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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2273675 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #65757 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65757) diff --git a/old/65757-0.txt b/old/65757-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 992a3d7..0000000 --- a/old/65757-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8470 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Last Essays of Maurice Hewlett, by Maurice -Hewlett - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Last Essays of Maurice Hewlett - - -Author: Maurice Hewlett - - - -Release Date: July 4, 2021 [eBook #65757] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST ESSAYS OF MAURICE HEWLETT*** - - -E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) from page images digitized by the -Google Books Library Project (https://books.google.com) and generously -made available by HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - HathiTrust Digital Library. See - https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015031235537 - - - - - -Last Essays of Maurice Hewlett - - -[Illustration: Logo] - - - - - - -London -William Heinemann, Ltd - -First Published 1924 -Second Impression May 1924 - -Printed in England at -The Westminster Press, Harrow Road -London, W.9 - - - - -_NOTE_ - - -_Lovers of Mr. Hewlett’s work will understand that these Essays have -not been subjected to the severe revision which Mr. Hewlett would -undoubtedly have given them before publication in this book. In one or -two minor points his Executors have felt doubtful about the deletion -or insertion of a passage, but in these cases the decision has always -been the same--that his readers would prefer to have the Essays in Mr. -Hewlett’s original form._ - -_Thanks are due to the editors of “The Times” and “The Evening -Standard”; “The London Mercury,” “The Cornhill Magazine,” “The -Nineteenth Century,” and other periodicals, for permission to reprint -certain of these Essays._ - - - - -CONTENTS - - PAGE -A Return to the Nest 1 - -“And now, O Lord ...” 7 - -The Death of the Sheep 12 - -The Solitary Reaper 16 - -Interiors 19 - -The Plight of Their Graces 25 - -The Village 30 - -The Curtains 39 - -Happiness in the Village 43 - -Otherwhereness 48 - -The Journey to Cockaigne 54 - -Suicide of the Novel 59 - -Immortal Works 65 - -Ballad-Origins 69 - -Real and Temporal Creation 77 - -Peasant Poets 82 - -Doggerel or Not 88 - -The Iberian’s House 93 - -Scandinavian England 99 - -Our Blood and State in 1660 103 - -“Merrie” England 109 - -Endings--I 115 - - “ II 124 - -Beaumarchais 132 - -The Cardinal de Retz 148 - -“L’Abbesse Universelle”: Madame de Maintenon 166 - -Pierre de L’Estoile 172 - -La Bruyère 191 - -Couleur de Rose 211 - -Art and Heart 217 - -A Novel and a Classic 223 - -The Other Dorothy 229 - -Realism with a Difference 247 - -Mr. Pepys His Apple-cart 253 - -One of Lamb’s Creditors 269 - -Crocus and Primrose 278 - -Daffodils 285 - -Windflowers 291 - -Tulips 297 - -Summer 304 - -The Lingering of the Light 310 - - - - -A RETURN TO THE NEST - - -Why it was that my great-grandfather left the village in Somerset in -and on which his forefathers, I believe, had lived from the time of -Domesday, why he forsook agriculture and cider for the law, married -in Shoreditch, settled in Fetter Lane, went back to Somerset to bury -his first child, and returned to London to beget my grandfather, be -ultimately responsible for _me_, and break finally with his family -cradle, I never understood until the other day when, in good company, -I took the road, left the bare hills--how softly contoured, how -familiar, and how dear--of South Wilts, topped the great rock on which -Shaftesbury lifts, dived down into Blackmore Vale, and so entered my -county of origin at its nearest point, namely Wincanton (where I saw, -by the by, a palæolithic man alive and walking the world)--to find -myself in a land of corn and wine and oil, or so it seemed, such a -land as those who love deep loam, handsome women, fine manners and a -glut of apples more than most things in this life (and there are few -things better), would never leave if they could help it. That is a long -sentence with which to begin an essay, but it expresses what I did, and -very much how I did it. - -In a word, I left Broadchalke and drove to Yeovil, within ten miles -of which thriving town the family to which I belong itself throve -and cultivated its virtues, if any. My great-grandfather and I were -not acquainted; but I remember my grandfather perfectly well, and -can testify that he had virtues. He was on the tall side of the mean -height, a deep-chested, large-headed old man, with hair snowy white, -a rosy face, and cool, extremely honest blue eyes. He was hasty in -his movements (and in his temper), trundled about rather than walked. -I used to think as a boy that it could not be wholesome, and must be -most inconvenient, to have such clean hands, such dazzling linen, and -such polished pink filberts instead of finger-nails. I never saw him -otherwise dressed than in black broadcloth, with shoes polished like -looking-glasses, and a shirt-collar just so starched that it stood up -enclosing his chin, yet so little that it took on the contours of his -cheeks where they pressed it. He had a deep voice, with a cheer in it. -I remember--for he had little else to say to me--how he used to put -his hand on my head and murmur, as if to himself, “My boy, my boy,” in -such a way that I felt in leaving him, as perhaps Jacob did with Isaac, -that it would be impossible ever to do anything wrong again and betray -such a noble affection. One other thing struck me, even then, young and -ungracious as I was, and that was his extraordinarily fine manners. -Since then, whenever I have considered manners, I have compared them -with his. He is for me the staple of courtesy. They were the manners -which bring a man more than half-way to meet you. He used them to all -the world: to me, to the servants, to the crossing-sweeper, to the -clerks from his office who used to come for papers when he was too old -to go into London. I know now where he got them. They were traditional -West Country manners; and sure enough when I walked the village street -where, if my grandfather never walked, my great-grandfather did, -the first man of whom I asked information met me with just the same -forwardness of service, and seemed to know tentacularly what precisely -lay behind the question which I put him. I had always been proud of my -grandfather; now I was proud of my county. For if manners don’t make a -man, they make a gentleman. - -Let me call the village Bindon St. Blaise, to give myself freedom to -say that I don’t remember to have seen one more beautiful than it -looked on that sunny autumn day, drowsing, winking in the heat of noon. -The houses are of stone--and that stone saturated, as it seemed, in -centuries of sunlight. Yes, I have seen Bibury in Gloucestershire, -and Broadway in Worcestershire, Alfriston in Sussex, and Teffont in -Wilts; and Clovelly, and Boscastle, and Ponteland, and many another -haunt of peace; but never yet a place of grey and gold so established, -so decent in age, so recollected, so dignified as Bindon St. Blaise, -which my great-grandfather unwillingly, I am sure, forsook in 1780 or -thereabouts. Nobody could tell me which of its many fair houses he -had forsworn. The fancy could play with them at large. There was a -long-roofed farm with gables many and deep, with two rows of mullioned, -diamonded windows, each with its perfect dripstone, which I should -like to think was once ours, except that it faces north, and therefore -has gathered more moss than we should care about now. Perhaps it _was_ -ours, and he left it, seeking the sun. But would he have gone to look -for it in Fetter Lane? No, no. I incline, however, to a smaller house -facing full south, with a walled garden full of apple trees, and a -pear tree reaching to the chimney stack, and a portico--whereover a -room looking straight into the eye of the sun. There was a radiant -eighteenth-century house for a man to have been born in! Could I have -brought myself to leave such a nest? Well, we shall see. - -After luncheon at the Boulter Arms (let us call it), and an indication -where we should find “the Great House,” we went instead to see the -house of God, which lay on our road to it, almost within its park. -Like all that I have seen in Somerset, it is a spacious, well-ordered -church, mainly perpendicular, with the square tower and lace-worked -windows which belong to the type. The churchyard was beautifully kept, -planted with roses and Irish yews: the graves were in good order, -numerous, and so eminently respectable that, at first blush, it seemed -as if we had stepped into the Peerage; for if we were not trenching -upon a lord’s remains, it was upon those of one who had had to do with -a lord. Research was encumbered by this overgrowth of dignities: the -great family, like its Great House, overshadowed the Valley of Dry -Bones; and plain men, who in life perhaps had been parasites perforce, -in death were sprawled upon by their masters. Hannah Goodbody, for -instance, “for forty years in the service of the Right Hon. John -Charles Ferdinand, sixth Earl Boulter, Viscount and Baron Boulter of -Bindon St. Blaise”--had she not earned _quietus_, and need all that be -remembered against her? Percival Slade, “for twenty years Groom of the -Chambers to Ferdinand Charles John, seventh Earl”; Matilda Swinton, -housekeeper; Peter Wain, gamekeeper; Thomas Duffey, storekeeper--I -began to see what had been the matter with my great-grandfather. - -Inside, the church revealed itself as a family vault so encumbered -with the dead that the living must have been incommoded. In the midst -of life they were in death indeed. Earls in effigy slept (like Priam’s -sons in the Iliad) beside their chaste wives--flat in brasses, worn -smooth in basalt, glaringly in plaster, as might be. A side-chapel -was so full of them that the altar was crowded out: and why not? They -were altar and sacrifice and deity in one. They spilled over on to the -floor, splayed out on the walls in tablets as massy as houseleeks; and -on the bosses of the vaulted roof one found the Boulter arms implanted -in the heart of the Mystic Rose. O too much Boulter--but we were not -shut of them yet. Discreetly curtained off was a Holy of Holies where -the shining ones who survived worshipped their ancestors; a noble -apartment, a withdrawing room, with a stove, a couple of sofas, some -club-chairs, and a deeply padded elbow cushion. Magazines, an ash-tray, -a match-stand--one missed them. There is, no doubt, a comic side to all -this. “J’ai trente mille livres de rente, et cependant je meurs!” said -the Abbé de Bonport. The same amazement might come upon an entrenched -Earl Boulter at any minute in the midst of his cushioned ease. Neither -coat-armour nor a private stove will ward off the mortal chills. -However, I forgive them their quality, but not their oppression of -other people’s tombstones. - -For we too were oppressed, and not diverted. We were seeking our -ancestors, but they were not here. They had fled to Fetter Lane, and I -cannot blame them. The doubt about my great-grandfather is solved. He -left the village of Bindon St. Blaise because he saw no other way of -escape from an Earl on his tomb. He married, his wife bore him a son, -which died young. Moved then by piety, he brought down the innocent -to be buried, secure that upon that unknown life no great name could -intrude. I should have done the same thing, I believe. - - - - -“AND NOW, O LORD ...” - - -“And now, O Lord, permit me to relate to Thee an anecdote”: that was -how a minister, labouring with a good story, introduced it into the -midst of his extemporary prayer. I ask to be excused a better exordium, -if better there be. - -Heaven knows what reminded me of it, but a friend of mine had an -interesting experience at Hyde Park Corner one day. He had been riding -in the Row, and was returning leisurely to Whitehall and official cares -somewhere about eleven in the forenoon. At the gates of entry and issue -he was held up in common with the traffic of east and west, which at -that hour was almost at the flood. Omnibuses throbbed and simmered, -dray-horses chafed at their bits, motors and taxis all stood obedient, -bicyclists clung to whatever stays they could come by: in the midst -two staunch policemen stood with their arms at danger. All that mighty -heart was lying still, and there was a lane of emptiness, as if for -royalty, from Constitution Hill. Along that presently there paddled -a wild duck and her chicks in single file, the mother leading; all -necks on the stretch, all eyes wide, all beak a-twitter. Everybody was -interested, but nobody laughed, so far as he could see. I would have -given much to be there. We are a pretty degraded race, no doubt, yet -we have instincts left us which, at our best, betray us for what we -were intended to be. I myself, such as I am, once caused a motor to be -stopped while a stoat and her family crossed the Blandford Road, and -we have a tradition that my father once reined up a phaeton to allow -a woolly bear to get safely over. I daresay he did: such things are -inherited. I mention them in no spirit of boasting, but rather to show -that Londoners, who seem to us here so machine-made, are of the same -clay as the children of light. - -You may see queer things in London still, though they are rarer than -they used to be. Nature persists in spite of the electrification of -most things. I saw a battle in the upper air between a crow and a heron -one morning early, in Hyde Park. Heaven knows from what regions fair -and far they were come--but there they were at it, hammer and tongs. -I watched them for a quarter of an hour. The heron got home once, but -not a true blow. It glanced off the skull, and the black shuddered and -avoided. It was inconceivable how quick the blow was, a very lightning -flash; yet the crow swerved in time, and swopped off sideways. The -baffled heron turned heavily and gave no chase. More persistent, and -with death in it, was a duel watched by a man I knew from a Foreign -Office window, between a swan and a pelican. The broadsword there had -no chance against the longer reach. The end must have been terrific, -for the swan took his enemy by the neck and held his head under water -until the battling of his huge wings ceased to churn it into foam, -until the great creature itself became like a lump of white froth. -Then, said my friend, the swan lifted his own wings until they met -above his back, threw his head up and back to rest upon them, and -oared away towards the bridge. I would have given a good deal to see -that also, perhaps six hours a day at the Foreign Office. There’s no -end to the tale of things you can see in London. Why, a lady in whom -I have every reason to believe came in to lunch one day saying that -she had just seen a hansom drive down Victoria Street with an eagle -standing on the horse’s back, balancing himself on outspread wings. -What was one to say, except wish that one had been as lucky? - -Against that extreme example of the picturesque I could only advance -that I had seen an elm-tree fall on a man in Gray’s Inn and kill him -instantly. Or that, at the corner of Montague Place, I saw a runaway -brewer’s dray barge into a four-wheeler. It missed the cab (on whose -box the driver sat intact), but caught the horse full and knocked him -and the shafts with him down some area steps across the pavement--where -indeed he remained as in his stall until he could be built up from -below. Extreme urgency had hurtled him down the steps, but no -persuasion, fore or aft, would move him up again. So they built him -up with trusses of straw. Nothing quite so good as that ever happened -to me in a four-wheeler; but I haven’t done so badly either. I was -driving once through Paris very early in the morning from the Gare de -Lyon to Saint-Lazare. You are lucky to get a cab at all at such times, -and I thought myself so to have a crazy old victoria and a horse tied -together with string. We did not exactly go, but we got, into the rue -Lafayette, where, without any warning, the victoria parted amidships. -The driver on his box and two wheels went on with the horse; I and my -companion fell forward into the road and the hood of the thing atop of -us. I set up a yell, half-laughter, half-alarm, which caused our man -to look round. When he saw what had happened he pulled up, and very -carefully descended from his perch. Did he come to help us? Not so. He -went directly and deliberately into a cabaret, without any notice taken -of any kind, and we saw him put away a noggin, or whatever it is, of -cognac. Then, with the same meditated method, he came to extricate his -charges. They, however, had by that time extricated themselves, and -considered themselves shut of him. - -When a Frenchman begins to drive anything, horse or motor, he seems to -become intoxicated with progress, and content just to drive, not to -guide, and never, at any rate, to stop. I have been the victim also -of that generous ardour. It was in Algiers, ages ago, but not such -ages that there were not tramcars along the sea-front. A baker in his -covered cart was taking us to see some sight or other; and along the -sea-front held his course magnificently indifferent to everything -but the speed and joy of it all--aided not a little thereto by the -fine afternoon, the business of the road, and the café tables hemming -it, dense with customers. For it was the hour of absinthe. The trams -flashed past us, coming or going, but little cared he for that. His -object was to pass them, and he did pass one or two. Presently, -however, at a curve he flogged his horse to pass one, on the wrong -side, and just as he drew level, behold, another bearing swiftly down -upon us! I confess that I blenched--but he did not; rather held on -his way, and not until the last tick of our last minute on earth did -it strike him that he must do something. And what did he do? He gave -a wild shout and turned his horse sharply to the left. On his left -was the overflow of a café--tin tables, bentwood chairs, syphons, -opal-brimmed glasses, citizens in straw hats, with straws to their -mouths, with cigars or newspapers--as thick as a flock of sheep. Into -the midst of this, as once Don Quixote hurled himself, we plunged, -horse, cart and passengers. Tables flew right and left, citizens were -upset, glasses shivered, waiters wrung their hands. You never saw -such a sight. And what did we do? I and my companion sat where we -were, laughing ourselves ill, fighting for breath. Our driver slowly -dismounted and looked round. He disregarded entirely the havoc he -had made, and thought only of his honour. The driver of the tram was -waiting for him. They met, and each lifted a bunched hand, in which all -the finger-tips met and formed a little cage, to within an inch of the -other’s nose. Then began _des injures_, which could only have ended in -one of two ways. The arrival of the gendarmes decided in which of the -two it was to end. - - - - -THE DEATH OF THE SHEEP - - -Alfred de Vigny, it seems, wrote a poem of stoic intention called _La -Mort du Loup_, in which he apostrophised in his eloquent way that -particular among other _sublimes animaux_. I have never read a line of -it myself, but can well understand, when Sainte-Beuve regrets that it -should have been written too much from the standpoint of seeking in -nature at all costs subjects of meditative poetry, that Sainte-Beuve -may have been right. The pathetic fallacy is a stumbling-block to -the egoistic travellers we are. De Vigny on his dead wolf may have -been lifted as far, or nearly as far, as Sterne on his dead donkey. -Personally, I am busking for a short excursion on a dead sheep; but -although there were elements of the high sublime in the climax, and -of the horrid in the anti-climax of the tragedy, it is not on their -account that I wish to relate it; rather because it seemed to me at -the time to be representative, exactly to prefigure the countryside -in which I saw it all done. It may stand up as type, or as symbol, of -the fells and the life lived there; it has in it much of their lonely -grandeur and savagery, of their harshness and plainness, of their -entire absence of amenity; in a word, of their Nordic quality which -does not so much insist as take for granted, in a way disconcerting -to the Southerner, that neither man nor woman, dog nor sheep more or -less makes one straw’s worth of difference to the day’s work, but that -we are all alike rolled round, as Wordsworth said, “with stocks and -stones and trees.” He himself, Nordic to the bone, saw nothing amiss -with it; and no doubt it is all right. - -The sheep must have died rather suddenly in the late afternoon. When I -went down the fell-side, at six, to fish in the river there was nothing -but greenness to be seen; when I came up again, round about eight -o’clock, I saw, or thought I saw, a grey rock where had been no rock -before. It was the sheep, and quite cold. She must have felt her time -at hand, withdrawn herself from her companions, and descended the hill -deliberately to be alone with fate. Then, as I see it now, she stood -there, facing down the hill, which in health her kind never does, and -awaited the end of all things. Then, as the chills crept up, she lay -down and put her muzzle flatlings to that rooty earth which in life -she had so diligently sought, and with the scent of it to comfort her -(the best thing she knew) given up what ghost she had. She looked, as I -stood over her, to be asleep--asleep with large, bare eyelids covering -her blank amber eyes--and grandly indifferent to me and the rest of -us. I left her, a warrior taking her rest. There she lay all night; -and in the morning, her former mates feeding all about her, there she -was. A windless silver rain was falling, straight as rods of glass. The -fell was blanched with it, as with hoar frost; but she took no notice -of the rain. A crow or two wheeled about, and bore off in the haze as -soon as I showed myself. I went down to look at the sheep. She lay -easily, her nose to the ground, while others of her nation gazed at -me, foolishly serious, heaving at the side. Whatever had taken place at -that supreme hour of yesterday evening, it had changed this corruptible -into something other than a sheep. Sheep-nature had gone; she had not a -sheep’s face any more. Her dead eyes looked wiselier through their lids -than their empty ones unveiled, and fuller, too, as if charged with -weightier news. Sterner, too, she appeared--with her lips curled back; -the rabbit-look gone. - -There she lay in the wet all forenoon, very dignified and at ease in -death. But distresses were at hand. After mid-day I saw a thin white -dog, come out of nowhere, high-trotting over the grass, his tail -feathering, his nose in the wind. He tacked to the corpse, sniffed at -it from a spear’s length, then spurned it after the manner of his race, -and slowly retired. Not for very long. He had discovered a hankering -as he went, which became irresistible, and drew him back to satisfy -it. I watched him. This time he came, not adventurously, but as on -secret errand, furtively, creeping cat-footed by the stone wall--much, -I thought, as Amina would have skirted the graveyard. When he had to -take to the open he approached by broad tacks north and south, and at -the last came on with a rush. I saw him attack the silent thing, pull -out large tufts of wool, from which he fiercely shook himself free. He -did more than that before I shouted, and threatened with my hand. Then -he slipped rapidly away, at a loping gallop, with many a look behind to -where I stood on the brow. He was only the first. Looking out again, I -saw a black-and-white dog, with his head busy in the carcase, and down -by the river another on the way. I had seen in my day jackals about a -dead camel, and did not want that sort of thing rehearsed in Eskdale. -In my own country we feed our sheep-dogs, and should discourage them -from helping themselves to braxy mutton, lest they might acquire a -taste for meat of their own killing. Besides, I respected what had -seemed to me a dignified end of days. So I drove off the two ghouls and -went down to do what I could. I was too late. She had suffered the last -indignity. She was dragged over on to her back, her head was awry, her -lips riven apart to show her teeth; and she was disembowelled. However, -I did what there was to do, covered her with a loose field-gate, heaped -upon that coping-stones from the wall, made a kind of cairn. Then I -went over to the farm to see the farmer’s wife. - -She said--merely humouring my queasiness--that the remains should -be shifted. And they were. A leggy young thrall made short work of -my defences, and dragged the sheep by a hind-leg into a spinney of -sycamores near by. Thereabouts I saw the dogs gather themselves -together at shut of day, and I heard their snapping and snarling over -their uneasy meal. I heard it far into the night, where under cover of -dark the dead sheep was consumed with obscene rites. Nothing but bared -bones will be left; but they will remain undisturbed to gleam in the -murky wood for a season, inchmeal to be resumed into the soil. - - - - -THE SOLITARY REAPER - - -The Evangelist, when he said that the field was white already to -harvest, was thinking of some grain which we know not in Wilts. Our -broad acres are deep orange, some of them near the colour of rust. He -might have had oats in his mind’s eye, not a staple of ours. Here and -there they show up patches of silver-grey; but most of our corn is red -wheat, a noble increase. In a burning summer such as this the familiar -scene takes on the bleached glare and fierce hue of Spain or Provence. -I had a train journey yesterday across West Wilts through hills all -drab and tawny. The corn is shoulder-high, heavy in ear, bolt upright; -a sight, you would say, as I do, to thank God for. From all sides comes -the sound of the reaper, a rattle when horse-drawn, but a scream when -petrol drives it, a restless disagreeable noise, not only anti-social, -but unsociable. I regret the happy accidents of the vanished harvests: -the reapers with their attendant girls binding after them, the busy, -thirsty, brawling Irishmen; the sharp swish of the scythe which -succeeded the hook and was always a pleasant sound, whether as it -slashed down the straw, or when the stone tinkled rhythmically against -the blade; the work in file, the noonday rest in companies--all gone -now. I passed a hundred-acre field yesterday where cutting had just -begun. One man was reaping it. - - - Alone she cuts and binds the grain, - And sings a melancholy strain: - O listen! for the vale profound - Is overflowing with the sound. - - -It was indeed! For “she” was a machine. - -“It may be wholesome but it is not good,” as Nebuchadnezzar said, -munching the “unfamiliar food.” One misses the human note in -agriculture, always its most pronounced and amiable feature, the thing -in particular which gave poignancy to the festival which we shall -celebrate this year earlier than any man here can mind our doing. The -children’s holidays begin, too, this week, in obedience to what is -now a forlorn convention--a mere vestige like the human appendix. For -the children now have no part in harvesting. They used to twist the -bonds for their mothers and sisters; but the machine does all that -now, the exorbitant monster, with twine. I suppose that the hiles, -as we call them, are still set up by men’s hands--that is all there -is left of what used to be our high season of the mingling of both -sexes, all classes, and all ages. I regret, and I fear too. If the -“solitary reaper” is but the prelude to the golden age of Mr. Sidney -Webb’s dream, when farms are to be measured by their square-mileage, -and farming conducted in a box by a man with a switch-board in front of -him, a man who might be in Whitehall for anything that appears--why, -then the country will become as the town; life will be a game of -automaton chess-players; and I shall go and grow vanilla in a Pacific -island. Of all Utopias yet devised by the academic, Mr. Webb’s appears -to me the most ghastly, and luckily also the least likely to be -realised. There are “little men” here still growing corn, reaping it -still with sickle and hook; and perhaps some of them are threshing it -with flails, and winnowing it in the wind on floors like that of Ornan -the Jebuzite. They do that still in Greece, for I have seen the floors. -I don’t despair of seeing some here, where Mr. Webb’s _automata_ are -not visible. We are most of us “little men” at heart. - - - - -INTERIORS - - -Now is the time of year when you see interiors at their best--interiors -and all that they involve and imply. The warmth and light of the earth -concentre there, and he is unhappy--a figure for Hans Andersen--who has -not hearth to reach and household gods to await him. Meantime, however -he be hastening towards them, he will look, not without longing, -through still uncurtained windows, mark the leaping fire, the shaded -lamp, the tea-table and its attendant guests, and feel a glow and (I am -sure) a momentary pang. Perhaps we are exorbitant lovers, perhaps we -dread to know how lonely we are. I don’t care to say. But certainly we -are creatures of the light; and where that is, there must we be. - -Familiar as we are with ourselves, and often enough bored to tears with -the fellow, we are so blankly ignorant of each other that we can set -no bounds to our curiosity. Thence comes part, at least, of the charm -of lit interiors, that we think to surprise the inhabitants at their -mysteries, catch them unawares and find out what they do when no one -is looking at them--or they believe it. This is no case for Peeping -Tom of Coventry: the need is much too urgent for unwholesome prying. -Honestly, we require to be certified that we are not alone, unique -in the world. Besides, inspection, you may say, is invited; or it is -ignored. Your hastening steps down a village street at dusk may lead -you through a picture-gallery, so free are the indwellers of their -concerns: I have been gladdened by enchanting scenes through narrow -window-frames or magic casements. Once it was of children--four little -girls in pinafores, in a row behind a long table, all stooped over -bread and milk in yellow bowls. The eldest I put at about ten; from her -they ran down to four or five. So good, and so busy--“forty feeding -like one!” But there were only four of them so far as I could see. As -they stooped, their hair fell forward to curtain their faces. It was -what the French call _cendré_, very glossy and smooth, and curling at -the ends. They did not speak, just shovelled; but just as I passed I -saw the little one at the bottom of the row perform the feat of turning -a pretty large spoon completely round in a pretty small mouth; and as -she did it she looked sideways at someone hidden from me (presiding, -no doubt, over the tea-cups), to ascertain if she had been caught in -the act. I declare that I saw triumph and anxiety contending in her -eyes. And she _had_ been caught, not by the president, but by her elder -sister at the other end of the line. There too I saw reproof hovering. -Happy, busy, neat little creatures! I tell you I felt myself an exile -as I passed that haunt of peace and warmth! And so one always does, I -believe, whatsoever welcome await you at the end of your journey. You -ask--or I did--How come they to leave _me_ outside in the dark? Don’t -they know that I am one with them all? - -I have seen a mother reading to her girls at work, and longed to -know what the book was, whether I had read it. If, as I believed, it -was Miss Alcott, then I was all right. I have seen a boy rigging a -three-masted vessel at a table, and knew by the way he was biting his -tongue how happy he was. And I have seen comedies for Molière. I saw -topers once in a tap-room, and a man in a cut-away coat and a shocking -hat standing up and trying to make good and not succeeding. He did not -belong to their parts--that was evident. I guessed him to be an outlier -from some race-meeting or other. But there he was, inside, warm, and -at least smelling the good cheer, and there he hoped to remain. He was -doing it, or trying it, on his gift--which was tongues. I don’t suppose -that I was thirty seconds passing that window, if so much; yet I could -see decisively that he wanted them to believe in him, and how badly. -They, a plain-faced, weather-seamed row, were not taking any. They were -tired with their day’s work, leaned to the wall, their legs, I am sure, -stretched out at length. Each with one horny hand held his pipe in its -place; one and all they looked down at their feet, and listened, and -judged him for a poor thing. The things you see! - -They are not always so pleasant. Sometimes they can be pretty tragic -when you come to work them out. I passed a house once on the outskirts -of a country town, and across a laurel hedge and iron fence, and -between the branches of a monkey-puzzler, could see into a lighted -room. Not much to be seen, you might think. Gas was burning in a -central chandelier behind ground-glass globes. An engraving in a gilt -frame on a green wall; something in a tall glass case before the -window. I did not see the _aspidestris_, which must have been there. -Then, on one side of the fire a man in a black coat, asleep, and on -the other a woman in a white shawl, asleep--and that was all. Yes, but -wait. I remember a trial at some Assizes years ago, where a man was -arraigned for killing his wife. He pleaded not guilty, as of course; -but the evidence was clear. He had killed her with a chopper in the -scullery. He was convicted and sentenced to death, having had nothing -to say. Before his execution, but not long before it, he told the -chaplain of the gaol what he had done, and why. He said that he had -been married to the woman for twenty years; that they did not quarrel, -but had got out of the way of speaking to one another, and, in fact, -practically never did. It had not affected him for some time, he said; -but one evening, suddenly, it did. One evening he was struck with -horror, palsy-struck with the reflection: “Good God! I have sat dumb -before this woman, she dumb before me, for twenty years, and we may -have to sit so for another twenty.” He said that from that moment the -thought never left him, that the horror of the prospect daunted him, -and that by and by his heart failed him. He knew then that he could -not do it. Some wild resentment, some hot inconsiderate grudge wrought -madness in him--to that shocking end. By ordinary we do not use our -imagination, and so escape very likely as much misery as happiness, -glory and the like. But if the picture-making faculty awake of itself, -blaze the future at us, so vividly that we cannot doubt of its -truth--what then? Why, then, as often as not, despondency and madness. -I had no envy of that gas-illumined room, and was contented to be a -stranger to that disgruntled pair. - -I have seen other things of sharper savour, where passion clearly was -involved, and, as it seemed, the creatures themselves uncurtained as -well as the room they occupied. Two of them, related long ago, I shall -always remember: the first, seen by chance from a window of the Army -and Navy Stores, which looked out over the purlieus of Westminster -towards the river. That showed me a mean second-floor bedroom just over -the way, and a little maid-servant in it, down at heels, draggled, her -cap awry, dusting and tidying up. All familiar, uninteresting, a matter -of routine, until suddenly I saw her throw her head up--a gesture of -real abandonment--and fall on her knees beside the bed. She buried -her face in her bare arm; and I moved away. That was no place for me. -Startling though, to be jolted out of the smooth apparatus of shopping, -away from obsequious service and the accepted convention, in return for -my half-crowns, that I was a temporary lord of the earth. All a sham, -that; but there across the street, in a frowsy bedroom, was reality--a -soul and its Disposer face to face. - -The other was revealed when, as a very young man, I had chambers in Old -Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn. My bedroom there backed upon slums, but was -above them, being almost in the roof of a tall old house. One night, -very late, I was going to bed, and leaned far out of my window to get -air and see the stars. Before, and below me rather, rose a dark wall -of houses, entirely blind but for one lighted window. That revealed a -shabby sitting-room--a table with a sewing-machine and paraffin lamp; -little else. There was a man sitting by the table in his shirt-sleeves; -he was smoking while he read the evening paper. Then a door opened -and a tall, youngish woman came in. She was in white--evidently in -her nightdress--and her loose hair was about her shoulders. She stood -between door and table, resting her hand; I don’t think that she spoke. -The man, aware or unaware, went on reading. But presently he looked -up: their eyes met. He threw down pipe and paper and went to her. He -dropped to his knees, clasped hers, and bent his head to his hands. All -that I had seen before--I knew what I was doing--but I saw no more. -What did it mean? Husband and wife? Sinner and saviour? What do I know? - - - - -THE PLIGHT OF THEIR GRACES - - -The mills of God grind as the poet has declared, and they grind to the -same measure both the illustrious and the obscure. Naturally one hears -more of the sorrows of the great. The wailing of a duke will carry the -length of the realm, and since America is now interested domestically -in that estate it will reverberate in the Western continent also. The -Duke of Bedford has lately exhibited a part of his case to readers of -_The Times_, the Duke of Portland more explicitly his to his friends -and neighbours. Both their graces say in effect that the thing can’t be -done. They do not tell us why not; but we can infer it. To do things -properly, Welbeck and Woburn require some thirty housemaids; and how -are they to find thirty housemaids, or, having found them, as things -now are, pay for them? They do not ask, but the question follows for -the plainer sort, why should a man stand in the ridiculous position of -requiring thirty housemaids? - -It so happens that I have just been to Woburn for the first time -in my life, have made the circuit of the great wall, some ten feet -high and, I daresay, ten miles round, have entered at one fine gate -and issued at another after a traverse of the noble spaces of the -park, in which herds of deer, occasional ostriches, lamas, bisons, -remote and solitary buffaloes, and heaven knows what, were to be seen -peacefully feeding, as if no kind of anxiety was fretting the peace -and amplitude of it all. The trees, the boscages, the lake, the great -piled grey house unapproachable of the vulgar, the model villages with -their cottage-fronts all stamped with a crowned B--all these splendid -established things passed by me like an opium-eater’s dream: all so -seeming secure, inevitable and right; all, actually, so shaky, doomed, -and infernally wrong. And with the Lord of Welbeck’s wail in my ears, I -also saw that, truly, it could not be done. - -It is not a matter of housemaids alone. It is a matter of gardeners, -of woodmen, of a permanent staff of masons and bricklayers--for with -a wall of ten feet by ten miles there will always be repairs. Other -services in proportion. Where are we then? I avoid arithmetic for -excellent reasons; but I do see that thirty housemaids at £50 a year -apiece plus board come to £3,000 a year, and that the others will -figure out accordingly. How is it to be done? It is not. And why should -it be done? God knows. - -Whether their Graces know is another matter. I think that they are -beginning to know--but even so, they are only at the beginning of -the problem. For it is not so easy as it sounds just to drop Welbeck -or Woburn and live _en pension_ at Dieppe. What are you to do with -Welbeck in the meantime? And if you don’t want it yourself, who, do -you suppose, will want it? And let it be remembered that their Graces, -besides Welbeck and Woburn, possess each another house, not made with -hands, an indestructible house. They are dukes for ever after the order -of Melchisedech. Like snails, wherever they go--to Dieppe, to a flat -in the Temple, to a caravan, to the banks of the Susquehanna--they must -carry that blazoned house on their backs. And I cannot imagine a more -inhospitable or superfluous mansion for the life of me. - -The only nobility worth talking about is one of birth, and even that -won’t bear talking about very seriously. Lord Chesterfield, the famous -one of the family, had a gallery of ancestors which was a wonder to -behold of completeness and splendour. But he was wise enough to correct -it with two pictures: a scrubby old man, labelled Adam de Stanhope, and -a scrubby old woman, Eve de Stanhope. He had the values straightened -out thus wittily, at any rate for himself. Then there was the -family-tree of the Wynns, or another Welsh house, which had an asterisk -some distance down, with a note attached: “About this time the creation -of the world took place.” This is perhaps all very foolish, but we can -understand it. - -We supplemented that intelligible aristocracy in our country, first -with an aristocracy of office, and then with one of rank; and it is -on those in particular that the economic crisis presses. Noble birth -is a matter of tradition and, so to speak, of God’s grace. If you are -nobly born you may black boots, sell matches or beg at a church door. -Hidalgos, grandees of Spain, do these things in their own country, and -remain grandees of Spain. Even ignoble pursuits cannot stultify noble -birth. There it is. Official nobility, too, is very well, while ability -to office persists: but that kind died out because ability to office -refused to be hereditary. The first Earls were governors of earldoms, -that is of counties. The first Viscounts were Vicecomites, Sheriffs. -But Lord Viscount Northcliffe is not a sheriff. If he is an aristocrat -it is by virtue of rank. Now rank is not quite like beauty. Handsome -is as handsome does, we know; but rank is as rank is able to be. You -may make a man a duke, of course, but it is possible that he will -make himself ridiculous; and if he does that, and if he does it often -enough, and if there are enough of him, he will make the Fountain of -Honour itself ridiculous. I don’t know who was the first of our kings -to ennoble, his Quelconques, his “unfortunate females,” as Carlyle used -to say: I think it was Henry VIII; but whoever he was he sowed the -seed of a fungus in the ranks of the peers. One knows what the French -kings did, what Charles II, what the Hanoverians did. Whether, when the -politicians took control of the Fountain of Honour and commercialised -its golden waters, they did any worse, it were hard to say. They made -common what had already become vulgar. The peerage of late years is -only less absurd because it is less conspicuous. That at least is -to the good. Yet there remains this last thing to be said about it. -An aristocracy of birth is self-sufficient, but one of rank demands -self-evidence, quite a different matter. It drives you back upon -wealth, without which it is an absurdity. A grandee of Spain selling -matches will pass--but how about a Caroline or Georgian marquess -driving a taxi, or taking his turn at a music-hall? - -M. Henri Lavedan wrote a novel upon that theme, a cynical, witty, -bitter, rattling novel, too, called “Le Bon Temps.” A party of -Parisians, men about town and their ladies, is lunching _al fresco_ -at Armenonville or some such on a fine morning in May. A hurdy-gurdy -sounds a familiar air outside, which touches the tender top of some -quill in one of the _convives_. “Let’s have the old chap in,” he moves -the company. “He’s playing the _Blue Danube_, and will renew the youth -for some of us.” They have him in, a tattered, bearded, bright-eyed -_vecchio_, his instrument slung by a greasy strap to one shoulder, -on the other a foolish little troubled monkey in a red velveteen -petticoat. He lifts his old hat and recommences his grinding. One of -the guests covers his eyes, and so remains until the grinder has gone. -Then he lifts his head. “Do you know who that was?” “Not I indeed!” -“That was the Duc d’Epervier.” Then he tells the story of _Le Bon -Temps: Wein, Weib, und Gesang_, a rattling tale with a croak in it. - -“Why do the people imagine a vain thing?” This is a case for tags. - - - - -THE VILLAGE - - -The gardener told my housekeeper, and she told me, that the policeman’s -wife had a baby. I said, Splendid! or Good!--it was one or the -other--which will show you that I knew what I was about. To have said -less than that--to have said simply, “Oh,” or “Why not?” would have -been to fail in tact. For in the village we take such a thing as a baby -seriously. We call it Increase, not a baby, in the old fashion, and -disregard the new probability that, while it may be so in one sense, -there are several in which it may well be called Decrease. When a -patriarch’s--or, I should say here, a Druid’s--wife had a baby, both -she and the Druid knew that, barring accidents, it would work for him, -if it was a boy, and in due course bring in a wife of its own, and -Increase of its own--all to work for the Druid until he died. Or, if -it was a girl, he would sell it to a neighbouring Druid for measures -of corn or heads of cattle. Increase then all round, however it turned -out. But it is different now. We have the name without the thing. If -it is a boy, as in fact the policeman’s is, it will be no use to him -until it is fifteen, and not much then. Suppose it gets a job somewhere -handy, it will pay its mother, say, five shillings a week, a bare -subsistence. At twenty, if still living at home, that may be increased -to ten shillings. Clothes and a motor-bike will somehow come out of the -rest. Precious little Increase there. And soon after twenty it will -marry and disappear from the household. But still the village holds -by the old fashion, and calls a boy-baby Increase. I have heard girls -dignified by the same title, though it is not so invariable. Yet there -is more chance of a girl proving useful to her parents than of a boy’s -being so. It depends entirely on the mother, whether as the child grows -up it finds out that she won’t stand any nonsense. There are still such -mothers left--I know two or three; but their numbers diminish with -every additional nonsense that crops up. - -Not only do we take babies seriously, but we take each other so. The -first is enforced upon us by custom, which is simply the unwritten -village law; the other comes about by circumstance, which provides that -whether we like it or not--and, on the whole, I am pretty sure that we -do like it--we are simply a large family. I don’t necessarily mean that -everybody is related to everybody else, though as a matter of fact he -is, but rather that everybody, from the time he was anybody, has always -known everybody else intimately: called him or her by his Christian -name--within limits--known the exact state of his wardrobe, the extent -of his earnings, the state of his pocket; what he had for dinner, or -will have to-morrow, where he has been, what he was doing, whom he is -courting, or by whom he is courted--and so on. I should fail entirely -to make plain the sense in which this extreme and (to a townsman) -extraordinary intimacy must be understood if I had not in reserve one -crowning example of it, beyond which I defy anybody to carry intimacy. -It is, then, the plain and literal fact that everybody in the village -knows, or can find out, exactly the amount, condition, value and period -of recurrence of everybody else’s underwear. There is no exception -to that. It is, it can be, it must be exposed to view and subject to -criticism every Monday afternoon in the garden of every cottage. When -you have a community with such a mutual knowledge among its members, -how can you help their taking each other seriously? - -Two of the fundamentals of village life have been expounded, I hope: -Custom, which is the Law, and says that what you did the day before -yesterday is sanction for doing it the day after to-morrow; that, and -exact mutual knowledge of your own and your neighbours’ affairs. There -is a third: common poverty. Everybody is poor--or if he is not, he must -seem so. That is invariable, for where everyone is poor, and everyone’s -affairs known to everyone else, a very jealous eye is kept for any -variation from the standard. Poverty--and by poverty I mean the state -where you never have quite enough for the week’s expenses, are never -more than a week’s pay off “the Parish,” and have to trust to windfalls -for mere necessaries--that kind of poverty is a state which can only -be borne in company. In the village it is the general state, and while -that is so the villagers will put up, it seems, with almost anything. -Custom, which assures them that it was like that for their forefathers, -enables them to accept their continual privations. I daresay there is -nobody in the village, of cottage rank, who has ever known an ordinary -day when he was not hungry after a meal. They say that that is good -for you. My only comment is, Try it, and it won’t seem to be so. They -will stand that; and being cold in bed; and letting the fire out when -you are not cooking something--so that you come home wet and tired to -cold ashes, and must chop kindling before you can be warm or dry; and -working incessantly, as the women do, for almost nothing or literally -nothing; and wearing the same clothes until they fall off you; and -washing at the sink downstairs because you are too tired to take water -upstairs; and having windows that won’t open, and doors that won’t -shut--but why go on? Worse things than any of these are endured in the -slums of great towns. The village makes little of them, provided that -they are shared; but the moment it knows, or has cause to suspect that -any one of its number has had “a stroke of luck,” come into money, had -a useful present made him, or found a well-paid job, then it is at -once dissatisfied with its lot, and the lucky offender hears about it. -It is not that village people are naturally unkind to each other--far -from that, they are kindness itself in times of trouble. But they are -incurably suspicious, and quicker to believe ill than well of each -other. They grudge prosperity to a neighbour less than resent it. It -seems a slight upon themselves. A hot and bitter question surges up, -Why should that good fortune happen to her; and what have I done to be -left out? By some queer jugglery of the mind, the first half of the -question answers the second half; the happy one is so at the expense -of the less favoured. If you engage a girl in the village for some -daily task, her friends, as likely as not, will cut her in the street. -I knew a woman in Norfolk whose husband was killed by a fall from a -straw-stack. Compensation, insurance, club-money, presents from the -benevolent flowed in to the widow, whose neighbours saw her not only -free as air, but comfortably off according to village standards. They -called her “the Lady,” and some of her own family would have nothing to -do with her. - -Indiscriminate or heedless present-giving should therefore be -avoided, unless you wish harm to come to the object of your alms. -There was a man in a village over the hill who was doing a turn of -work in the house of a newcomer, a rich young man with the most -friendly intentions. Talking to his labourer one day and noticing his -unconventional leg-covering, it suddenly shot across his mind that he -had lately tried on a new pair of trousers and taken them off again -in a rage because of their cut. “By George,” he thought, “I like this -chap. Now I’ll give him those beastly trousers”--which he did. On -Sunday, then, there shone upon the church-going village young Richard -in the newest pair of trousers it had ever seen, except, of course, -upon the legs of a “gentleman,” where they would have been simply -unremarkable, _hors concours_. But now it was as if a private in a -file should show up there in a cocked hat with feathers. The trousers -were glossy from the iron, they caught the sun. The creases before or -behind would have cut a swathe. In the after-dinner time, when some -favoured corner hums with youth, it hummed to only one tune; and on -Monday the children going to school called out after young Richard, -“Who stole my trousers?” It will now be understood why no village can -be found without its miser. Between hiding and hoarding there is only a -difference of degree. The first is forced upon the villager, for public -opinion is too many for him; he dare not let it be known that he has -anything to put by. The mattress used to be the favourite place for -your economies. If it is not used now it is simply to save the waste -of good ticking which always followed a death. Now it will be a hole -under the hearthstone, or in the thatch, or a _cache_ under the third -gooseberry bush as you go down the garden. Sometimes it is so well -hidden that, if death be sudden, it is never found at all. Sometimes -the hider will forget where he hid his money, and dig up the whole -garden in the middle of the night. Mr. Pepys was in that predicament -and, so feverishly did he hunt, lost quite a number of broad pieces. -But the worst case is where he knows the hiding-place exactly, and -going to recover his treasure, finds that somebody else had known it -too; and so it has gone. Cruel dilemma! He dare not let his loss be -known, nor, should he be able, accuse the thief. His only remedy in -such circumstance is to steal from the stealer. I heard of an old woman -who was robbed of twenty pounds, which she kept in an old beehive, and -who knew perfectly well where the money was. She said nothing at all, -continued her acquaintance, and even used to have the thief to tea with -her. I don’t know how it was done--whether it dawned upon the guilty -that she was suspected, and so compunction came. Anyhow, as I was -told, the money was restored. - -It may seem odd that when a villager rises in the world, as they often -do, he ceases to be grudged. I am not sure that he really does; but no -signs of grudging appear, simply because he ceases to be a villager. -Rank is carefully observed--but it is all outside. There is no rank in -the village itself. All are level there--except in one way. And that -exception is not odd, either. - -Walking down the street at certain hours of the day you will meet -certain old men, elders of the people. Although they differ in no -respect from any others you may find there, you will notice this about -them that they will be “Mr.” to everyone, and not, as is usual, Jack, -Tom, or Jimmy. What has procured them their title of honour? Not always -age, certainly never riches: as often as not the bearer of a title -will be an old-age pensioner. Or he may be “on the rates.” It doesn’t -matter. Some native worth or resident dignity forbids the use of his -Christian name, which is otherwise of invariable application. That -points to a real aristocracy, an aristocracy of character; the only -one which can hope to be permanent, as founded upon reason and nature; -and the one without which no democracy can expect to be permanent -either. Walking with one of these patricians the other day, I observed -before us a man of near his age. Presently there came towards us an -urchin homing from school, who passing our front rank, a man old enough -to be his great grandfather, lightly acclaimed him with “Afternoon, -George.” But to my companion it was, “Afternoon, Mr. M----.” With the -women--married, of course--the decencies are observed in salutation, -but not in reference. You will hear of one as old Liz Marchant, of -another, always, as Mrs. Catchpole, or whatever her name may be. But, -to each other, married women are strict formalists. Two girls who have -known each other from childhood and been at school together will be -Florry and Bess to the very church-porch. From the wedding day onwards, -if they should live to be a hundred, they will be “Mrs.” to each other. -That would fill me with wonder if I did not know how seriously the -married state is taken in the village, the more so, I don’t doubt, -because the single is more free than is convenient. Marriage, we say, -sets right every irregularity. Perhaps it does; but in these parts it -effectively prevents there being any more. - - -I have been expounding, it should be seen, what are virtually the -manners and customs of a nation widely different from that of most of -my readers. It is not really an economic, but an historic difference; -for the longer I study it the clearer it becomes that the village does -not differ in any essential respect from its remotest original, the -Neolithic settlements on the tops of these hills. From where I live, a -quarter way up the chalk down, I could conduct the inquirer to three -or four vestiges of communities exactly like this one. I could point -out the holes in which they lived, the track by which they drove their -flocks to and from the watering places, which are still _in situ_ and -still used. I could lay a wreath on the mound which covers their dust, -or I might by a chance of the spade uncover their bones, not dust yet. -There has never been discovered, so far as I am aware, anything to show -that any one man of that nation lorded it over his fellows. Lords and -masters enough there have been since. From the time when the Alpine -race invaded our country the Iberian stock which underlies us all has -never lacked a master. _But they have none now._ They have employers, -hirers, not masters. So far as I can see the West Country village -community is now once more just where it was fifteen hundred years -before Christ, or thirty-five hundred years ago. It is in the valley -instead of on the hill, it is professedly Christian instead of heathen. -But it is still guided by tradition, and governed by common opinion, -and as near a democracy as may be: a democracy tempered by character. - - - - -THE CURTAINS - - -Your pair of muslin curtains, given time and place, may cost you -anything in the region of four, eleven, three, as the shop will tell -you; but if you add to that domestic calm, the amenities and a raw -sconce they soon mount up. That was what they cost a man I know, and -I say that they are not worth it. For, not to dwell for a moment upon -his particular pair, muslin curtains don’t fulfil the whole duty of -curtains, but only a part of it, and the wrong part. They prevent you -from seeing out of the window, which is the last thing you want of -them in the country; they don’t prevent other people from seeing into -it--which is the first thing. Particularly when you have the lamp -alight. For instance, the other evening the whole village was informed -inside of an hour that Mrs. Hobday, a young and pretty woman, had been -trying on a hat with one hand and powdering her nose with the other. -She herself was the last to know it, and the last to be allowed to -forget it. - -The Hobdays’ neighbours are the Cosseys, and Mrs. Hobday and Mrs. -Cossey from the first were bosom friends. That was very important if -life were to be what you might call life, for the two front doors are -under one lintel, and, said Mrs. Cossey, “’tis such close living that -if you weren’t one thing you must be t’other.” But they were always -the one thing until the affair of the curtains, though Mrs. Cossey was -large and plain-faced, and Mrs. Hobday pretty and small; though Mrs. -Cossey had two children and Mrs. Hobday was only expecting. However, -from the very first we were told ’twas all as pleasant as pleasant. -They lived in each other’s houses, listened to each other’s tales -of courtship and marriage, admired each other’s washing, and shook -sympathetic heads over the unreasonableness of each other’s husband. -There were no clouds in the sky, nor the makings of them. The Cosseys -had an Axminster, but the Hobdays a new drugget. Mrs. Cossey had a -copper kettle, Mrs. Hobday a silver teapot. Things were “just so,” neck -and neck, and nothing to choose between them, when you came to add -things up. O sweet content! And then, one mild morning, Mrs. Cossey was -offered a seat in a motor-car going into town, and accepted. - -It was a fine day; she was elated by her drive. Market-day, too. She -felt like going it, and she went it. Away flew five shillings on a pair -of muslin curtains which were selling like hot cakes at a stall. Mrs. -Cossey bought other things, but nothing to count. The curtains fair set -her up, they did. She felt as though she were treading on air. Wherever -she went about the town that day she had an eye for the windows, and -saw nothing better anywhere. “I’ll make Fred put ’em up after dark,” -she promised herself. “’Twill be a surprise for Mrs. Hobday in the -morning.” It was. - -When Mrs. Hobday saw her friend’s front-room window she felt her heart -jump, then stand still. But she knew what was due to herself, and let -not a sigh escape her. Mrs. Cossey found her busy on her knees over -the doorstep, busier certainly than she had ever been before. It became -necessary to call her attention to the curtains, which somehow took the -edge off them. You can’t explain it, but so ’twas. Then, of course, -Mrs. Hobday admired; and when she had admired enough, she was told all -about it; and when she knew all about it she said no more, but excused -herself for being busy, and withdrew. Nor, if you will believe Mrs. -Cossey, was she seen again for two days and nights; never so much as -put her head outside the door. But Mrs. Cossey did not know how she -had wept on Hobday’s shoulder that evening of discovery, how she had -pleaded (as they used to do at Assizes, poor things) her condition, and -how Hobday had said she shouldn’t want for anything, if it cost him ten -shillin’--which it did. She knew nothing of all that; but in two days’ -time, when she stood at her front door, and, happening to look at her -neighbour’s window, might, so she said, have been knocked down with a -feather--then indeed she knew all the blackness of Mrs. Hobday’s heart. - -Whatever she might have been knocked down with, she herself used a -club, that is to say, most injurious words. The whole village heard -them, at second-hand, from Tom Crewkomb, the sweep, who had been -passing at the time. Warmed by eloquence, it seems, and her growing -sense of triumphant suffering, Mrs. Cossey called Mrs. Hobday a saucy -young piece; whereat Mrs. Hobday, as if whipped, struck out blindly -and said that Mrs. Cossey was no better than she should be. It may -have been true--it is true of most of us; but Mrs. Cossey took it to -heart and, refusing all nourishment, could do nothing but repeat it -to herself over and over again. The pair of cottages, resplendently -curtained as they might be, became a house of lamentation. The -breaking-point was reached when Hobday came home to tea, and being -again wept upon, pushed fiercely into next door and called Mrs. Cossey -to her face an old tantamount--a terrible word, whose implication -no man could possibly know. For end thereof, not despondency but -madness: for when Cossey understood that Hobday had called his wife a -tantamount, he waited for him outside, and gave him what he called a -pair of clippers over the ear. Hobday was a light-weight, and did his -best, but he could not get near Cossey; and he went to grass. Mrs. -Hobday had hysterics, and asked for the doctor; and then (such is human -nature at its best) Mrs. Cossey ran in to her, called her a lamb, and -put her to bed. - -It is a boy. - -Mrs. Cossey and Mrs. Hobday have better things to admire in each other -now. But Mrs. Hobday knows that her curtains cost more. So also does -Hobday. - - - - -HAPPINESS IN THE VILLAGE - - -Not far from me there lives a man with wife and child in a tenement -not much better than a cowshed. It is exactly two rooms of a wooden -building, with no other conveniences of any kind, not so much as -a copper for the washing. It is built into a ledge cut out of the -southern slope of the valley, consequently never looks the sun in the -face. I know that the rain falls through into the bedroom. If one dared -one would have the place condemned, if to do that would not condemn -to the workhouse those who shelter there. Yet I have known those poor -things envied. At a certain hour of the afternoon the wife comes to her -open door, the child in her arms. After five minutes’ watching, she -sets the little creature down to totter up the road, down which comes -a man, homing from his work. He too is on the look-out, and stands to -admire. Then, when they meet, he picks up the baby, sets it on his -shoulder, and back they go together to mother at the door. I have known -that envied, I say, by the childless, by the unhappily mated, and by -those whose days for children are over and done. Life has that in -store for some of us, and I don’t know that it has anything better. An -allegory, that, in its way. - -Four years ago, when Agriculture had a Wages Board, and hopes were -high that a _carminis aetas_ was opening for our oldest industry, a -club was formed among the members of the Board for the ventilation of -ideas. It was a gallant adventure, maintained with spirit so long as -the parent Board was suffered to endure. Political exigencies, however, -determined its existence, and with it perished the Agricultural Club. -Now its president and virtual founder, Sir Henry Rew, has published -its remains in “The Story of the Agricultural Club” (P. S. King and -Son), and we are able to judge of the remedies proposed for a sick -profession. It may shortly be said of the club, as of the deceased -board, that its very existence did more service to agriculture than -any of its recommendations, if only because it was solid in Pall Mall -while its remedies were, and largely remain, in the air. In that fine -room of Schomberg House, which happens to have been Gainsborough’s -studio, there met on the eve of every Board-meeting representatives of -the landed interests from all England, squires, tenant-farmers and farm -labourers, on terms of that complete equality which only clubmanship -can guarantee. How extraordinary that was is illustrated by Sir Henry -Rew as follows: - - - “A year ago I had occasion to attend a meeting in the market - town of a typical agricultural district. It purported to be - a conference between the representatives of farmers and of - farm-workers with regard to a dispute then in progress. I was - shown into the conference room, where I found the farmers - assembled in force round a large table, and I was honoured with a - seat at the head of the table by the side of the chairman. After - some discussion among themselves, the chairman announced that they - were ready to receive the representations of the workers. About - half a dozen of them entered, and were ranged on a form against - the wall at the lower end of the room. The Chairman addressed them - civilly enough, but with much the same air of condescension as - a magistrate assumes in speaking from the Bench. I am sure that - no offence was intended or taken. The position seemed perfectly - natural to both parties. It was the normal and habitual relation - of master and man in discussion.” - - -It is fair to conclude, with Sir Henry, that the Wages Board and its -club were “the expression of a new relationship,” not that of “master -and man,” but rather of “man and man”; and it is not difficult to -say what that may imply in latter-day village life. I am prepared by -observation to say that at least it implies a definite heightening -of status for the farm-labourer, of which he is very well aware. But -whether it will work out for village prosperity and (a very different -thing) village happiness, is still a matter of various opinion--opinion -which is reflected in the papers read before the assembled club, and in -the ensuing discussions. - -These papers, as one might expect, are mainly practical in purpose. -They deal with education, principally technical; they deal with -cottage-building, not very fruitfully; they offer proposals for -the formation of village-clubs; they touch, but gingerly, upon the -ownership of land. The avowed ends of every proposition are two: how to -keep the labourer in the village, and how to make him happy when he is -there. It seems to me that readers and debaters alike fell into the -common error of confusing prosperity with happiness, and happiness with -pleasure. The mistake is fundamental. If all men of pleasure were happy -men, legislation might accomplish what philosophers have failed to do. -If excitement had no reactions, then let village clubs abound and young -ploughmen dance all night! Bread and circuses are within the discretion -of Parliament, but not prosperity, and not happiness. A man must work -for his happiness “as some men toil after virtue”; and the education -which he must receive in order to attain it is in another technic than -that which has been in the mind of the Club. The young villager must -acquire mental alacrity, he must learn to be temperate, and he must get -charity. Having those, he may pick up happiness like gold off from Tom -Tiddler’s ground, for the world is full of it. All the specifics of the -Agricultural Club are palliatives of his lot, “consolatories writ.” The -elementals remain--to be sought elsewhere. - -The virtues of the villager are well known. They are such as to -deserve and frequently to obtain happiness, but they do not tend to -his prosperity in the Club’s sense. Nationalise the land to-morrow, -and parcel it out in small holdings next week; by next year more than -half of it will have run to waste. On the other half, for nine men who -gain a bare subsistence off it there may be one who will do well. What -is lacking? Mental alacrity. The peasant can plod with the best, rise -early, work till dark; but he will do the thing to-morrow which he did -yesterday. Mental sloth is temperamental: probably the Iberians had -it. But there is nothing to prevent him from being happy; very many of -them are so, and more than you might expect. Farm-labour, like farming, -is a way of life; and so is happiness, in the sense that the kingdom -of Heaven may be within you. One might go so far as to say that the -prosperity of which the labourer dreams would rather diminish his store -of happiness than increase it. Some of the wisest of my friends of the -village feel sure of it. There are men about here who have risen in -the world, as they call it, and are not conspicuously better citizens, -nor more contented ones for that. Getting and spending, they lay waste -their time. The wise villager sees it, and if he would rather be happy -than prosperous is in the way to remain so. In that resolve the papers -of the Agricultural Club cannot help him. The elementals remain. Others -abide our question, but not those. - - - - -OTHERWHERENESS - - -The man whom I found one day in the reading-room at the Club, searching -the Court Guide to find out his own name, was quite good-tempered -about it. It had suddenly occurred to him to send a telegram, and he -had written it out: when it came to signing it he was beat. I told him -at once what I believed his name to be; he verified it in Boyle. “I -might have had to get a dressing-room,” he said. “It isn’t one of those -things which you can ask the hall-porter.” - -The really absent-minded are not irritated by those intrusions -of the supra-liminal self. The sub-liminal so pleasantly employs -them, habitually, that they can afford to put up with the other’s -impertinence. But occasionally he goes too far, as he certainly did -with a dear and vague friend of mine when, horribly involved with a -fishing line and a fly-hook in his sleeve, he hastily put his eye-glass -into his mouth and his cigarette into his eye. Then indeed he broke -into a flood of imprecation, so very unlike himself that one part of -him “which never was heard to speak so free” really shocked the other -part. “Oh, shameful, shameful!” I heard him say, and the profaner part -was silenced. Here, of course, the whole assembled man was no further -away than the whereabouts of the fly-hook, and not at all pleasantly -occupied. Mostly, as Lamb says of his good friend, George Dyer: - - - “With G. D., to be absent from the body, is sometimes (not to - speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord. At the very - time when, personally encountering thee, he passes on with no - recognition--or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprised--at - that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor--or Parnassus--or - co-sphered with Plato--or, with Harrington, framing ‘immortal - commonwealths.’” - - -If he interrupted those happy sojournings, as he did once, to make -a call in Bedford Square, and on learning that no one was at home, -solemnly to sign his name in the visitors’ book, it is not at all -surprising that, wandering on and on, he should presently find himself -again in Bedford Square, again inquire for his friends, again ask for -the visitors’ book and be brought up short, on the point of signing it -again, by his own name scarcely dry--as if, says Lamb, “a man should -suddenly encounter his own duplicate.” He may have been a little -mortified, I daresay, but--it was worth it. A thing of the same sort -happened to a very delightful lady of my friends--a lady of commanding -presence, but occasional remarkable absences too. She went to call at -a house in Eaton Square, no less, and found herself, when the door was -opened by a footman, totally deprived of the name of the houselady. -What did she? There was a moment of heart-beating and wild surmise; -and then, with a smile of ineffable courtesy and sweetness, she held -out her hand to the wondering man, pressed his own warmly as she said -“_Good_-bye,” and sailed serenely away to resume her commerce with -the infinite. Such commerce, I know, she had. She told me the story -herself, and saw nothing amiss with it. Nor was there anything amiss. -She was one who could do simple things simply--which is a great and -rich possession; but occasionally she presumed upon it--as when she -assured herself of the same virtue in her daughters and expected them -to carry out her simplifications. That, of course, was a very different -thing; but I don’t think she understood it. There is this also to be -said, that women are much less self-conscious than men and do not go in -such terror of being made ridiculous. Tell me of a man who could enter -his drawing-room full of guests, and discovering himself without, say, -his teeth, could laugh in the first face his eye encountered. “Forgive -me--one moment--I must get my teeth”--tell me of such a man. _Mutatis -mutandis_, I have been told of such a woman--and a great lady she was, -too--by somebody who was there. It was not teeth, however. - -The best of men--the George Dyers, whom, happily, we have always with -us somewhere or other--are as content as most women with their natural -destiny. George Dyer dined one night with Leigh Hunt at Hampstead, -dined, talked, and took his leave. Twenty minutes later the knocker -announced a late-comer. It was G. D. “What is the matter?” asked Hunt. -“I think sir,” said Dyer, in his simpering, apologetic way, “I think -I have left one of my shoes behind me.” He had indeed shuffled it off -under the table, and did not discover his loss until he had gone a -long way. As I read that story, which is Ollier’s (but I get it from -Mr. Lucas), G. D.’s apologetics were directed to Hunt, whose rest he -had disturbed, by no means to himself. A man less sublimely lifted was -one with whom I had been staying in a Scotch country house. We came -away together, and half-way to the station he struck himself on the -forehead, and “Good God!” he said, “I have tipped the same man three -times!” It appeared too true that he had: once in his bedroom, once -in the hall, and once at the carriage door. Now he, if you like, was -excessively mortified, and his reason may well have been that he had -not been better employed, on Helikon or elsewhere, when he might have -been noticing menservants. He was as blind as a bat, poor man, and a -sense of infirmity may have stung him. The otherwhere men have no sense -of infirmity--on the contrary, one of great gain. An ampler æther, a -diviner air is theirs in which to exercise. - -But of all divinely preoccupied men the best--unless Dyer be the -best--is Brancas--the Comte de Brancas of whom you may read in -Saint-Simon, in the Correspondence of “Madame,” and in Tallemant des -Réaux. Brancas was to the Paris of the _Grand Siècle_ what Dyer was to -the London of the Regency, or Dr. Spooner to the wits of my younger -days. La Bruyère, summarising him as _Ménalque_, overdid his study, and -made him appear like the clown in a circus who gets horribly involved -in the carpet, or kicks away the hat he stoops to pick up. It may be -perfectly true that Brancas went downstairs, opened his front door, -and shut it again, thinking that he had just come in--that I can -perfectly understand. It is a thing I might have done myself. But to -add to it that he presently discovered his nightcap on his head, his -stockings down about his ankles, and his shirt outside his _chausses_, -is to spoil the story. Never mind, he is out in the street finally, -and walking briskly along, with his mind leagues away. By and by he -is brought up short by a violent blow on the nose. “Who has attacked -me?” he cries. Nobody. He has walked fiercely into the tilt of a -market cart, which he had overtaken in his briskness. Or he goes to -Versailles to pay his court, enters the _appartement_, and passing -under the central chandelier, his perruque is caught and held there; -but he forges along. The company gapes, then bursts into laughter. -Brancas stops, looks inquiringly about, sees the swinging perruque and -is delighted. “Whose is that?” He looks all about him to find the bare -pate and exposed ears. Finally, of course, somebody claps it on his -head. A good story, which may be true. - -Two of them, at least, may be, as they are told by Madame in letters -to her friends. Brancas went to church--to the _Salut_: he knelt -down, and feeling in his pocket for his Book of Hours, pulled out a -slipper which he had put there instead of it. Just outside the church, -on leaving, he is accosted by a lackey who, with much deprecation, -asks him if he happens to have taken Monseigneur’s shoe by mistake. -“Monseigneur’s shoe!” It is the fact that he had paid a call upon a -bishop that afternoon. “No, no--certainly not”--then he remembers that -he has, in fact, a slipper in his pocket. His hand goes in, to make -sure that it is there. It is; but so is another slipper--which is -precisely--Monseigneur’s. - -The next is even better. Brancas goes to mass at Versailles. He is -late, and bustles up the nave between the kneeling company. He sees, as -he thinks, a _prie-dieu_ facing the altar. Most convenient--just the -thing. He hastens, throws himself upon it. To his amazement it emits a -strangled cry, gives way before him, and he finds himself intricately -struggling on the pavement with a stout lady. His _prie-dieu_ had been -the Queen-Mother. - - - - -THE JOURNEY TO COCKAIGNE - - -I remember being taken ill in a small town on the Marne in 1906, -desperately ill with copper poisoning. I say that I remember, as if -there was a chance that I should ever forget it. The agony, the rigour -and all the rest of it, were accompanied by high fever and delirium, -which lasted all through a burning August night. It happened that a -_fête nationale_ had possession of the town: there were a fair, a steam -roundabout, a horrible organ accompaniment. The grinding, remorseless -tune, the uproar, the slapping of countless feet (though I tried to -count them) on the pavement wove themselves into my racing dreams. -I seemed to be a party to some Witches’ Sabbath; and now, if I ever -try to imagine Hell, it always comes out like that. A dry, crackling, -reiterated business, without rest, without mirth, without hope, without -reason. One suffered incredibly, one was desperately concerned; the -brain was involved in it; the more frivolous it was the more deeply the -mind must work. I knew it was a festivity; all the familiar features -of revel were there--and all horrible. The mind was so tired that you -seemed to hear it wailing for mercy; but it went on jigging after the -organ. The feet of the dancers were burnt by the paving stones, yet -never stayed. Some mocking devil possessed the people, rode them with -spurs. There was no zest, yet no pause; and through it all was the -blare of the organ. - -Life in London, in Ascot week, struck me, coming up after six months -in the country, as very much like that night of fever. There was the -same dry crackling, the same strife of noise, the symptoms of mirth -without reality. London, of course, is much too big to be generalised -from. The best is hidden behind shut doors. It is the froth of the -ferment that you see. But there is now too much froth; one wonders what -is working in the lees. - -Londoners, as you pass them in a cab, are a crowd; you don’t even -suspect individuality there. They drift along the streets like -clouds. The colours of them are so blurred down by the dust and din -that they seem a uniform drab. Here and there a yellow jumper, or -a grass-green sunshade catches the eye; but no personality behind -it, no reasonable soul in human flesh subsisting. It requires stern -attention on a fixed point if you would candidly consider your fellow -creatures as London has made them, and, no doubt, been made by them. -It happened to me that I was held up by a block in Piccadilly, at a -favourable point between Bond Street and the arcade of the Ritz. Four -o’clock on a glaring afternoon; tea-shops crammed; motor buses piled -skywards like market-carts: extraordinarily over-dressed young men, and -extraordinarily undressed girls were on the pavement, all very much -alike, and all apparently of one age. - -Observe that I have not seen London in the season since the Armistice. -Well, it seemed to me that the scythe had mown down much that I used to -know. Here instead was a saturnalia of extreme youth. I saw thin girls -in single garments of silk, with long white legs and Russian opera -shoes; and young men walking with them, looking curiously at them, -or talking to them urgently at shop windows. The girls said little; -they were not there to talk, but to be talked to; they accepted what -was said as a matter of routine. Their eyes wandered from article to -article displayed. They seemed to me as purposeless as moths hovering -about flowers at dusk. Love, I suppose, was their food--it ought to -have been; but neither they nor their lovers showed any of the pride or -triumph, the joy or the longing of love. Love, for once, was not a new -thing; the wonder had left it. Fever had dried up the juices of nymph -and swain alike. It was like a dinner off husks. - -Next day was the first of Ascot, and I watched for some time the -endless procession of motors in the Hammersmith Road. I had often -seen it before--I mean before the war. It had been a big thing then; -but now it was a monstrous thing, a nightmare of going to the races. -A continuous stream there was, of long, low, swift, smooth-gliding -machines, never stopping, almost noiseless. They were all covered -and glazed, all filled inside with doll-like, silent, half-clad, -vaguely-gazing girls; with stiff and starched, black-coated, -silk-hatted young men. I saw no one laughing; I thought the whole -business a dream on that account; for, though you see and mix with -crowds in dreams, there is never either talking or laughing. It was -that absence of heart in the thing, or of zest for it, which made one -so uncomfortable. Lavish outlay is rather shocking nowadays; but if you -take away the only excuse for it, which is high spirits, it is much -more than shocking; it is terrifying, it is hideous. - -Where on earth, I asked myself, did the money come from? Who floated, -and how did they float the balances at the banks? Every one of those -motors must have cost a thousand pounds; every one of the chauffeurs -(you could see at a glance) must have cost five pounds a week. The -clothes, no doubt, you could have on tick; but not the champagne, and -not the chauffeurs. From where I stood in Addison Road I could see, at -the lowest, fifty thousand pounds’ worth of motors. And the stream, -mind you, at that hour reached from Ascot to Piccadilly, and was -repeating itself on the Fulham Road and the King’s Road, to say nothing -of the Uxbridge Road. Who were those people? Were they all profiteers, -or all in other peoples’ debt? It was very odd. In the county where I -live we are rather put to it how to keep going. The great houses are -mostly shut up or in the market; the smaller houses are all too big for -their owners and occupiers. There is a scale of general descent. The -marquesses let their castles, if they can, and go in to the manors; the -squires let their manors, and convert the farmhouses to their domestic -use. I leave my old Rectory and hide in a cottage. We are all a peg or -two down. Income-tax and the rates had done their fell work when there -came upon us a coal strike of three months long--a knock-out blow to -many. Did it not touch London? Or were all those pleasurers Colonel and -Mrs. Rawdon Crawleys who live at the rate of seven thousand a year, on -tick? The Lord knows. - -On the whole, I thought it well that the miners’ wives, in the -scorching grey villages of Durham and the Tyne, were not standing -with me in Addison Road that first day of Ascot. Or if South Wales -and Lanark had been there! I should not have wished them let loose on -London just then. Nothing was further from London’s mind than either -of those vexed and seething provinces. It neither talked of them nor -read about them. _The Westminster Gazette’s_ front page was entirely -filled up with a cricket match; so, by the by, was the second. _The -Times_--but since _The Times_ has become sprightly I confess it is -too much for me. An elephant on hot bricks! Nowadays, if I want to -read the news I must send to Manchester for it. Thence I learn that -the coal strike is in its third month, the English and Irish still -murdering each other, and the Government still throwing overboard its -own legislation. Golf news, cricket, polo, lawn tennis I can have from -_The Westminster Gazette_. - -The sea saw that and fled; Jordan was driven back. I stood it for -three days, then came home to find the mallow in flower in the hedges, -and men and women still afield getting in the last of the hay. Wilts -was being careful over many things, but Ascot and thin girls were not -of them. In London I was puzzled by the way the money was flying; -but I was shocked, not by that, but by the absence of zest for a -time-honoured pastime. If only some young couple had laughed! Or made -love as if it was the only thing in the world worth doing! But they -were all as weary as the King Ecclesiast. That seemed to me the serious -matter. - - - - -SUICIDE OF THE NOVEL - - -The epic faculty in us is never likely to atrophy, but will break -out again presently in some unsuspected place; for while all men are -children once, most of them remain so all their lives. Winter’s Tales -will go on, because there will always be winter evenings, and the most -interesting thing, next to playing at life, is to talk about it. “There -was a man--dwelt by a churchyard ...”, or “Andra moi ennepé, Mousa....” -So the romantic or the adventurous tale should begin, as it always did -and always will. It is when he adds love to his chronicle of events -and allows that to modify them that the tale-teller turns novelist -and, in danger of over-sophistication, begins the road to Avernus; for -love involves passion, and passion means sex, and sex invites curious -philosophy, and philosophy calls in pathology; then comes Herr Freud -with his abhorred complexes; and then you have something which may -stimulate, may divert, may do you good, but (as the old tale goes) -“is not Emily.” There is no love in the _Odyssey_, none in _Robinson -Crusoe_, none worth talking about (only gallantry) in _Gil Blas_. The -animalism in _Tom Jones_, as in Smollett’s gross tales, was but a vent -for high spirits in a century which reckoned love among the appetites, -and put women and claret roughly in the same category. Speaking only -for my own countrymen, I doubt if sex took on its romantic aspect or -became a final cause of narrative fiction until the latter half of -the last century. In Walter Scott and Jane Austen it does not exist. -It hardly exists in Dickens, hardly, except as a butt, in Thackeray. -Trollope’s charming girls are satisfied with extremely little in the -way of wooing. The Luftons and young Frank Greshams and Major Grantleys -choose by liking, wait seven months or years for their Rachels, kiss -them and go home--to write once in a while. Johnny Eames cherishes a -flame--if it may be called a flame. We are asked to believe in Mr. -Grey’s passion for Miss Vavasour--but do we believe it, or are we the -less entertained for our strong doubts? No, indeed. - -In the latter half of the last century, Rossetti wrote sensuous poetry -of a kind which was new to English literature, very different, say, -from that of Keats. Swinburne wrote sexual poetry, as I apprehend, of -a highly theoretical kind. I don’t know exactly when Mr. George Moore -began to write novels, but cannot recall any striking example of the -French novel in English before his time, and should be inclined to -commence our series of the grubby and illicit with him. George Meredith -and Mr. Hardy were both well-established before that; but though there -is passion in Meredith, and lyric passion too, and sex in Mr. Hardy, -with much intensive imagining about it, _non ragioniam di lor_. They -were alike in the old tradition. Neither Aphrodite or Priapus sat on -the Muse’s throne. At the utmost they did but “donner la chemise!” -Meredith and Mr. Hardy wrote stories, not sex-fantasias. Mr. Moore will -do very well as an illustration of the change which came over our -novels when Trollope ceased to write, the change which, as I say, made -them French novels written in English. Before that change, love, sex, -passion, as manifestations of life, had been part of the entertainment -which the novel as a redaction of life had to offer. After it they -_were_ the entertainment, and thereupon and thereby the novel ceased to -be a redaction of life. For, _pace_ Herr Freud, all life is not sex. -One resultant of the changed objective will account for that. There was -no room for life in a sex-novel. If you set out to write a dithyramb of -lust, or sex, your novel will be short. The subject is absorbing, once -it takes hold of you, and the celebration of it will exhaust itself -as the reality does. Such tales have always been short: _Daphnis and -Chloe_, for instance, _Manon Lescaut_. One could not have filled the -old three-decker with that kind of thing. Nobody except Richardson ever -tried it. With the change of theme, then, conspired the change of form, -and the bookseller and the novelist in a concatenation accordingly. - -Other things followed of necessity. The novel ceased to be an -interpretation of life and became a kind of poem. The preoccupied -novelist wrote _à priori_. Observation ceased to procure novels to -be written; the novelist, rather, stung by his gadfly into action, -observed for his own purposes and those of his theme. His novel clothed -his thought in appropriate draperies, to call them so, with which life -had little or nothing to do. He did not in fact set up an image of -life at all, but instead, a Hermes, on which he could hang garlands -corresponding to his passion or indicative of his complaint. Novels -of this sort, to call them so, are still being produced: I read three -of them the other day, all written by women. One of them, which was -“crowned” with a cheque for a hundred pounds, was a real pæan of sex: -in the other two sophistication had set in. They did not so much hymn -the function as “peep and botanise” upon its grave. The three were -episodic, “all for love, and the world well lost.” The world indeed, -for all that appeared, was standing still while half a dozen persons to -a book were enacting their secret rites. If the end of all this be not -despondency and madness it will be something quite as unpleasant. - -That which led me into these speculations was Mrs. Stirling’s excellent -memoir of her sister and brother-in-law, Evelyn and William De Morgan, -that happily-mated pair. She tells in its place the manner in which De -Morgan fell into the writing of novels, how without effort they came -to him. They were certainly the last of our novels which have offered -us a comprehensive reading of life. It seems absurd to say of them -that they are able, because ability, in the common use of the word, -implies the conscious exercise of it. De Morgan’s novels, however, seem -effortless; they read as the most spontaneous things in the world, and -Mrs. Stirling now says that they really were so. There is no apparent -design, no contrivance. They are as formless as life itself. - - - “‘Be good enough to note,’ he says in one of them, ‘that none of - the characters in this story are picturesque or heroic--only - chance samples of folk you may see pass your window now, at this - moment, if you will only lay your book down and look out. They are - passing--passing--all day long, each with a story. And some little - thing you see, a meeting, a parting, may make the next hour the - turning point of existence.... This is a tale made up of trifles.’” - - -What he made of those stored and treasured-up trifles, with what -humour, with what tenderness, what wisdom he combined and related -them, what in fact was the harvest of his quiet eye, cannot be entered -upon here. De Morgan had been harvesting for sixty-five years when he -began! To me his books seem to be the wisest of our time. I know of -none which, as Matthew Arnold said of Homer, produce the sense in the -reader “of having, within short limits of time, a large portion of -human life presented to him.” They contain--like the _Iliad_ in that, -like _Tom Jones_, like _David Copperfield_ and _Vanity Fair_, and _War -and Peace_--sufficient of the world to create in us a strong illusion -of the whole labouring, blundering, groaning, laughing, praying affair. - -But De Morgan is too good for the end of an essay--he who has -inspired so many. And he will write no more of his friendly, wise and -comprehending books. And he is not the point. The point is that the -novelist has bled his art down and out by urging it to make a poem -of itself instead of a digest. I say nothing now of the pamphlet and -the tract. Those things also the novelist has done without leaving -the other undone. He, or his novel, is now dying of exhaustion, -self-induced. Worst sign of all--he is beginning to note his own -symptoms. - - - - -IMMORTAL WORKS - - -An editor--one, that is, of a race suspect to my species; for, as the -herbivores fear the carnivores, so is it with the likes of me and of -him--an editor, I say, has lately spread his nets before me, inviting -me to “a symposium of well-known poets and critics.” A banquet, I -fear, like that last one of Polonius, “not where he eats but where he -is eaten.” The subject of our symposium, the staple of our feast, was -to be “What poets since Wordsworth, _especially what living poets_, -and which one or two of their poems ... should be given a place in the -Golden Treasury of English poetry.” Excellent, i’ faith! Will you walk -into my parlour? said the spider to the fly. I am by this time a fly -getting on in years. I dine out as little as may be, and have developed -something of an intuitive sense which tells me whether I am to dine or -to be dined upon. So I decline the invitation in the following terms: - -“Dear Sir,--I deprecate such proposals as yours, because I cannot think -them intended seriously, or (even if they are) likely to be taken so. -It seems to me that you are inviting me less to a symposium than to an -exhibition, in which I am to be an exhibit. You are asking me, among -others, to grant immortality, or deny it, to certain living persons, -many of whom are my friends or acquaintances. Entry into a Golden -Treasury is the hall-mark of no less a thing, the end and aim of every -poet in the world. Once there, a poet is a peer, a knight of a round -table. And you expect me to make of myself a Fountain of Honour, to dub -knights, deal round coronets? No, indeed, my dear sir. I am many bad -things, but I hope not so arrogant, nor such an ass. No man living can -predict immortality for his friend, though he may dearly wish that he -could. - -“It is not possible to be sure of current literature for the plain -reason that local and temporary interests must inevitably bias the -judgment. I don’t mean by that one’s interest in one’s friend. At this -hour the war of 1914-18 is the most portentous thing we know or can -think of. I would not mind staking a round sum upon the probability -of nine out of ten of your banquetters selecting recent war poems by -recent young warriors. And yet how many war poems are there in the -existing Golden Treasury? _The Burial of Sir John Moore_, of course; -but what others? And yet again, is it not only too possible that, -before your new Golden Treasury were in the printer’s hands, another -war would be burning out the memory of its forerunner, and wringing -from us new war poems whose appositeness would make immortality more -obviously theirs than of any which you had in type? You see? That is -one of the difficulties in which you would land me, supposing that you -were serious.” - -So much for the editor of ----. We do not know, indeed, though -we sometimes think and always hope that we do, what makes for -immortality. Shakespeare, you say? Who (except Shakespeare himself) -thought Shakespeare immortal on the day when he was alive and dead? -Who thought Johnson’s Dictionary immortal? Gibbon’s _Decline and -Fall_? Yes, I fancy that any serious reader of that book, when it was -published, knew in his heart that it would live. But take smaller -things. Why, out of all Landor’s verse, was _Rose Aylmer_ taken, and -why were others left, many of them technically as perfect? You don’t -know. Nor do I. Well, then, which out of the beautiful numbers of _A -Shropshire Lad_ will live for six hundred years--as long as Chaucer? -Which out of the quatrains of Fitzgerald’s _Omar_? We may think that we -know. But do we? Really, all that we do know is that among the copious -poets (and Landor was very copious) some produced more perdurable -lyrics than others. We know that Burns did, that Heine did: we don’t -know how or why. Universality we say goes to immortality. It certainly -does: the thing must go home to everybody. So does heart, whatever -that is; the “lyric cry,” the sense of tears. Look at _Auld Robin -Gray_: that is immortal. Look at _The Wife of Usher’s Well_. Those -things might last as long as Homer or the Bible. The exact proportion, -the exquisite admixture of those qualities I have mentioned, with -others--felicity, limpidity, grace, and so on--do make certain poems as -immortal as you please; and the want of them cuts others out. That is -all there is to say. - -On the whole, it is a good thing that we don’t know the recipe. It -is one of several things we had better not know. Immortality in this -world, immortality in another! Suppose that we were as certain of the -latter as we are of getting to Paris by the 11 a.m. from Victoria. -Either the world would be emptied by suicide, or--it wouldn’t! -Suppose that immortality for a poem was a matter of formula. Take of -universality so much, of heart so much, of grace so much: add tears, -so much, and simmer gently till done ...! What would be the result? -Everybody’s poems would be immortal. The Golden Treasury would stretch -from here to Easter. It would be as bad as the Order of the British -Empire. Nobody would want to be in it. And the result of that would be -that mortal poems would be the only immortal ones. To be too bad for -the Golden Treasury would be a real title of honour. And somebody would -compile a Platinum Treasury to put you in. - - - - -BALLAD-ORIGINS - - -Discussion and research into the origin of folk-songs, or epic poetry, -or children’s games, afford permanent recreation to a number of learned -hands; and so they have ever since we left off taking things for -granted. If nobody except the explorer is any the better, nobody except -the other explorers is any the worse. There the ballads are, fruit for -the thirsty mouth, as they were to Sir Philip Sidney. But research -is good hunting, and discussion good talk: all makes for pattern and -diversity in a life which, for most of us, runs too easily into drab. -Whether Homer was written by Homer, or “by another man of the same -name,” has been, and still is being, debated. Herr Wolff started the -ingenious suggestion that, instead of one or two Homers, there were -dozens of him. The late Mr. Butler put up a woman for author of the -Odyssey, and gave her a name. But Mr. Butler loved two things above -all else in life: little jokes and annoying other people. He must not -be taken seriously. Similarly, the authorship of the ballads has ever -been in debate. The man of our time who knew more about them than any -man who ever lived--Professor Child, to wit--knew so much about them -that he never committed himself to any hypothesis of their origin. That -showed indeed the supreme of knowledge of his subject. But Professor -Kittredge, who followed him, built himself a little bungalow of theory; -and Professor Gummere presently reared a mansion of it; and now comes -Professor Louise Pound from Nebraska with pick and crowbar to level -them with the ground. It is very good fun, as I have admitted, except -perhaps for Professors Kittredge and Gummere. - -Professor Gummere gets the worst of it; but then he has put himself -up a mansion of surmise. Professor Kittredge went no further than -to declare a peasant-origin for ballad-poetry. Professor Gummere, -according to his present housebreaker, erected a theory of something -like spontaneous generation--a truly daring conception, one which makes -ballad-poetry unlike any other poetry in the world. Throng-inspiration -does not commend itself to me, knowing something of throngs and of -inspiration. As Professor Pound has no difficulty in establishing, -such a thing never happens now, and never happened to anything else, -unless Horace Walpole’s account of the effect of putting horsehair into -a bottle of water may be accepted. But if it may not, and if it never -happened to any other kind of poetry, why should it have happened to -ballad-poetry? _Queste cose non si fanno._ These things are not done. - -However, when Professor Gummere argues that the folk-ballads originated -in folk-dancing he is building his house of theory upon a footing -of rock. _Ballare_ means “to dance”; there’s no escape from that; -and if ballads, or ballets, had nothing to do with dancing, why were -they called ballads or ballets? Then he can put forward the refrains -or burthens which a goodly number of ballads still retain: jingles -like “Bow down,” like “Eh, wow, bonnie,” like “Three, three, and -thirty-three.” The first of those describes an act of dancing; the -second is foolishness unless you dance it; the third, even now, insists -on being danced. If he had left it at that, without piling upon it his -additament of spontaneous generation, I don’t think Professor Pound -could have done any good with her crowbar. But he was too ingenious by -half; he soared--he soared into the inane. So down he comes, and we are -where we were before. - -With all respect for the courage and learning of Professor Pound, I -don’t think she has disproved the close connection of song and dance -in my country’s youthful days. But “dance” is a word of special -connotation now, and it is necessary to remember a much wider -application of it in times gone by. It was once a word of ritual -significance, as when “David danced before the Lord,” as now when the -Canons of Seville dance at Easter; and it was once a word of sport. -That, in all probability, is the right connotation of it where ballads -are concerned. In certain phases of the dance as a game drama comes in. -Drama involves dialogue, and may easily involve narration. “Here we go -round the mulberry bush” is both drama, dance, and narration. “Sally, -Sally Waters” is the same. So too “Ring a ring of Roses.” But to say of -such things, as I suppose Professor Gummere says, that the dancing-game -generated the dialogue or narration is to put the cart before the -horse. If, as I have said, the jingle “three, three and thirty-three” -insists on being danced, is it not more reasonable to suppose that in -all cases the jingle, or lilt, or sentiment--“the broom blooms bonnie -and says it is fair”--inspired the dance? Personally, I can conceive -of spontaneous throng-generation of a dance much more readily. Let the -Professor try it, when next he has a throng of children in his garden. -Let him begin to jig up and down, saying repeatedly “three, three, and -thirty-three,” and see what happens. - -I am not at all concerned to say that all ballad-poetry originated in -dancing-games, nor concerned to argue against Professor Pound when she -suggests that they began in church. She has there the support of the -fact, for what it is worth, that the earliest ballads we can find are -concerned with religion. That is a fact, though it will not take her as -far as she would like. Unfortunately very few such things can be dated -before the fifteenth century; and the Professor must remember that -preoccupation with religion was by no means confined to the clerical -caste. The thirteenth century was the flowering time of the friars. -They carried religion into corners where no cleric would ever have set -his foot. If religious balladry had a religious origin it would be -Franciscan. She does not insist upon all this, however, and certainly -I do not. All the concern I have with a possible religious origin of -ballad-poetry is with the certainty it affords that, if the friars -had anything to do with the beginning of popular epic-narration, as -they undoubtedly had to do with that of popular drama, their efforts -were addressed to the populace rather than to the court, to the -market-square and village green rather than to the hall. - -What does Professor Pound herself believe about this obscure matter? -She quotes, and quarrels with, Andrew Lang, who said that “Ballads -spring from the very heart of the people, and flit from age to age, -from lip to lip of shepherds, peasants, nurses, of all that continue -nearest to the natural state of man.... The whole soul of the peasant -class breathes in their burdens, as the great sea resounds in the -shells cast up from its shores.” That seems to me so obviously true -of most of the ballads that I should require a stronger case than -Professor Pound’s, and a case less weakened by strange oversights, -to cause me to think twice of it. Apparently Professor Pound’s main -belief about ballads is that they were by origin “literary.” Being -literature, that may be supposed by anybody without taking a body very -far. But if she means by that that they were composed by professional -“literary men,” and not by or for the peasants, I have to suggest -to her that there is much in the peasantry and much in the ballads -themselves which she has not brought into account; and that that must -be sought _within_ the peasantry, and _within_ the ballads, rather than -round about them. It is, for instance, a serious error to assume a -courtly origin--courtly poet or courtly auditory--in all ballads which -deal with courtly people--Lord Thomases, Estmere Kings, Child Horns, -Little Musgraves, and so on. Such personages are the stock-in-trade -of romance, from Homer to the _Family Herald_. Reasoning of that kind -will land the Professor in uncharted seas. There is a fallacy in it -comparable to that in “Who drives fat oxen must himself be fat.” Not -a doubt of it but Professor Child’s great book contains a number of -courtly ballads--“Chevy Chase” and the like; it needs nothing but a -knowledge of literature and the texts to settle it. I should compute -the number of such in Child to be between a third and a half of the -whole. - -To decide upon the remainder, whether they are written by or for the -peasantry (and it does not matter which, because in either case the -traditions of the peasantry would be preserved), one must go to the -ballads themselves. Within them such literary tact and peasant-lore -as you possess--and you cannot have too much--will infallibly detect -the origin of a given ballad. So much as that, at least, is involved -in the very nature of literature. A ballad--any ballad--was either -written _up_ to the height of his own powers by an original poet (a -Burns, a Clare), or written _down_ to the auditory’s capacity, which is -the way of the hack, or professional minstrel. According as you judge -(_a_) apprehensions of fact, (_b_) locutions, (_c_) _parti pris_, you -will put the thing down to the idiosyncrasy and origin of the poet -_or_ to the idiosyncrasy and _milieu_ of the auditory; and you will -nearly always be right. It may not be possible to be sure whether a -peasant-poet wrote, though the probabilities will be high; it will -always be possible to be sure whether a peasant-audience was addressed, -and whether, consequently, by a peasant-audience the ballad was learned -and preserved. Who in particular the poet may have been does not -matter. But it matters very much, to us, that we should have all we -can collect of the nature of our indigenes, though we shall never be -able to get it with the clearness and precision with which Professor -Pound can get at the nature of hers. - -As good an example as anyone could want of the truth of the preceding -paragraph is furnished by “The Twa Corbies.” Everybody knows “The Twa -Corbies,” a cynical, romantic, highly literary, and most successful -thing in the Scots manner; assuredly written for the gentry. But -Professor Child juxtaposes to it an English version, called “The -Three Ravens,” and provides an instructive comparison. The earliest -copy he finds of that is of 1611. It is as surely of peasant origin -as the “Twa Corbies” is not. Firstly, it has a rollicking chorus, -neither to be desired nor approved by the gentry; secondly, instead -of being romantic, it is sentimental; thirdly, instead of ending with -a wry mouth, it ends as genially as the circumstances allow. Cynicism -has never “gone down” with the peasantry. I don’t quote it, for -considerations of space. Another interesting comparison can be made by -means of “Thomas Rymer” in Child’s versions A. and C. In each Thomas -takes the Queen of Faëry for her of Heaven, and in each she denies it. -In A. she says: - - - “‘O no, O no, True Thomas,’ she says, - ‘That name does not belong to me; - I am but the Queen of fair Elfland, - And I’m come to visit thee.’” - - -But in C. she says: - - - “‘I’m no the Queen of Heaven, Thomas; - I _never carried my head sae hie_; - For I am but a lady gay, - Come out to hunt in my follee.’” - - -The idiom there is quite enough to settle the question for me. But -there is another point. The peasantry will never name the fairies if -they can help it. They call them the “Good People” or the “Little -People,” and go no nearer. Well, observe, and let Professor Pound -observe, how C. version gets round that difficulty. - -Lastly, I will touch upon the delicate subject of ballads like -“Sheath and Knife”, “Lizzie Wan”, “The King’s Daughter, Lady Jean”, -and others. The romantic treatment of that subject is very rare in -literature. Ford’s play I believe to be the first case of it in ours; -and after Ford you must travel down to Shelley for another. With a -peasant poet or a peasant auditory there would be no difficulty. For -all sorts of reasons, that class knew a great deal about such matters. -If you are to conceive those particular ballads as written for the -gentry you are adding to fine literature things unknown before the -seventeenth century, and then out of sight until the nineteenth. Let -the Professor perpend. It does not do to be too exclusive in estimating -ballad-origins. - - - - -REAL AND TEMPORAL CREATION - - -A chance remark of mine the other day to the effect that the worth of a -novelist could be best ascertained by the number of souls he had added -to the population has drawn me into more correspondence than I care -for. You don’t look--at least, I don’t--for precision in such _obiter -dicta_, but you must have plausibility, and I do think it plausible. -You read your novel--say, _Emma_, and while you read, Emma and Jane -Fairfax, Miss Bates and Mrs. Weston and all the rest of them live, and -their affairs are your affairs. But when you have shut up the book -and put it back in its place, Mr. Woodhouse and Miss Bates have not -disappeared with their circle of acquaintance. You feel about them that -they are in history. They have lived in a different way altogether. -They have lived as Charles Lamb lived, or Oliver Goldsmith. You would -know them if you met them; your great-grandfather may have met them. -If you went to Leatherhead (if it _was_ Leatherhead) you would want to -visit their houses. Jane Fairfax is a girl in a book; Miss Bates is a -person. - -Surely that is true. Consider other cases. There’s no doubt but that -Falstaff has reality in a way in which Hamlet has not. Hamlet, so to -say, is an _ad hoc_ creation. He lives in the play. Falstaff lived -in Eastcheap. There’s no doubt about “my” Uncle Toby. Certainly he -must have served under Marlborough in Flanders. Neither of Tom Jones -nor Sir Charles Grandison could so much be said. They were nobody’s -Uncle Tom or Uncle Charles, out of their books. Amelia would have been -a delicious aunt, but I doubt if she was one. Well, then, there’s no -doubt about Mrs. Gamp, or Mr. F.’s Aunt, or Betsy Trotwood or Captain -Cuttle. Dickens enriched the population enormously--but not always. -There’s a sense in which Dr. Blimber lived, and Major Bagstock did not. -Generation was capricious, even with Dickens. Squeers never lived, -Creakle did. Micawber lived, Pecksniff didn’t. Trabb’s Boy lived, the -Fat Boy didn’t. Cousin Feenix didn’t, Inspector Buckett didn’t--and -so on. But if you go through Dickens methodically, as I did during a -wakeful two hours in bed the other night, you will find five scores to -one miss--in the minor characters. With leading parts it is another -thing. I shall come to that presently. - -Let me go on. The Wife of Bath--certainly a British subject. In -Shakespeare--all the Eastcheap set, and Shallow and Slender; and -Parolles, and Dogberry and Verges, and Bottom, and Sir Andrew -Aguecheek; and Polonius, the only one in _Hamlet_; and Launcelot Gobbo, -the only one in _The Merchant of Venice_. Walter Scott: the Baillie and -Dandie Dinmont; Andrew Fairservice and Dugald Dalgetty. Last we have -Don Quixote and Sancho, much more real to most of us than Philip II or -IV, or Alva or Medina-Sidonia, or, for that matter, Miguel de Cervantes -himself. - -Those two last are enough to prove that it is not only eccentrics who -have stepped out of their book-covers and found dusty death in the -real world: though generally, no doubt, it is the few lines which give -life, and provide that the reader shall be one of the parents. You -need bold undercutting, and elaboration is apt to blur the outline. -The second part of the book might have robbed the pair of their -immortality. Yet they live, and have lived, in spite of the Duke and -Duchess and the Island. Falstaff, with the better part of two plays to -his credit, is the only hero of Shakespeare’s whose reality gets out -of the theatre. I can’t admit Hamlet or Macbeth or Othello or Shylock. -At Malvolio I hesitate--but if you make a hero of Malvolio you turn -_Twelfth Night_ into a tragedy. In 1623, the year of Shakespeare’s -death, the play was called _Malvolio_; and King Charles I annotated -the title, _Twelfth Night_, in his folio with the true name in his own -hand. _Tantum religio potuit suadere--bonorum._ So is it with the women -in Shakespeare: the heavy leads are not so persuasive as the small. Of -Mrs. Quickly and Juliet’s nurse there can be no doubt whatever. But of -the heroines, I can only put forward Rosalind--but even Rosalind won’t -do. Compare her objectivity with Becky Sharp’s. Who has not felt the -immanence of Becky in Brussels? I am afraid that settles Rosalind. - -Neither Scott nor Dickens succeeded with heroes and heroines; but Scott -has a girl to his credit whose reality is historical: Jeannie Deans. -I cannot listen to a doubt about that noble creature. If Scott had -given her a burial-place I should have gone to look for her tomb, and -never doubted of finding her name in the parish register. In that he -beats Dickens, with whom and Shakespeare he must strive for the crown -in this matter of adding to the population. In heroes Dickens has a -slight apparent advantage with David Copperfield. At first blush you -might think he had lived: turn it over and you won’t think so. Even if -you decided for him that would only put Dickens level with Scott and -Shakespeare; for his girls don’t live in the pages of their books, and -have not so much as temporal creation. I would put Colonel Newcome to -Thackeray’s score (with dozens of _minora sidera_: Major Pendennis, -for instance!) and, personally, the handsome Ethel, on whose account -I myself have been to Brighton, and who can bring strong testimony -forward in the horde of maidens she has stood for at the font. Surely -no other heroine of fiction has been so many times a godmother! Guy -Livingstone and Sir Guy Morville, in their day, gave their names pretty -handsomely, but--! I had nearly left out, but must by all means add, -Alexandre Dumas, who devoted three novels to his musketeers, and, in -Porthos, made a living soul. D’Artagnan had been one already, but Dumas -barely added anything for all his pains; and with Athos whom he loved -and Aramis whom he hated failed altogether. It was not, of course, -Dumas’ line to create an illusion by dialogue or description. His was -the historical method; his people lived by incident. But Porthos lived -anyhow, and would have lived without incident if needs were. “‘En -effet,’ fît Porthos, ‘je suis très incrédule.’” The man who said that -was once a breathing giant. - -What, then, is requisite to the production of this prolonged illusion? -A relish, on the writer’s part, a sudden glory, a saliency; nothing -which will be a hair’s-breadth out of character, and nothing too much. -On the reader’s part intimacy, relish too, the sort of affection you -feel towards Sir Roger de Coverley, and a faith which is, like that of -a lover, a point of honour. Just as--if I may hazard the comparison--to -millions of simple Christians their Saviour, though dead and risen, is -still a Child, a _bambino_, so it is with them who have accepted Don -Quixote, and have stood by his death-bed. Such a death must have been -died, such a life lived indeed. “Believing where we cannot prove.” The -heart plays queer tricks with us. - -Stevenson’s is an odd case. He really spent himself to give reality to -Alan Breck, and failed. He played with Theophilus Godall, the superb -tobacconist, and with the Chevalier Burke, and behold, they lived! He -added those two to the population. He could not go wrong with them, had -them to a tick. It is observable that extravagance of matter is no bar -to illusion. But what is wrong with Alan Breck? - - - - -PEASANT POETS - - -The peasant is a shy bird, by nature wild, by habit as secret as a -creature of the night. If he is ever vocal you and I are the last -to hear of it. He is as nearly inarticulate as anyone living in -civilisation may be. Consequently a peasant sufficiently moved, or when -moved, sufficiently armed with vocables to become a poet, even a bad -poet, has always been rare. When you need to add genius to sensibility -and equipment, as you must to get a good poet, you may judge of the -rarity. Indeed, to put a name to him, _exceptis excipiendis_, I can -only find John Clare. Other names occur, but for various reasons have -to be cut out. There was a postman poet in Devonshire, a policeman poet -in Yorkshire; and there was a footman poet. One of those certainly had -merit, even genius, and any one of them may have been a peasant in -origin. But by the time they began to make poetry they had ceased to -be peasants; and that rules them out, as it does Robert Blomfield and -Thomas Hardy. Then there is Burns. But Burns was not a peasant. We in -England should have called him a yeoman. Besides, his is one of those -cases of transcendent genius where origin goes for nothing, but all -seems the grace of God. At that rate the corn-chandlers might claim -Shakespeare, or the chemists’ assistants Keats. - -But there’s no doubt about Clare, a Northamptonshire peasant, son of -peasants, brought up at a dame-school, and at farm labour all his -working life. It is true that he was “discovered” by Taylor and Hessey, -published, sold; that his first book ran into three editions in a year; -that he was lionised, became one of the Lamb-Hazlitt-Haydon circle, -and thus inevitably sophisticated with the speculations not of his own -world. But roughly speaking, from start to close, his merits were the -merits of the peasantry, and his faults as pardonable as theirs. He was -never gross, as they never are; he was never common, as the pick of -them are not; he was deeply rooted, as “The Flitting”, one of his best -poems, will prove; he was exceedingly amorous, but a constant lover; -nothing in nature escaped his eye; and lastly, in his technique he was -a realist out and out. Of his quality take this from “Summer Evening”: - - - “In tall grass, by fountain head, - Weary then he crops to bed.” - - -“He” is the evening moth. - - - “From the haycocks’ moistened heaps - Startled frogs take sudden leaps; - And along the shaven mead, - Jumping travellers, they proceed: - Quick the dewy grass divides, - Moistening sweet their speckled sides; - From the grass or flowret’s cup - Quick the dew-drop bounces up. - Now the blue fog creeps along, - And the bird’s forgot his song: - Flowers now sleep within their hoods; - Daisies button into buds; - From soiling dew the buttercup - Shuts his golden jewels up; - And the rose and woodbine they - Wait again the smiles of day.” - - -The poem runs to length, as most of Clare’s do, but the amount of -exact, close and loving observation in it may be gauged from my -extract. It is remarkable, and worthy of memory for the sake of what -is to follow. You may say that such microscopic work may be outmatched -by gentle poets; you may tell me of sandblind Tennyson, who missed -nothing, of Cockney Keats and the “Ode to Autumn,” and say that it -is a matter of the passion which drives the poet. There is, I think, -this difference to be noted. Observation induces emotion in the -peasant-poet, whereas the gentle or scholar poet will not observe -intensely, if at all, until he is deeply stirred. I don’t say that that -will account for everybody: it will not dispose of Tennyson, nor of -Wordsworth--but it is true of the great majority. - -There is one other quality I should look for in a peasant-poet, and -that is what I can only go on calling “the lyric cry.” It is a thing -unmistakable when you find it, the pure and simple utterance in words -of the passion in the heart. “Had we never lov’d sae kindly”, “Come -away, come away, Death”, “The Sun to the Summer, my Willie to me”, -“Toll for the brave”, “Ariel to Miranda, take”, “I have had playmates”, -“Young Jamie lou’d me weel”,--they crowd upon me. Absolute simplicity, -water-clear sincerity are of the essence of it, and of both qualities -the peasant is possessed; but to them it is requisite to add the fire -of passion and the hue of beauty before they can tremble into music. -These things cannot be told, since private grief is sacred, but I have -had experience of late years in my intercourse with village people: men -bereaved of their sons, girls mourning their lovers. Words, phrases -have broken from them to which a very little more was needed to make -them sound like this: - - - “The wind doth blow to-day, my love, - And a few small drops of rain; - I never had but one true-love, - In cold grave she was lain.” - - -That is a perfect example of what I mean. It comes from Sussex, and -if there could be any doubt of its peasant-origin the weather lore of -the first two lines should settle it. And this from Scotland may be -compared with it: - - - “It fell about the Martinmass, - When nights were lang and mirk, - The carlin wife’s three sons came hame, - And their hats were of the birk. - - “It neither grew in dyke nor ditch, - Nor yet in any sheugh; - But at the gates o’ Paradise - That birk grew fair eneugh.” - - -No gentle poet short of Shakespeare could get the awful simplicity -of that; and Shakespeare, I think, only achieved it when, as for -Ophelia’s faltered songs, he used peasant-rhymes. - -It is, to me, a task of absorbing interest to go through Child’s -huge repertorium piece by piece and pick out the folk-ballads which -have the marks of peasant origin. So far as I can tell at present, -certainly one half, and it may be three-fourths of them are peasant -songs--I don’t say necessarily made by peasants, but in any case made -_for_ them. If one could, by such means, form a _Corpus Poeticum -Villanum_ there would be a treasure-house worth plundering by more -students than one. For as nothing moves a people more than poetry, -when it is good poetry, so nothing needs truth for its indispensable -food so much as poetry. If you have what most deeply touched and -stirred a people you have that which was dearest to them, the blood -as it were of their hearts. The _criteria_ are as I have indicated: -minute observation, stark simplicity, the lyric cry, and realism. You -may add to those a preference of sentiment to romance, and a decided -adherence to the law of nature when that is counter to the law of the -Church. Thus incontinence in love is not judged hardly when passion -in the man or kindness in the woman has brought it about; on the -other hand, infidelity to the marriage vow never escapes. Again, that -which the Italians call “assassino per amore” is a matter of course -in peasant-poetry; and another crime, universally condemned, except -by about two of our gentle poets, is freely treated, and--not to say -condoned--freely pitied. Perhaps one of the most curious of all the -ballads is “Little Musgrave,” which is English and of unknown age. -It is quoted in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ of 1611. Little -Musgrave and Lord Barnard’s wife fall in love, and betray his lordship. -He, however, is informed by his page, and rides out to clear his -honour. Musgrave hears something: - - - “Methinks I hear the thresel-cock, - Methinks I hear the jay; - Methinks I hear my Lord Barnard, - And I would I were away.” - - -But she answers him: - - - “Lye still, lye still, thou Little Musgrave, - And huddle me from the cold; - ’Tis nothing but a shepherd’s boy - A-driving his sheep to the fold.” - - -Lord Barnard breaks in and does his affair with the two of them. Then: - - - “‘A grave, a grave,’ Lord Barnard cryd, - ‘To put these lovers in; - But lay my lady on the upper hand, - For she came of the better kin!’” - - -Realism indeed: but a poem. - - - - -DOGGEREL OR NOT - - -If Mr. Cecil Sharp, as I hope, is collecting his many and scattered -publications under one roof, so to speak, he will be doing a service -to a number of people besides me. I await his learned leisure, having -now possessed myself of his _English Folk-Songs_, Vols. I and II. -He will not achieve what I want to see done before I die, a _Corpus -Poeticum Villanum_, because, being a musician before all things, he -is only interested in peasant verse of which the music has survived. -He won’t do that, but he will help somebody else towards it with an -indispensable supplement to Child, in an accessible form; and that will -be great gain--goodliness with contentment, in fact. - -Valuable variants of many and many a folk-song are to be found in his -first instalment; though such was the phenomenal patience and far-flung -activity of the American that in two volumes of a hundred songs Mr. -Sharp has only been able to find one which is not in the great work. -That is one which would have delighted the Professor--“Bruton Town.” -The _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_ contains nothing at all like -“Bruton Town”; yet the theme of it is one of those which was common to -every folk, no doubt, in Europe. Boccaccio gave it its first fame, Hans -Sachs followed him. In England we had to wait for Keats, who, so far as -we are concerned, supplanted the Florentine and the Nuremberger; for -all the Britains know something of Isabella and the Pot of Basil. It -must, however, be noted that the specific note of those masterpieces -is not the real theme, and never could have been. The horrid dealings -with the murdered man’s head are macabre embroidery altogether too -sophisticated for a folk-tale. The real theme is the Squire of Low -Degree. You get it in the “Duchess of Malfy,” and you get it in -“Bruton Town.” There is no instance of the morbid in a peasant-ballad. -Elemental human beings dealt in elemental passions. Love, pride, scorn, -birth, death were concern enough for them. So, in “Bruton Town,” the -theme is the trusty servant, his master’s daughter, the young men’s -reprobation and vindication of their sister’s “honour.” Here is the -opening: - - - “In Bruton Town there lived a farmer - Who had two sons and one daughter dear. - By day and night they were a-contriving - To fill their parents’ hearts with fear. - - “One told his secret to none other, - But to his brother this he said: - I think our servant courts our sister, - I think they have a mind to wed.” - - -Doggerel or not, I don’t see how that could be bettered. Mr. Sharp -thinks something has been lost, but I think not. What could heighten -the note of mystery and dread with which the second quatrain -opens--“One told his secret to none other”? Mr. Sharp has not--he -confesses it--been able to refrain from the temptation which has -always beset the ballad-hunter, from Percy and Sir Walter onwards, of -working on the ore which he finds; but that stroke of art in particular -is unpremeditated and original, I feel sure. It is constant to all the -versions of “Bruton Town” which I have seen. - -The hasty whispered plot follows, the preparation of the “day of -hunting,” the murder, and the sister’s discovery of the deed. She rises -early and finds the corpse. Then comes: - - - “She took her kerchief from her pocket, - And wiped his eyes though he was blind; - ‘Because he was my own true lover, - My own true lover and friend of mine.’” - - -That again is constant, and could not be mended: though Mr. Sharp would -mend it if he could, thinking that the hasty shifting of persons, -from third to first, is awkward. It may be awkward, but is very -characteristic and, as I think, evidence of authenticity. One more -verse, which devotes the mourner to a shared grave, ends “Bruton Town” -in pure tragedy; pity, terror, but not disgust. Boccaccio’s additament -is nasty, and Keats did not avoid it, though he was not so nasty as -Boccaccio. - -“Bruton Town” comes from Somerset, and is worthy of that songful shire. -It carries in itself its own conviction of peasant origin. No other -race of our people would have conceived the verse last quoted exactly -like that, nor any other audience have accepted it as adequate. “Friend -of mine” is the _pièce de conviction_: the sweetest name a village -girl can give her lover is that of her friend. The pathos of “And wiped -his eyes though he was blind” is the pathos of a wounded bird. It is -beyond the compass of art altogether, one of those strokes of truth -which puts art out of court. It is Nature’s justification before the -schools. - -Doggerel, then, or not? There are other things in Mr. Sharp’s volumes -which may help to determine. There is the well-known “Little Sir Hugh,” -where the sacrifice of a Christian child by the Jews is sung. Mr. -Sharp’s version is in parts new. Take this out of it for good doggerel: - - - “She set him up in a gilty chair, - She gave him sugar sweet; - She laid him out on a dresser board, - And stabbed him like a sheep.” - - -Well, without any pretence at _curiosa felicitas_, that does its work. -It is terse, tense, yet easy and colloquial. It is shocking rather -than pitiful; but it means to be so. It might be evidence at the -Assizes, where, term by term, they supply just the kind of thing which -would have given that versifier what he wanted. Mr. Sharp’s “Little -Sir Hugh” in fact is not far from Catnachery, of which he gives some -avowed examples. It has only to be set beside “Bruton Town” to settle -it that if “Sir Hugh” is doggerel, the other is not. Ease, tensity, -colloquialism both have; but then comes the difference. “Sir Hugh” -shocks, “Bruton Town” moves; “Bruton Town” has in it the lyric cry, -“Sir Hugh” has it not. - -Take as a last case “The True Lover’s Farewell,” pure doggerel, but -excellent of its kind. Everybody knows it, for a reason: - - - “O fare you well, I must be gone - And leave you for a while; - But wherever I go I will return, - If I go ten thousand mile, - My dear, - If I go ten thousand mile.” - - -Now for the reason. Burns lifted that for his occasions, and hardly -altered it. He took it and fitted it into its place among other verses -on the same model--but this is how he began: - - - “O my luve’s like a red, red rose - That’s newly sprung in June: - O my luve’s like the melodie - That’s sweetly played in tune--” - - -An opening, observe, of three beats; and then, as a kind of chorus, the -emotions quickened up, three four-beat verses of abandonment increasing -in reckless simile, and ending with: - - - “And fare thee well, my only luve; - And fare thee well awhile! - And I will come again, my luve, - Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!” - - -That is drawing poetry out of doggerel, the work of genius. - - - - -THE IBERIAN’S HOUSE - - -Not long ago I was on the Downs in pursuit of wild raspberries, which, -as the old phrase goes, are very plenty this year. Although the days -are still those of the dog, there was autumn in the air even then: a -grey sky with a cool stream of wind from the west in which was that -familiar taint of things dying which autumn always brings. The flowers -were of autumn too--scabious, bedstraw and rest-harrow; mushrooms were -to be had for the stooping, which we usually seek in dewy September -dawns. On the other hand, there were the raspberries; the brambles were -in flower, and the corn just tinged with yellow. After a burning May -and June, a dripping July, the times are out of joint--but I filled a -hat full of raspberries. - -I found the best of them in a pear-shaped hollow in the ground, a place -rather like a giant’s sauce-boat, in depth perhaps some six feet. -Allowing for the slow accumulation of soil tumbled from the sides, for -growth by vegetation and decay spread over many centuries, it may once -have been another three feet down. Call it, then, nine feet deep. By -outside measurements it was fourteen yards long by nine at the broad -end of the pear, narrowing down to three where the stalk would have -been. To-day the actual floor-space is barely two yards at the broad -end. That is because the sides have fallen in, and made descent a -matter of walking, which originally, no doubt, was contrived by some -sort of a ladder, or by slithering down a tree-trunk. Vegetation -is profuse in there: the turf like a sponge, the scabious as big as -ladies’ watches, the raspberries good enough for Bond Street. Well -they may be, for they are rooted in the bones and household spoil of -more than two thousand years. The place was a house long before Cæsar -knew Britain, before the Belgae were in Wilts, before Wilts was Wilts. -To revert to a convenient term, I picked my raspberries in an Iberian -house. - -I considered it that day in the light thrown upon its proportions -for me (all unknown to the author) by a terrible little book, the -more terrible for its dispassionate statement, called “The Woman in -the Little House,” whose author, Mrs. Margaret Eyles, has herself -experienced what she writes of. Her Little House is one of, I daresay, -a million; one of those narrow, flat-faced boxes of brick--“two up and -two down,” as they are expressed--sprawling far and wide over the home -counties about London, in which the artisans and operatives who work -thereabout contrive, as best they may, to bestow themselves. It does -not need--or should not--Mrs. Eyles’s calm and good-tempered account to -realise that such dwellings are bad for health and morals, fatal to the -nerves and ruinous to the purses of their occupants. Yet she mentions -more than one simple truth which proves immediately that the smallest -house at the lowest possible rent may be much more costly than a large -one--for instance, she points out that the smallness of the house and -the want of storage room make purchase of stores in any kind of bulk -out of the question. But I have neither the time nor the knowledge to -develop these questions properly. I have only one criticism to make, -and that is that the sufferings of the small householder cannot all be -laid to size; that the difficulties of the Woman in the Little House -are not only economic. Fecklessness in the Woman must take its share of -blame. It is hard to bring up a family in the fear of God and the use -of soap, where there seems to be neither room for the one nor chance -for the other. It is wearing-down work to be nurse to many small and -fretful children while you are carrying yet another, to keep order in -a household which has neither scope for, nor desire of order, to deal -with drunken husband, grudging landlord, quarrelsome neighbour--and so -on. But Mrs. Eyles knows that these things can be done by the woman who -realises that they must, that they have been done and are being done; -and though both of us may grudge, as we do, the waste of nerve, youth, -beauty, vitality which they involve, yet had we rather preach the -gospel of such heroic dumb endurance, such constancy in adversity, such -piety, _and their reward_, than have the heroines fall back, flounder -in the trough of the wave, or the “sensual sty.” But for their lamps -held up, indeed would “universal darkness cover all.” - -I seem to be far from my neolithic dwelling; yet am close to it; for -that itself was not much smaller than the “Little House” of to-day, -and yet is three thousand years older at the very least. To its -successor, the Celtic and early English wattle-and-daub hut this brick -box has succeeded, while here in the village under the Down there -are two-roomed, three-roomed tenements in which may be found man, -wife, and eight or ten children. So far as floor-space, air-space, -headroom, sanitation go, they will be very little better than the hole -in the chalk. So far as intellectual and moral outlook go, so far as -foresight, restraint of members, mental capacity, while tradition -is still the universal guide--a tradition which it is not easy to -distinguish from mere instinct--there is little reason to suppose the -occupants of the one differ materially from those of the other. I am -not to regret it or reprove it, but to state it; and go on to say -that when tradition is modified by character the state of a family -so conditioned may be not only orderly, not only prosperous, but -happy--and by that I don’t mean merely contented, but consciously and -avowedly happy. I know several which are so; and while I see, or hear, -of their well-being I have no reason for being anything but glad of it. -Sir Alfred Mond, to be sure, has had nothing to do with it; but it is -my belief that when it comes to a tug-of-war between character and Sir -Alfred Mond, character will pull the right honourable baronet all over -the place. - -I cannot bring myself to be that whole-hearted kind of reformer who -says, my sauce must be your sauce, or there is no health for the world. -If I must provide a villager (as surely I must) with store-room for -his potatoes, I would not give him a bath-room for the purpose. I am -uncomfortable myself if I don’t souse every morning in warm water; -but I know several persons who do nothing of the sort, and are not -in the least uncomfortable, nor (to the senses) unclean. I have been -a guest in a house in Northumberland of the right Iberian kind, which -consisted of one room only. A better-conditioned, more wholesome, more -intelligent family than I found there I don’t expect to find easily -anywhere. Tradition explained, and character made tolerable, such a -dwelling. I have not actually seen, but know the appearance of the -house in Ecclefechan, where Carlyle was reared. I should be surprised -to learn that it was more than “two up and one down,” rather surprised -if it was so much. I don’t put Thomas Carlyle forward as an example of -the modification of circumstance by character: he was much the reverse. -But all that he tells me of his father and mother was written for my -learning. The rule of Saint Use was well kept in Ecclefechan, or I am -the more deceived. If Carlyle’s mother would have exchanged her lot for -that of any woman born she was not the woman he celebrates. And have -we not heard of Margaret Ogilvie, and been the better of it? It is not -the present-day practice to consider our social troubles from the moral -end, and I am sorry for it. The economic end engrosses us altogether; -yet it is not, strictly speaking, the “business-end.” It is little use -abolishing this or that institution while human nature remains as it -always was. - -There is one serious subject which Mrs. Eyles has had to deal with, -into which I hesitate to intrude. Iberian women are kind, and their men -clamative. As she has heard it said by many a one of them, the day may -be endured, but not the night. Well, there again character can modify -use-and-wont, either by teaching acquiescence or by inspiring revolt. -And yet I cannot but remember what was said to a friend of mine in a -neighbouring village in the first of our terrible four years of war. -The speaker was a woman, a mother of children, who for the first time -in her life had enough money and her house to herself. “Ah, ma’am,” she -said, “you may depend upon it, this war has made many happy homes.” - - - - -SCANDINAVIAN ENGLAND - - -The valley is narrow, not much more than a hundred and fifty yards -wide, where I am stationed now. Of them some twenty are claimed by -the headlong river and its beaches of flat grey stones, and perhaps -eighty more by small green garths, divided by walls. Then broken ground -of boulders, bent and bracken, and then, immediately, the fells rise -up like walls to a ragged skyline. They stream with water at every -fissure, are quickly clouded, blurred and blotted by rain; then clear, -and shining like glass in the sun. The look of things is not the same -for half an hour at a time. Fleets of cloud come up from the Atlantic, -anchor themselves on the mountain-tops, and descend in floods of rain, -sharp and swift as arrows. Or if the wind drive them they will fleet -across the landscape like white curtains, and whelm the world in blown -water. You don’t “make” your hay in this country, you “win” it if you -can: you steal it, as they say. As for your patches of oats, as likely -as not you will use them for green fodder. Roots would be your crop -if you had room for them among the stones--but in Eskdale you are a -sheep-farmer, with a thousand head of sheep and a thousand acres of -fell to feed them on. - -I am new to this corner of our country, where Lancashire and Cumberland -run so much in and out of each other that the people have given up -county categories and call it all indifferently Furness Fells. I don’t -know any other part of England so sparely occupied. The farms are few, -large and far apart; there are practically no villages; and my own -cottage (which was built for a dead and buried mining scheme, and is -the last of its clan) is the only one to be found within miles of empty -country. A plain-faced, plain-dealing, plain-spoken race lives here, -in a countryside where every natural landmark has a Norse name, and -one is recalled to the Sagas at every turn of the valley, and by every -common occupation of man. The economy of life exactly follows that -told of in the Icelandic tales. In the homestead live the farmer and -his thralls, the wife and her maids. There are no married labourers, -and board and lodging is part of every young man’s and young woman’s -hire. Twelve such people live in the farmhouse nearest to me--twelve -people, eleven dogs, an uncertain number of children, and a bottle-fed -black lamb. Not only so, but it is true that the dalesmen and their -servants are Icelandic in favour and way of speech. Dialect is not much -to the point; intonation is a great deal to it. That runs flat, level -and monotonous--unemotionally, like Danish. It makes a kind of muted -speech, so that it is hard to know whether a woman is pleased or angry, -or a man of agreeable or offensive intention. - -I never met with a people more innately democratic than the Danes -until I met this year with this people of Eskdale. It is not at all -that they seek to assert their equality: it is that they know it. -The manners depicted in the Sagas are those of men dealing with men. -Neither inflation nor deflation is deemed necessary, neither arrogance -nor condescension. You make a statement, short and unadorned: it is -for the other man to take or leave. Speech is not epigrammatic because -minds move slowly here. But it is very terse--because it may rain -before you have finished. Plainer than speech are manners. They were -that in the Sagas, in more than one of which the starting-point of feud -and vendetta was the persistent and obtuse besetting of a daughter of -one house by the son of another. She was busy, or busied, as in all -primitive societies the women are; but he was not. So he hung about her -house, not attempting speech with her, not explaining or justifying or -extenuating his oppressive behaviour, simply overshadowing the poor -thing, causing her to be talked about, and scandalising her family. -There was but one way of dealing with him in those days, which was -to crack his skull. That was done, and so the drama put on its legs. -Things are better than that now, yet the principle is the same. I -remember the discomfort and alarm of three southern maids whom we once -brought up with us to a farmhouse in Selkirk. At their supper-hour -three strange young men were discovered sitting on a gate in full view -of the kitchen window. Nothing makes an Iberian so uncomfortable as to -be watched at a meal. But nothing would move the young men, not even -the drawing of the curtains. They had no explanation to give, no excuse -to make. One faintly whistled between his teeth, and then said that it -was a free country. So it was, if to make free is to be so. - -It is much the same here. The young men of the farm regard every young -woman, of whatever walk in life, as a thing to be whistled in, like -a sheep-dog. They have the Saga knack of declaring the state of their -feelings by imposing themselves upon its object. They beleaguer the -house, shadow the desired, trust to wearing her down, hope to bore her -into love. Or, rather, they don’t care whether she love or not, so long -as they are allowed it. Woman in the Sagas is a chattel, a thing to be -bought or stolen. So she was to the Homeric hero. So she seems to be -here. - -The Danes, as we loosely call our Norse invaders, were a more dominant -strain than whatever people they found in Furness. Not only have they -implanted their form, feature and hue upon the Cumbrians, not only -named their rivers and hills for them, or a great many of them, but -they have established their social code. “Whistle and I’ll come to you, -my lad,” is not a sentiment of Southern Britain. It is firmly implanted -in the mind of the young Dalesman, who finds it right and proper. - - - - -OUR BLOOD AND STATE IN 1660 - - -I believe that we have always had the good conceit of ourselves which -we have still. We complain freely of our weather, institutions, habits, -manners and customs--but that is a freedom which we arrogate to -ourselves: when foreigners do the same we are merely amused, not for a -moment supposing either that their charges are true or that they really -mean them. Though our grousing can hardly be dated with safety before -Horace Walpole, our complacency is of pretty old standing, and goes -back to the time when we began to look Europe over, to say nothing of -America, and incidentally grew curious about our own country. Leland, -Speed, Camden, Drayton, Coryat, and finally old Thomas Fuller, between -them have fairly summed up what there can have been to say for us when -we had emerged from the Middle Ages and were beginning to shape for -posterity; and of all those Fuller is perhaps the least known and the -best worth a thought, if only because his eyes were upon what he saw -rather than what he knew. The rock upon which most of our eulogists -split was archæology. There Leland foundered, Speed and Camden too. -Drayton had his troubles elsewhere, and plenty of them, as a poet -would. Avoiding Scylla, he barged into Charybdis, where mythopoiesis -lurked for him like a mermaid, and sank him so deep that he never came -up again. He is very nearly unreadable; he invites ridicule and wins -disgust. Over and over his bemused corpus of rime, John Selden, a most -learned spider, spun webs of erudition. It is difficult to read either -of them, but of the two I prefer the poet. The present Laureate puts -the antiquary first. But when you come to Thomas Fuller, D.D., his -_Worthies of England_, that wordy work, encumbered though it be with -texts of divinity, you do at least get your teeth into something upon -which to bite. He did not live to finish it, though, and the piety of -his son John, “the author’s orphan,” as he described himself, erected -it as a monument to his memory in 1672. - -Fuller, I think, set out with the intention of belauding the human -products of our realm. He cast all mankind into categories and, with -them for a sieve, shook out the shires to see what he could find. -To that he added matter concerning the natural and manufactured -commodities of England, which forms the best reading in him to-day. -One does not particularly want to know what he had to say about Sir -Walter Raleigh or Cardinal Wolsey; even his opinion of Shakespeare -and Ben Jonson need not detain us long, though he seems to have known -personally the pair of them, and to have considered Jonson considerably -the greater man. Wit was always reckoned above genius in that day. -But he admits Shakespeare as a worthy of Warwickshire, accords him -exactly as much space as Michael Drayton, “a pious poet,” and thinks -that in our greatest man “three eminent poets may seem in some sort -to be compounded”; a sufficiently qualified judgment. Those three -are--“Martial, in the warlike sound of his surname”; Ovid, “the most -natural and witty of all the poets”; and Plautus, “an exact comedian, -yet never any scholar, as our Shakespeare (if alive) would confess -himself.” He goes on, “Add to all these, that though his genius -generally was jocular, and inclining him to festivity, yet he could -(when so disposed) be solemn and serious.” Not extravagant praise. He -does not know the date of his death, leaves it blank. And so much for -Shakespeare. - -It doesn’t matter; nor are his judgments of Jonson and Donne of any -more moment. But it is interesting to know what the counties were doing -in 1660, though, except grazing, it was little enough. In fact, what he -does not say is surprising. I had certainly understood, for instance, -that Newcastle was exporting coal long before that; but Fuller has -no “natural commodities” to report of Northumberland. No coal in -Lancashire, either. Lancashire’s products were “oates,” “allume,” and -“oxen,” and her only manufacture, so declared, “fustians.” Bolton, -he tells you, “is the staple place for this commodity, being brought -thither” from all parts of the county. But Manchester was spinning -cotton. “As for Manchester, the cottons thereof carry away the credit -in our nation, and so they did an hundred and fifty years ago. For when -learned Leland on the cost of King Henry the Eighth, with his guide -travailed Lancashire, he called Manchester the fairest and quickest -town in this county, and sure I am it has lost neither spruceness nor -spirits since that time.” That is a good report, made no worse probably -by the entire absence of Liverpool from the record. But there is -more to come. “Other commodities made in Manchester are so small in -themselves, and various in their kinds, they will fill the shop of an -haberdasher of small wares. Being therefore too many for me to reckon -up or remember, it will be the safest way to wrap them all together in -some _Manchester-Tickin_, and to fasten them with the _pinns_, or tye -them with the _tape_, and also (because sure bind sure find) to bind -them about with _points_ and _laces_, all made in the same place.” -That is as near to jocularity as Dr. Fuller can go. With much the same -elephantine gambols used Mr. Pecksniff in a later day to entertain his -daughters and pupils. - -He records as proverbial of Lancashire her “fair women,” not without -pointing a moral. “I believe that the God of nature having given fair -complections to the women in this county art may save her _pains_ -(not to say her _sinnes_) in endeavouring to better them. But let the -females of this county know, that though in the Old Testament express -notice be taken of the beauty of many women, _a._ Sarah, _b._ Rebekah, -_c._ Rachel, _e._ Thamar, _f._ Abishaig, _g._ Esther; yet in the New -Testament no mention is made at all of the fairness of any woman.” -Grace, he would have you know, is all, and “soul-piercing perfection -far better than skin-deep fairness.” Two other facts about Lancashire -are noteworthy: “It is written upon a wall in Rome, _Ribchester_ was -as rich as any town in Christendom”--that is one; and the other is -that “About Wiggin and elsewhere in this county men go a-fishing with -spades and matthooks.” As thus: “First they pierce the turfie ground, -and under it meet with a black and deadish water, and in it small -fishes do swim.” Such fish, he thinks, are likely unwholesome, and so -do I; therefore I am pleased with his comfortable conclusion. “Let them -be thankful to God in the first place who need not such meat to feed -upon. And next them let those be thankful which have such meat to feed -upon, when they need it.” Very much in the manner of Dr. Pangloss. - -Fuller’s own fishing after “natural commodities” obliges him to use a -small mesh. Even so he sometimes wins nothing. Cambridgeshire gives him -eels, hares, saffron, and willows--a mixed bag; Essex oysters, hops -and _puitts_, by which he intends peewits. Hants does better, with red -deer, honey, wax, and hogs; but Wilts can only offer tobacco-pipes, -and wool. Cornwall gives him diamonds! “In blackness and hardness -they are far short of the Indian”--but there they are. He tops up -a bumper basket down there with ambergris, garlic, pilchards, blue -slate, and tin. Cornwall is easily his richest county, and next comes -Cumberland, with pearls, blacklead and copper. Here are some poor ones: -Dorset, “tenches,” pipe-clay, and hemp; Berks, “oakes, bark, trouts”; -Bedfordshire, “barley, malt, fullers’-earth and _larks_”; slightly -better are Bucks, with “beeves, sheep and tame pheasants”; Kent, -“cherries, sainfoin, madder”; Hereford, “wool and salmons.” Clearly it -was a day of small things. Staffordshire was making nails; Derbyshire -mining lead and brewing mild ale; Somerset produced serges at Taunton; -Yorkshire bred horses and made knives at Sheffield, as she did in -Chaucer’s time; and that is about all that “the painted counties” were -doing in 1660. For the rest, it was grazing and small-farming, large -families and the beginning of religious ferment which was to work for -another hundred years before it came to a head. - -But old Fuller himself was what he calls somebody else, “a cordial -protestant,” and does not allow us to forget it for a page at a time. -He cannot speak of salt in Cheshire without remembering Lot’s wife, -nor of polled cattle without head-shaking over the calf in Horeb. “The -historian,” he reminds himself, “must not devour the divine in me.” He -never does. The Scriptures are his real affair, as they were coming to -be ours in 1660. It would be an edifying exercise, remembering that, to -reckon up our gains and losses out of his meandering pages. - - - - -“MERRIE” ENGLAND - - -The Athenians, I believe, used to round off their bouts of high tragedy -with a farce of satyrs and clowns, and the practice has survived almost -to our own day. When Charles Lamb and his sister went to Drury Lane, -_Pizzaro_ or _Artaxerxes_ would be followed by _Harlequin Dame Trot_, -or _Harlequin Dick Whittington and his Cat_. I am not scholar enough to -say of the Elizabethans that they were in the same tradition; but if -they were I can perceive some intention in _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_, -which has been newly edited and printed for Mr. Basil Blackwell of -Oxford. Otherwise I confess myself at a loss. It is an Elizabethan or, -as I think, an even earlier knockabout, in which those only who saw fun -in a harlequinade would find the kind of thing that they liked. That it -should have been contrived for the amusement of the Master and Fellows -of Christ’s College, Cambridge, is perhaps not so wonderful as it would -have been if Ben Jonson’s _Bartholomew’s Fair_ had not been revived the -other day with some measure of success. And I suppose that the persons -who were diverted by seeing Malvolio in the cage were very capable -of being pleased with _Gammer Gurion’s Needle_. It is no worse than -Shakespeare at his worst, and much better than Ben Jonson in that it is -much shorter. Launcelot Gobbos, Speeds, Launces fill the stage. There -are no Dogberrys, nor Dame Quickleys; no Master Shallow, no Bottom, and -of course no Falstaff. But the difference is of degree, not of kind. -_Gammer Gurton_ is written _de haut en bas_, as Shakespeare also wrote -of rural life and manners. Its author, “Mr. S., Mr. of Art,” whoever -he was--and the editor thinks that he was William Stevenson, Fellow of -Christ’s in the fifteen-fifties--as heartily scorned the peasantry as -William Shakespeare ever did; and I think that he knew quite as much -about them. In fact, I am led to believe that the thing is not far from -being a faithful picture, as nearly so, indeed, as its comic intention -will allow it to be. If that is so it deserves study. When we talk, as -we are apt to do, of “Merrie England,” it is as well that we should -know in what England’s merriment consisted. - -Gammer Gurton is mending the breeches of her man Hodge when she -sees the cat at the milk-bowl. Starting up to trounce the thief, -she drops her needle, her “fayre long strayght neele that was her -onely treasure.” That is serious. The house is turned inside out and -upside down. Tib the maid has to sift the rubbish-heap; Cock the -boy spends his day on all-fours and his nose to the ground. Enters -here the villain of the piece, the village half-wit, Bedlam Dick, -and says that Dame Chat has the “neele.” That prepares for the great -scene of the play, a slanging match between the two old women, which -ends in a tooth-and-nail affair. Gammer Gurton sends for the priest; -Bedlam Dick primes Dame Chat. He tells her that Hodge is going to rob -her hen-roost; and later, to the priest, he suggests a hiding-place -whence he can spy on Dame Chat and the “neele” in felonious use. The -priest edges in; Dame Chat thinks he is the chicken-thief, and cracks -his skull for him. Mighty hullabaloo: the bailiff is called in to -arbitrate. Bedlam Dick gives Hodge a smack on the buttocks, and drives -the needle home. That is the plot, expounded in plain words which, no -doubt, were exceedingly close to the bone. - -According to Christ’s College, Cambridge, the life of the English -peasant in Reformation days was a purely animal process, punctuated -only by foul language. Eating and drinking were the pleasures, working -was the pain, contriving how to get liquor without working for it the -only intellectual exercise. In _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_ there was not -even love to complicate existence. Ale was the Good, and the only good. - - - “I cannot eate but lytle meate, - my stomacke is not good; - But sure I thinke that I can drynke - with him that weares a hood. - Thoughe I go bare, take ye no care, - I am nothinge acolde: - - “I stuffe my skyn so full within - of joly good Ale and olde. - Back and syde go bare, go bare, - both foote and hand go colde: - But, belly, God send thee good ale inoughe - whether it be new or olde”:-- - - -and so on for four clinking verses. The thing is a triumph; it sings -itself. Out of its rollicking rhythm a kind of haze of romance has -piled up, which select spirits like Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton -still see as a rosy cloud. I suppose it is all right. - -But the language of those “merrie” people! There was only one injurious -thing for woman to call woman: it was reflected in man’s accusation of -man. If you named a woman the thing--and you always did--you named a -man the thing’s son. The impact varied according to the temper of the -accuser. It pricked you to madness if anger lay behind it; often it was -a term of affection. Gammer Gurton so called Tib her maid, Dame Chat -her girl Doll; but that was to coax them. When the beldams belaboured -each other with the imputation they made the fur to fly. Exactly -that impotence of expression, even in moods of malice, is observable -to-day--but in towns, not in the country. I have lived twenty years -in a village and never heard the taunt so much as whispered by one to -another. But then nobody gets drunk out here now. Is there a holding -link between ale and sterility of language? I suppose there must be. - -Religion provides the only other expletives there are in _Gammer -Gurton_, and that makes the date of it an interesting matter. No -earlier edition appears to be known than that of 1575; but a play -called _Dyccon of Bedlam_ was licensed to be printed in 1562, and one -by the presumed author of _Gammer Gurton_ was acted at Christ’s College -in 1553-4. However all that may fit in, there are internal evidences -very much to the point. In the fifth act the bailiff is charged by -the priest with Dick of Bedlam’s arrest. “In the King’s name, Master -Bayly, I charge you set him fast,” he says. That might be Edward VI if -the Prologue had not an allusion directly in conflict with it: - - - “Dame Chat her deare gossyp this needle had found; - Yet knew shee no more of this matter (alas) - Than knoeth Tom our Clarke what the Priest saith at masse.” - - -Is that reminiscence of old practice? Hardly that, for if the mass was -then being said in English it would be quite pointless. Beyond that, -the play is crammed with Catholic catchwords, all of them oaths. “Gog’s -bread,” “Gog’s sydes,” “Gog’s malte”; numberless Our Ladys; “by gys” -(by Jesus); finally this: - - - “There I will have you sweare by our dere Lady of Bullaine, - S. Dunstone, and S. Donnyke, with the three Kings of Kullaine, - That ye shall keepe it secret....” - - -These things point to a familiarity with Catholic usage, whichever -way you take them, exceedingly interesting. The chief thing which -they point out to me is that there was no religious sense in the -peasantry at all. The names and symbols of worship were augmentives of -conversation, but no more. They meant nothing, and implied nothing but -use and wont. Catholicism expired and Calvinism did not thrive, for the -same reason. Neither of them touched the heart of the peasantry, which -remained what it had been throughout, innately pagan, follower (as I -put it) of Saint Use, but of no other divinity. That is as far as one -has been able to go. Certainly _Gammer Gurton_ will take us no further. - -Dullness, bestiality, grossness: these stare you in the face. Between -the lines of them you may discern the squalor and the penury of village -life in Merrie England. Take this: - - - _Gammer_: “Come hether, Cocke; what, Cocke I say. - - _Cocke_: Howe, Gammer? - - _Gammer_: Goe hy thee soone, and grope behind the old brasse pan, - Ther shalt thou fynd an old shooe, wherin if thou looke well - Thou shalt fynd lyeng an inche of whyte tallow candell, - Lyght it, and brynge it tite awaye.” - - -If that does not bring them home to us nothing will do it--except -perhaps this: - - - “And home she went as brag, as it had ben a bodelouce.” - - - - -ENDINGS - - -I - -Not very long ago I took occasion to inquire into the beginnings of -books. I found that the rules were simple, the formulæ few, and the -practice seldom varied until near our own times. If you were an Epic -poet, you invoked the Muse and stated the theme in which you desired -her assistance; if you wrote prose narrative, you began with “Once -upon a time,” or “There was a man,” and went on from there. You began, -in fact, at the beginning; but if you were romantically inclined you -contrived somehow to insinuate a hint of colour and what the artists -call atmosphere. Whichever you were, poet or prosateur, like a -musician, you had a prelude, and gave it as much work as it was capable -of bearing, and sometimes rather more than it could bear. No matter for -that: everything was in your favour: hope was high in your breast, and, -no doubt, in your hearer’s or reader’s. The rules were simple; you laid -out the theme, and off you went. - -But the _ending_ of your work is a very different thing. There are -no formulæ for that. You are at the stretch of your tether, either -thankfully or not; you are in your public’s discretion; however you -take it, you are judged already. You may amend all by your ending, or -you may make weariness more weary. In any case, you have somehow to -“get off with it,” and will find that your shifts to make a good end -to your adventure are not easily reduced to rule or comfortably suited -by convention. We don’t hear so many sermons as we did; yet most of us -know by experience that it is one thing for a clergyman to open upon -his text, and quite another for him to turn to the East with credit. -If he have prepared his peroration, and the way to it--what I may call -his _coda_ and _finale_--well or ill, he will let it off. If he have -not, then in addition to his anxious care for what he is to say, he -will have another for what he must by no means say. Let him beware, for -example, of using the hortatory words “And now”; for so surely as he -pronounces them the congregation will rise as one man, and then nothing -for it but the rest of the Ascription. I have known that happen more -than once, and never faced the preacher with nerve enough to reseat the -congregation for one more turn. - -The writer and the orator may be compared, since literature, by origin -a spoken word, has never lost the habits it then acquired--or has only -just now lost them. As the ancient bard, Homer or Demodocus, as the -wandering minstrel, trouvère or balladist, faced his assize, somehow or -other he had to get off his platform. What was he to do? He desired a -supper, perhaps a bed: one need not shirk the probability that he was -to send round his hat. Could he be sure of them without some kind of a -bang? Should it be a long or a short bang? Was he to sum up the whole -argument of his poem in its last twenty lines, condense it all into one -compendious epigrammatic sentence? As we shall see, that was the means -of one of our great prose-writers. Then, otherwise, should he perorate, -and, in the musician’s way, recall the theme with which he began? As -poet, perhaps he should--so indeed Tennyson more than once did; but -as epic poet it was not always possible. No better poet than Homer -ever lived, no better ending to an epic was ever made than that to the -Iliad, whose last book shows Achilles, for once, generous, and Priam, -in his simplicity, noble. But the Iliad does not end upon the matter of -its beginning, nor with the hero of it. On the contrary, it ends with -the hero’s chief enemy; and its very last line, - - - “So served they the last rites of Hector, tamer of horses,” - - -is remarkable, because it shows that the interest of poet and hearers -alike had shifted during the progress of the poem. Homer, a Greek, -singing to a Greek audience, finds it necessary to close his poem with -Priam and Hector of Troy! - -That shows you how difficult it is to end an epic. The Odyssey shows -it you from another side. Everybody now agrees that what happens in -that after the return of Ulysses, his revenge upon the suitors and -recognition by Penelope, is anti-climax. We are not prepared, at the -end of a long poem, to descend once more into Hades and listen to the -ghosts of the wooers relate their griefs to the ghosts of Agamemnon -and Achilles. We are not prepared for an outbreak of retaliatory war -between the Ithacans and their recovered prince. _Nor were Homer’s -auditors._ Therefore Homer turned to the old stage device of the god -from the machine; he brought an Athené to shut all down. No other means -was open to him, and the knot was worthy. - -I don’t intend to deal with the drama in this place. It has its own -conventions, only occasionally of use to narrative writers. Most of -them are impossible: the Chorus, for instance, which is an easy way of -bringing down the curtain; or the attendants who carry off the dead -bodies; or the curtain itself. The nearest approach to the curtain -which a book can have is the _Explicit_, or _Colophon_; but I only -know one case of its use in a great poem, and in that case it is used -in a hurry, and (as I believe) certainly not by the poet. The poem I -mean is the _Song of Roland_, which, as we have it now, has neither -beginning nor end. Of what may have once been either there is no trace -to be found. As it stands now, the last stave of it shows Charlemagne -reposing after justice done upon Roland’s betrayer, and the Archangel -Gabriel announcing to him the call for new enterprise. Whereupon-- - - - “‘God!’ said the King, ‘my life is hard indeed!’ - Tears filled his eyes, he tore his snowy beard”; - - -and then the famous colophon which nobody can translate: - - - “Ci falt la Geste que Turoldus declinet.” - - -Clearly, if Turoldus made the _Song of Roland_, he did not put his -colophon just there. Mr. Chesterton, in an introduction to the very -accomplished version of the song made by Captain Scott-Moncrieff, -devotes some eloquent lines to its defence; but he does it at the -expense of criticism. It will not do. A poet is, after all, a man -singing to, or writing for men. No man in the world would end a long -story by beginning another. These things are not done. - -The ending of the _Divine Comedy_ is original and characteristic at -once. There is deliberate art in it; there is a kind of artifice or -trick in it. But the trick is justified because it is both beautiful -and, philosophically, true. Each of the three canticas ends with the -same word and the same thought. The aim of the pilgrim through Hell, -Purgatory and Heaven is to reach the stars. From the darkness and -lamentation of Hell he issues - - - “a riveder le stelle”; - - -after his painful climbing of the Mount of Purgation he finds himself - - - “Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle”; - - -the Paradise begins by describing the glory of the Prime Mover of -things; and ends by discovering that this Prime Mover of the universe -is Love, and that Love it is which - - - “muove il sole e l’altre stelle.” - - -As I say, there is artifice in that. After it we are not surprised to -learn that the number of cantos in each cantica, the number of verses, -the number of words in each was approximately planned out and very -closely kept. It is much of a question what is gained by such joinery; -but there is no question at all of the starry endings. Philosophically -and poetically they are beautiful and right. - -Dante belonged to the scholastic age, and to the Middle Age; but he -stood alone both in his art and his artifice. Poets less serious than -he, poets like Boccaccio and Chaucer, had other cares. As they drew -near the end of their occasionally very light-hearted poems, they began -to think about their own end as well as that of their poesy. Fears of -the Archdeacon and his “Somonour,” fears of a summons still more dread -beset them. The more they had written about pagan antiquity as if -they believed in it, the more necessary it became to make their peace -with Heaven before they had done. _The Canterbury Tales_ were never -finished, so one cannot say whether Chaucer’s wholesale recantation of -the “worldly vanitees” of them, of _Troilus_, and of practically all -that has made him immortal was really designed to fit on to the end of -them or not. It certainly looks as if it was; and one can believe that -The Wife of Bath, mine Host and others of the joyful company may have -required some extenuation before the Recording Angel. So perhaps did -_Troilus and Cresseide_, for which he provides a careful and solemn -ending, following Boccaccio there as elsewhere. He shades off Troilus’ -death very artfully by the translation of his “light gooste” to the -eighth sphere of Heaven, from which elevation he was able to look down -at the mourners bewailing his decease. And then the poet is elevated in -his turn and, dropping all his debonair detachment, himself translated, -becomes a pulpiteer of the best. “Such fyn,” he cries: - - - “Such fyn hath then this Troilus for love! - Such fyn hath all his greté worthinesse!” - - -It is fierce and powerful pulpit eloquence, mounting up and up until he -reaches a height of scorning what he had previously loved, from which -invective may be poured out like lava from Vesuvius: - - - “Lo here, of payen’s curséd oldé rights! - Lo here, what all their Goddés may availe!” - - -which, considering he began his poem by invoking the help of those same -gods, seems ungrateful, not to say ungracious. The last stanza is quite -simply a doxology: - - - “Thou one, and two, and three, eterne in life, - That reignest aye in three, and two, and one,” - - -just such an accomplished and charming doxology as might be expected -from Chaucer--but, all the same, a doxology. To such strange uses did -poets lend their muse when they loved paynimry and were horribly afraid -of it too. - -Freed from the overshadowing of a wrath to come, Milton was able to -concentrate upon poetic excellence, as indeed he did. You will look far -before you find so serene and beautiful a close to a long poem as that -of _Paradise Lost._ Pity and terror contend in the last paragraph. When -the Archangel with his burning brand, and the attendant Cherubim, faces -in the fire, descend and take possession of Eden, terror holds us; but -then, pity: - - - “They, looking back, all th’ eastern side beheld - Of Paradise so late their happy seat....” - - -They were mortal, that pair. Mortals have short memories, but long -hopes. So-- - - - “Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; - The world was all before them where to choose - Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. - They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, - Through Eden took their solitary way.” - - -The dream was over. Life began its “search for rest.” Beautiful indeed, -and exactly observed. - -I must here leave the Muse with barely a glance at the Victorians, -which suffices nevertheless to reveal that they adopted the rhetorical -device of the peroration. Tennyson uses it in _In Memoriam_ and _Maud_, -Browning in _The Ring and the Book_, Swinburne, very finely, in -_Tristram of Lyonesse_, and very characteristically too with his usual -catchword. I don’t know how many considerable poems there may be of -Swinburne’s which do not end with the word “sea,” but believe that the -fingers of one hand would be too many for them. In _Sordello_ Browning -chose the mediæval colophon, the _Ci falt la geste_, when he shut down -his long enigma with - - - “Who would has heard Sordello’s story told,” - - -and laid himself open to the easy retort that it was not at all true. -But the grandest finale of our times remains to be told: Tennyson’s -closing lines of _Idylls of the King_. I do not refer to the Envoy, -which is only a postscript to the Dedication. I mean rather the end of -“The Passing of Arthur”: Sir Bedivere on the shore, “straining his eyes -beneath an arch of hand” to see the barge out of sight, “down that long -water opening on the deep”; to see it go, - - - “From less to less and vanish into light--” - - -Then one more line, one more picture: - - - “And the new sun rose bringing the new year.” - - -Superb! Nothing in the _Idylls_ became Tennyson like the leaving them. -They do not form an epic; but the end is epical. - -And now for prose. - - -II - -You cannot end a book of prose as you can a poem, for the simple reason -that prose does not appeal to the emotions directly, as poetry does, -but by way of the reason. By emotion you can carry off anything that -you may have had the passion to begin and continue; but the reason asks -another satisfaction. You may win emotional assent to a proposition -that two and two make three, or five. In the heat of the moment it -will pass. Reason won’t take it in on the mere statement. If some such -result is to be the outcome of your book--and it is that of many and -many a novel--you must be careful how you conclude; and it will be -seen, I think, that so the novelists have been. - -The simplest way of ending a story, you might think, would be to say -That’s all, and get off your tub. It was the way, we saw, of the -rough-and-ready intelligence which carved the _Song of Roland_ out of -some huge rhymed chronicle: _Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet_. -It is the way of the colophon. But even the colophon must be meditated -and prepared for; so it is not the real end but only part of it. Sir -Thomas Malory had a long colophon to the _Mort d’Arthur_, including a -bidding prayer on his own account; and then Caxton his printer puts in -a word for himself; but it is led up to by a page which sees Lancelot -and Guinevere dead and buried, the realm of England disposed of, and -the later fortunes of the few knights left alive. It is a deliberate, -not a summary end to a great book--the end “in calm of mind, all -passion spent,” which such a book should have. It is, again, the way -chosen by Gibbon for _The Decline and Fall_. You have a dignified -and sufficient summary of the whole work in a sentence of twelve -co-ordinate clauses, set stately apart by their semicolons. Then comes -a brief reflection of the author’s--“It was among the ruins of the -Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which....” And then, -after that momentary tribute to his personal share in it, he makes a -formal submission of it “to the curiosity and candour of the public.” -Mannerly and contained to the last, the good Gibbon. Nobody ever came -down from a tub with more self-respect; yet Boswell came down pretty -well too: - -“Such,” he concludes, “was Samuel Johnson, a man whose talents, -acquirements and virtues were so extraordinary, that the more his -character is considered, the more he will be regarded by the present -age, and by posterity, with admiration and reverence.” He was, at -least, sufficiently moved to forget himself altogether--which is very -much to his credit. Yet he does not satisfy like Gibbon. - -Carlyle was tired with _Frederick_, and, may be, out of conceit with -it. His conclusion is short, and his colophon barbarous. “Adieu, -good readers; bad also, adieu,” is rather bravado than bravery. More -courteous, more inclusive, serener and braver is the conclusion of -_The French Revolution_. One sniff there is, at the “Citizen King, -frequently shot at, not yet shot,” recollection of a Teufelsdröckian -prophecy, neither here nor there; and then a paragraph of valediction. -“Toilsome was our journeying together; not without offence; but it is -done.... Ill stands it with me if I have spoken falsely; thine also it -was to hear truly. Farewell.” A beautiful colophon. - -Carlyle was a scolding philosopher; Montaigne had been a shrugging one. -His last essai, _De l’Expérience_, is very long, but appropriately the -conclusion of a ripe and profitable book. The end of the matter deals -with what, according to him, is the end of life itself, “de scavoir -jouyr loyallement de son estre.” “So much art thou God,” he continues, -“as thou knowest thyself for man.” His bidding prayer is on behalf -of old age, addressed to the God of Health and Wisdom--“mais gaye et -sociale.” It is very French to lay down in terms at once the nature of -your God and your need of him. Compare with it old Burton’s “corollary -and conclusion” of the _Anatomy_: - - - “Be not alone, be not idle”: - - -then, as he must always be quoting, - - - “Hope on, ye wretched, - Beware, ye fortunate”-- - - -encouragement and warning in one. - - -The novelist, whose aim has been your entertainment, and who has never -lost the habit of the market-place in which he certainly began, had -his own peculiar cares as the time approached for his last words. If -he had earned applause and assent to heights and moments of his tale, -could he make sure of them by a quiet end? Or must he earn them by a -final shock? Should he burst into a bouquet of stars in the upper air, -like a rocket, or come down like its stick? Each way has been chosen. -_The Mill on the Floss_ ends sublimely in the air, or, strictly, the -water; so in its own way--not at all sublimely--does _Tristram Shandy_; -but the majority of novelists have favoured the gentle decline of the -narrative to the marriage or death-bed, and generally speaking, the -longer the novel the quieter the end. Efforts to endear, however, can -always be discerned. The earliest novel of all shows us an expedient -in practice which has remained in use down to the Victorian age, and -only been discarded by the ultra-moderns even now. Daphnis and Chloe in -Longus’s old tale are married at the end of the book. The last picture -in it shows the lovers in each other’s arms; and the last words of it -are these: - -“And Daphnis now profited by Lykainion’s lesson; and Chloe then first -knew that those things that were done in the wood were only the sweet -sports of children.” - -The shift is very plain. It is to recall to the memory the most moving -or provocative episodes in your tale, in the hope that the thrill they -afforded him once will revive in the reader and lift you over the -end. It is a sound rhetorical device by no means disdained by high -practitioners in the art. Sir Walter used it in _Waverley_, when, on -the last page, he recovered the _poculum potatorium_ for the Baron of -Bradwardine. He had an affection for the Baron, it is obvious; but -he rightly felt him to have been his strongest card, and relied on -him to win him the last trick. Often the novelist may be mistaken and -table the wrong card, as Dickens certainly was when he ended _Nicholas -Nickleby_ with tears upon Smike’s grave, believing that shadow to have -been a trump. He should have led Mrs. Nickleby. How wisely Jane Austen -played out her hand in _Emma_, whose last paragraph is enjewelled with -reflections of Mrs. Elton’s: - -“Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business! -Selina would stare when she heard of it!” - -Jane Austen was incomparable alike in beginnings and endings. - - -Instead of recalling with insistence your strongest points, you may -make a last effort to carry off what you doubt have been your weakest. -There is much of that in both Dickens and Thackeray. In _Dombey and -Son_, for example, it is evident that Dickens desired to extenuate what -he felt had been an excess of starch in Mr. Dombey. The last page and a -half of the book deglutinates him with a vengeance. The man of buckram -ends up as a weeping goose. Agnes Wickfield in _Copperfield_ had never -been convincing, nor had Estella in _Great Expectations_. The last -pages of those novels are devoted to the service of the pair of ladies; -but the effort is too plain, and the reader withholds assent. So with -Thackeray, who spends his last drop of ink in _Pendennis_ on Laura, -and in _Esmond_ to pulling off the amazing marriage of a man and his -grandmother. In vain! The end of _Vanity Fair_ is tame, because Dobbin -is tame; the true end of _The Newcomes_ is the _Adsum_ of Colonel -Newcome: very beautiful and not to be bettered. The epilogue, with its -trite exhibition of strings and wires, had been better omitted. It is -on all fours with _Don Quixote_, which really ends with the epitaph of -Samson Carrasco upon the Ingenious Gentleman. The ensuing reflections -of Cid Hamet Benengeli are not to the purpose, but, in fact, counter to -it. - -I have left almost to the last that conventional ending to novels -best described as the Wedding Bells ending, or, in the consecrated -fairy-tale phrase, “And they lived happily ever after.” I wonder what -is the attitude of the ordinary novelist to that? Fielding, now. Did -he write the end of _Tom Jones_ and _Amelia_ with a shrug, or did -he really believe that all was going to be for the best for the two -charming women married to a couple of scamps? Moralist and satirist -as he was to the roots, are those cynical endings? I cannot help -suspecting it. No such doubt afflicts you with Anthony Trollope, who -nearly always tied all his knots at the close. But Trollope worked -in sober tones. His heroes and heroines had few rapturous moments, -but loved temperately, hoped moderately, and if they longed, said -little about it. His fondness for carrying over shows us some of his -young people sedately and reasonably jogging along: Mr. and Mrs. -Frank Gresham, Lord and Lady Lufton, Dr. Thorne and his Dunstable. We -see them seated in the mean, contented if not happy. On the whole, I -commend the cradle rather than the altar as a more hopeful ending. It -is charmingly used by M. Anatole France in the most charming of all his -books. M. France does not often incline to the idyll. The French do -not. Consider the last words of Stendhal’s _Chartreuse de Parme_: - -“Les prisons de Parme étaient vides, le comte immensément riche, Ernest -V. adoré de ses sujets, qui comparaient son gouvernement à celui des -grands-ducs de Toscane.” - -Well may he have added to that the final address, To the happy few! I -should do him wrong if I did not remark that it is on the last page of -the novel that Stendhal mentions, for the first and only time in it, -the Chartreuse de Parme itself. - -The French novelists favour irony at the close. It may be that they owe -it to Voltaire: - -“Pangloss used to say sometimes to Candide: All the things that happen -to us are linked one to another in this best of all possible worlds; -for indeed if you had not been driven out of a fine castle by kicks -behind for Cunégonde’s sake, if you had not endured the Inquisition, -traversed America on your two feet, driven your sword through the -Baron’s body, lost all your fine sheep of Eldorado, you would not at -this moment be eating lemon preserve and pistachio nuts. It is well -said, replied Candide; but we must go on digging our garden.” - -Flaubert adopted that sort of thing for _l’Education Sentimentale_, -whose last is its best page. It is good to have arrived there, anyhow; -and pleasant to depart on a happy thought. - -How nearly the latter-day, strictly modern method allies the novel -to the story of Cambuscan bold, I have no space left in which to -tell the strictly modern reader--who also knows more about it than -I do. Aposiopesis has its points, one of which certainly is that as -anything you please has happened already, it can happen again, and may -as well. But it presumes too much upon the immunity afforded by the -printing-press. If the modern story-teller tried that game upon an -auditorium, and proposed to take himself off with his characters left -sitting, it is long odds that he himself would not have anything worth -talking about left to sit upon. The only requital open to the reader, -unfortunately, is to cease to be one; and that is very much what I -understand him to be doing. - - - - -BEAUMARCHAIS - - -I have often wondered what were the feelings of the growing boy -upon whom it slowly dawned that his sponsors had had him christened -Hyacinth, or Achilles. Was he conscious of inspiration or the reverse? -The discovery must have been frequent in France, where the reign of -Louis XV in particular was a flowering time for names. There was an -Anarcharsis Klootz, there was a Maximilien Robespierre. When to the -unremarkable patronym of Caron there were prefixed the resounding -syllables, Pierre-Augustin, to the wearer of them at least the things -became a trumpet. He shrilled himself upon them into the far corners -of Europe. The Empress Catherine chuckled over him in her Winter -Palace; her august neighbour had him read to her, evenings, in Vienna. -Horace Walpole, while declining his acquaintance, wrote of him with -astonishment to Mme. du Deffand; Voltaire at Ferney thought that there -must be something in him. And there was. First and always, impudence. -He would look anyone in the face, and never be discountenanced himself. -Next, good humour: in his worst hours he bore no grudges, and in his -best so few as make no matter. When he had his enemy face to face, -and was really at grips with him, he could always hold back from the -fray to let off a joke or turn an attack by a compliment. There was -a Madame Goëzman with whom he was badly embroiled in civil process. -When they were before the registrar, and she was asked, Did she -know the plaintiff--“I neither know nor desire ever to know him,” -said she. “Neither have I the honour of Madame’s acquaintance,” said -Pierre-Augustin in his turn; “but having seen her, I am constrained to -a desire exactly the opposite of hers.” A happy gallantry which ought -to have touched the court, but did not. - -Morally, he was like an india-rubber ball: the harder you hit him the -higher he leapt. The Goëzman pair, husband and wife, in the legal -broil just referred to, thought to crush him out of hand by scorn of -his degree in the world. They more than hinted that his father had -been a watchmaker, that they themselves were “noble.” Pierre-Augustin -saw his chance and took it. He held up the Mémoire in which those -injudicious nods and winks had appeared. “You open your _chef d’œuvre_ -by reproaching me with the fortunes of my ancestry. It is too true, -Madame, that the latest of them added to other branches of industry -some celebrity in the art of watchmaking. Forced as I am to suffer -judgment upon that point, I confess with sorrow that nothing can -cleanse me from your just reproach that I am the son of my father.... -But there I pause, for I feel that he is behind me at this moment, -looking at what I write, and laughing while he pats my shoulder.” - - - “You,” he goes on, “who think to shame me through my father, have - little conception of the generosity of his heart. Truly, apart - altogether from watchmaking, I have never found another for which - I would exchange it. But I know too well the worth of time, - which he taught me how to measure, to waste it in picking up such - trifles. It is not everyone who can say with M. Goëzman: - - ‘Je suis le fils d’un Bailli; oui: - Je ne suis pas Caron; non.’” - - -And so he left it. - - -However high he leapt, his aims were not high. I don’t think he ever -failed of his heart’s desire. He wanted a title of nobility, and -obtained one, or indeed, some. He was “Ecuyer, Conseiller-Secrétaire -du Roi, Lieutenant Général des Chasses, Baillage et Capitainerie de la -Varenne du Louvre, Grande Vénerie et Fauconnerie de France,” which can -hardly mean more, and may mean considerably less than it sounds; and -all that, when he had earned a territorial name by marriage, enabled -him to become Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Next, he wanted -money, and had it, and lost it, many times over. Then he wanted to be -talked about; and for a long time Paris, and for some time Europe, -talked of little else. That was when he was conducting two interminable -lawsuits, one growing out of the other, and not only conducting them -with a vivacity and geniality which nothing could tire, but issuing -from the press bulletins of progress of the kind I have attempted -to sample above. It was those Mémoires which entertained equally -Petersburg and Strawberry Hill. Delightful as they must have been to -read when all the actors were alive and buzzing in the courts or on -the quays, they are difficult to follow now. The original suit, which -was to recover a debt on an estate from an executor, was made complex -by French legal process, but the second (in which the Goëzmans were -involved) was complex in itself. The exceedingly delicate point in it -was that Beaumarchais had attempted to bribe a member of the Court, and -actually got the money as far as his wife, where some of it remained, -though the bulk was restored. To recover by law what was still held it -was necessary for Beaumarchais to reject with vehemence the suggestion -that he had tried to suborn justice, while bringing home the fact that -Madame Goëzman had undoubtedly taken his money. He did not, naturally, -succeed; but he incriminated the Goëzman pair, and with them was -condemned in “infamy and civil degradation.” But in reporting his daily -engagements with them, and his verbal victories, he became simply the -hero of the hour, and ultimately carried his main action against the -Comte de la Blache with damages and costs. - -That must be a parenthesis, to show how Beaumarchais climbed to his -point of desire, whatever it was at the moment, serving himself alike -of disaster and success. Many were his affairs of the kind, all pursued -with unflagging _enjouement_--as, a breach of promise in Madrid on -behalf of his sister, a row with the mad Duc de Chaulnes about an -“unfortunate female,” a more than dubious, a not at all dubious, plant -upon Maria-Teresa, underground transactions with the Chevalier d’Eon, -gun-running for the United States of America; and finally that upon -which his present fame rests--two comedies which broke all the records -of the theatre for anticipation and realisation. I would not go so far -as to say that he engineered the repeated delays in their performance -which brought expectation up to hysteria if not delirium, but have no -doubt that he courted them, and deserved, if not earned, the proud -result that more people were crushed to death crowding in to the -_Barbier de Seville_ than had ever been so crushed before, and that it -and its sequel, _Le Mariage de Figaro_, ran longer on end than any such -things had ever done. When they threatened to flag their author was the -man to revive them. He knew as much about advertising as Mr. Selfridge, -and had as little use for modesty as Mr. Bernard Shaw. Like that -salient dramatist, he published his plays, and wrote prefaces to them -which are better reading than the text. The pair still hold the stage, -as they were written, and as opera; and I should not be surprised to -hear that they and their author were as generally known as most of -Molière’s and theirs. After all, the same could be said of Sheridan, -with his pair, at the expense of Shakespeare. - - -Mr. John Rivers,[1] Beaumarchais’ first English biographer, I believe, -has evidently enjoyed his work, and will be read with enjoyment. He is -right in claiming the Life of his hero as a challenge to fiction. It -is first-rate picaresque, nearly as good as Gil Blas, and much better -than Casanova. But I think he rates him too highly as a dramatist. He -considers that Figaro ranks with “Falstaff or Tartufe.” If he does, -it is thanks to Rossini and Mozart: without their help the claim is -surely preposterous. Luckily, he has taken the trouble to translate -large portions of both plays, and so furnished the best corrective -to exaggerated pretensions that we could wish to have. Taken in such -liberal doses, they don’t march. In their original they are not easy -reading, for Beaumarchais, though a brisk, was not a good writer. One -does not ask for fine writing necessarily of a dramatist, but that he -shall attend to his business. Beaumarchais conceives his to be the -making of points. He is apt to be diffuse in reaching them, and to -clinch them tightly when he has them. In French he is often difficult; -in English he is both dull and difficult. It is like reading bad -handwriting on foreign letter-paper. You never seem to get on with the -thing. - -The _Barbier_ is not much more than a Commedia dell’ Arte. It is a play -of manœuvring, intrigue the whole affair. Stock characters will do for -that, and you can manage without humour, if you have a sufficiency -of wit. There is perhaps more effervescence than wit, and what wit -there is not of the best kind. It is not concerned with ludicrous -appositions; rather it is paradox, verbal antithesis, the Gratiano -vein. Here is an example. Figaro is reporting to Rosine that Lindor is -her lover, and asks leave to tell her so: - - - “_Rosine_: Vous me faites trembler, monsieur Figaro. - - “_Figaro_: Fi donc, trembler! mauvais calcul, madame. Quand on - cède à la peur du mal, on ressent déjà le mal de la peur.... - - “_Rosine_: S’il m’aime, il doit me le prouver en restant - absolument tranquille. - - “_Figaro_: Eh! madame! amour et repos peuvent-ils habiter en meme - cœur? La pauvre jeunesse est si malheureux aujourd’hui, qu’elle - n’a que ce terrible choix: amour sans repos, ou repos sans amour.” - - -Beaumarchais can better that, though it is a fair sample of his -handling. In the second Act, where Bartholo (Pantaloon) has patched up -a reconciliation with Rosine (Columbine), whom he intends to marry, he -closes the scene like this: - - - “_Bartholo_: Puisque la paix est faite, mignonne, donne-moi ta - main. Si tu pouvais m’aimer, ah! comme tu serais heureuse! - - “_Rosine_ (baissant les yeux): Si vous pouviez me plaire, ah! - comme je vous aimerais! - - “_Bartholo_: Je te plairai, je te plairai; quand je te dis que je - te plairai! (Il sort.)” - - -That is very happy, because it has humour as well as wit. Pantaloon and -Columbine have become human beings. - -It is not all so good as that, and some of it is not good at all. It -was written originally for an opera libretto, for which it is well -suited. It would do equally well for marionettes. To such things the -spectator can lend himself, because in the former the music, and in the -latter the puppets, take the responsibility off him; nothing of his -own is involved. But in a play the action and the dialogue perform the -resolution of life into art, with the audience as accomplice. Human -nature is implicated; if we allow the cheap, we must cheat ourselves. -If there is any resolution in the _Barbier_, it is into a jig, and -condescension is difficult. Life is only there in so far as some of the -personages wear breeches, and some petticoats. It is a mere trifle that -the scene is laid in Spain, while all the characters are Italian. - -The _Mariage de Figaro_ is a more considerable work, if only because -it is much longer and more complicated. Everybody is older, including -Beaumarchais. Since the end of the _Barbier_, Count Almaviva has -pursued hundreds of ladies, Rosina has almost left off being jealous, -Figaro has become a cynic, and is inclined to give lectures. The -romance would seem to have been rubbed off seduction, as you might -expect when you consider that the Count has been at it all his life, -and is now a middle-aged man, old enough to be Ambassador. It has been -said--and Mr. Rivers says it--that Beaumarchais was deliberate in -contriving the effect of satiety, which he certainly obtains--as if -an author would set himself to work to be wearisome! Subversion, Mr. -Rivers thinks, was his aim, moral revolt. He wrote, and it was played, -on the eve of the Revolution. Was the _Mariage_ not, therefore, a -contributory cause? - - - “_Figaro_, soliloquising: Parceque vous êtes un grand seigneur, - vous vous croyez un grand génie!... Noblesse, fortune, un rang, - des places, tout cela rend si fier! Qu’avez-vous fait pour tant de - biens? Vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître, et rien de plus. - Du reste, homme assez ordinaire; tandis que moi, morbleu! perdu - dans la foule obscure, il m’a fallu déployer plus de science et de - calculs pour subsister seulement, qu’on n’en a mis depuis cent ans - à gouverner toutes les Espagnes: et vous voulez jouter ...!” - - -Is that contributory to revolution--or revolution contributory to -it? It was surely current coin in 1784. Voltaire and Rousseau had -encouraged cats to look at kings; everybody had made fun of the -nobility. Titles of honour can have held little intimidation since -Louis XIV had had the handling of them, and turned out dukes where -his grandfather made marquises. What little there might be left to do -had been done handsomely by his grandson. It is far more likely that -Beaumarchais was easing grudges of his own, or that in the famous -flight of paradoxes aimed at “la politique” he was recalling recent -experiences in London and Vienna, where he came into collision with the -real thing. Much out of character as it is, it is a good example of -what both Figaro and Beaumarchais had become by 1784: - - - “Feindre ignorer ce qu’on sait, de savoir tout ce qu’on ignore; - d’entendre ce qu’on ne comprend pas, de ne point ouïr ce qu’on - entend; surtout de pouvoir au delà de ses forces; avoir souvent - pour grand secret de cachet qu’il n’y en a point; s’enfermer pour - tailler des plumes, et paraître profond quand on n’est, comme on - dit, que vide et creux; jouer bien ou mal un personnage; répandre - des espions et pensionner des traîtres; amollir des cachets, - intercepter des lettres, et tacher d’ennoblir la pauvreté des - moyens par l’importance des objets: voilà toute la politique, ou - je meure!” - - -Very brisk. But when Count Almaviva shortly comments, “Ah! c’est -l’intrigue que tu définis!” the criticism is final, because it is -completely just. Curious that a playwright should light up his Roman -candle, and damp it down the next moment. Such speeches imperil the -character of Figaro by making him so dominant a personality that there -can be no fun in seeing him dupe his betters. Beaumarchais, I think, -may have felt that objection, and attempted to restore the balance by -having Figaro duped himself in the last act. - -The balance is really adjusted in quite another way. Two new characters -are brought in, one of whom, Marceline, a _vieille fille_, designs to -marry Figaro, but presently finds out that she is his long-lost mother! -The other is Chérubin, who saves the play, to my thinking, just as -surely as Polly Peachum saves _The Beggar’s Opera_. Chérubin--“création -exquise et enchanteresse,” says Sainte-Beuve--is the making of the -_Mariage_, partly because he keys it down to its proper pitch, which -is that of children playing grown-ups, and partly because he is truly -observed and poetically presented. I don’t see how the adage, “Si -jeunesse savait,” could be more tenderly exploited. All his scenes are -good--the first with Suzanne, in which the young scamp, after betraying -his occupation with three love affairs at once, snatches his mistress’s -hair-ribbon and dodges behind tables and chairs while the maid pursues -him; the second, with the Countess, where she is dressing him as a -girl, and discovers her ribbon staunching a cut in his arm: in each of -these scenes the delicious distress of his complaint is painted with a -subtlety and sensibility combined which are first-rate art. Delicate -provocation can go no further, or had better not. Beaumarchais’ triumph -is that he knows that, and does not add a touch in excess. The final -touch is that the Countess, instead of feigning a desire for the -restoration of the ribbon (which she did very badly), now really does -desire, and obtains it. Enough said: there is no more. “Tu sais trop -bien, méchante, que je n’ose pas oser,” says the youth to Suzanne. That -is his trouble, and a real one it is. - -The imbroglio in this play is a thing of nightmare. “Que diable est-ce -qu’on trompe ici?” The answer is the audience. Everybody deceives -everybody, twice over and all the time. It surprises, if you like, by -“a fine excess.” It is not surprising, anyhow, that the last act was -too much for Sainte-Beuve, has been too much for Mr. Rivers, and is -too much for me. I do not, simply, know what is happening, but I do -know that none of it is very funny. Compare it with _Sganarelle_, and -you will see. In that little masterpiece you have four characters: -Lélie and Clélie, the lovers, Sganarelle the jealous husband, and -Sganarelle’s wife. Clélie lets drop Lélie’s portrait in the street, -Sganarelle’s wife picks it up, and is caught by Sganarelle admiring it. -Presently, when Clélie faints, and is picked up by Sganarelle, it is -his wife’s turn to be jealous. Then Lélie, overcome by his feelings, is -pitied by Madame Sganarelle and helped into her house. The fat is in -the fire. Madame Sganarelle flies at Clélie for carrying on with her -husband; Lélie believes that Sganarelle has married Clélie. Sganarelle -pursues Lélie with a sword, and when he is confronted, pretends that he -brought it out because the weather looked threatening. It is a complete -cat’s cradle of a play, and as easily untied. The action is swift, the -intrigue is easy to follow, the appositions are really comic. But who -believes that Almaviva seriously wants Suzanne, or that Figaro has -really promised Marceline, or that the Countess really loves Chérubin? -The lack of plausibility causes the _Mariage_ to turn unwillingly, -like a mangle. It took four hours and a half to play: I can hardly -believe that Figaro’s inordinate soliloquy in the last act survived -the first night. Figaro himself is overweight; Marceline is a very -bad shot. She has at first a good Polly-and-Lucy slanging match with -Suzanne; but in the discovery scene she grows serious--very serious, -and rightly serious, no doubt, in any other play but this. But to -suspend all the gallantries in progress for the sake of her diatribes -upon gallantry, to shake the head over them, to say “True,” and “Too -true”--and then immediately to resume gallantries, has the effect of -exhibiting neither gallantry nor the reprobation of it as serious; -and as something in a play must be taken seriously, the Comédie -Française, rightly deciding in favour of gallantry, cut out the whole -scene; and it is so marked in my edition of Beaumarchais. It would -have been a pleasant toil for Edward FitzGerald, who loved such work, -to hew and shape this comedy. It has fine moments, but wants both the -speed and the gaiety of the _Barbier_. Mozart gave it them--we owe to -Beaumarchais the most delightful opera in the world. - -Mr. Rivers translates the two plays freely, but I don’t think very -successfully. I have said already that Beaumarchais is not a good -writer--too diffuse at one time, too terse at others--but no doubt he -is very difficult. Literal translation is useless. “Miss” is not a -translation of “Mademoiselle.” “Mistress,” or “Young Lady” would be -better--and so on. You cannot get the points sharply enough unless you -translate ideas as well as idiom; and to do that you must take a wide -cast. Rhetoric is rhetoric in whatever language you cast it. It has its -own rules. Dialogue is another matter. There come in the familiarities, -secrets of the toilette, secrets of the bower. How are these things to -be done? I don’t know; but if Andrew Lang could not be natural with the -15th Idyll of Theocritus, it is no shame to Mr. Rivers to have failed -with Beaumarchais. - -If he desired to try his hand I wonder why he omitted one of his -liveliest and wittiest sallies--the letter which he addressed to _The -Morning Chronicle_ in 1776, on one of his confidential visits to -London. It is too long to give entire, but I must have a shot at pieces -of it: - - - “Mr. Editor,” he says, “I am a stranger, a Frenchman and the soul - of honour. If this will not completely inform you who I am, it - will at least tell you, in more senses than one, who I am not; and - in times likes these, that is not without its importance in London. - - “The day before yesterday at the Pantheon, after the concert and - during the dancing which ensued, I found at my feet a lady’s cloak - of black taffetas, turned back with the same and edged with lace. - I do not know to whom it belongs; I have never seen, even at the - Pantheon, the person who wore it; all my inquiries since the - discovery have taught me nothing about her. I beg of you then, Mr. - Editor, to announce in your journal the discovery of the cloak, in - order that I may punctually return it to her who may lay claim to - it. - - “That there may be no possible mistake in the matter, I have - the honour to give you notice that the loser, upon the day in - question, had a head-dress of rose-coloured feathers. She had, I - believe, diamond ear-rings; but of that I am not so positive as - of the remainder of my description. She is tall and of elegant - appearance; her hair is a flaxen blonde, her skin dazzlingly - white. She has a fine and graceful neck, a striking shape, and the - prettiest foot in the world. I observe that she is very young, - very lively and inattentive, that she carries herself easily, and - has a marked taste for dancing.” - - -He then proceeds to deduce all these charming properties from the -taffetas cloak--some from a single hair which he finds in the hood, -some from minute particles of fluff and fur; others, more carefully, -from measurements; others, again, from the position in which the cloak -was lying--all of which led him to conclude infallibly that “the young -lady was the most alert beauty of England, Scotland and Ireland, and -if I do not add, of America, it is because of late they have become -uncommonly alert in that particular country.” Sherlock Holmes! - - - “If I had pushed my inquiries,” he concludes, “it is possible that - I might have learned from her cloak what was her quality and rank. - But when one has concluded that a woman is young and handsome, has - one not in fact learned all that one needs to learn? That at any - rate was the opinion held in my time in many good towns in France, - and even in certain villages, such as Marly, Versailles, etc. - - “Do not then be surprised, Mr. Editor, if a Frenchman who all - his life long has made a philosophical and particular study of - the fair sex, has discovered in the mere appearance of a lady’s - cloak, without ever having seen her, that the fair one with the - rosy plumes who let it fall unites in her person the radiance of - Venus, the free carriage of the nymphs, the shape of the Graces, - the youth of Hebe; that she is quick and preoccupied, and that - she loves the dance, to the extent of forgetting everything else - in order to run to it, on a foot as small as Cinderella’s, and as - light as Atalanta’s own.” - -He has done it with the unfailing humour and neatness which carried -him in and out of the lawcourts, took him to prison and enlarged him -again. And he was then only forty-four, and had another twenty years -before him. Impudence and good humour. The first was his shield and -buckler--triple brass. The other enabled him to support it in all -companies without offence. When at long last his suit with La Blache -was ended, and in his favour, the Comte not only restored the estate -without a murmur, but gave him a fine portrait of the testator. -Beaumarchais may have been a bad lot; but he was evidently a good sort. - -FOOTNOTE: - -[1] “Figaro: the Life of Beaumarchais,” by John Rivers. Hutchinson. 18s. - - - - -THE CARDINAL DE RETZ - - -No student of France and literature can afford to neglect this gay and -hardy little sinner, though the use of that very word might show that -I was not fitted to expound him. It has here, however, an æsthetic -significance and not an ethical. Poets and moralists have this in -common that, owing their power to the strength of their prejudice, they -make bad historians. Carlyle, very much of a poet, illuminating his -heroes with his own fire, did no harm to Cromwell, whose wart was a -part of his glory; but Frederick the Great showed up oddly. The higher -the light rayed upon him the more ghastly stared his gashes under the -paint. Michelet was a good deal of a poet too, and rootedly a moralist. -Naturally he came to blows with the history of his country. The Fronde -made him angry, the _grand siècle_ shocked him. Edification may be -served that way, not truth. It is, I grant, difficult to read the -History of France as that of a sane, hard-working, penurious people; -difficult to decide why the Revolution, instead of coming in 1789, did -not come in 1689; or why, having begun in 1649, it did no more, as -Bossuet said, than “enfanter le siècle de Louis.” To understand that -would be to understand the Fronde, but not how the state of things -which evoked the Fronde and made possible the Memoirs of de Retz, -could have come about. A royal minority, a foreign regent, a foreign -minister, and a feudal aristocracy will account for a good deal--not -for all. The Italianisation of manners which began with the last -Valois kings, and was renewed by Henry’s Florentine wife, has to be -reckoned up. To a nobility convinced of privilege it opened the ways of -_Il Talento_. - -_Il Talento_ is the Italian description of the state of mind induced by -desire and the means to gratify it on the spot. Iago is the standing -type; but Cæsar Borgia is a better. For him and his likes, _The -Prince_ of Machiavelli was the golden book. In France the princely -families--those of Lorraine, Bouillon, Condé and Savoie--found it a -kindly soil; and one of its best products was naturally the Cardinal -de Retz, whose memoirs are as good as Dumas, very much like him, and -the source of the best chapters of _Vingt Ans Après_. Here was _Il -Talento_ in fine flower, existing for its own sake; whereas Mazarin hid -it in avarice, and Richelieu had lost it in statecraft. You cannot read -Retz with pleasure, to say nothing of profit, if you do not allow for -the point of view--which you will have no difficulty in doing if you -remember that, less than a hundred years before the Cardinal’s day, his -ancestor, Alberto Gondi, had been as familiar with the Ponte Vecchio as -he himself was with the Pont-Neuf. - -In his “portrait” of Mazarin, Retz accused his brother-cardinal of -common origin, but if you went back to his own family’s beginnings I do -not know that the Gondis were more than respectable according to French -standards. But the future Cardinal, Jean-Francois-Paul, was born the -son of a Duc de Retz, a great man of Brittany, was a Knight of Malta in -the cradle, and when, later, it was thought well to make a churchman -of him, tumbled into abbacies as became a young prince, and had a -bishopric as soon as he cared. He says of Mazarin’s youth that it was -shameful, that he was by bent and disposition a cardsharper. He might -have said worse and not been wrong; yet the account he gives of himself -is so frank, shameless and extremely flagrant that the reproof has an -odd sound. - - - “I did not affect devotion,” he says of himself as Abbé, “because - I could never be sure that I should be able to keep up the cheat. - But I had great consideration for the devout, and from their point - of view that is in itself a mark of piety. I suited my pleasures - to the rest of my habits. I could hardly get on without gallantry, - but I continued it with Madame de Pommereux, young and a coquette, - whose ways suited me because, as she had all the young people not - only about her but in her confidence, her apparent affairs with - them were a mask for mine with her.” - - -This equivocal conduct so far succeeded that the pious agreed with St. -Vincent de Paul that, though the Abbé de Retz was not truly religious, -he was “not far from the Kingdom of Heaven”--quite as near, in fact, as -the young gentleman desired to be. And then he tells a story which he -thinks is to his credit: - - - “A short time after I left college, my governor’s valet, who was - my humble servant, found living with a wretched pin-maker a niece - of hers, fourteen years old and of remarkable beauty. After he had - shown her to me, he bought her for one hundred and fifty pistoles, - took a little house for her at Issy, and put his sister in to - look after her. I went there the day after she was installed, and - found her extremely cast down, but attributing it to her modesty, - was not at all surprised. She was still more so the next day, a - fact about her even more remarkable than her good looks, which - is saying a great deal. She talked with me straightforwardly, - piously, without extravagance, and cried no more than she could - possibly help. I saw that she was so much afraid of her aunt that - I felt truly sorry for her, admired her disposition, and presently - her virtue. I tested that so far as it could be done, and took - shame to myself. I waited till it was dark, then put her into my - coach and took her to my aunt de Meignelais. She put the child - into a convent of religious, where eight or ten years later she - died in the odour of sanctity.” - - -One must not expect too much from a _grand seigneur_ in a cassock. The -story has more implication than he was able to perceive; but at least -it shows that he had pity in him, if not piety. - -In time he was appointed coadjutor to his uncle, the Archbishop of -Paris, with a promise of survivorship, and a fancy title of Archbishop -of Corinth. He tells us that he took six days to consider how he should -regulate his conduct, how restore the credit of the archiepiscopate -(which was very necessary) without losing any of his pleasures. “I -decided to do evil with deliberation--no doubt the most criminal course -in the eyes of God, but no doubt also the most discreet in those of the -world.” In his opinion that was the only way open to him of avoiding -“the most dangerous _absurdity_ which can be met with in the clerical -profession, that of mixing sin and devotion.” “Absurdity” is remarkable. - -His first duty as coadjutor was a severe trial to his fortitude. It was -necessary to make a Visitation of the Nuns of the Conception; and as -the convent held eighty young ladies, “of whom several were handsome -and some adventurous,” he had many qualms about exposing his virtue -to such a test. “It had to be done, though; and I preserved it to the -edification of my neighbour. I did not see the face of a single one, -and never spoke to one unless her veil was down. This behaviour, which -lasted six weeks, gave a wonderful lustre to my chastity. I believe, -however, that the lessons which I received every evening from Madame de -Pommereux strengthened it materially against the morrow.” - - -Such was the Coadjutor-Archbishop of Paris, and such his efforts to -restore the credit of that see. He did not continue them long. Other -things engrossed him, one being to obtain from Mazarin a recommendation -to the Cardinalate, another by all, or any, means to obtain his -benefactor’s disgrace. Before the first could take effect, or the -second be effected, the parliamentary Fronde began, and Retz was in -it to the neck. What he wanted, except to enjoy himself, is not at -all clear. He despised rather than hated Mazarin; he forsook the only -man--Condé--for whom he seems to have had any real regard; he invited -his country’s enemies to Paris; and he got nothing out of it. But I am -sure he enjoyed himself. - -His strong card was his popularity with the Parisians. He earned that -partly by hard money--the Barricades, he says, cost him some thirty-six -thousand _écus_--and somewhat on his own account too. After he had -been enthroned as Coadjutor, he gave himself no airs. On the contrary, -“Je donnai la main chez moi à tout le monde; j’accompagnai tout le -monde jusqu’au carrosse.” Then, when he was firmly established as the -most affable seigneur in the city, suddenly he jumped in a claim for -precedence before M. de Guise, and had it adjudged him. It enhanced -his prestige incalculably. “To condescend to the humble is the surest -way of measuring yourself against the great,” is the moral he draws, -but another is that if you aim at popularity, you should stand up to a -great man, and beat him. Retz had courage, and the Parisians loved him -for it. So did the Parisiennes, according to his own account, though -many things were against him. He was an ugly little man, a little -deformed, black man, Tallemant reports him, very nearsighted, badly -made, clumsy with his hands, unable to fasten his clothes or put on -his spurs. No matter. Whatever he could or could not do, there is no -doubt he could give a good account of himself in the world, upstairs -and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber. Not only does he say so in -Memoirs, written, as he is careful to say, for the instruction of -Madame de Caumartin’s children, but his enemies allowed it. It may -even be that Mazarin paid him the compliment of being jealous of his -midnight conferences with Anne of Austria; at any rate, Retz seriously -thought of cutting him out. Then he was a good preacher, a ready -debater, and a born lobbyist to whom intrigue was daily bread. Those -were his cards for beggar-my-neighbour with Mazarin, and not bad ones. -The weakness of the hand resided in the player. He had as little heart -as conscience. He cared nothing for his country, for his friends or -for his mistresses when their interests conflicted with what for the -moment were his. If he had an affection for anyone it was for Condé. -Yet he was against him all through, and chose rather to back the poor -creature, Monsieur--to his own undoing, as he must have foreseen if he -had given it a moment’s thought. Gaston simply let in Mazarin again, -through mere poltroonery; and Mazarin once in, Retz must be out. And so -he was. - -The Fronde, the first Fronde, began seriously, like our Civil War, on -a question of principle. The Parlement of Paris took advantage of the -Regency to restore its old claim to be more than a Court of Record. It -claimed the right to examine edicts before registering them--in fact, -to be a Parliament. Atop of that came the grievance of the Masters -of Requests, who, having paid heavily for their offices, found their -value substantially reduced by the creation of twelve new ones. The -masters struck, and their offices were sequestrated. Then came the 26th -August 1648, when the Court, exalted by Condé’s victory at Lens, first -celebrated the occasion by _Te Deum_ in Notre Dame, and immediately -afterwards by causing Councillor Broussel, Father of the People, to be -arrested and carried off to Saint-Germain. Retz, the coadjutor, was in -both celebrations, as we can read in _Vingt Ans Après_. It was the day -before the Barricades. Directly the news of the arrest became known the -town, as he says, exploded like a bomb: “the people rose; they ran, -they shouted, they shut up their shops.” Retz went out in rochet and -hood--to watch, no doubt, over the harvest of his 36,000 sown _écus_. -“No sooner was I in the Marché-Neuf than I was encompassed by masses -of people who howled rather than shouted.” He extricated himself by -comfortable words, and made his way to the Pont-Neuf, where he found -the Maréchal de La Meilleraye, with the Guards, enduring as best he -could showers of stones, but far from happy at the look of things. He -urged Retz, who (though he had had an interchange of repartees with -the Queen overnight) did not need much urging, to accompany him to the -Palais-Royal and report. Off they went together, followed by a horde of -people crying, “Broussel! Broussel!” - - - “We found the Queen in the great Cabinet with the Duc d’Orléans, - Cardinal Mazarin, Duc de Longueville.... She received me neither - well nor ill, being too proud and too hot to be ashamed of what - she had said the night before. As for the Cardinal, he had - not the decency to feel anything of that kind. Yet he did seem - embarrassed, and pronounced to me a sort of rigmarole in which, - though he did not venture to say so, he would have been relieved - if I had found some new explanation of what had moved the Queen. - I pretended to take in all that he was pleased to tell me, and - answered him simply that I was come to report myself for duty, to - receive the Queen’s commands, and contribute everything that lay - in my power towards peace and order. The Queen turned her head - sharply as if to thank me; but I knew afterwards that she had - noticed and taken badly my last phrase, innocent as it was and - very much to the point from the lips of a Coadjutor of Paris.” - - -Then follows one of his famous Machiavellian aphorisms: “_But it is -very true that with princes it is as dangerous, almost as criminal, to -be able to do good as to wish to do harm._” - -Retz might play the innocent, no one better, but neither Queen nor -minister were fools. It is not to be supposed that they had heard -nothing of his distribution of _écus_. Then the Maréchal grew angry, -finding that the rioting was taken lightly, and said what he had seen. -He called for Retz’s testimony, and had it. - - - “The Cardinal smiled sourly, the Queen flew into a rage.... ‘There - is a revolt even in the intention to revolt,’ she said. ‘These are - the stories of people who desire revolt.’ The Cardinal, who saw - in my face what I thought of such talk, put in a word, and in a - soft voice replied to the Queen: ‘Would to God, madame, that all - the world spoke with the same sincerity as M. le Coadjuteur. He - fears for his flock, for the city, for your Majesty’s authority. I - am persuaded that the danger is not so great as he believes; but - scruple in such a matter is worthy of his religion.’ The Queen, - understanding this jargon, immediately altered her tone, talked - civilly, and was answered by me with great respect, and a face so - smug that La Rivière whispered to Bautru, ... ‘See what it is not - to spend day and night in a place like this. The Coadjutor is a - man of the world. He knows what he is about, and takes what she - says for what it is worth.’” - - -The whole scene, he says, was comedy. “I played the innocent, which -I by no means was; the Cardinal the confident, though he had no -confidence at all. The Queen pretended to drop honey though she had -never been more choked with gall.” But what comedy there was was not -there very long. The Queen, who had declared that she would strangle -Broussel with her own hands sooner than release him, was to change her -mind. La Meilleraye and Retz were sent out again to report, and La -Meilleraye, losing his head, nearly lost his life. At the head of his -cavalry, he pushed out into the crowd, “sword in hand, crying with all -his might, ‘Vive le Roi! Broussel au large!’” More people, naturally, -saw him than could hear what he said. His sword had an offensive look; -there was a cry to arms, and other swords were out besides his. The -Maréchal killed a man with a pistol-shot, the crowd closed in upon him; -he was saved by Retz, who himself escaped by the use of his wits. An -apothecary’s apprentice, he says, put a musket at his head. - - - “Although I did not know him from Adam, I thought it better not - to let him know that. On the contrary, ‘Ah, my poor lad,’ I said, - ‘if your father were to see this!’ He thought that I had been - his father’s best friend, though in fact I had never seen his - father, and asked me if I was the Coadjutor. When he understood - that I was, he cried out, ‘Vive le Coadjuteur!’ and they all came - crowding round me with the same cry.” - - -La Meilleraye knew very well what he had done. He said to Retz, “I am a -fool, a brute--I have nearly ruined the State, and it is you that have -saved it. Come, we will talk to the Queen like Frenchmen and men of -worth.” So they did, but to no purpose. She believed that Retz was at -the bottom of the whole _émeute_, and was not far wrong. But there was -no stopping it now. The barricades were up at dawn the next morning, -and it was clear that Broussel must be given back. He was. Then came -the flight of the Court, which Dumas tells so admirably. - - -After the evasion of the royalties, the Fronde became largely comic -opera. Certain of the princes--for reasons of their own--joined the -popular party: Beaufort, le roi des Halles, who wanted the Admiralty; -Bouillon, with claims upon his principality of Sedan; Conti, Elbeuf, -Longueville. Retz had the idea of bringing their, and his, ladies into -it. He himself fetched Mesdames de Longueville and de Bouillon with -their children to the Hôtel de Ville, “avec une espèce de triomphe.” - - - “The small-pox had spared Mme. de Longueville all her astounding - beauty; Mme. de Bouillon’s, though on the wane, was still - remarkable. Now imagine, I beg you, those two upon the steps of - the Hôtel de Ville, the handsomer in that they appeared to be in - undress, though they were not at all so. Each held one of her - children in her arms, as lovely as its mother. The Grève was full - of people over the roofs of the houses. The men shouted their joy, - the women wept for pity. I threw five hundred pistoles out of the - window of the Hôtel de Ville.” - - -After their debonair fashion these high people played at revolution. -“Then you might see the blue scarves of ladies mingling with steel -cuirasses, hear violins in the halls of the Hôtel de Ville, and drums -and trumpets in the Place--the sort of thing which you find more of in -romance than elsewhere.” Nothing came of it all; a peace was patched up -with the Parlement, and each of the grandees got something for himself, -which had been his only reason for levying civil war. Beaufort was -assured of his Admiralty, Longueville was made Viceroy of Normandy, -Bouillon compensated for Sedan--and so on. La Rochefoucauld, too, who -had taken up arms for the sake of Mme. de Longueville-- - - - “Pour mériter son cœur, pour plaire à ses beaux yeux, - J’ai fait la guerre aux rois; je l’aurais fait aux dieux”-- - - -we must suppose that he also was rewarded. There is an interesting -page in the Memoirs of André d’Ormesson, one of an upright family of -lawyers, which by stating the mere facts lets in the light upon the -Fronde. All he does is to draw up a list of the _grands seigneurs_ of -1648-55, with a statement of how often they changed sides in the seven -years. It should be studied by all who wish to know how not to make -civil war. But Retz too gives the spirit of the thing equally well. -When his quarrel with Condé was coming to a head, and he was preparing, -as he threatened, to push that prince off the pavement, he collected -his friends about him, and among them two light-hearted marquises, -Rouillac and Canillac. But when Canillac saw Rouillac he said to Retz, -“I came to you, sir, to assure you of my services; but it is not -reasonable that the two greatest asses in the kingdom should be on the -same side. So I am off to the Hôtel de Condé.” And, he adds, you are to -observe that he went there! - -Retz alone, who, if he had been serious, might have been master of -Paris, had nothing--except, of course, his Cardinal’s hat, which he -would have had anyhow. The Court came back, Mazarin was forced out of -France for a couple of years. But the Queen had him in again; and then -it was _his_ turn. Retz was persuaded into the Louvre, immediately -arrested and carried off to Vincennes. It was a shock to his vanity -that the populace took it calmly. There were no barricades for him. -From Vincennes he was presently removed to Nantes, whence, with the -assistance of his friends--and I cannot but suspect the connivance -of the governor--he escaped to the coast, landed at San Sebastian, -was allowed to cross Spain and re-embark for Italy. He fetched up in -Rome, where he remained for a year or two, taking part in conclaves -and thoroughly enjoying himself. He spent large sums of money, which -he did not possess, but never failed to receive from his friends. The -French Ambassador and all the French clergy steadily cut him--but he -did not take any notice. The Pope did, though, and Retz was given to -understand that he had better remove himself. He went to Germany, to -Switzerland, Holland, England in turn. Mazarin was dead, and Charles II -restored by the time he came here. I don’t think that he did anything -to the purpose with our Court, though no doubt Charles was glad of -him. Neither Evelyn nor Pepys have anything to say about him; and I -fancy that he was only a passing guest. As soon as he could he crept -back to Court, to which he had already surrendered his coadjutorship. -Louis employed him once or twice; but his day was over. He lived mostly -at Commercy, where he tried economy, and made periodical retreats, -as La Rochefoucauld unkindly says, “withdrawing himself from the -Court which was withdrawing itself from him.” He was four million -_livres_ in debt, but managed to pay them off, and even to contemplate -a snug residuary estate which he intended for Mme. de Grignan, Mme. -de Sévigné’s high-stomached daughter. But Mme. de Grignan snubbed him -consistently and severely, and nothing came of it. He died in 1679, -drained of his fiery juices, making a “good end.” The stormy Coadjutor -had become “notre cher Cardinal.” - - -His Memoirs, taken on end, are wearisome, because endless intrigue, -diamond-cut-diamond and chicanery are wearisome, as well as intricate, -unless some discernible principle can be made out of them. It seems -that Retz did nothing except talk--but, as Michelet points out, that -was what France at large did when the Gascons were let into Paris with -Henri IV. Read desultorily, they are delightful, witty, worldly-wise, -untirably vivacious, thrilling and glittering like broken ice. His -Machiavellisms are worth hunting out: - - - “The great inconvenience of civil war is that you must be more - careful of what you ought not to tell your friends than of what - you ought to do to your enemies. - - “The most common source of disaster among men is that they are too - much afraid of the present and not enough of the future. - - “In dealing with princes it is as dangerous, if not as criminal, - to be able to do good as to wish to do harm. - - “One of Cardinal Mazarin’s greatest faults was that he was never - able to believe that anyone spoke to him with honest intention.” - - -When the Queen-Regent was working her hardest for Mazarin’s return, -she tried to win Retz over to help her. He told her bluntly that such -a move would mean the ruin of the State. How so, she asked him, if -Monsieur and M. le Prince should agree to it? “Because, Madam,” said -Retz, “Monsieur would never agree to it until the State was already in -danger, and M. le Prince never, except to put it in danger.” Excellent, -and quite true. - - -After Retz’s death, the Président Hénault, writing about his Memoirs, -asked how one was to believe that a man would have the courage, or the -folly, to say worse things about himself than his greatest enemy could -have said. The answer, of course, is that Retz had no suspicion that -he was saying bad things about himself. He said a great deal that was -not true. Other chronicles of the Fronde give detailed accounts of -such days as that of the Barricades, with not a word of the Coadjutor -in them. But even if it had all been true, it would have seemed a -perfectly simple matter to him. If you have no moral sense, the words -“good” and “bad” have only a relative meaning. It is much harder to -understand why he did the things which he relates, or why, if he did -not do them, he said that he did. What was he trying to get done? Did -he hate Mazarin? There is no evidence that he did anything more than -despise him. La Rochefoucauld, whom he accuses, by the way, of having -tried to assassinate him, explains him and his Memoirs alike by vanity. -“Far from declaring himself Mazarin’s enemy in order to supplant him, -his only aim was to seem formidable, and to indulge the foolish vanity -of opposing him.” If Retz knew of that “portrait”--and he did, because -Mme. de Sévigné sent it him--his own more benevolent one of its author -must be reckoned in his favour. He had written it in his Memoirs, but -allowed it to stand there unaltered except for one little word. He -had originally said that La Rochefoucauld was the most accomplished -courtier and most honest man of his age. He scratched out the honesty. - -Personally, I picture a happy _rencontre_ in the Elysian Fields in -or about 1679, when the Cardinal de Retz should have arrived and -greeted his brother in the purple. A lifting of red hats, a pressing -of hands--“Caro Signore, sta sempre bene?” and so on. There had been -bitter war on earth; each was a keen blade, each an Italian. Each -had had his triumphs. Retz had twice driven Mazarin out of Paris and -once out of France. But Mazarin had proved the better stayer. He had -returned, put Retz to flight, and died worth forty millions. Retz came -back, made a good end, and only just cleared his debts. And what had it -all been about? Some say, Anne of Austria, an elderly, ill-tempered, -fat woman; some say vanity, some ambition. I say, _Il Talento_ and the -joy of battle: the brain taut, the eye alert, the sword-hand flickering -like lightning on a summer night. Greek was meeting Greek. Inevitably -that must have been. There was not room for two Italians of that stamp -in France. - -But let us always remember that he was mourned by Mme. de Sévigné, who -said that he had been her friend for thirty years. There is the best -thing to be known about him. - - - - -“L’ABBESSE UNIVERSELLE”: MADAME DE MAINTENON - - -Few of the outstanding names in history have received the hard measure -which has been meted out to Madame de Maintenon’s. She has had it, so -to speak, both ways; been blamed for what she did not, and for what -she did. First, she was to be held abominable because she was not the -King’s wife; next, and even more so, because she was. All that falls -to the ground if it can be shown that her life before the marriage -was as irreproachable, morally, as it was after it. Madame Saint-René -Taillandier, in a recent admirable study of the misjudged lady, has -no difficulty in proving that it was so. She proves it positively by -showing of what nature Madame de Maintenon really was, and negatively -by exploring all possible sources of contemporary evidence, and -finding nothing worth consideration. Dull, narrow, bigoted, obstinate, -over-busy about many things, more occupied with to-day than to-morrow, -falling in too readily with Louis’ view of himself and his place in the -universe (a view which she shared with the entire French nation)--these -things she may have been, and done. But she was a good woman, a pious -woman, one who was severely tried, one who did her immediate duty and -gave to the poor. She had a long and unhappy life, and died worn out. -There can be no doubt of all this. All sorts of reasons for hating and -slandering her can be urged: none of them good ones. - -The reproaches of the historians are not so summarily to be dismissed. -It is not necessary to go so far as Michelet did when he said that -the price of her marriage with Louis was the revocation of the Edict -of Nantes. That’s absurd. Madame de Maintenon neither bargained nor -sold her hand. But it is hard to believe--impossible to believe--that -she was not in consultation with the King, and Louvois, and the -priests about the Revocation, or that, if consulted, she would not -have urged it. Saint-Simon, who is her first accuser here, is writing -after her death, and writing as an historian. I feel sure that he is -right. It is, of course, true that she was a Huguenot by descent, a -grand-daughter of that truculent, serio-comic old Agrippa d’Aubigné, -whose portrait, savagely grinning, is so extraordinarily like those -of his king, _le Béarnais;_ and it is true also that, though she was -converted before she was a grown woman, she never lost her fanatic hold -upon religion, but simply changed its direction. Throughout her life, -says Madame Taillandier, she showed Huguenot characteristics. She could -never take to the devotion of the rosary; she could never find any -enthusiasm for convents; she invoked neither the Virgin nor the Saints; -continued the reading of her Bible. No matter for that: she was hungry -for souls. As Saint-Simon puts it, with evident truth: “Elle eut la -maladie des directions ... elle se croyait l’abbesse universelle.... -Elle se figurait être une mère d’église.” She converted whomsoever -she could touch, and as she grew in influence she could touch a many. -Concerned in the Revocation, besides Louis, there were Louvois, -Father le Tellier, Bossuet, her own spiritual director, the Bishop of -Chartres, and all the Jesuits. Everything that we know about her shows -to which side she would incline; and nothing that we know about her -makes it likely that she had any conception what statesmanship meant. -Louis called her “Sa Solidité.” Her solidity showed itself in her -care for detail: nothing was too small for her--she loved to order a -household, knew how many chickens you should get in for a small family, -how much wine for the servants, how many pounds of candles. She could -design the quasi-conventual robes for Saint-Cyr, costumes for ballets -and so on. But the economic or political outcome of the Revocation of -the Edict; the ruin of her country, the humiliation of the King, all -the immediate results of the “affreux complot” were entirely outside -her power of vision. “Four regiments of infantry,” Madame Taillandier -pleasantly says, “two of cavalry were ordered to follow the Duc de -Noailles into Languedoc, and _trample a little_ on the Huguenots.” My -italics! Well, Madame de Maintenon expected to save souls like that. I -don’t think that she can be let off her share in the _dragonnades_, or -in the Revocation. - -Never mind. She was more of a saint than a sinner, though she lacked -the severity and suavity, the “sweet reasonableness” of the true -Saints. She was bleak, in herself and in her outlook; her life had -always been, and after her marriage was long to be, cheerless and -unutterably dull. What a life it was, throughout its eighty-three -years! Born in a prison in 1635, and living thereafter on charity, -with one relative or another; hounded from Huguenot pillar to Catholic -post; clinging to the faith in which she had been reared until she -was “converted” almost literally by force; still a pauper, often a -drudge; then at seventeen married to an elderly balladist, crippled by -disease, Paul Scarron, a scribbler of pasquinades and squibs, author -of a travesty of Virgil and what not; married to this incapacitated -rip; living with him in Grub Street on what he could pick up by the -hire of his pen--a libel here, a dedication there, a lampoon elsewhere, -a broadside for the street corner or bridge-end; living so from hand -to mouth, married but not a wife--what a life for a young girl gently -born, grand-daughter of King Henry’s old friend! Nothing is more -pathetic in Madame Taillandier’s account of her than the gallant fight -she put up in her little salon in the Rue Neuve Saint-Louis--polite -conversation in her bed-chamber with her friends, while Paul and his -tore the decencies to shreds below-stairs. And she succeeded, too, in -making good and herself respected. She had valuable friends. Madame -de Sévigné was one, Madame de Coulanges another, Madame de Lafayette -a third. Through them she became acquainted with yet higher persons, -among them with Madame de Montespan, then in league with the highest -of all. By those means she fell under the King’s eye. He did not like, -but he esteemed her, and chose her out of all the Court and all Paris -to govern Madame de Montespan’s children. She did it, by all accounts, -admirably. If she had no other qualities, she had two rare ones: she -did her duty, and held her tongue. - -When, by public Act, the children were made Enfants de France, they -were removed from Paris to Saint-Germain; and there was Madame -Scarron in daily intercourse with Louis. That was the beginning of -her astounding ascent. Madame de Montespan was uneasy, and had reason -to be. The _gouvernante’s_ influence was steadily against her. Madame -Scarron disapproved of her and all her kind; and sure enough, from the -hour of her entry into the King’s family, the mistress’s star began -to wane. Finally, what the preachers--Bossuet, Bourdaloue--could not -do the ghastly business of “the Poisons” settled. La Montespan was in -that up to the neck, and Louis knew that she was, and held his peace, -not to save her neck, but to save his face. Montespan was exiled, and -took, as George Meredith said, “to religion and little dogs.” Madame -Scarron remained in charge of the children, and was ennobled with a -fief and a Marquisate. The Court called her “Madame de Maintenant”--but -she had not fully earned that. The Queen died--and Louis almost -immediately married the Marquise. There is not a ghost of a doubt of -it. Saint-Simon gives the date, the hour, and the names of celebrant, -assistants, and witnesses. Everybody knew it--but nothing was said. -From that hour Louis was hardly ever out of her company until the end, -when she was forced to leave him before the breath was out of his body. - -What did she gain except unutterable weariness, suspicion, fear, -slander, and unending labour? Read Dangeau’s diary of the dreary, -splendid routine of Versailles, Marly and Fontainebleau; read in -Madame Taillandier a letter from the poor woman describing one of her -days. She had her Saint-Cyr in which she really delighted. She could -play universal Abbess there, and be interested and at peace for a time. -But even there chagrin and disappointment dogged her. She brought in -Madame Guyon, Quietism, and other things taboo. She became involved in -Fénélon’s disgrace; and presently she had to submit to Rome and turn -her beloved “Institution” of ladies into a convent of nuns. - -No--she was bleak, and had a narrow mind; but, as she saw her duty, so -she did it. Her duty led her into thorny wastes and desert places; it -led her to be one of the thousand idle parasites yawning and stretching -at Versailles, slowly and endlessly revolving like dead moons round le -Roi Soleil. We may pity Madame de Maintenon for what life made of her, -but not blame her. - - - - -PIERRE DE L’ESTOILE - - -Rich as they are in the possession of the _diverticula amoena_ of -history--and much richer than we are--for all that the French have no -Pepys. “Many an old fool,” said Byron of Coleridge at his lecture, -“but such as this, never.” So it may be put of the French memoirists: -many a burgess of plain habit and shrewd observation, many a rogue -husband too; but the like of one who, being both, turned himself inside -out for the wonder of posterity, never. Indeed, it would be hard to -imagine a Latin Pepys. The French do not discharge their bosoms on -paper without reason; and the reasons which moved Pepys, whatever -they were, would not approve themselves to their minds. Cynicism, or -vanity, might suggest self-exhibition to one or another, as it did to -Casanova the Venetian, but the truth is not served that way. There was -a leaven of puritanism in Pepys such as Huguenotry never deposited -in a Frenchman. That leaven did double work in our man. It seasoned -for him his pleasant vices, and gave also a peculiar thrill to his -confessions, as if his pen, like his hair, was standing on end as he -wrote. No Frenchman needed a relish for his foibles of the kind; and -as for thrills, his nation has always kept faith and works in separate -compartments. We cannot do that. - -However, they are rich enough without him. If they have no Pepys, they -have in their Pierre de L’Estoile one whom we cannot match. Imagine -a citizen of London in Elizabeth’s last and James’s first years, -observing, recording each day as it came. We have in John Evelyn, fifty -years later, a diarist of higher quality, who yet, and for that reason, -was of less historical value. He seldom stooped to the detail in which -the Parisian was versed: would that he had! L’Estoile will furnish no -such picture as Evelyn’s of the Gallery at Hampton Court on a specimen -afternoon. On the other hand, in L’Estoile, the brawling, buzzing, -swarming streets of old Paris come before us at every turn of the -leaf--and there at least he was like Pepys. If by happy chance one John -Chamberlain, a private citizen of London, whose letters were published -last year, had kept a diary, and could have kept it out of harm’s way, -he might have given just such a particularised account of his town -as L’Estoile gives of the Paris of the League, the Seize, and _La -Religion_. But he was fearful of the post, and never committed himself. -Nor would he, of course, have had such cataclysmic matter to report, -England in James’s reign was drifting towards the whirlpool: France was -already spinning madly in it. - -Pierre de L’Estoile was an official of the Chancellery in Paris. -His title was “Audiencier,” and his duties, as nearly as I can -ascertain, were more like those of one of the Six Clerks of our Court -than of him whom we call Auditor. He was a man of family, of the -_noblesse de Robe_, of landed estate, of education, and of taste. -He had Greek, and Latin, bigotry and virtue; he collected coins and -medals, books, ballads, pamphlets, bibelots of all sorts. He began -to keep a diary on the day when Charles IX died, “enferme, comme un -chien qui enrage”--Whitsunday, 1574; maintained it through the riot -and effrontery, the anarchy and intrigue in which Henry III and the -_mignons_ killed and were killed; through the open war of the League, -and through the Siege of Paris. He saw the entry of Henry IV; judged -while he loved that ribald king; and caught up the flying rumours of -that day which hushed all the city, that day when he was stabbed to the -heart, “au coing de la rue de la Ferronnerie, vis-à-vis d’un notaire -nommé Poutrain,” as he sat in his coach listening to a letter which -Epernon was reading to him. He went on until 1611, and only laid his -pen down because he was about to lay down his life. His last entry is -of the 27th September: on the 8th October he was buried. He had lived -under six kings of France, had three of them die violent deaths, had -been an eyewitness of the Saint-Bartholomew. A seasoned vessel. - -As he was never a courtier he could not have witnessed all the great -events which he relates. I think he saw the entry of Henry of Navarre, -if not his shocking exit. But he was out and about, all agog; he had -highly placed friends; and collected for his diary as he did for his -cabinet. I imagine he must be a “source” for such a tragic scene as -the murder of the Duc de Guise, which might have gone bodily into _Les -Quarante-Cinq_ if that fine novel had not stopped a few months short of -it. Everything is there to the hand. As first, the presages: how on the -21st of December (1588), - - - “the Archbishop of Lyon, having overheard the proud speeches - which the Duke had made the King in the gardens of Blois, told - him that he would have done well to use more respect, and that a - more modest bearing would have been becoming: whereupon, ‘You are - wrong,’ the Duke replied: ‘I know him better than you do. You have - to take him boldly. He is a king who likes to be made frightened.’” - - -And then another: on the next day, - - - “As the Duke went to table, to his dinner, he found a note under - his napkin wherein was written that he ought to be on his guard, - because they were on the point of doing him a bad turn. Having - read it, he wrote upon it these three words, ‘They dare not,’ and - threw it under the table. The same day he was told by his cousin - the Duc d’Elbœuf that on the morrow there would be an attempt - against his life, and answered with a laugh that, plainly, he had - been searching the almanacs.” - - -On the 23rd he and his brother the Cardinal attended the Council, on -summons: - - - “They found the guard strengthened, and more hardy than usual. - They demanded money, and asked the Duke to see to it that they - were paid, using (as it seemed) a new manner of address, less - respectful than he had been accustomed to hear. Taking no notice, - they went their ways; and for all that the Duke had had warnings - from many quarters of what was working against him--nine of them, - indeed, on that very day, whereof he put the last in his pocket, - saying aloud, ‘That is the ninth to-day’--nevertheless, so blind - was that high mind of his to things as clear as daylight, he could - not bring himself to believe that the King intended to do him an - ill turn; for God had blindfolded his eyes, as He generally does - of those whom He designs to chasten. Being then come into the - Council, in a new coat, grey in colour and very light for the time - of year, the eye on the scarred side of his face was seen to weep, - and he to let two or three drops at the nose--on account of which - he sent a page out for a handkerchief.... Presently the King sent - Revel, one of the Secretaries of State, for him, who came up just - as he was shutting down into the silver box he used to carry, the - plums and raisins which he used for his heart-weakness. He rose - immediately to attend his Majesty, and just as he came into the - ante-chamber one of the Guards in there trod upon his toe; and - though he knew very well what that meant, notwithstanding he made - no sign, but went on his way to the Chamber, as one who cannot - avoid his fate. Then, suddenly, he was seized by the arms and legs - by ten or a dozen of the Quarante-Cinq ambushed behind the arras, - and by them stabbed and murdered, uttering among other lamentable - cries this last, which was plainly heard, ‘God! I am dying! My - sins have found me out. Have mercy on me!’ Over his poor body they - flung a mean carpet, and there he lay exposed to the gibes and - indignities of them of the Court, who hailed him ‘fair King of - Paris’--the King’s name for him.” - - -Detail like that must have been got at first hand. When he comes to -the Cardinal, he contents himself by saying that he was despatched in -the Capuchin Convent on Christmas Eve. But the account of the Duke -carries conviction. L’Estoile had a friend at Blois--an official of the -Council, or an usher of the door. Though there is pity in his words, -“Sur ce pauvre corps fut jetté un meschant tapis,” his judgment was not -disturbed. His account closes with the stern words, - - - “Et ici finist le règne de Nembrot le Lorrain.” - - -Henry being what he was, and whose son he was, it was plain to him that -the only thing to do with the head, and crownable head, of the League -was to remove it. After the Saint-Bartholomew murder was a recognised -arm of kingship, a sort of _jus regale_, in France. But Catherine de -Médicis, who taught her sons the uses of the dagger and the dark, was -not consenting to this particular use of them. Her worthless son might -be the last of the Valois; but she dreaded the first of the Bourbons -much more than the extinction of her own race; and when Henry was -fool enough to boast, “Now I am the only King,” and (says L’Estoile) -“began immediately to be less of one than ever,” she, sickening of -such inanity, took to her bed, and died in it on the 5th of January -following the _coup d’état_. - - -A year later the League gave the counterstroke. Henry was murdered -at Blois by its creature, Clément the Jacobin: “poorly and miserably -slain,” says L’Estoile, “in the flower of his age, in the midst of -his garrison, surrounded, as always, by guards; in his chamber, close -to his bed, by a little rapscallion of a monk, with a jerk of his -nasty little knife.” The thing was miraculously simple, a touch-and-go -which just came off. Clément asked for an audience, was refused: Henry -heard of it and insisted on seeing him. The man was let in, found his -victim undressed and at disadvantage, gave him a letter, and while he -was reading, drove a knife into his bowels and left it there. He was -himself killed on the spot, having done what the League intended, and -more than that by a good deal. L’Estoile notes it at the moment: “The -King of Navarre is made King of France by the League.” So he was. - -Civil war followed: Paris in the grip of the Seize, with the Duc de -Mayenne as Regent for the League. L’Estoile lost his appointment; for -the Chancery followed the King, and he himself could not. A Court of a -kind was maintained in the city, and he, in order to live, was forced -to serve the Seize, whom he detested and feared. He had good reason for -that. Famine and pestilence were on all sides of him, and treachery -and suspicion--under the bed, at the street corners, in the churches, -wherever people came together--and the gibbet expecting its daily -tribute. When the news came in of Arques or Ivry, of the capitulation -of Chartres or what not, it was as much as your neck was worth to be -seen to smile. Lists of names went about--you might see your own on -it any day. By a letter attached to it you could know your portion. -P. stood for _pendu_, D. for _dagué_, C. for _chassé_. L’Estoile -saw his own, with D. against it. He went in fear, naturally, but I -think he was more scandalised than afraid when they began their new -Saint-Bartholomew by hanging the President of the Council, Brisson, -and two of his fellow members. It took place in prison, and L’Estoile, -though he was not present, reports the manner of it, and the harangues -of the victims. His conclusion is good enough: “Thus, on this day, -a First President of the Court was hanged--by his clerk.” The King, -he hears, “gossant à sa manière accoustoumée,” said that he had no -better servants in all Paris than the Seize, who did his business for -him better than anything they did for their masters, and cost him no -doubloons neither. - -Meantime the city was beleaguered, and very soon hungry. Cauldrons -of broth and boiled horse were set up at street-corners, and people -fought each other to get at them; bread was made of oats and bran, and -doled out by pennyweights as long as it lasted. When they had eaten -all the horses they came to the dogs, then to the cats. The siege was -maintained, the people starved. They ate tallow, dog-skin, rat-skin, -cat-skin. They made bread of men’s bones from the cemeteries; they -hunted children--L’Estoile has no doubts; many lay still, awaiting the -mercy of death. “The only things which went cheap in Paris,” he says, -“were sermons, where they served out wind to the famished people, -giving them to understand that it was very pleasing to God to die of -starvation--yea, and far better to kill one’s children than to admit -a heretic as king.” A man, he says, came to his door to beg a crust -of him to save a child’s life. While L’Estoile was fetching the bread -the baby died, in the father’s arms. He himself sent away his wife and -infant son to Corbeil: the leaguer had been raised for that purpose, -and many took advantage of the grace. Unfortunately Corbeil was taken -by the Spaniards, and his people held to ransom. There were fierce -riots; but the Seize knew that their own necks were in peril (as proved -to be true), and held out. Finally, after the farce of conversion -solemnly enacted, Henry entered his good town. As a last resource -the League had ordered the descent and procession of the Châsse of -Ste-Geneviève a few days before. L’Estoile gives the warrant in full, -with this note in addition: “Its virtue was shown forth, five days -afterwards, in the reduction of Paris.” He always girded at the Châsse. -It was brought down in July 1587 to make the rain stop. “She did no -miracle, though liberally assisted. The moon before had been a rainy -one, and they brought her down on the fifth of the new moon when there -was promise of a little fine weather. Nevertheless, it began to rain -harder than ever the next day.” He called Madame Sainte-Geneviève Diana -of the Parisians. - -Well, the Béarnois came in, and heard _Te Deum_ at Notre Dame. He -made a torchlight entry, dressed in grey velvet, with a grey hat -and white _panache_. His face was “fort riant”; his hat always in -his hand to the ladies at the windows, particularly to three, “very -handsome, who were in mourning, and at a window high up, opposite -Saint-Denys-de-la-Chartre.” L’Estoile must have seen that, and admired -the ladies. And he certainly saw--he says so--the reception of Mesdames -de Nemours and Montpensier. They were held up by the passing of troops, -and put out of countenance by the insolence of the bystanders, who -“stared them full in the face without any sign of knowing who they -were.” And that to Madame de Montpensier--“Queen-Mother” to Paris -besieged! - -Next day Henry played tennis all the afternoon, and hazard all night; -but L’Estoile loved that king without approving of him. His tales tell -for him and against, his esteem rises and falls. He liked his easy -manners, his old clothes, his _Ventre-Saint-Gris_, his cynicisms and -mocking humour. He does not seem to think the monarchy let down by such -_sans façon_. Anyhow, there it is; and two things are made clear by -the diary--first, that Henry was not the good fellow he is generally -reputed, and second, that he was not then thought to be so. He himself, -may be, had been too much knocked about by the world to have any -illusions left him. There was an attempt against his life in 1595. The -people seemed frantic with delight at his escape. L’Estoile relates how -he went in procession to Notre Dame. - - - “You never heard,” he says, “such approbation of a king by his - people as was given that day to our good Prince whenever he showed - himself. Seeing it, a lord who was close to his Majesty, said to - him, ‘Remark, sir, how happy are all your subjects at the sight of - you.’ Shaking his head, the King replied, ‘That is the people all - over. And if my greatest enemy was where I am now, and they saw - him go by, they would do as much for him as for me, and shout even - louder than they are doing now.’” - - -No, there were no rose-coloured curtains between Henry of Navarre and -this transitory life. He did not even pretend to approve of himself; -and if he was ashamed, as it seems he was, of his amorous entanglements -with the young Princesse de Condé, it is certain that they shocked -L’Estoile to the heart. When it comes to apologies there, there was no -spirit left in the respectable man. For this diarist was as moral as -our John Evelyn, and so far as I can find out on as good a foundation. -He could express himself on such matters with point. For instance: - - - “Sunday the 12th February, which was Dimanche des Brandons, Madame - had a splendid ballet at the Louvre, where nothing was forgotten - that could possibly be remembered--except God.” - - -A sharper saying than Evelyn would have allowed himself. But it is -the fact, as I have said, that good King Henry was not found so good -living as dead. Afterwards--under Richelieu, under Mazarin, during -the Fronde, under the Edict of Nantes--by comparison he shone. During -his lifetime he had many more enemies and far fewer friends than was -supposed. The Maréchal D’Ornano, in 1609, told him in so many words -that he was not beloved by his people, and that a very little more on -the taxes would bring back the civil war. The King said that he knew -all that, and was ready for it. D’Ornano then said that he could not -advise rough measures. “I shall freely tell you, sir, that the late -King had more of the _noblesse_ for him than you have for yourself, -and more of the people too than you will have if there be trouble. For -all that, he was obliged to leave Paris and his own house to rebels -and mutineers, and the rest of us thought ourselves lucky to get off -with our heads on our shoulders.” L’Estoile had that from “a brave and -trustworthy gentleman” who was close by at the time. The gentleman said -that the King was at first moved to anger by D’Ornano’s plain speaking, -but thanked him for it afterwards. - -Bad stories of King Henry are to be had for the asking; perhaps the -worst in L’Estoile is told in a poem which he picked up, and reports. -A Madame Esther had been the King’s mistress in La Rochelle, and had -borne him a son. The child died, the King tired, and forsook her. She -came to see him at Saint-Denis when he was busy, distracted, seeking -other game: he refused to see her or hear what she had to say. She -was ill, and died in the town where he actually was, and being of the -religion, a grave was denied her. What became of her body is not -known, but “they raised to her memory,” L’Estoile says, “the following -_Tombeau_ (epitaph), which was rehearsed at Saint-Denis and everywhere: - - - “TOMBEAU DE MADAME ESTHER - - “Here Esther lies, who from Rochelle, - Called by the King, her master, came, - Risking the life of her fair fame - With him to whom her beauty fell. - - “Faithful she was, and served him well, - Bore him a son who had no name, - And died: so then her lover’s flame - Sought other kindling for a spell. - - “Forsaken, hitherward her steps - Strayed, and to God she tuned her lips - For mercy, dying so: but earth - - “Was closed against her. Ah, it’s bad-- - No yard of all his lands and worth - For her who gave him all she had!” - - -A touching and simple piece. It should have gone home to a man whose -intentions were always better than his inclinations, yet always gave -way to them. The end of him, sudden and shocking as it was, can have -surprised nobody. He had enemies everywhere, and few friends. The -Catholics had never believed in him, the Protestants had ceased to -believe in him. The day before his last he had had Marie de Médicis -crowned with all the forms, though unwillingly. L’Estoile was there, -and observed two notable facts: “the first was that it had been thought -proper, on account of the subject-matter, to change the gospel of the -day, which is from Mark x--“_And the Pharisees came to him, and asked -him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife, tempting him._” That -sounds to me a little too apt to be likely. - -“The other was that at the _largesse_ of gold and silver coins, which -is usual at coronations of kings and queens, there was never a cry -_Vive le Roy_, nor yet a _Vive la Reine_--which, it was remarked, had -never happened but at this coronation.” His next entry relates to the -assassination: - - - “_Luctus ubique, pavor, et plurima mortis imago_,” is his - conclusion of it all: “the shops are shut; everyone goes weeping - or holding up his hands, great and small, young and old; women and - maids pluck at their hair. The whole town is very quiet: instead - of running for arms we run to our prayers, and make vows for - the health and welfare of the new king. The fury of the people, - contrary to the expectation and intent of the wicked, is turned - upon the infamous parricide and his accomplices, seeking only to - ensue vengeance and to have it.” - - -_De mortuis!_ That is always the way. And distrusting the Queen as he -plainly did, and abhorring Concini, not the first, and not the best, -of the implanted Italians, there is little wonder at the diarist’s -dismay. He goes on, without circumlocution, to lay the crime at the -door of the “Society of Judas,” as he calls a famous companionship, -a society to whose new church the King’s heart had been promised, by -whose means, he as good as says, it was now obtained. Not without -scandal, it was presently conveyed there. - -Enormous crowds viewed the king’s body, which lay in state in the -Louvre. The Jesuits were among the first to come; he says: - - - “Class them as you please: everybody knows the maxim they preach, - that it is lawful to kill the king who suffers two religions - in his realm. Nevertheless (_vultibus compositis ad luctum_) - they played affliction above everyone. Father Cotton, with an - exclamation truly smacking of the Court and the Society, ‘Who is - the villain,’ cries he, ‘to have killed this good prince, this - pious, this great king? Was it not a Huguenot, then?’ They tell - him, No, it was a Roman Catholic. ‘Ah, deplorable, if it be so!’ - he says, and signs himself with three great crosses. Someone - present, who had overheard him, was himself overheard to say, ‘The - Huguenots don’t play those tricks.’” - - -But the Society took the heart to Notre-Dame-de-Boulogne. - -L’Estoile survived to see the little king in Paris. He watched him -benevolently always, and has tales to tell of him, of which the -prettiest is about Pierrot, a village boy of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. -When Louis had been there as Dauphin, Pierrot used to play with him; -and now that he was King, and at the Tuileries, he had the notion of -going to see him. - - - “The King was playing down by the lake, with a fine company about - him; but as soon as he was aware of Pierrot, his old play-fellow - (who still called him M. le Dauphin, and to those who reproved - him, swore his round Mordienne that he did not know what else to - call him), he left them all where they were to go to Pierrot, into - whose arms he flew, and kissed him in the face of everybody. He - told M. de Souvrai that they must find clothes for his friend the - very next day, so that he might stay with him, but Pierrot said he - could not do that, but must go home for fear of being beaten. His - father and mother had not been willing to let him go--but he had - gone for all that, and had brought M. le Dauphin (he called him) a - present of some sparrows.” - - -“Simplicité rustique,” L’Estoile calls it, and praises Louis for going -half-way to meet it. He is then very near the end of his record, and of -his earthly tether too. - -Misfortunes were gathered thickly about the honest man. He was out of -his employment through age; money was very short with him. He sold -his collections piecemeal, and was glad to make fifty francs or so -here and there. He does not name the most serious of his ailments, -but I fear that it was malignant, and put recovery out of the case. -In September 1610, feeling himself in extremities, he demanded the -Sacrament, and it became a question of confession. Father des Landes, -a Jacobin and a friend of his, was chosen for the office, and demanded -of him a protestation that he would die in the Catholic, Apostolic, -Roman faith. The first two--yes, said L’Estoile; but boggled over the -third. He relates the course of the argument which he held with the -Jacobin. It branched off, as they will, into all sorts of side issues: -invocation of the Saints, Council of Trent, errors of the Popes, and -what not. He comes as near as he ever does here to putting down what -he really did--or at least what he really did not--believe. He was an -eclectic, but desperate of remedy. He would have seen the Reformed -Church Catholic, and the Catholic reformed. But that, he is aware, is a -counsel of perfection. “Three things forbid: lack of charity, lack of -zeal for the glory of God, and stubbornness, which is the last trench -of the ignorant.” And he concludes on the whole matter: “I shall hold -on then to that old stock, rotten as it is, of the Papacy. The Church -is in it, though it is not the Church.” And thereupon he had his -absolution and the Sacrament. Father des Landes was a liberal-minded -Jacobin. - -I have fallen into the old easy way of confounding historical persons -and history, but that is L’Estoile’s fault at least as much as mine. -I might have stuffed my account of his book with criminal records, or -with sermons; for next to the doings of the great those are the matters -which concern him. Few days pass, never a week, in which he does not -record an execution or several of them. I don’t know whether the -Paris of the Henrys was worse than the London of James, and failing -an English L’Estoile, I shall never know. But Paris would be bad to -beat--not only for bestial crime but for bestial requital of it. In -London you might be decapitated or hanged: burning was rare towards the -end of Elizabeth’s reign. In Paris you might be hanged, or hanged and -strangled, or broken on the wheel, or hanged and burned; or, if you -were respectable enough you could be executed with a sword. Burning was -reserved for heresy: for _lèse-majesté_ there was death by horses--four -of them. L’Estoile saw Ravaillac die that death. He died, the wretch, -at the “deuxième tirage.” These things are shocking, as the crimes -were which they were designed, after the ideas of the times, to fit. -Then there were the duels which reached in France a point not known in -our country. The _mignons_ quarrelled in companies. That happened when -Quélus, Maugiron and Livarrot met d’Entragues, Ribérac and Schomberg in -the Marché-aux-Chevaux. Maugiron and Schomberg were killed outright; -Ribérac died the next day, and Quélus, with nineteen wounds, lingered -for a month, and died then. The King kissed the dead, cut off and -kept their fair hair, and took from Quélus the ear-rings which he had -himself put into his ears. “Such and the like ways of doing,” says -L’Estoile, “unworthy indeed of a great king and a high-hearted, as -this one was, caused him by degrees to be despised ... and in the -Third-Estate, to be made little by little their faction, which was the -League.” No doubt that is true. - -Let me remember, as I end, this curious piece of news: on January 8th, -1608, it was so cold that the chalice froze in Saint-André-des-Ars, -and they had to get a brazier from the baker’s to thaw it. Saint-André -was L’Estoile’s favourite, or perhaps his parish church. The law cares -nothing for trifles, but history lives upon them. My last scrap, -however, is not of an age but of all time. “J’ay trente mil livres de -rente, et cependant je meurs!” said the Abbé of Bonport in his last -agony. - - - - -LA BRUYÈRE - - -If we can still contrive to hold up our heads in the world it is -not the fault of the writers of maxims, who have seldom had a good -word to say for us. We may ask, as we wilt but read on, Have we then -nothing which can face unashamed the microscopic eye? Does not virtue -lend itself to aphorism? Should it not be possible to make pithy -summaries of our good qualities, of our reasonable institutions? La -Rochefoucauld’s answer would be, Inform me of your virtues, show me -your tolerable institutions, and I will tell you if I can reduce them -to maxims. Nobody took the trouble to do it. He was read, as he wrote, -for entertainment; and entertainment certainly comes if we don’t read -too much of him at a time. He is for the bedside or the dressing-table. -You can glance at him as you shave: but if you linger on him, you had -better put away the razors. He has himself detected the source of the -entertainment. “In the misfortunes of our best friends we can always -find something which is not unpleasing.” He is dreadfully right; and -it was his accuracy, no doubt, which Madame de Sévigné found to be -“divine.” I obtain my own consolation out of the fact that, poor things -as we are, it has been possible for one at least of us to write us -down so well. But I am under no delusions about this duke. He is not -necessarily a good man struggling with adversity, but as human as the -rest of us. His only right to the microscope is that of user; and the -pose that he who sees so many beams in his neighbour’s eyes has no -motes in his own, it is fair to say, is not consciously assumed, but -inseparable from the aphoristic method. - -In La Bruyère, the French Theophrastus, who has tempered his maxims -with “portraits,” I think that the Rhadamanthus-attitude is deliberate. -La Bruyère is indignant, and takes it for righteousness. You cannot -call him cynical; he is a _censor morum_. He combines the methods of La -Rochefoucauld and Tallemant des Réaux, but is more human than the first -because he condescends to scold his victims, and much less so than -the other because he cannot bring himself to consider them as of the -same clay with himself. La Bruyère, you may say, never takes off his -wig and gown; Tallemant never puts his on. In _Les Caractères_ is but -one paragraph of unstinted praise; the _Historiettes_ is full of them. -Tallemant, however, did not write for publication, and La Bruyère did. -It is possible that he would have praised more generally than he did -if it had been as safe to praise as to condemn. But it was not. He had -been rash enough at starting to call attention to Bishop Le Camus, and -to be astonished at the red hat conferred upon a pious and devoted man. -Then he learned, first, that the King had been very much offended by -the Pope’s action, and secondly, that the Pope had intended him to be. -Just in time he cancelled the passage. No--a writer had to be sure of -his ground when he went about to praise. You were only perfectly safe, -indeed, in praising His Majesty. - -His “pleasant” saying of Dangeau, as Saint-Simon calls it, that he was -not a grandee, but “after a grandee,” is typical of him, at once acute -and direct. It says more exactly what Dangeau was than a page. The -page is there too, but the few words shine out of it like an electric -light. It is as if he was talking round about his subject, seeking the -best aspect of it, and then, suddenly, with a pointing finger, you -get “_Pamphilius_ in a word desires to be a great man, and believes -himself to be one; but he is not; he is after a great man.” The rest -of the page goes for little. It is Thackerayan, as we should say. -Whether Thackeray owed anything directly to La Bruyère I am not able to -determine; but he owed a fair amount to Steele, who assuredly did. - - -If La Bruyère had desired to learn the worst of mankind he could not -have been trained in a better school than that which he found for -himself. He had been one of the Accountants-General in the Bureau -of Finance at Caen for a few years when M. le Prince--le Grand -Condé--called him to Chantilly to be tutor--one of several--to his -grandson the Duc de Bourbon. There, and at Versailles, he remained -for the rest of his life, and at Versailles he died. Of Condé, of -Henri-Jules, his terrible son, and of the grandson, “very considerably -smaller than the smallest of men,” as Saint-Simon declares him, and -very considerably more of a degenerate than most men, this learned, -accurate, all-observant, deeply-meditating man was content to be the -servant and the butt. When his pupil left his hands he stayed on as -“gentleman” to the father, who was in his turn M. le Prince. Prince as -he was, he was also, quite simply, a wild beast, biting mad; and his -son was little better: a pervert and proud of it, crafty, malicious, -tyrannical, and “extremely ferocious.” One does not know how life with -such masters can have been tolerable. La Bruyère was both neglected -and despised. He had nothing to do, for even as “gentleman” he was -a supernumerary--yet he must be there. To understand it you must -accept the _sang royal_ in its fullest implications. His book, which -yielded eight editions in his lifetime, went for nothing at Chantilly, -though the King himself had heard of it, and had his harangue at the -Academy read to him at Marly. Yet one of the inmates of Chantilly -(Valincourt), while admitting that “La Bruyère meditated profoundly -and agreeably, two things which are rarely found together,” went on -to say that “he was a good fellow at bottom, whom, however, the fear -of seeming pedantic had thrown into its ridiculous opposite ... with -the result that during all the time he spent in the household of M. -le Duc, in which he died, he was always held for a figure of fun.” -It seems that he tried to be sprightly, would dance, put on airs and -graces, make jokes, and walk on his toes. We may regard all that -as protective colouring, the instinct of the creature to hide his -continual mortifications. Elsewhere--in Paris, naturally--he had made -himself a personage. His book sold, if not to his profit, very much to -his credit; he had made himself imposing enemies, and had the better -of them at every turn; Bossuet was his friend, Pontchartrain, Racine -and the like. He still held his sinecure office at Caen. Why, then, did -he hang about Chantilly, and lodge in an attic at Versailles when M. -le Prince was there? Who is to say? That particular prince was a human -tiger--but in his service he lived on, and died. I think he ought to -have put himself into his own book--and perhaps he did: - - - “I see a man surrounded, and followed--he is in office. I see - another man whom all the world salutes--he is in favour. Here is - one caressed and flattered, even by the great--he is rich. There - is another, observed curiously on all hands--he is learned. Here - is another whom nobody omits to greet--a dangerous man.” - - -At any rate, his experiences provided that one of the shrewdest -sections of _Les Caractères_ is that headed “Of the Court.” - - - “The Court does not satisfy; it prevents you from satisfaction - anywhere else. - - “It is like a house built of marble: I mean that it is made up of - men, very hard, but polished. - - “One goes there very often in order to come away again and be - therefore respected by one’s country gentry, or the bishop. - - “The most honourable reproach which can be made against a man is - to say of him that he knows nothing of the Court. In that one - remark there are no virtues unimputed to him. - - “You speak well of a man at Court for two reasons: the first, that - he may learn that you have done so; the second that he may so - speak of you. - - “It is as dangerous at Court to make advances as it is awkward not - to make them.” - - -The man who penned those caustic little sentences knew what he was -talking of. Yet La Bruyère’s portrait of himself sets him forth as a -creature apart, pointedly distinguishes him from _Clitiphon_, who has -been too busy to heed him. - - - “O man of consequence and many affairs,” he says to _Clitiphon_, - “when you in your turn have need of my good offices, walk into - my lonely study. The philosopher is at your service, and will - not put you off to another day. You will find him there, deep - in Plato’s dialogues, dealing with the spiritual nature of the - soul, distinguishing its essence from that of the body; or, pen - in hand, calculating the distance from us of Jupiter or Saturn. - I am adoring God in those books of his, seeking by knowledge of - the truth to conduct my own spiritual part into better ways. Nay, - come in, the door is open; there is no ante-chamber in which to be - wearied while you wait. Come straight in, without announcement. - You are bringing me something more to be desired than gold and - silver if it is a chance of serving you. Speak then, what do you - desire me to do for you? Am I to leave my books, studies, work, - the very line which I am now penning? Happy interruption, which is - to make me of service to you!” - - -Overwhelming invitation! The butter, you will agree, is spread too -thick. On another page he quotes the saying of the Roman patriarch, -that he had rather people should inquire why there was no statue to -Cato, than why there was one. But it had perhaps not occurred to Cato -as calculable that he might have to erect a statue to himself. - -“Voilà de quoi vous attirer beaucoup de lecteurs, et beaucoup -d’ennemis,” said M. de Malezieu to La Bruyère on perusing _Les -Caractères_. There was no doubt about that. Although he set out with a -translation of Theophrastus, in going on to be a Theophrastus himself -the temptation to draw from nature was obvious, and not resisted. -Theophrastus generalised; he wrote of abstractions, Stupidity, -Brutality, Avarice and what not. If he had had instances in his head, -nobody knew what they were, and nobody cared. But La Bruyère did not -write of qualities: he wrote of things and of people--women, men, -the Court, the sovereign; and by his treatment of them in examples, -in short paragraphs, with italicised names, with anecdotes, snatches -of dialogue and other aids to attention, provided the quidnuncs with -a fascinating game. “Keys” sprang up like mushrooms in a night. The -guess-work was dangerously unanimous. The instances he had chosen -were recent: there could not be much doubt who were _Menalcas_ and -_Pamphilius_, _Clitiphon_ and _Arténice_. Three editions were called -for in 1688, a fourth in 1689, and then one a year until 1694. On the -whole he came off very lightly. The _Mercure Galant_ and its supporters -furiously raged together. But the King had been elaborately flattered, -and no harm came to La Bruyère. - -_Les Caractères_ is a book both provocative and diverting, written in -the clear, sinewy, reasonable language of Pascal and Fénélon: by no -means without malice, but with a malice robbed of its virus by the -air of detachment which La Bruyère has been careful to give it. When -he pleases to be severe he uses the dramatic method. The portraits -interspersed with his judgments enable him to move more freely than La -Rochefoucauld. He is better, because livelier, reading, and the effect -is not so depressing. However, his debt cannot be denied. He would be -an acute critic who knew which was which in these: - - - “A woman with but one lover believes that she is not a coquette: - she who has several that she is only that. - - “A woman forgets of the man she no longer loves even the favours - he has had of her. - - “In her first passion a woman loves her lover. In the others she - loves love.” - - -Here is La Rochefoucauld at his best: “Hypocrisy is the tribute which -vice pays to virtue”; and here is La Bruyère when he chooses to sting: -“There is wanting nothing to an old lover from the woman who claims him -except the name of husband; but that is much. If it were not for that -he would be a thousand times lost.” As a rule he is more of a moralist -than the Duke, as here where his reflection flows from his axiom: - - - “A woman unfaithful, if the interested party knows it, is just - faithless; if he believes her true, she is false. This advantage - at least accrues from a woman’s falsity, that you are cured of - jealousy.” - - -The reflection flows, I say--but is it true? It is safe to say that the -man who generalises about women is as often wrong as right. “Women,” he -says, “are always in the extreme, better or worse than men”; and again, -“The generality of women have no principles. Their hearts direct them; -they depend for their conduct upon those they love.” I should say that -there were as many exceptions to those rules as examples of them. Then, -what of this: “It costs a woman very little to say something which she -does not feel; and a man still less to say something which he does”? It -needs La Bruyère himself to determine from that which of the sexes is -the more sentimental; but he leaves it there. I like the following, and -believe it to be entirely true: - - - “It is certain that a woman who writes with transport is carried - away, less so that she is touched. It would seem that a tender - passion would render her mournful and taciturn; and that the most - urgent need of a woman whose heart is engaged is less to persuade - that she loves than to be sure that she is loved.” - - -The second term of that aphorism is an enlargement of the first. A -woman, he would say, really in love would hide it by instinct. Her need -is rather to be loved. - -Try him on another tack. Here is a parallel with La Rochefoucauld. -The Duke says, “Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console -themselves for being no longer able to set bad examples.” La Bruyère’s -is equally sharp: - -“A modern writer will generally prove to you that the ancients are -inferior in two ways--by reason and example. The reason will be drawn -from his own taste, and the examples from his own works.” Very neat -both, but I think La Bruyère’s has the more comic turn. If the Duke -had had less prudence, or more bitterness (with as much reason for -it), we might have been able to compare his treatment of _la Cour_. -But he hardly touches it. La Bruyère cannot leave it alone. “Let a -favourite,” he says, “have a sharp eye on himself; for if he keep me in -his ante-chamber a shorter time than usual; if his look be more open; -if he frown less, listen more willingly, show me a little further from -the door, I shall be thinking him in the way of losing credit; and I -shall be right.” Then he breaks into this bitter reflection: “A man -can have little resource in himself if he must fall into disgrace or -be mortified in order to become more human, more tractable, less of a -brute and more of a good fellow.” - -There is a note very familiar to us in this: - - - “How comes it about that _Alciopus_ bows to me this morning, - smiles, throws himself half-way out of the carriage window for - fear of missing my eye? I am not a rich man--and I am on foot. By - all the rules he ought not to have seen me. Is it not rather so - that he himself may be seen in the same coach with a lord?” - - -Thackeray all over; but I don’t think Thackeray had it straight from -_Les Caractères_. The first translation into English was in 1699, and -by “Eustace Budgell, Esq.” There were many others--two, anonymous, -in 1700 and 1702, one by Nicholas Rowe in 1709, one by “H. Gally” in -1725. Was not Budgell one of the _Spectator’s_ men? Steele and Addison -both may have quarried in his version. Here is a specimen _Spectator_ -paragraph: - - - “_Narcissus_ rises in the morning in order that he may go to bed - at night. He takes his time for dressing like a woman, and goes - every day regularly to mass at the _Feuillants_ or the _Minims_. - He is an affable fellow, who may be counted on in a certain - quarter of the town to take a _tierce_ or a _cinquième_ at Ombre - or Reversi. So engaged you will see him in his chair for hours - on end at _Aricia’s_, where every evening he will lay out his - five gold pistoles. He reads punctually the _Gazette de Hollande_ - and the _Mercure Galant_; he will have read his Cyrano, his des - Marete, his Lesclache, Barbin’s story books, assorted poetry. He - walks abroad with the ladies; he is serious in paying calls. He - will do to-morrow what he does to-day and did yesterday; and after - having so lived, so he will die.” - - -The sting in the tail is perhaps too sharp for Steele, though it is not -for Addison. You will find the former more exactly foreshadowed in -the fable of _Emira_, an insensible beauty of Smyrna, who finds that -she cannot love until she has first been jealous, and finds that out -too late. Style and handling are the very spit of Steele’s. I have not -seen the suggestion anywhere, and put it forward for what it may be -worth, that Budgell’s translation inspired our pair of essayists to hit -off friends and foes under the stock names of _Belinda_, _Sacharissa_, -_Eugenio_ and the like. The “portrait” had been a popular literary -form in France from the days of Richelieu; but it was new to England -when Addison and Steele went into journalism. Are there “keys” to the -_Spectator_ and _Tatler_? I suppose so. - -Not all his portraits are malicious, not all of them so simple as -that of Narcissus; but some of them are really malignant. It is -safe to say that a man of whom Saint-Simon had nothing but good to -report, had nothing but good to be reported. Such a man was the Duc -de Beauvilliers. La Bruyère says of him that he was greedy after -office--exactly what he was not. The Comte de Brancas, who figures as -_Menalcas_, is very good fun. Brancas was the George Dyer of Paris and -his day, _distrait_ in ways which a knowledge of his time will excuse. -The best story of him, when he failed to see the Queen Mother using a -certain _prie-dieu_, and knelt on her, has been told. Another shows -him at home, putting down his book to nurse a grandchild; then, when a -visitor was announced, jumping to his feet, and flinging the baby on to -the floor, where he had just flung the book. There are dozens of such -tales, none of them ill-natured. Probably even La Bruyère could not -have been unkind to Brancas. - -He is certainly more severe than Tallemant, but that is because he -will always introduce himself into the story, and always to his own -advantage. Tallemant never does that, but uses the historical method -invariably. A good example of La Bruyère’s intrusion is in his dealing -with a Lord Strafford of ours, a peer whom Saint-Simon calls “une -espèce d’imbécile,” and accuses of having 50,000 _livres de rentes_ in -England and spending them in Paris. La Bruyère calls him Philémon, and -strikes the attitude of Diogenes in his regard: - - - “Gold, you tell me, glitters upon _Philémon’s_ coat? It glitters - as keenly at the tailor’s. He is clothed in the finest tissue? Is - it less well displayed in shop-lengths? But the embroideries, the - enrichments make him splendid! I praise the needlewoman. But ask - him the time, and he will pull out a masterpiece of a watch: the - guard of his sword is of onyx; there is a diamond on his finger - of a water ...! You have managed to make me curious at last. I - must see these priceless things. Send me Philémon’s clothes and - gimcracks. You may keep Philémon.” - - -That is the better part of it. In the next paragraph he turns to scold -the old lord, and calls him a fool in so many words. That is a mistake -of his. It is not playing the game of satire, but the kind of game -which is played at the street corner. On the same page is Harlay, the -very unepiscopal Archbishop of Paris, but only a part of him. He leaves -the bishop out of the question (as assuredly he was), and gives us the -courtier. Harlay was famous for his manners. _Theognis_, as he calls -him, - - - “is careful of his appearance, goeth forth adorned like a woman. - He is hardly out of doors before he has composed his looks and - countenance so that he may appear all of a piece when he is in - public, the same thing to all men. Passers-by are to find him - graciously smiling upon them; and nobody must miss it. He goes - into the corridor, turns to the right where everybody is, or to - the left where there is no one: he will salute those who are - there, and those who are not. He will embrace the first man he - comes across and press his head to his bosom; then he will ask - you who it was he was greeting. Perhaps you have need of him in - some little business or other, you go to him, ask him to help. - _Theognis_ lends you a ready ear, is overjoyed to be of use, - implores you to find him other chances of serving your occasions. - Then, when you urge your immediate affair, he will tell you that - he cannot manage that; he will ask you to put yourself in his - place, judge for yourself. So you take your leave, escorted to the - door, caressed, and puzzled, but almost gratified to have been - refused.” - - -That is excellent, done with a light-hearted malice worth all the -_coquins_, _fats_ and _sots_ in the world. But of all his “portraits” -by far the most agreeable is that of Madame de Boislandry, whom -he calls _Arténice_. It appears as a fragment in the section _Des -Jugements_, but I don’t think really belongs there. There is nothing -else like it; it has a gusto and charm of its own. Steele comes to mind -again, with his Lady Elizabeth Hastings. It must be my last example: - - - “ ... He was saying that the mind of that beautiful person was - like a well-cut diamond; and continuing his talk of her, ‘There - is,’ he added, ‘a ray of reasonableness and charm in it which - engages at once the eyes and the hearts of those who converse - with her. One hardly knows whether one loves or admires: she has - that in her to make her a perfect friend, and that too which - might lead you beyond friendship. Too young and too lovely not - to please, too modest to dream of it, she makes little account - of men but upon their merits, and looks for no more from them - than their friendship. Brimming over with life and quick to - feel, she surprises and attracts; and while perfectly aware of - the delicate shades and subtleties of the best conversation, she - is yet capable of happy improvisations which among other charms - have that of inspiring repartee. Her intercourse is that of one - who, without learning of her own, is aware of it, and desires to - inform herself; and yet she listens to you as one who, after all, - knows a good deal, can appraise the worth of what you say and will - lose nothing that you may choose to impart. Far from seeking to - contradict you, she takes up your points, considers them as her - own, enlarges and enhances them. You find yourself gratified to - have thought them out so well and to have put them forward better - than you had supposed....’” - - -There is more in that strain of intense appreciation, done by a writer -who knows that what he says of you is worth having, even if it be -flattery. La Bruyère had his reasons for flattering _Arténice_: it is -agreed that he was very fond of her. So were many others: she had her -adventures, though he did not share them. Evidently he knew that she -was not for him; for there is no tarnish of jealousy upon his praise. -He was one whom there were few to love, and he found very few to -praise. But he praised and loved Madame de Boislandry. - - -Although he became a person of consequence from the day his book was -out, he was not chosen to the Academy until 1693, and then not without -several postponements, considerable effort on the side of his friends -and strenuous opposition from Fontenelle and his partisans, whom he had -fustigated as Les Théobaldes in his _Caractères_. When he was in fact -chosen it was a very near thing. A M. de la Loubère, who blocked his -road, retired in his favour and transferred to him the suffrages of his -own supporters. For that generous act La Bruyère paid him a handsome -and a happy compliment in his address of reception: - -“A father,” he said, “takes his son to the theatre: a great crowd, the -door besieged. But he is a tall man and a stout. He breaks a way to -the turnstile, and as he is on the point of passing in, puts the lad -before him, who, without that foresight, would either have come in late -or not come in at all.” - -A pretty turn to give his gratitude! Apart from that he was -unnecessarily provocative. He went out of his way to praise Racine at -the expense of Corneille, which, seeing that Thomas Corneille was a -brother, and Fontenelle a nephew of the great man, and that both were -present was asking for trouble. Trouble there was--efforts to refuse -him inscription in the archives, a foaming attack in the _Mercure -Galant_, a plot to print and publish separately the address of his -co-nominee, and so on. But the Abbé Bignon stood by him; both addresses -were published together, La Bruyère’s with a fighting preface, and -inscription in the records followed. - -In his preface he girds at his critics for not having seen what he -was driving at in _Les Caractères_. They had taken it, he says, for a -collection of aphorisms and sentences loosely assorted under headings, -with portraits here and there of distinguished persons, scandalous or -malicious as might be. They took it, in short, for a nosegay of flowers -of speech, selected more for their pungency than their fragrance, -relieved by foliage luxuriant enough, but beset with thorns. That was -not at all his own idea of it. - -“Have they not observed,” he asks, “that of the sixteen chapters -comprised in it, there are fifteen which, applied to the discovery -of what is false and absurd in the objects of the passions and -attachments of mankind, aim only at breaking down the growths which -first enfeeble and presently extinguish the knowledge of God in -men--nothing therefore but preliminary to the sixteenth and last, in -which atheism is attacked, and possibly routed.” - -I confess that if the critics had not detected all that in the plan -or content of Sections I-XV, there is much excuse for them. I am in -the same condemnation. It is true that those sections may be said to -attack false gods in general: folly, ostentation, vainglory, evil -concupiscence and such like. It is true that La Bruyère is a _censor -morum_, like many a man before him and since. But it is not at all -obvious that he is clearing a way by his analytic philosophy for a -synthetic which will seat the true God firmly on his throne in the -heart. Nor is the effort to do that conspicuous. “I feel that there -is a God,” he says in his sixteenth section, “and I do not feel that -there is no God. That is enough for me; all the reasoning in the world -is beyond the purpose: I conclude that God is.” Very good; but then, -why all the reasoning in the book? Pascal said the same thing, rather -better. “It is the heart that feels God, not the reason. That is faith: -God sensible to the heart, not to the reason.” It is probably as near -as one can go. But how does La Bruyère make it more pointed by what -has gone before? If you prove to demonstration that the goods of this -world are but vanity, does that of itself imply, first that there is -another world, whose goods (secondly) are not vain? Not at all. My -impression is that La Bruyère had no such large intention when he -began, and that if he had had it, he would have declared it in his -opening observations. He was moralist and satirist both; but as much of -one as the other. Character rather than characteristics attracted him, -as I think, and the sharp sentences he aimed at were more literary than -ethical. As for maxim-drawing, although he drew plenty, he expressly -disavowed it. “I ought to say that I have had no desire to write -maxims. Maxims are the laws of morality, and I own that I have neither -the authority nor the genius which would fit me to legislate.... Those, -in a word, who make maxims desire to be believed. I, on the other hand, -am willing that anyone should say of me that I have not always well -observed, provided that he himself observe better.” - -And the last sentence in the book is this: “If these _Caractères_ of -mine are not relished I shall be surprised; and if they are I shall be -equally so.” - -There is a pose in that; but it is a literary pose. - - -He did not live long to enjoy his academic dignity. He made but one -appearance at the table, and then supported the candidature of somebody -whose name was not before the assembly. His proposal was of Dacier -the classic, but he owned that he should prefer to see Madame Dacier -chosen. On the 10th of May 1696, just a month after Madame de Sévigné, -he died of apoplexy at Versailles. He had rooms in the Chateau opening -on to the leads--bedroom, book-closet, and dressing-room. The inventory -of his effects shows him to have been possessed of some three hundred -books. Very few of his letters exist: one to Ménage about Theophrastus, -one to Bussy, thanking him for his vote and sending him the sixth -edition of _Les Caractères_, others to Condé, of earlier date, -about the progress of his grandson. Two letters to him from Jérôme -Phélypeaux, the son of Pontchartrain, survive, which hint at a happy -relationship between the scholar and the young blade. Phélypeaux, who -was just one-and-twenty, chaffs the philosopher; calls him a “fort joli -garçon,” suspects him of being “un des plus rudes joueurs de lansquenet -qui soit au monde.” La Bruyère’s solitary letter to his young friend is -in a light-hearted vein too, chiefly about the weather. - -It is so hot, he says, that yesterday he cooked a cake on his leads, -and an excellent cake. To-day it has rained a little. Then he plays the -fool very pleasantly. “Whether it will rain to-morrow, or whether it -won’t, is a thing, sir, which I could not pronounce if the health of -all Europe depended upon it. All the same, I believe, morally speaking, -that there will be a little rain; that when that rain shall have ceased -it will leave off raining, unless indeed it should begin to rain -again.” It is evidence of a sound heart that a learned man can write -so to a young friend; and as it is much better to love a man than not, -I close upon that frivolous, but happy note. La Bruyère was to live a -year more in his attic on the leads. Let us hope that he baked some -more cakes and wrote many more letters to young M. Phélypeaux. - - - - -COULEUR DE ROSE - - -Sainte-Beuve, in one of his early _Lundis_, tells a touching story -of Madame de Pompadour, the frail and pretty lady who was forced by -circumstances rather than native bent into becoming a Minister of -State, and one, at that, who had to measure swords with the great -Frederick of Prussia. At one stage of her career she had hopes of a -match between a daughter of her married state and a natural son of -Louis. There seemed to be the makings of a Duc du Maine in the lad, -of a Duchess consequently for her family. And that was the simple -objective of those of her faction who favoured the scheme. But her -own was simpler still. She spoke her real mind about it to Madame de -Hausset, her lady-in-waiting, from whose Mémoires Sainte-Beuve quotes -it. - -“Un brevet de duc pour mon fils,” she said, “c’est bien peu; et c’est à -cause que c’est son fils que je le préfère, ma bonne, à tous les petits -ducs de la Cour. Mes petits enfants participeraient en ressemblance du -grand-père et de la grand’-mère, et ce mélange que j’ai l’espoir de -voir ferait mon bonheur un jour.” - -Interesting revelation. “Les larmes lui vinrent aux yeux,” says Madame -de Hausset. She was bourgeoise, you see, this poor Pompadour, with -the homely instincts, the longing for the snug interior, the home, -the family life which characterise the plainly-born. She had been a -Mademoiselle Poisson. Poisson indeed! What had a Mademoiselle Poisson -to do with a Fils de Saint-Louis, or in a Parc aux Cerfs? Nothing -whatever in first intention, at least; rather she was all for love and -the world well lost. She had had her dreams, wherein Louis was to be -her “jo,” and they were to climb the hill together. The ideal remained -with her, for ever unrealised, always, it seemed, just realisable; and -her foreign and military adventures, the certain ruin of her country, -were so many shifts to arrive--she and Louis together, hand in hand--at -some Island of the Blest. No beautiful end will justify means so -unbeautiful, but to some extent it excuses them. - -Exactly on a level with that tale is one which I read somewhere lately: -also a French tale. It was about the exorbitantly-loved mistress of -some officer, who craved the rights of a wife, and worried him until -she had them--with the result that she obtained also the wrongs. She in -fact became what the man’s wife was at the moment: in her turn she was -_trompée_. And what were the rights for which she risked, and indeed -lost, everything she had? To preside at his breakfast-table, to dine -_vis-à-vis_ at home instead of at a restaurant, to sleep with her head -on his shoulder. That was all. And when she had it, her pride and joy -became his ineffable weariness. He carried his vice elsewhere. There -is the whole difference between two classes there--between Louis le -Désiré and his Poisson; between two instincts--Sentiment and Curiosity; -between two ideals--Distraction and Fulfilment. There is very nearly -all the essential difference that exists between men and women, the -active and the passive principle in human nature. - -Behind the sentimental there is always a moral reality. It may not be -all the sentimentalists believe it; they may mistake appearance of the -thing for the thing itself; but there is a reality. To preside over a -man’s tea-cups is symbolic; to be his wife is more than symbolic, for -a symbol may be a sacrament--and that is a reality. The wedding-ring -is a sacrament for those who seek fulfilment of their being. To those -who seek distraction of it, it simply puts a point to their need. -To the seekers of distraction there is neither end, nor symbol, nor -sacrament. Mr. Hardy once wrote a parable upon the theme--the Pursuit -of the Well-Beloved it was called; and after his manner he gave a -mocking twist to it. In it a nympholept, a sort of Louis XV, pursued -successively a woman, her daughter and her grand-daughter, and having -caught them one after another, found that there was nothing in it. Last -of all, the man died also, but not without feeling pretty sure that if -he could have waited for the great-grand-daughter all would have been -well with him. Such shadows we are, pursuing shadows. But women are -realists. They can see detail and fulfil themselves with that, failing -the great thing. That is a strength which is also a weakness, fatal -to them in many cases. Only, even so, it is not always easy to decide -which it is. Was it strength or weakness in Romney’s wife? She nursed -him through a fever, herself then a young girl, and he married her for -her pains. He lived with her for five years, gave her a family, and -left her. He hardly saw her again for forty years, when he returned, -broken and old, to Kendal, where he had left her, to be nursed once -more out of illness. So far as we know, she had no reproaches for -him. He died in her arms. What reality she may have found to support -her constancy one can hardly say; but at least she had more than the -nympholept had ever found in his forty years in the wilderness. Enough -indeed to give her fulfilment at the last. - -I have touched a thing there, or I am the more deceived, which Mr. -Lucas has entirely overlooked in a recent book of his. By so doing he -has turned what might have been a touching piece of sentiment into -something which, luckily for us, exists mainly in club arm-chairs. We -have had _Science from an Easy-Chair_, and none the worse for being -so delivered. But arm-chair ethics is another matter. In Mr. Lucas’s -_Rose and Rose_ a doctor, with a good cook (an important factor) and -an Epicurean friend, who has the knack of making cynicisms sound true, -by using a genial manner, becomes guardian of a child, who grows up -into a nice girl, and in due course falls in love. She chooses a man -whom the doctor dislikes, whom she, however, prefers to several other -candidates, against whom there are really only nods and winks from the -doctor and the Epicurean on the sofa. She marries, and isn’t happy. Her -husband, without being a prig--he had not enough colour for that--was a -precisian, careful of his money, who did his own housekeeping. He had -not such a good cook as the doctor had, and may have felt that Rose’s -education in housewifery had been neglected. Probably it had. A good -cook will coddle her clients, but not impart her mystery. I daresay -the husband was trying; but he seems to have been good-tempered and -honourable; he paid his way, and he gave Rose I a Rose II. That at -least should have been an asset on his side of the account. But not at -all. After a time, not clearly illuminated, in which nothing particular -seems to have happened--except one thing--Rose I ups and elopes with -the one thing, leaving her husband and Rose II in the lurch. She had -known her lover before marriage. He had very white teeth, and she had -nursed him through an illness. Well, when she found him again, his -teeth were still quite white, and he had another illness. So there you -were. She went off with him, I think to Singapore, and did not reappear -until the last chapter, by which time her ailing lover had cleaned his -teeth for the last time. The doctor, who still had the good cook, and -had adopted and brought up Rose II to the marriage-point, then received -back with a beating heart his Rose I. - -A doctor of seventy, with a good cook and digestion, an arm-chair -and a rather good cellar of port, fortified also by the caustic wit -of an epicurean patient, is capable of much. He might think (as Mr. -Lucas’s did) that it was all right. He would be for the line of least -resistance, and that would certainly be the baby. He happened to like -them--which put him in a strong position. But his Rose I went much -further than even Jean-Jacques had gone. He took his superfluous -children to the _Enfants Trouvés_. Rose simply dropped hers. “De Charon -pas un mot!” And so far as I can find out not a word afterwards, until -she came home in the last chapter, as if nothing had happened. Then, if -you please, Rose II takes the prodigal mother to her bosom, and they -all lived happily ever after. Life is not so simple as all that. It -could not be while women were women. - -The poor “unfortunate females” with whom I began this article are -against it. Mrs. Romney is against it. To the best of my belief the -middle-class, to which the Roses belong, is still against it. Many -marriages are unhappy, and many children left to shift; but not yet in -the middle-class to any dangerous extent. A doctor in an easy-chair, -with a good cook and cellar, does not count. His cook has unclassed him. - - - - -ART AND HEART - -GEORGE SAND AND FLAUBERT - - -Flaubert is, or was, the fashion in high-art circles; George Sand was -never that, and to-day is little more than a name in any circle. Yet in -the familiar letters, lately published in translation, translated by -Aimée McKenzie, between a pair so ill-assorted in temperament, so far -apart in the pigeon-holes of memory, it is she who proves herself the -better man. - -Gustave Flaubert will live for times to come less by what he did than -by his gesture in doing it. He was, before all, the explicit artist, -the art-for-art’s-sake, neck-or-nothing artist; and as such he will -stand in history when these strange creatures come up for review. He -made the enormous assumption of an aristocracy of intelligence. As, -once upon a time, Venice, and later on we British, claimed to hold the -gorgeous East in fee, so Flaubert, and the handful of poets, novelists -and playwrights whom he admitted as his equals, looked upon the world -at large with its hordes of busy people as so much stuff for the -workshop. Bourgeois all, Philistines all. They were the quarry; upon -them as they went about their affairs he would peep and botanise. He -would lay bare their hearts in action, their scheming brains, their -secret longings, dreams, agonies of remorse, desire, fear. All this as -a god might do it, a being apart, and for the diversion of a select -Olympus. It was useless to write for the rest, for they could not -even begin to understand you. More, it was an unworthy condescension. -It exposed you either to infamy, as when they prosecuted you for an -outrage against morals, or to ridicule, as when they asked you what -your novel “proved.” Write for ever, wear yourself to a thread, hunting -word or _nuance_; but write for the Olympians, not for the many. Such -was the doctrine of Flaubert, gigantic, bald, cavern-eyed, with the -moustaches of a Viking, and the voice of a bull; and so Anatole France -saw him in 1873: - - - “I had hardly been five minutes with him when the little parlour - hung with Arab curtains swam in the blood of twenty thousand - bourgeois with their throats cut. Striding to and fro, the - honest giant ground under his heels the brains of the municipal - councillors of Rouen.” - - -That was the sort of man who, in 1863, struck up a friendship with -George Sand. - -And she, the overflowing, mannish, brown old woman, his antithesis; her -vast heart still smouldering like a sleepy volcano; she who had kicked -over all the traces, sown all the wild oats, made spillikins of the Ten -Commandments, played leapfrog with the frying-pan and the fire; written -a hundred novels, as many plays, a thousand reviews, ten thousand -love-letters; grandmother now at Nohant, with a son whom she adored, -a little Aurore whom she idolised; still enormously busy, writing a -novel with each hand, a play with each foot, and reviews (perhaps) with -her nose; she of _Elle et Lui_, of _Consuelo_ and _Valentine_ and -_François le Champi_--how on earth came she to cope with the Berserk of -Croisset, who hated every other person in the world, took four years -to write a novel, and read through a whole library for the purpose? -The answer is easy. She made herself his grandmother, took him to her -capacious bosom, and handled him as he had never been handled before. -Affectionately--to him she was “cher maitre,” to her he was her “pauvre -enfant” or her “cher vieux”--but she could poke fun at him too. She -used to send him letters from imaginary bourgeois, injured by his -attacks, or stimulated by them, as might be. One was signed, “Victoire -Potelet, called Marengo Lirondelle, Veuve Dodin”: - - - “I have read your distinguished works, notably Madame Bavarie, - of which I think I am capable of being a model to you.... I am - well preserved for my advanced age and if you have a repugnance - for an artist in misfortune I should be content with your ideal - sentiments. You can then count on my heart not being able to - dispose of my person being married to a man of light character who - squandered my wax cabinet wherein were all figures of celebrities, - Kings, Emperors ancient and modern and celebrated crimes....” - - -A delicious letter to write and to receive. - -With all that, in spite of her impulse to love, to admire, to fall -at his feet, she saw what was the matter with her “pauvre enfant.” -_Madame Bovary_ hurt her because it was heartless. She understood -the prosecution of that dreadful book; she saw that the passionless -analysis of passion may be exceedingly indecent. She is guarded in her -references to it, but she saw quite well that the book was condemned, -not because it was indecent (though it was indecent), but because it -was cruel. She thought _L’Education Sentimentale_ a failure; ugly -without being reasonable: - - - “All the characters in that book are feeble and come to nothing, - except those with bad instincts; that is what you are reproached - with ... when people do not understand us it is always our - fault.... You say that it ought to be like that, and that M. - Flaubert will violate the rules of good taste if he shows his - thought and the aim of his literary enterprise. It is false in the - highest degree. When M. Flaubert writes well and seriously, one - attaches oneself to his personality. One wants to sink or swim - with him. If he leaves you in doubt, you lose interest in his - work, you neglect it, or you give it up.” - - -Not a doubt but she was right. You cannot with impunity leave your -heart out of your affair. I will not say that a good book cannot be -written with the intellect and the will; but I am convinced that a -great book was never yet so written. The greatest books in the world’s -history are those which the world at large knows to be good; and to the -making of such books goes the heart of a man as well as his brain. - -But eighteen-seventy was at hand. Isidore, as they called him, was -diddled into war. Everything went badly. French armies blew away like -smoke, France was invaded, the Prussians were at Rouen, and there was -no time to theorise about art. Sedan; the Prussians in Paris; then the -senseless rage of the Commune. Flaubert took it all _à sa manière_: - - - “I shall not tell you all I have suffered since September. Why - didn’t I die from it?... And I cannot get over it! I am not - consoled! I have no hope!” - - -And in another letter: - - - “Ah! dear and good master, _if you could only hate!_ That is what - you lack--hate.... Come now. Cry out! Thunder! Take your lyre and - touch the brazen string; the monsters will flee.” - - -Poor wretch, with the only remedy of the arrogant! But the fine old -priestess of another heaven and earth did as he bid her; cried out, -thundered, in a noble letter, which should be engraved on gold plates -and hung up on the Quai d’Orsay: - - - “What then, you want me to stop loving? You want me to say that - I have been mistaken all my life, that humanity is contemptible, - hateful, that it has always been and will always be so?... - You assert that the people has always been ferocious, the - priest always a hypocrite, the bourgeois a coward, the soldier - a brigand, the peasant a beast?... The people, you say? The - people is yourself and myself.... Whoever denies the people - cheapens himself, and gives the world the shameful spectacle of - apostasy....” - - -That is plain speaking; but she goes on to be prophetic. It would seem -as if she had foreseen a war and its aftermath infinitely more terrible -than that of 1870: - - - “We shall have to pity the German nation for its victories as much - as ourselves for our defeats, because this is the first act of its - moral dissolution. The drama of its degradation has begun.... It - will move very quickly.... _Well, the moral abasement of Germany - is not the future safety of France, and if we are called upon to - return to her the evil that has been done us, her collapse will - not give us back her life._” - - -Is not that nobly said? And then her great cry: - - - “Frenchmen, let us love one another ... let us love one another or - we are lost.” - - -She was but five years off her death-bed when she wrote that. In a -sense it was her swan-song. Had she never loved so blindly, she might -have been a better woman it may be. But she loved kindly, too, and will -be forgiven no doubt because she loved much. Love at any rate inspired -her to better purpose than Flaubert’s hate could have done. The world -is not to be advantaged by intellectual arrogance; nor does it appear -from these letters that poor Flaubert was at all advantaged either. It -served him but ill in literature and not at all in the adventure of -life. One must be a man before one can be an artist. Whether George -Sand was an artist or not, she neither knew nor cared. There is no -doubt at all, though, of her manliness. - - - - -A NOVEL AND A CLASSIC - -LA PRINCESS DE CLÈVES - - -The first novelist in the world as we know it (I say nothing of the -Greeks and Romans) was, I believe, a Pope--Pius II. It is not what -we have come to expect from the Vatican; but his novel, I ought to -add, was “only a little one.” The second, if I don’t mistake, was -Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who did the thing on a large scale. _Artamène, -ou Le Grand Cyrus_ is in twenty volumes; and though men be so strong -(some of them) as to have read it, it is not unkind to say that, for -the general, it is as dead as King Pandion. “Works,” then, won’t secure -more for an author than his name in a dictionary. You must have quality -to do that. The little _Princesse de Clèves_, written by a contemporary -of Mademoiselle’s, all compact in a small octavo of 170 pp., has -quality. First published in 1678, at this hour, says Mr. Ashton, in -his study of its author,[2] “there are preparing simultaneously an art -edition, a critical edition, and an édition de luxe, to say nothing of -the popular edition, which has just appeared.” Here is “that eternity -of fame,” or something like it, hoped for by the poet. I suppose the -nearest we can approach to that would be _Robinson Crusoe_. - -The authoress of the little classic was Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La -Vergne, who was born in 1634. She was of _petite noblesse_ on both -sides, but her mother’s remarriage to the Chevalier Renaud de Sévigné -lifted her into high society, and brought her acquainted with the -incomparable Marquise. If it had done nothing else for her, in doing -that it served two delightful women, and the world ever after. But it -did more. It procured for Mlle. de La Vergne her entry to the Hôtel -de Rambouillet; it gave her the wits for her masters; it gave her the -companionship of La Rochefoucauld; and it gave _us_ the Princesse de -Clèves. She married, or was married to, a provincial seigneur of so -little importance that everybody thought he was separated from his wife -some twenty years before he was. When separation did come, it was only -that insisted on by death; and through Mr. Ashton’s diligence we now -know when he died. Nothing about him, however, seems to matter much, -except the bare possibility that the relations between him, his wife, -and La Rochefoucauld, which may have been difficult and must have been -delicate, may also have given Madame de Lafayette the theme of her -novels. - -She wrote three novels altogether, and it is a curious thing about them -that they all deal with the same subject--namely, jealousy. Love, of -course, the everlasting French triangular love, is at the bottom of -them: inclination and duty contend for the heroine. But the jealousy -which consumes husband and lover alike is the real theme. Only in -the _Princesse de Clèves_ is the treatment fresh, the subject deeply -plumbed, the _dénoument_ original and unexpected. Those valuable -considerations, and the eloquence with which they are brought to bear, -may account for its instant popularity. It has another quality which -recommends it to readers of to-day--psychology. To a surprising extent, -considering its epoch, it does consider of men and women from within -outwards--not as clothes-props to be decked with rhetoric, but as -reasonable souls in human bodies, and sometimes as unreasonable souls. - -Here’s the story. Mademoiselle de Chartres, a high-born young beauty -of the Court of Henri II--is there any other novel in the world the -name of whose heroine is never revealed?--is married by her mother in -the opening pages to the Prince de Clèves, without inclination of her -own, or any marked distaste. The prince, we are told, is “parfaitement -bien fait,” brave, splendid, “with a prudence which is not at all -consistent with youth.” I do not learn that he was, in fact, a youth. -All goes well, nevertheless, until the return to Court of a certain Duc -de Nemours, a renowned breaker of hearts, more brave, more splendid, -more “bien fait,” and much less prudent, certainly, than the Prince de -Clèves. He arrives during a ball at the Louvre; Madame de Clèves nearly -steps into his arms by accident; their eyes meet; his are dazzled, hers -troubled, and the seed is sown. For a space of time she does not know -that she loves, or guess that _he_ does: the necessary discoveries are -provided for by some very good inventions. An accident to Nemours in a -tournament, in the trouble which it causes her, reveals him the truth; -his stealing of her picture, which she happens to witness, reveals it -to her. - -Discovery of the state of affairs, naturally, spurs the young man; -but it terrifies the lady. Greatly agitated, she prevails upon her -unsuspecting lord to take her into the country. Nemours follows them, -as she presently learns. Then, when her husband insists on her return -with him to Paris and the daily intercourse with the person she dreads, -driven into a corner, she confesses that she dare not obey him, since -her heart is not her own. Nothing will induce her to say more; and -the prince, disturbed as he is, is greatly touched by the nobility -and candour of her avowal. Unfortunately, he is not the only one to -be touched; for Nemours, who had been on the point of paying a visit -to his enchantress, stands in the ante-room and overhears the whole -conversation. He knew it all before, no doubt--but wait a moment. He is -so exalted by the sense of his mistress’s virtue that, on his way back -to Paris, he casts the whole story into a tale of “a friend” of his, -but with such a spirit of conviction thrilling in his tones, that it is -quite easy for him who receives it to be certain that “the friend” was -Nemours himself. That is really excellent invention, quite unforced, -and as simple as kissing. Naturally the tale is repeated, and puts -husband and wife at cross-purposes, since it makes either suspect the -other of having betrayed the secret. More, it tells the husband the -name of his wife’s lover. Further misunderstandings ensue, and last of -all, the husband dies of it. I confess that that seems to me rather -stiff. Men have died and worms have eaten them--but not the worms of -jealousy. - -The end of the book is perfectly original. When her grief and remorse -have worn themselves out, what is to prevent the lovers coming -together? A curious blend in her of piety and prudence, which again -seems to me very reasonable. Madame de Clèves feels that, practically, -Nemours was the death of her husband. He had not meant to be, did not -suspect that he was: she knows that, and allows that time might work -in his favour. “M. de Clèves,” she admits, “has only just expired, -and the melancholy object is too close at hand to allow me to take a -clear view of things.” Leave all that to time, then, by all means. But, -says she, at this moment “I am happy in the certainty of your love; -and though I know that my own will last for ever, can I be so sure of -yours? Do men keep their passion alight in these lifelong unions? Have -I the right to expect a miracle in my favour? Dare I put myself in the -position of seeing the certain end of that passion which constitutes -the whole of my happiness?” M. de Clèves, she goes on, was remarkable -for constancy--a lover throughout his married life. Was it not probable -that that was precisely because she did not at all respond? “You,” she -tells the young man, “have had many affairs of the heart, and will no -doubt have more. I shall not always be your happiness. I shall see you -kneel to some other woman as now you kneel to me.” No--she prefers him -to dangle, “always to be blest!” “I believe,” she owns, with remarkable -frankness, “that as the memory of M. de Clèves would be weakened -were it not kept awake by the interests of my peace of mind, so also -those interests themselves have need to be kept alive in me by the -remembrance of my duty.” This lady would rather be loved than love, it -is clear; but how long M. de Nemours would continue to sigh, being -given so unmistakably to understand that there would be nothing to sigh -for, is not so well established. - -He was very much distressed, but she would not budge. “The reasons that -she had for not marrying again appeared to her strong on the score of -duty, insurmountable on that of repose.” So she retired to a convent, -“and her life, which was not a long one, left behind her an example of -inimitable virtues.” - -So far as we are concerned to-day, the _Princesse de Clèves_ lives -upon its psychological insight. But for that I don’t see how it could -possibly have survived. It is a recital, in solid blocks of narrative -interspersed with harangues. It is extremely well-written in a terse, -measured style of the best tradition; Love is its only affair; nobody -under the rank of a Duke is referred to; as Horace Walpole said of -Vauxhall in its glory, the floor seems to be of beaten princes. None of -these excellencies are in its favour to-day. Why then does it exist? -Because it exhibits mental process logically and amusingly; and because -it offers a fresh and striking aspect of a situation as old as Abraham. - -FOOTNOTE: - -[2] _Madame de Lafayette: La vie et ses Œuvres_, par H. Ashton. -Cambridge University Press. - - - - -THE OTHER DOROTHY - - -Two Dorothys in our literature showed themselves worthy of a name -declaratory of so much. Dorothy Osborne was one, Dorothy Wordsworth, -much more famous, was another. If I were teacher of the Sixth Form in -a girls’ school I should take my class methodically through the pair, -satisfied that if I did my duty by them it would have as fair a view -of the moral and mystical philosophy of its sex as needs could ask -or require. The text-books exist; little but appreciation could be -expected from the teacher. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Letters and Journals -fill the better part of three small volumes. They need but little -annotation, save cross-references to her brother’s poems, and to -Coleridge’s. She was the muse of those two, and had perhaps more of -the soul, or substance, of poetry in her than either. They informed -what she taught them, and she taught them through the great years. -Of the two Dorothean voices hers was of the heights. More beautiful -interpretation of nature hardly exists in our tongue. “She tells us -much, but implies more. We may see deeply into ourselves, but she sees -deeply into a deeper self than most of us can discern. It is not only -that, knowing her, we are grounded in the rudiments of honour and -lovely living; it is to learn that human life can be so lived, and to -conclude that of that at least is the Kingdom of Heaven.” If I quote -from a paragraph of my own about her, it is only to save myself from -saying the same thing in other words. It is the only thing to say of a -woman long enskied and sainted by her lovers. - -Dorothy Osborne, whose little budget of seventy-seven letters and a -few scraps more has been exquisitely edited by the late Judge Parry, -did not dwell apart: starry as she was, she was much before her world. -She was daughter of a stout old cavalier, Sir Peter, and shared with -him the troubles of Civil War and sequestration of goods under the -Commonwealth. For six years, also, she was the lover and beloved of -William Temple, whom, until the end of that term, she had little hope -or prospect of marrying. Her father and his had other ideas of the -marriage of their children, and means of carrying them out. Sir Peter -Osborne had lost heavily by his defence of Guernsey for the King, and -sought to re-establish himself in the settlement of Dorothy. Sir John -Temple gave his son an allowance and was not disposed to increase it, -except for a handsome equivalent from the other side. When Sir Peter -died it was no better. Dorothy’s brothers brought up suitor after -suitor, of whom Henry Cromwell, the Protector’s second son, was the -most formidable, and Sir Justinian Isham, an elderly widower, with -four daughters older than herself, the most persistent. She was fairly -beset; and when she made her guardians understand that her heart was -fixed, the truth came out that they disliked and distrusted William -Temple. They doubted his principles, accused him of being sceptical in -religion, and (not without cause) of lukewarmness in politics. Temple -was a prudent youth, and was already on the fence, which he rarely -left all his life. During the Commonwealth he was a good deal abroad, -but whether abroad or at home, neither for the King nor his enemies. -He was moderately educated--Macaulay says that he had no Greek--but it -may have been too much for the Osbornes. Possibly he gave himself airs, -though Dorothy did not think so. However it was, the lovers could only -meet by accident, and must correspond under cover. That correspondence, -a year and a half of it, is all we have of her writing, and good as it -is, the thing it does best of all is to measure the extent of our loss. -Love-letters apart--and there must have been the worth of five years or -more of them lost--she was writing, we hear, at one time weekly to her -bosom-friend, Lady Diana Rich, a beauty of whose mind she had as high -an opinion as of her person. All that has gone. Later, when she had -been many years married, she made another close friend in Queen Mary -II, but the letters which went to her address in what a relative of -Dorothy’s describes as a “constant correspondence,” letters which were -greatly admired for their “fine style, delicate turn of wit and good -sense,” are supposed to have been burnt among her private papers just -before the Queen died. So they have gone too, and with them what chance -we may have had--as I think, a fair chance--of possessing ourselves of -a native Madame de Sévigné. It does not do, and is foolish, to press -might-have-beens too far, if only because you cannot press them home. -How are you to set off seventy-odd letters, for one thing, against -seventeen hundred? There are obvious parallels, however, with Madame -de Sévigné which there is no harm in remarking. She and Dorothy were -almost exactly coevals. Both were born in 1627; Madame died in 1696, -Miladi Temple (as she became) in 1695. Each was well-born, each had -one absorbing attachment, each was handsome. Dorothy, in the portrait -prefixed to the _Wayfarer_ edition, has a calm, grave face, remarkable -for its broad brow, level-gazing, uncompromising eyes, and fine Greek -nose, not at all a “petit nez carré.” She looks, as her letters prove -her to have been, a young woman of character and breeding. She does not -show the enchanting mobility of Madame de Sévigné, nor can she have -had it. At any rate, she was a beautiful woman, whose conversation, as -I judge, would have been distinguished by originality and a “delicate -turn of wit,” as her letters certainly are. Further resemblances, if -there are any, must be sought in the documents, to which I shall now -turn. - - -We are to read a woman’s love-letters, always “kittle work,” however -long ago the pen has fallen still, whether they are the letters of a -fond mother to her child or of a girl to her sweetheart; yet there is -no reason why we should shrink from the one intrusion and make light -of the other. Indeed, of the two, it is Madame de Sévigné who displays -the pageant of her bleeding heart, and is able more than once to make -the judicious grieve, and even the injudicious uncomfortable. There -was nothing of the “jolie païenne” in Dorothy Osborne. She served no -dangerous idolatry. There is not a phrase in her touching and often -beautiful letters, not even in those where her heart wails within -her and the sound of it enfolds and enhances her words--not there, -even, is there a word or a phrase which imperils her maiden dignity. -She loved, in her own way of speaking, “passionately and nobly.” It -is perfectly true. At all times, under all stresses, her nobility -held her passion bitted and bridled. She rode it on the curb, not, as -was Madame’s delightful weakness, “la bride sur le cou.” Her extreme -tenderness for the man she loved is implicit in every line. Nobody -could mistake; but when, man-like, he seemed to demand of her more and -ever more testimony, she was not to be turned further from her taste in -expression than from “dear” to “dearest.” Towards the end of the long -probation--and in our seventy-seven letters we have, in fact, the last -year and a half of it--a certain quickening of the pulse is discernible -in her writing, a certain breathlessness in the phraseology. “Dear! -Shall we ever be so happy, think you? Ah! I dare not hope it,” she -writes to him in one of the later letters, and cutting short the -formalities, ends very plainly, “Dear, I am yours.” Nothing more ardent -escapes her throughout, yet in that very frugality of utterance, -never was exalted and faithful love made more manifest. When--as did -happen--misunderstandings were magnified by Temple’s jealousy, and -aggravated by her honesty, she was hurt and showed it. Separation then -seemed the only remedy; despair gave her eloquence, and we have for -once a real cry of the heart: - -“If you have ever loved me, do not refuse the last request I shall ever -make you; ’tis to preserve yourself from the violence of your passion. -Vent it all upon me; call me and think me what you please; make me, -if it be possible, more wretched than I am. I’ll bear it without the -least murmur. Nay, I deserve it all, for had you never seen me you had -certainly been happy.... I am the most unfortunate woman breathing, but -I was never false. No; I call Heaven to witness that if my life could -satisfy for the least injury my fortune has done you ... I would lay it -down with greater joy than any person ever received a crown; and if I -ever forget what I owe you, or ever entertain a thought of kindness for -any person in the world besides, may I live a long and miserable life. -’Tis the greatest curse I can invent: if there be a greater, may I feel -it. This is all I can say. Tell me if it be possible I can do anything -for you, and tell me how I can deserve your pardon for all the trouble -I have given you. I would not die without it.” - -Eloquent, fierce words, indignant, dry with offended honour, but -certainly not lacking in nobility. It is the highest note struck in the -series, and can hurt nobody’s delicacy to read now. Happily the storm -passed over, the sky cleared, and the sun came out. From the sounding -of that wounded note there is a _diminuendo_ to be observed. The very -next letter is lower in tone, though she has some sarcasms for him -which probably did him good. In the next but one: “I will not reproach -you how ill an interpretation you made (of the attentions of Henry -Cromwell), because we’ll have no more quarrels.” Nor did they, though -they were still a year off marriage. So much of the love affair which -called the letters into being I must needs have given. I shall not -refer to it again. - -Her head went into her letters as well as her heart; and though love -was naturally the fount of her inspiration, she wrote as much to -entertain and enhearten her lover as to relieve herself. There is -enough literary quality in what we have left to make it a valuable -possession. It is by no means only to be learned from her with what -courage a seven years of star-crossed love may be borne; how gently -the fretting and chafing of a self-conscious man turned; how modesty -can veil passion without hiding it. At her discretion raillery can be -pungent without ceasing to be playful, and the rough and dirty currency -of the world handled without soiling her fingers, with a freedom bred -of innocence of thought. This still and well-bred Dorothy was a critic -of her day, and though she was pious had no fugitive and cloistered -virtue. All about her were living the survivors of a Court not quite so -profligate, perhaps, as that of the first or the third Stuart king, but -profligate enough. It was not the less so for being in hiding. She did -not approve of much that her acquaintance did, but she accepted it and, -as far as might be, excused it. “I am altogether of your mind,” she -writes, “that my Lady Sunderland is not to be followed in her marrying -fashion, and that Mr. Smith never appeared less her servant than in -desiring it. To speak truth, ’twas convenient for neither of them, and -in meaner people had been plain undoing of one another, which I cannot -understand to be kindness of either side. She had lost by it much of -the repute she had gained by keeping herself a widow; it was then -believed that wit and discretion were to be reconciled in her person -that have so seldom been persuaded to meet in anybody else. But we are -all mortal.” From that, which is temperate statement, go on to consider -a passage of temperate argument which is surely notable in a girl of -her age. She was twenty-six when she wrote: - -“’Tis strange to see the folly that possesses the young people of this -age, and the liberties they take to themselves. I have the charity to -believe they appear very much worse than they are, and that the want -of a Court to govern themselves by is in great part the cause of their -ruin. Though that was no perfect school of virtue, yet vice there wore -her mask, and appeared so unlike herself that she gave no scandal. Such -as were really as discreet as they seemed to be gave good example, and -the eminency of their condition made others strive to imitate them, -or at least they durst not own a contrary course. All who had good -principles and inclinations were encouraged in them, and such as had -neither were forced to put on a handsome disguise that they might not -be out of countenance at themselves.” - -Is that not excellent discourse upon the subject of “young people” -from a girl of six-and-twenty? Dorothy, it will be seen, writes the -modern as opposed to the seventeenth-century English, but does it -in mid-career of the century. Comparison with her contemporary, the -Duchess of Newcastle, is proof enough. “Madam,” writes that very -“blue” lady, “here was the Lord W. N. to visit me, whose discourse, as -you say, is like a pair of bellows to a spark of fire in a chimney, -where are coals or wood, for as this spark would sooner go out than -inkindle the fuel, if it were not blown, so his discourse doth set the -hearer’s brain on a light flame, which heats the wit, and inlightens -the understanding.” And so on--like a wounded snake. Dorothy, I think, -was almost the first to do what Milton never did, and what Dryden -was to make the standard of good prose. James Howell preceded her -slightly in that use, but was not so sure a hand at it. In cogency -and simplicity of expression hers is like good eighteenth-century -letter-writing. She apologises to her lover for “disputing again.” He -had been a churl to find fault with such sagacious reflections. - -There is no sign that she was the least bit “blue,” though she read -the books of that _coterie_, and esteemed them, with reservations. She -had the Cléopâtre of Calprenède, the _Grand Cyrus_ of la Scudéri, and -passed them on, volume by volume, to Temple, remarking of “L’amant -non aimé” in the latter that he was an ass. She had Lord Broghill’s -_Parthenissa_ hot from the press. “’Tis handsome language,” she says of -it. “You would know it to be writ by a person of good quality, though -you were not told it; but, on the whole, I am not much taken with -it.” The stories were too much like all the others, she thought--and -certainly they were: “the ladies are so kind they make no sport.” One -thing in _Parthenissa_ made her angry. “I confess I have no patience -for our _faiseurs de Romance_ when they make women court. It will -never enter into my head that ’tis possible any woman can love where -she is not first loved; and much less that if they should do that, they -could have the face to own it.” That is high doctrine, yet inquiry -yields the best sort of support to it. - -So far from being a _précieuse_, Dorothy quarrelled with _Parthenissa_ -on account of preciosity. “Another fault I find, too, in the -style--’tis affected. _Ambitioned_ is a great word with him, and -_ignore_; _my concern_, or _of great concern_ is, it seems, properer -than _concernment_?” She expects Temple, nevertheless, to fit her -up with the newest town-phrases. “Pray what is meant by _wellness_ -and _unwellness_; and why is _to some extreme_ better than _to some -extremity_?” She has her own ideas about style. “All letters, methinks, -should be free and easy as one’s discourse; not studied as an oration, -nor made up of hard words like a charm.” Then she pillories “a -gentleman I knew, who would never say ‘the weather grew cold,’ but that -‘winter began to salute us.’” She had “no patience with such coxcombs.” -A jolly word of her own is “pleasinger.” I have not met it anywhere -else. “’Twill be pleasinger to you, I am sure, to tell you how fond I -am of your lock.” His “lock” was a lock of hair which he had sent her -on demand before he went to Ireland. For a moment it charmed her out -of her reserve. “Cut no more on’t, I would not have it spoiled for -the world. If you love me be careful on’t.” For once she lets herself -go. “I would not have the rule absolutely true without exceptions -that hard hairs are ill-natured, for then I should be so. But I can -allow that soft hairs are good, and so are you, or I am deceived as -much as you are if you think I do not love you enough. Tell me, my -dearest, am I? You will not be if you think I am yours.” That charming -little outbreak, written _à bride abattue_, concludes a letter which -begins, as all of them do, with the formal “Sir.” In its complete -unaffectedness and spontaneity it is not far behind _Notre Dame des -Rochers_. - -To return to Dorothy’s reading, I do not know that, country for -country, she was far behind her contemporary. Novel apart, she is -reading the travels of Mendez Pinto, quotes the action, not the words, -of Shakespeare’s _Richard III_, has Spanish proverbs at command, writes -a note in French, takes a part in _The Lost Lady_, knows Cowley’s -poems, and was a “devote” of Dr. Jeremy Taylor. From that goodly divine -she takes a long argument upon resignation of the will, nearly word for -word, and holds it up for Temple’s admiration. She is more reticent -about her religious opinions than Madame was, having to deal with a -lover suspected of being something of a Gallic instead of a daughter -adept in Descartes. If she was primed with Jeremy Taylor she was in a -good way. Yet I don’t know what that doctor would have said to this: - -“We complain of this world,” she says, “and the variety of crosses -and afflictions it abounds in, and for all this, who is weary on’t -(more than in discourse), who thinks with pleasure of leaving it, or -preparing for the next? We see old folks that have outlived all the -comforts of life, desire to continue it, and nothing can wean us from -the folly of preferring a mortal being, subject to great infirmity and -unavoidable decays, before an immortal one, and all the glories that -are promised with it.” - -“Is not this very like preaching?” she asks. It is less like the -preaching of the author of _Holy Dying_ than that of six-and-twenty -in love; but undoubtedly it proceeds from common experience. She was -merciless to bad sermons, able to make such good ones of her own. “God -forgive me, I was as near laughing yesterday where I should not. Would -you believe that I had the grace to go hear a sermon upon a week-day?” -Stephen Marshall was the preacher, a roaring divine of the prevailing -type. “He is so famed that I expected rare things of him, and seriously -I listened to him at first with as much reverence as if he had been -St. Paul; and what do you think he told us? Why, that if there were no -Kings, no Queens, no lords, no ladies, nor gentlemen, nor gentlewomen -in the world, ’twould be no loss at all to God Almighty. This we had -over some forty times, which made me remember it whether I would or -not.... Yet, I’ll say for him, he stood stoutly for tithes, though, in -my opinion, few deserved them less than he; and it may be he would be -better without them.” Marshall should have known better than to try his -levelling doctrine at Chicksands. - -To the making of all good letter-writers, all those to whom it is a -natural vent for the emotions, goes quality, that which we call style, -an entire naturalness of expression turned in a manner of one’s own, -an incommunicable something not to be mistaken. All the best have -it; the second-best have something of it. Into literary quality goes, -of course, moral quality, _l’homme même_. Now, Dorothy Osborne has -quality: little as we have, there is enough to show that. She can -be playful, but not sparkle, not ripple like the Marquise nor set a -whole letter twinkling like the sea in a fresh wind; hers is a still -wind. Nor has she such news to impart, to be “le dessus de touts ses -panniers.” Chicksands was not Paris. She has spirit, but not gallantry. -Madame de Sévigné’s chosen defence was always attack. Dorothy is as -quick to see her advantage, but has a more staid manner of execution. -She will be slower to believe herself menaced; and when she discovers -it will reason plainly with the offender, as much for his good as for -her justification. Take this for an example. Temple, who was a fussy -man, a precisian, had been scolding her for fruit-eating. You could -hardly expect a lady to approve lectures upon her digestion from her -lover. She replied: - -“In my opinion you do not understand the laws of friendship aright. -’Tis generally believed it owes its birth to an agreement and -conformity of humours, and that it lives no longer than ’tis preserved -by the mutual care of those that bred it.” Is there no style in that? -“’Tis wholly governed by equality, and can there be such a thing in -it as distinction of power? No, sure, if we are friends we must both -command and both obey alike; indeed, a mistress and a servant sounds -otherwise; but that is ceremony and this is truth. Yet what reason had -I to furnish you with a stick to beat myself withal, or desire that -you should command, that do it so severely?” Observe her conduct of the -relative there! “I must eat fruit no longer than I could be content you -should be in a fever; is not that an absolute forbidding of me? It has -frighted me just now from a basket of the most tempting cherries that -e’er I saw, though I know you did not mean that I should eat none. But -if you had I think I should have obeyed you.” - -Evidently she had tossed her head over his dictation; but how well in -hand is her temper, how admirable her style! It is very much in the -manner of Madame when her querulous daughter had hurt her feelings; and -entirely in that manner Madame would throw up the sponge at the end -of a successful attack--entirely as Dorothy does here, with her, “If -you had I think I should have obeyed you.” Dorothy is not, however, so -quick to veer from the stormy to the rainy quarter. She can be fierce, -as I have shown, when her feelings are overstrained, but there is no -hysterical passion. Modesty forbade. “Love is a terrible word,” she -says, “and I should blush to death if anything but a letter accused me -on’t.” She could be bold on such occasions; she could be as saucy as -Rosalind, and as tender. When it is a case of his going to Ireland, on -business of his father’s, which may advance their personal affair, she -urges him to be off. But when the hour has come--“You must give Nan -leave to cut off a lock of your hair for me.... Oh, my heart! What a -sigh was there! I will not tell you how many this journey causes, nor -the fears and apprehensions I have for you. No, I long to be rid of -you--am afraid you will not go soon enough. Do not you believe this? -No, my dearest, I know you do not, whate’er you say....” Any good girl -in love would feel like that, but not everyone could let you hear the -quickened breath in a letter three hundred years old. - -Sévigné was wise, and so is Dorothy. She read and could criticise, -she read and remembered. With less philosophy, and no fatalism, she -looked her world in the face, and had no illusions about it. But she -was in love, and it was a good world. Cheerfulness kept breaking in. -“What an age we live in, where ’tis a miracle if in ten couples that -are married, two of them live so as not to publish to the world that -they cannot agree.” Yet she thinks that one should follow the Saviour’s -precept, take up the cross and follow. She believes that the trouble is -mostly of the woman’s making, for as for the husband, if he grumbles, -and the wife says nothing, he will stop for lack of nutriment, and -nobody be any the worse. A splenetic husband of her acquaintance had -the trick, when harassed, of rising in the night and banging the table -with a club. His wife provided a stout cushion for the table, and was -not disturbed. - -Sévigné is merry, and so is Dorothy, though much more demure. In her -seventy letters you will find no _tours de force_--nothing like the -“prairie” letter, the marriage-of-Mademoiselle, or the “incendie” -letter. She can touch you off a situation in a phrase excellently -well, as when after a quarrel comes a reconciliation between her and -her brother Henry, and she says, “’Tis wonderful to see what curtseys -and legs pass between us; and as before we were thought the kindest -brother and sister, we are certainly now the most complimental -couple in England”; or, asking “Is it true my Lord Whitelocke goes -Ambassador?” she comments upon him, “He was never meant for a courtier -at home, I believe. Yet ’tis a gracious Prince.” Another Commonwealth -lord, whose title depended upon the standing of the Court of Chancery, -has a flick in the same letter: “’Twill be sad news for my Lord Keble’s -son. He will have nothing left to say when ‘my Lord, my father,’ is -taken from him.” Those are both brisk and pleasant; more ambitious is -her discussion of the “ingredients” of a husband, which opens with -sketches of impossible husbands. He “must not be so much of a country -gentleman as to understand nothing but horses and dogs, and be fonder -of either than his wife”; nor one “whose aim reaches no further than -to be Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff”; nor “a -thing that began the world in a free school ... and is at his furthest -when he reaches the Inns of Court.” He must not be “a town gallant -neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary,” who “makes court -to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is -laughed at equally”; nor a “travelled Monsieur, whose head is all -feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but dances and -duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes when everybody else dies -of cold to see him.” In fact, “he must love me, and I him, as much as -we are capable of.” Those impersonations might have come as well from -Belmont as from Chicksands. - -I said just now that we have no “prairie” letter from Dorothy. We have -something not far from it, though, and I will give as much of it as I -dare. It is of her very best in the way of unforced, happy description; -but after it I must give no more. The date of it is early May, 1653: - -“You ask me how I pass my time here. I can give you a perfect account -not only of what I do for the present, but of what I am likely to -do this seven years if I stay here so long. I rise in the morning -reasonably early, and before I am ready I go round the house till I -am weary of that, and then into the garden till it grows too hot for -me. About ten o’clock I think of making me ready, and when that’s done -I go into my father’s chamber, and from thence to dinner, where my -cousin Mollie and I sit in great state in a room and at a table that -would hold a great many more. After dinner we sit and talk till Mr. B. -(a suitor of Dorothy’s, a Mr. Levinus Bennet) comes in question, and -then I am gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and -about six or seven o’clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by -the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and -sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare their -voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, -and find a vast difference there; but, trust me, I think these are as -innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find they want nothing -to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that -they are so.” - -I could go on to empty the whole paragraph on to the page, for it is -all excellent; but will stop with that happily rounded period. Charm, -or the deuce, is in it. - -Beyond it I will not go. Too little straw has been allowed to the -making of my brick. With twice as much more--with some of the letters -to Lady Diana or Queen Mary, freed from the preoccupations of a love -affair--who can say that we might not have had something to set off -against the letters to Mesdames de Lafayette, de Coulanges, de Guitant? -We have something very distinctive and charming, at any rate, enough -to certify us that we have missed of a letter-writer of excellence -who need not have feared comparison with our best. She had not the -vivacity, or the opportunities of Lady Mary; but she had what that -lively observer missed of, a heart wherewith to inform her writing. She -had not the wit of Lady Harriet Granville, but she had more humanity. -I would not put her up, in a Court of Claims, to “walk” before Mrs. -Carlyle, or plead her sagacity and tenderness against that unhappy -woman’s brilliancy. Yet who would hesitate in the choice of one of them -for correspondent? Whose book would you sooner have at the bed’s head? -Such questions, however, do not arise. You judge Literature like coins -at the Mint. You are either good or bad. If you ring false--out you go. - - - - -REALISM WITH A DIFFERENCE - - -_Moll Flanders_, which has now received the large octavo honours due -to a classic, was written, Defoe tells us, in 1683. The statement is -almost certainly part of the cheat, for it was published in 1722, two -years after _Robinson Crusoe_; and if it had been true he would have -performed a feat which has never been equalled, that of writing his -first novel with the accomplishment shown in that of his prime. Nothing -in the technique of _Crusoe_ shows any advance upon _Moll Flanders_. -Its greater popularity is, of course, due to its matter: it is more -_simpatico_, more moving, more endearing to youth. The adventures upon -the island are more arbitrary and more surprising. They come from -outside the hero, not from his inside. Anything shocking may happen -upon a desert island, even the greatest shock of all, which is to find -that it is not deserted. _Suave mari magno_ ... the tag holds good when -you are thrilled by a tale in the first person. The flesh creeps; but -it is like being tickled by a kindly hand. The pleasure to be had from -_Moll Flanders_ comes when we know enough of the world to have need of -large allowances. Then it is that we are interested in the liabilities -of character, and love to see the oracle worked out. In _Moll Flanders_ -we do. With the single premise that Moll was the abandoned child of a -thief and baggage, cast upon the parish by gypsies, everything that -happens to her follows as inevitably as night the day. She engages -the compassion of a genteel family, and is taken in quasi-adoption. -She grows up with the children of the house, petted by the daughters, -and in due time, naturally, by the sons, one of whom “undoes” her. -But by the time that happens we know something of Moll’s temperament, -and nod sagaciously at what, we say, was bound to be. So it goes on -from stave to stave to make out the promise of the title-page that, -born in Newgate, she was “Twelve Year a _Whore_, five times a _Wife_ -(whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a _Thief_, Eight Year a -transported _Felon_ in _Virginia_, at last grew _Rich_, liv’d Honest, -and died a _Penitent_.” It sounds uncommonly like Boccaccio’s tale of -the Princess of Babylon, not at all unlike _Gil Blas_; but the point is -that it is most of all like Life, that the lurid programme is smoothly -and punctually kept, and that we never withhold our assent for a -moment--not even from the added statement that it was “Written from her -own Memorandums.” It is no more necessary to believe that than that it -was written in 1683; but there is no difficulty in believing either. - -Defoe, if he began to write novels at fifty-eight, came by his method -as Athené by her ægis; it sprang fully armed from his brain. He never -varied it for a worse, and could not have for a better. It was to -tell his story in plain English without emotion, and to get his facts -right. That is his secret, which nobody since his time has ever worked -so well. The _Police News_ style has often been used, and many a -writer has laboured after his facts. Some have succeeded--very few--in -smothering their feelings, and some, of course, have had no feelings -to smother. Defoe alone accomplishes his ends with consummate mastery. -He is certainly our greatest realist, and there are few in France to -beat him. Perhaps the nearest approach to him was made by the Abbé -Prevost in _Manon Lescaut_ (1731)--but put Zola beside him if you -would judge his method fairly. Zola, who went about his business with -stuffed notebooks, succeeded in various aims of the novelist, but not -in commanding assent. He could not control himself; the poor man had an -itch. Artistically speaking, he did unpardonable things. Some of the -bestiality of _La Terre_ might have happened in a Norman village; a -Norman village _might_ have been called Rognes. To conjoin the two in -a realistic romance is paltry. It absolutely disenchants the reader, -and gives away the writer and his malady with both hands. You may -call a town Eatanswill in a satire; but _La Terre_ is not a satire. -As for _Manon_, astonishingly documented as it is, the conviction -which it carries does not survive perusal, though it revives in every -re-perusal. Its intention, which is rather to suggest than to narrate, -to provoke than to satisfy, is apparent when the book is shut. No such -aims are to be detected in _Moll Flanders_, concerned apparently with -the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. - -The triumph of the method, used as Defoe only can use it, remains -to be told. _Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner._ We can all see -round Moll Flanders, behind her as well as before. The current of the -tale, every coil and eddy and backwash of it, is not only exactly -like life, it puts us in a position to appraise life. Conviction of -such a matter, rare as it is, is not so difficult to secure as the -understanding of it. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances -in every guilty course. One finds them for oneself as a neighbour, in -the jury box, on the bench. One finds them or invents them. In _Moll -Flanders_ they steal upon us unawares until, quite suddenly, we find -ourselves with her in a human relationship. Her close shaves, her -near-run things in shop-lifting give us thrills; but when she is rash -enough to steal a horse we are aghast. Mad-woman! how can she dispose -of a horse in a common lodging-house? When she is finally lagged we -agonise with her. Why? We know that she could not help herself. But -there’s more than that. She is never put beyond our moral pale. She -steals from children, but suffers both shame and sorrow. She robs a -poor householder of her valuables in a fire, but cannot forget the -treachery. She picks the pocket of a generous lover when he is drunk, -but repents and confesses. He forgives her, and so do we. All her -normal relations with her fellow-creatures are warm with the milk of -human kindness. For instance, she puts herself, for business purposes, -in the disposition of a “Governess,” that is, an old gentlewoman who -is procuress, midwife, baby-farmer, and receiver of stolen goods. But -the pair are on happy and natural terms. Moll calls her Mother; the -old thing calls Moll Child; and when she is transported as a convicted -thief she entrusts “Mother” with all her little fortune, and is -faithfully served in that and other concerns. The pair of them, rascals -together, are bad lots, if you will--and good sorts too. That’s the -virtue of the realistic method when you are not on the look out for bad -smells. - -In her dealings with my sex, certainly she was often and unguardedly -a wife, as well as something else not so proper. Yet kindness was her -only fault. Whatever else she may have been as a wife, she was a good -one, faithful, affectionate, sympathetic, and most responsive. If the -young man who undid her had kept his promises, I daresay she would have -lived to be Mayoress of Colchester and mother to some sixteen children, -without a stain upon her character. As it was, she must have had half -that number. She is never a beast. She never revels, nor wallows, nor -is besotted; she is no slave to appetite. She plays hazard one night -and wins a matter of fifty guineas. She will not play again for fear of -becoming a gamester. She continues a thief for many years, though often -moved to break away. Why does she not break away? - - - “Though by this job I was become considerably richer than before, - yet the resolution I had formerly taken of leaving off this horrid - trade when I had gotten a little more, did not return, but I - must still get farther, and more; and the avarice joined so with - the success, that I had no more thoughts of coming to a timely - alteration of life, though without it I could expect no safety, no - tranquillity in the possession of what I had so wickedly gained; - but a little more, and a little more, was the case still.” - - -What could be more human, and on our footing more reasonable, than -that? That, in fact, which saved _The Beggar’s Opera_ from being an -immoral, cynical, even a flagrant work, was precisely that which gives -Moll Flanders our sympathy--its large humanity. There is heart in -every average human being, as well as much vice and an amazing amount -of indolence; but to see it there you must have it yourself, and to -exhibit it there you must be a good deal of a genius. We feel for Moll -without esteeming her: we say, “There but for the grace of God....” -What saves us? Well, caution, timidity, the likes of those; but chiefly -the grace of God. - - - - -MR. PEPYS HIS APPLE-CART - - -It is hard to deal fairly by Samuel Pepys, and that because he has -dealt so fairly by himself. You cannot even put that amazing candour of -his down to his credit, for reasons which grow upon you as you read. -If he was candid it was to please himself, and, as one must suppose, -nobody else in the world. Whatever his motive was, it certainly was not -to read a moral lesson to mankind. But that he is all in his Diary, the -whole of him, inside and out, is evident upon any prolonged perusal of -it. He has neither been blind to himself, nor kind; he never excuses -himself, and rarely accuses. He pities himself, when he has been found -out, and hugs himself when he has made a good deal, or played the -fortunate gallant; but he rarely indeed pities anybody else, and if he -hugs other persons, always mentions it. Though we cannot impute his -honesty to righteousness, nevertheless it seems rather hard that he -should have to suffer for it. - -Anyhow, his merits would have transpired without a diary. State -papers exist to testify to them; his mounting credit is its own -record. Evelyn liked him, so did the King and his brother, so did -Sir William Coventry. Undoubtedly he was an able Clerk of the Acts, -and by the standard of any times but some which are still modern -history, an honest public servant. Had he lived in the golden age of -the Civil Service, an age which only ended a few years ago, he would -not have taken any commissions at all. As things are now, he took -very few; as they were in his day, what he took was negligible. I -feel sure that the Crown did uncommonly well by him. Then, socially, -he was a brisk, companionable creature, with an infectious laugh, a -taste for languages, the drama, parlour-science and chamber-music. -He had curiosity, which always makes a man good company; he was -both dilettante and connoisseur; he was affable with all sorts and -conditions, gave himself no airs, had vanity, but little conceit. Women -liked him; he had a way with him. And then he liked them. I cannot -imagine Pepys for five minutes in a woman’s company without her knowing -all that she need about him, and about it. Morally, he was a beast, -without pity or scruple, or personal shame, or courage, or honour. He -was depraved, and knew it, and didn’t care so long as no one else knew -it. He was the slave of public opinion, and in moments of apprehension -what that might be, sacrificed his companion in his dealing without a -thought. And yet women liked him, and suffered him. Psychologically, he -is, so far, an unsolved problem. Nobody has found out why on earth he -wrote himself down what he did write down; I have seen no account which -satisfies. To that I should add that no attempt to explain him seems to -have been made since we received all that we ever can receive of his -Diary. - -R. L. Stevenson’s exegesis was based upon Minors Bright, who is now -superseded by Wheatley. It is elaborate, and I think fanciful. I doubt -if it could have been accepted upon the then available evidence: it -is clean out of date now. Shortly, it was that Pepys, taking (as he -did) infinite pleasure in the minutiæ of memory, was careful to make a -hoard of such things for his after-needs. But even when that theory was -propounded we knew that Pepys recorded his shames and humiliations, and -it is difficult to allow that he might have looked forward to recalling -those towards his latter end. Now, however, we know the worst that -Pepys could say of himself, and lack nothing but the literal details of -his acts. We know how he glorifies and how he humiliates himself--for -he writes down all his failures along with his triumphs; we can see him -splash in the bagnio, and afterwards get rolled in the gutter. It can -be no question of remembrance. What is it, then? Any man may conceive, -and many will do the things which Pepys did: but not record them, -complacently, with the grin of relish. Why on earth did he do that? -I have a suggestion to make, though I am not certain that it meets -the whole case. My first opinion was that he derived that cerebral -excitation out of his details which it is to be supposed the lad may -who defaces walls with a stump of pencil, or the lover who, writing -about kisses, or craving them as he writes, ends up his letter with -a pullulation of little crosses--paraphrases of his passion. Reading -him again, I see that that is not all. It is part of the truth; it is -true of the middle of the Diary. But it is not the whole truth--not -true of the beginning, not true of the end. I now believe that he -originally intended his entries of delinquency as an act of penance or -humiliation--and that is supported by the accounts he gives of all his -shifts and turns under the screw of jealousy--but that out of that -act he found himself obtaining a perverse pleasure, which overlaid his -first intention and supplanted it. In the earlier diary you will find -him expressing his relief over lapses avoided or temptations withstood; -from 1663 onwards that is exceedingly rare; then, at the very end, -when he has been found out and has lost conceit in his delight, -his reflections are as contrite as you please. For the moment that -explanation satisfies me. - - -Pepys’s Diary covers ten years of his life, his twenty-seventh to his -thirty-eighth. They would be critical years in the life of any married -man, particularly when, as was the case, they coincided with the -Restoration and the sudden unlocking of all doors. When he began to -record he had been married five years, to a woman seven years younger -than himself, a diligent, handsome, thrifty, responsive little French -girl, whom he ruled, evidently, upon a theory; for he says more than -once that he found it desirable to give way when she showed a knowledge -of what her rights were. Being, as she was, exceedingly alive to them -in one essential matter, so long as those were observed she was easy -about others. Therefore, for the first two recorded years, Pepys had -very much of his own way. He kept her short of money, stinted her in -clothes and fal-lals[3]; and left her much alone while he pursued -business and pleasure abroad. All that she took in good part, until -her eyes were opened to what was going on. She did not, for instance, -mind his going to the theatre three or four times a week, until she -found out what he did when he was there. But when she became aware of -Mrs. Knipp and Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Gwynne, and of relations which were -not scenic, there was great trouble at home. After it she insisted -on going with him, and he hardly dared show his nose in a playhouse -without her. But that was later on: for for the first three years of -the diary, beyond a little kissing, or staying up “playing the fool -with the lass of the house” when he was on a jaunt, there was little -for Mrs. Pepys to worry over. Kissing, indeed, of the ceremonial kind, -she did not mind in the least. It was the English habit, as it still is -in one class of life at least. Pepys himself was advised to put up with -it when his wife was so distinguished. “So to Mrs. Hunt, where I found -a Frenchman, a lodger of hers, at dinner, and just as I came in was -kissing my wife, which I did not like, though there could not be any -hurt in it.” Surely not. - -But Pepys himself was not content with kisses of ceremony, nor did he -select proper objects of ceremony for his attentions of the sort--that -is, when once he was fairly on the primrose path. At first it was, “God -forgive me! what a mind I had to her, but did not meddle with her.” -That did not last. In September of that very year--it was 1662--he both -had the mind and the opportunity; he followed his inclination; and -though he recorded his first total lapse with great contrition, he was -past praying for, and with increasing frequency past writing about. -Vivacious man of pleasure as he was, and as his portrait shows him, -he discovers himself to us as voracious too. He cast a wide net, and -took all fish that came, gentle and simple, mistress and maid, mother -and daughter. Not a shop that had a handsome woman in it, not a tavern -with a pretty maid, between Fish Street Hill and Westminster Hall, but -he drew it regularly, like a covert. I am sure he was no worse than his -superiors; I think he may have been a good deal better than most of -them; he was never a corsair, like Rochester, Sedley, Jermyn; he was in -too small a way for that. But we can only guess at the whole of their -malpractice by adding two to two, and we know all about his; therefore -our gorges rise. Even his peculiar depravity was probably not peculiar -at all. - - - “Yet to our buzzards overfed - Virtue was Pandarus to Vice; - A maiden was a maidenhead, - A maidenhead a matter of price....” - - -That was the foible of a hateful age, and it was Pepys’s. He preyed -upon modesty. He must overcome virtue. He could not tire of that, and -wrought in his way incurable mischief. In short, he was a middle-class -Minotaur, a devourer of virgins. - -I shall not follow him in his hateful bird-netting except just as far -as may be necessary to relate the manner of his discomfiture. It is -sufficient to say that, given time to spread his lures, he succeeded -often enough. His office and patronage were favourite decoys of his. -So Mrs. Bagwell, who pleased him as “a virtuous modest woman,” became -something else by his leading her to suppose that he would get her -husband a good job, he being a carpenter in Deptford Yard. So it was -with other unfortunate creatures who courted his dispensing of places -to their men. But he had an easier prey, a natural prey nearer home, -in his wife’s maids. It lay among their duties, it seems, to assist -him at his levee and coucher: he certainly had a way with him--so what -were the poor girls to do? They had no chance. It does not appear that -any one of them escaped altogether, though, thanks to his lively fear -of Mrs. Pepys, no one of them found Mrs. Bagwell’s fate. That was not -their fault, poor things; they were mostly as wax under his hands. But -Mercer, Mary Mercer, faced him and got off with nothing worse than a -little fondling. She was a girl with both wit and courage; remained on -friendly terms with the household afterwards, visiting terms; and, when -once she had shown him her mind, was not chased by the destroyer. But -she, who came of good people--“a decayed tradesman’s daughter”--was -an accomplished young woman, with a singing-voice which had been well -trained, and plenty of _savoir faire_. Really, I think, Pepys, taught -by a rebuff, came to respect Mercer. In August 1665 he noted of her in -his jargon that he had his head combed “by my little girle, to whom -I confess que je sum demasiado kind ... mais il faut que je leave it -lest it bring me to alcum major inconvenience.” That was just what it -did lead to. Mercer left the house on the day the Fire of London broke -out, and for the best Pepys could do did not choose to return. The -Fire gave him other and healthier thoughts for a time: presently when -he met her in church, she refused to look at him. So she escaped, -slightly chipped; and afterwards, when, as I say, she came to be on -visiting terms with Mrs. Pepys, there are signs that she came and went -unmolested. But to her succeeded by-and-by Deb Willett, the last victim -of the Minotaur of Axe Yard. It was the addition of this girl to his -harvest which upset his load of Hesperian apples. - -He was disposed to her on hearsay, before he saw her; for Mrs. Pepys -had been light-minded enough to declare the engagement of a pretty -girl--the very thing to set him on fire. So presently, on the 27th -September 1667, “while I was busy at the office, my wife sends for me -to come home, and what was it but to see the pretty girl which she is -taking to wait upon her: and though she seems not altogether so great a -beauty as she had before told me, yet indeed she is mighty pretty; and -so pretty that I find I shall be too pleased with it.... She seems, by -her discourse, to be grave beyond her bigness and age, and exceeding -well bred as to her deportment, having been a scholar in a school at -Bow these seven or eight years. To the office again, my head running -on this pretty girl.” It certainly did, if we may trust the Diary. She -kept him awake at night; and when she came, brought by Mr. Batelier, he -was more than smitten with her, he was impressed. “So grave as I never -saw a little thing in my life,” he says. “Indeed, I think her a little -too good for my family, and so well carriaged as I hardly ever saw.” -His next recorded sentiment is, “I wish my wife may use her well.” How -are you to deal with a man like that--except by remembering that all -men are like that? - -She accompanied her employers to Brampton and gave satisfaction at -least to one of them. By the middle of October that had been observed -by the other, for he writes of that day that they had been to see “The -Coffee House” at the Duke’s Theatre; and “here, before the play began, -my wife begun to complain of Willett’s confidence in sitting cheek -by jowl by us, which was a poor thing; but I perceive she is already -jealous of my kindness to her, so that I begin to fear this girl is -not likely to stay long with us.” She stayed too long for her comfort, -or for his. On December 22nd Pepys “first did give her a little kiss, -she being a very pretty humoured girle, and so one that I do love -mightily.” In January she is promoted to be “Deb” in the Diary; in -March she is kissed, and more than kissed. Then comes the last volume. - -By the time that was reached, Pepys’s weakness had become a mania. His -apple-cart, so to speak, was full to overflowing, Deb Willett, though -he had no suspicion of it, the last fruit he was to add to it. His -work suffered, his mind suffered; there were omens of dirty weather. -June 18th, 1668: “At noon home to dinner, where my wife still in a -melancholy, fusty humour, and crying, and do not tell me plainly what -it is; but I by little words find that she hath heard of my going to -plays, and carrying people abroad every day in her absence; and that -I cannot help [fearing] but the storm will break out, I think, in a -little time.” At night it was no better: “My wife troubled all night, -and about one o’clock goes out of bed to the girl’s bed, which did -trouble me, she crying and sobbing, without telling me the cause.” -That ought to have warned him, if he had not gone too far. But he had. -He pursued his course unabated; and then, October 25th, came the crash. -It was Sunday. He rose, “discoursing with my wife about our house and -the many new things we are doing of”; he went to church, saw Jack Fenn -and his wife, “a pretty black woman”; he dined at home, had his wife -and the boy to read to him; at night “W. Batelier comes and sups with -us”--all well so far. And then--thunder, out of a clear sky, pealing -about his ears. “After supper, to have my head combed by Deb, which -occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world, -for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl....” -(_sic_). - -A comic scene, but humiliating to all three. “I was,” he says, “at a -wonderful loss upon it, and the girle also, and I endeavoured to put it -off, but my wife was struck mute, and grew angry, and so her voice come -to her, grew quite out of order, and I to say little, but to bed.” To -bed, but not to sleep. At two in the morning the storm which had been -massing itself in the heart and mind of Mrs. Pepys broke over his head, -at first in tears and a secret. That--and it was a shrewd hit--was that -“she was a Roman Catholic, and had received the Holy Sacrament.” Pepys, -who had always been a Puritan at heart, was very much disturbed, yet -dared no reproaches, so that the blow failed of its mark. She went on, -then, “from one thing to another,” until “at last it appears plainly -her trouble was at what she saw.” Yes, but what had she seen? “I did -not know how much she saw, and therefore said nothing to her.” Towards -morning “a little sleep.” If he thought that the end of it, he was -to find it only the beginning. Mrs. Pepys, outraged on her tenderest -side, grew from strength to strength; and as for her deplorable spouse, -for the first time in his Diary, if not in his days, he really felt -something which reads like remorse. His mind, he says of it next day, -“was mightily troubled for the poor girle, whom I fear I have undone by -this, my wife telling me that she would turn her out of doors.” That -threat was not at once executed. Deb was treated with severe clemency -for the better part of a month, allowed to visit her friends and suit -herself with a new situation; made to feel, however, that she was in -disgrace, and definitely cut off from any further assistance at her -master’s toilette. The miserable man hardly dared look at her; not a -word seems to have passed between them, though after a while, forced -to take a line of conduct by his wife’s reiterated attacks, Pepys “did -by a little note ... advise her (Deb) that I did continue to deny that -ever I kissed her, and so she might govern herself.” Deb read it and -threw it back again as he bade her; but she could not “govern herself.” -The very next day Mrs. Pepys examined her, and everything came out. -Pepys had to dine alone that night, for his wife kept her room, and -when he went up to see her, blazed out upon him his infidelity and -perjury together. To make it all the worse for him, she then told him -of temptations which had been put in her own way--by Captain Ferrers, -Lord Sandwich and other friends of his. _A la guerre comme à la -guerre._ All which “I did acknowledge, and was troubled for, and wept.” - -Without a leg to stand on, he must do as he was told. On the 12th -November, therefore, he must call Deb to his chamber in the presence -of his wife, “and there did, with tears in my eyes, which I could not -help, discharge her, and advise her to be gone as soon as she could, -and never to see me, or let me see her more while she was in the house, -which she took with tears too.” She had found herself a place, and -went to it; and Pepys looked forward now to a peace which he had not -known, he says, for twenty days. He did not get it, because he was both -knave and fool. Which this shows him to be I don’t pretend to decide. -He writes on the very day the girl left: “The truth is, I have a good -mind to have the maidenhead of this girl, which I should not doubt to -have if je could get time para be con her.” The Italians used to call -the compound of inclination and ability _il talento_, a word which our -language lacks. Under the spur of _il talento_ this incurable rascal -hunted London to find Deb’s whereabouts. He had reason for suspecting -Holborn, and quartered that; then Whetstone Park seemed probable, in -the service of one Dr. Allbon. Not known there. In Eagle Court, off the -Strand, he presently found out that “this Dr. Allbon is a kind of poor -broken fellow that dare not show his head, nor to be known where he is -gone.” Nevertheless, he did finally run down his doctor in Fleet Street -or thereby, even met a man in his employ, bribed him to take a message -“to a little gentlewoman, one Mrs. Willett, that is with him,” and -waited in the court of Somerset House for an answer. He did not have -it till after dark. She was well, and he might see her if he would, -“but no more.” That was enough for Pepys. Off he went in a coach, “it -being now dark,” and “she come into the coach to me, and je did baiser -her....” Then the real, the incredible Pepys: “I did nevertheless give -her the best council I could, to have a care of her honour, and to -fear God, and suffer no man para avoir to do con her as je have done, -which she promised.” The advice was sound and, from him, infallible. -To-morrow was to prove that much to him. I must afford myself the -morrow’s entry. - -“19th. Up and at the office all the morning, with my heart full of joy -to think in what a safe condition all my matters now stand between -my wife and Deb and me, and at noon, running upstairs to see the -upholsterers, who are at work hanging my best room ... I find my wife -sitting sad in the dining-room; which enquiring into the reason of, she -begun to call me all the false, rotten-hearted rogues in the world, -letting me understand that I was with Deb yesterday, which, thinking it -impossible for her ever to understand, I did a while deny, but at last -did, for the ease of my mind and hers, and for ever to discharge my -heart of this wicked business, I did confess all, and above stairs in -our bed chamber there I did endure the sorrow of her threats and vows -and curses all the afternoon.... So with most perfect confusion of face -and heart, and sorrow and shame, in the greatest agony in the world I -did pass this afternoon, fearing that it will never have an end; but -at last I did call for W. Hewer, who I was forced to make privy now -to all, and the poor fellow did cry like a child, and obtained what I -could not, that she would be pacified upon condition that I would give -it under my hand never to see or speak with Deb while I live, as I had -before with Pierce and Knipp, and which I did also, God knows, promise -for Deb too, but I have the confidence to deny it to the perjury of -myself.” - -It is extraordinary that Pepys, who could face with sangfroid -committees of Lords and Commons, marshal his facts and figures and come -off with credit, could be such a poltroon in this domestic inquest as -to deny what was obviously within his wife’s knowledge. But when to -terror you add a sense of guilt, a man will tell you anything. It is -still more incredible that that did not finish the story--but it did -not. The next day, what must he do but send W. Hewer off to Deb, “to -tell her that I had told my wife all of my being with her the other -night, so that if my wife should send she might not make the business -worse by denying it.” The alert Mrs. Pepys made it her business to find -out the whole of that, no doubt from W. Hewer himself; so that when -Pepys came home the whole thing began all over again, and this time -with violence. She “did fall to revile me in the bitterest manner in -the world, and could not refrain to strike me and pull my hair, which I -resolved to bear with, and had good reason to bear it.” He was driven -to call in Hewer again as intermediary; but this time the conditions -were terrible. Nothing would suit Mrs. Pepys but a letter conceived -in the most insulting and outrageous terms to the girl, who was not -what it styled her, from Pepys, who had done his best to make her so. -Even he was shocked at it, and once wrote it out without the word. Mrs. -Pepys tore it up. Then, on a wink passing from Hewer, he wrote it down, -and domestic fury was satisfied. It was handed to Hewer to deliver, -with “a sharp message” from Mrs. Pepys. That was the climax. No man -could be more deeply degraded than that; and to do Pepys credit, he -knew it, and could hardly bear himself. Hewer, on his own motion, it -would seem, delivered but half of the letter; the other, the injurious -half, was brought back to the unfortunate sinner. Deb never knew the -worst of him, and, so far as the Diary reveals, never saw him again. - -Love will lead a man any lengths, and justify itself, at least to -himself; but not lust. That is a sensitive plant, and shrivels in the -cold. Pepys, it will have been seen, was not prepared to go a yard out -of his prosperous way in pursuit or defence of the favourites of his -whim. If it is to his credit that he reports at length his humiliating -rebuffs, that is all that can be said for him. If he affords a -disagreeable spectacle, luckily it is also exceedingly ridiculous, -and the only thing about it difficult to understand is that he _does_ -afford it. To me it is much more interesting to speculate upon the -attitude of his victims towards these amorous advances. Concerned they -must have been; but were they interested, amused, embarrassed, or -bored? Did they take it as all in the day’s work; had they resentment -and feared to show it; or were they, poor children, led to take him -seriously? I am not thinking of the Knipps and Pierces, Betty Lanes -and half-dozen Nells--hardy perennials--but of his fresh young Mercer, -“decayed tradesman’s daughter,” or grave young Deb, carefully educated -at Bow, come also of a good Bristol family, with established aunts and -uncles, and all the rest of it--girls who certainly came new to the -kind of thing. Is it possible that Deb thrilled to a possible romance? -And how did she accept the discovery of what in fact it was? With the -one exception of Mercer, they are almost lay figures in the Diary, -mute and passive under his greedy hands. Some were baggages, no doubt, -or baggages-elect. They cannot all have been baggages. Deb, with her -gravity and measured speech, what was she? There’s no telling. I don’t -commend her for having seen him again, certainly not for sitting with -him in the coach. Then I remember that she was barely twenty years old. -She escaped, however, with some smirches, and one may hope that she -found a good husband. _Bocca baciata non perde ventura._ - -FOOTNOTE: - -[3] In 1665, for instance, he laid out, at one blow, £55 on his own, -and £12 on her clothes. - - - - -ONE OF LAMB’S CREDITORS - - -There are writers upon the roll of whom nobody demands, “How begot, -how nourishéd”--not many, but one or two. Milton, for instance: does -anyone try to derive Milton? Or Cowper? Or Wordsworth? Others, nearly -all the others, abide our question, and no wonder. Is not all creative -effort the agony of recalling? Is not the brain a sponge? Is there -anything new except arrangement? Very well--then Defoe must have been a -borrower, though he seems stark new. We know that Charles Lamb picked -up words, phrases, cadences as a magnet steel-filings; but his latest -and best biographer now goes further and seeks to lay his mental habit -to somebody. He has devoted an essay to deriving his whimsicality, as -he calls it, for want of a more comprehensive term, which shall include -the freakish humour which is peculiarly Lamb’s, and the “unreluctant -egoism” which he thinks Lamb was the first of us to signalise. I could -quarrel with him there, “if I had the mind,” being very sure that Lamb -was not the first egoist in English Literature by a very long way. -If he was, then Mr. Lucas must devote another essay dealing with the -claims of Sterne, Colley Cibber, Sir Thomas Browne, Cowley, Pepys, -and Lord Herbert of Cherbury, to name no more. However, let that go. -Lamb’s cast of humour, a glancing, many-faceted thing, as wayward as -the wind, but like the wind, from whatever airt it blow, bringing upon -it the scent of what garden plots, hedgerows, beanfields and thymy -uplands it may have crossed--_that_ Mr. Lucas has been driven, seeing -that he must needs buckle it to his egoism, to obtain from the mild -mock-epic of Cowper, which does seem to me a wide cast to have made, -with a small fry netted for his pains. When I came upon and had read -that essay, in Mr. Lucas’s _Giving and Receiving_, I gazed for a few -minutes thoughtfully into the fire, then got up and took down from the -shelf the second volume of the _Life_ of Charles by the same hand. In a -useful Appendix III, upon “Charles Lamb’s Books,” I found what I wanted. - -Before I say what it was I wanted, and what found, I ought to -acknowledge that Mr. Lucas draws a proper distinction between the -Essays of Elia and the Letters of Charles Lamb, one, however, which he -might not have drawn if the Letters of Cowper had not been published -long after Lamb began to write letters. That being the fact, he has -to derive Lamb’s Letters from Cowper’s Poems, and Elia’s Essays from -Cowper’s Letters, rather a _chassez-croisez_ piece of work. Except for -that necessity I think he might have gone as near as Mr. Saintsbury -does (in _A Letter Book_) to fining the difference between Essays and -Letters to one of “full dress” and “undress.” To me the difference is -much greater, is precisely, indeed, the difference between Charles -Lamb and Elia. Lamb’s alias was not (like Sterne’s) a stalking-horse; -it was a mask and domino. With the name he put on the thing signified, -or as much of it as he cared for, gave himself Lincolnshire ancestry, -shifted at ease his own relatives, his early loves, the haunts of his -youth, and used them the more freely for his occasions. Yet he treated -his form with respect, neither let it run down, nor stepped out of -character. Elia sometimes borrowed from Lamb. The “Convict” letter to -Barron Field yielded its bitter-sweet to an essay, but was transformed -in the taking. Not to speak profanely, there was an Assumption of the -Lamb. In the Letters whim is master: Lamb is Will o’ the Wisp. From -essay to essay Elia may change like Harlequin, but each single essay -is ruled by one mood. Elia was evidently, if not avowedly, a debtor. -Whiffs of Sir Thomas Browne, of Addison, Burton, Shakespeare, Montaigne -(or Florio) float up from the page as you read. So they do in Lamb’s -Letters. But there is one very signally in Lamb, not so evident in -Elia, and it was that which I looked for in Mr. Lucas’s Appendix III, -where, sure enough, among Lamb’s books I found: - - - Howell (James), _Epistolae Ho-Elianae_, 1645-55. - - -There, beyond doubt, is the source of more than a little of Lamb’s -whimsicality. - -James Howell, who was born in 1593, third of the many children of the -Reverend Thomas Howell, curate of Llangammarch and other places in -Brecknockshire, was a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, a good deal -of a scholar (able, as he boasted, to say his prayers in a different -language on every day of the week and in all of them on Sundays), -something of an adventurer, much of a traveller, and a man who never -lost a job for lack of asking for it. He was variously employed, -commercially in France and Italy, diplomatically in Spain (where he -was when Prince Charles would, and did, a-wooing go), in Germany also, -and the North of England: a traveller to better purpose than Coryat, -who slightly preceded him. He returned from each country he visited -set up in its language, and able to discourse reasonably upon its -politics, religion and economics. None the less, as I suppose, he was -idle, for he never made money or kept an employment. He was perpetually -scribbling, if you can call that an employment; the bibliographical -list of his “Works” contains something like seventy numbers. Many of -them are pamphlets, political, controversial, allegorical and what not. -If there had been any journals he would have been a journalist--for -that, out of due time, was he born. He wrote much on philology, and -pretty well; he wrote a deal of poetry too, and very badly. I shall -only inflict two specimens upon the reader. This is the opening of a -“small hymn” for Christmas Day: - - - “Hail holy Tyde - Wherein a Bride, - A Virgin (which is more) - Brought forth a Son, - The lyke was done - Ne’er in this world before--;” - - -and this is the beginning of an elegy upon the Earl of Dorset, - - - “But is great Sackville dead? Do we him lack, - And will not all the Elements wear black?” - - -and this the middle, - - - “Thus have I blubber’d out some tears and verse - On this renownéd heroe and his herse,” - - -and this the end, - - - “In the meantime this Epitaph shall shut, - And to my Elegy a period put--” - - -on which the only commentary I feel able to make is, Oh! - -He wrote in all the languages he had. “I would have you know,” he -writes to his friend Young, “that I have, though never married, -divers children already, some French, some Latin, one Italian, and -many English; and though they be but poor brats of the brain, yet -are they legitimate, and Apollo himself vouchsafed to co-operate in -their production.” It may be doubted whether any of them survived -their father except his _Familiar Letters_, those Epistolae Ho-Elianae -which were published and republished in his lifetime, and many times -afterwards, have survived even to this day, been favourites with -Thackeray as well as Charles Lamb; and are in fact the first of our -private letters to each other to enter an admitted chapter of our -Literature. If we could hope to see ourselves abreast of France it -would be by means of Howell that we should get there. Exactly at the -time when Guy Patin was writing his vivacious, very modern letters -to his confrère in Lyons, here was our man, quite as brisk and even -more modern in tone. Unfortunately for us, France had her Balzac, -well under way, and writing in a prose as easy and reasonable as -Renan’s. But Howell is strikingly modern compared, say, with Donne or -Milton. He reports, for example, that the Prince Palatine has got -together “a jolly considerable army”; and to a poetical friend he avows -his ambition (on what pretence we have seen) to become a “Lord of -Parnassus,” and to be the choice of “those nice girls,” the Muses! It -has been said by more than one critic, that not all Howell’s bullets -found, or were intended to find, their billets, that in fact letters -addressed to Sir K. D., to the Lord Sa., and more explicitly to the -Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Clare and so on, were really addressed -to the air, or the public. It may be so. Others were certainly real -enough. There is little doubt, though, that he wrote with an eye -to publication. Some of the longest of them are less letters than -treatises, and good as they are of their kind, contain none of the -additaments which make a letter a much better thing than a library of -treatises. By far the greater part are real letters, and excellent -letters too. Howell was something of a pedant, something perhaps of -a coxcomb. Thackeray called him a prig. Certainly, to address a long -letter containing many anecdotes _ad hoc_ and a “Gradual Hymn tending -to the honour of the holy name of God” to a ship’s captain upon his -“frailty” of “swearing in all his discourses deep and far-fetched -oaths,” is the act of prig or coxcomb--but I think Howell was the -latter. A prig believes that he can do you good, and the coxcomb -desires to air his talents. That was Howell’s simple design, and so I -am sure the captain took it. But I should like to know how Ben Jonson, -of whose tribe at the Devil Tavern Howell professed himself, took a -similar reproof. The burly poet had hurt the feelings of Inigo Jones -by putting him in a play as Vitruvius Hoop: whereupon Howell addressed -his “Father Ben” as follows: - - - “You know, - - Anser, apis, vitulus, populos et regna gubernant ... but of - the three the pen is the most predominant. I know you have a - commanding one, but you must not let it tyrannise in that manner, - as you have done lately. Some give it out that there was a hair - in it, or that your ink was too thick with gall, else it would - not have so bespattered and shaken the reputation of a royal - architect.” - - -Of his whimsicality I find examples enough to drown in. There is his -pleasant tale to a cousin just off to the Dutch wars, of the soldier -who had been there and returned, and being asked what exploits he had -done, answered, That he had cut off a Spaniard’s legs. “Reply being -made that that was no great matter, it had been something if he had cut -off his head; O, said he, you must consider his head was off before.” -And the other, truly excellent, of that Earl of Kildare who, arraigned -before the Lord-Deputy for having set fire to, and burned down, the -Church of Cashel, excused himself by saying that he would never have -done such a thing had he not understood that the Bishop was inside. -But here is from a letter a piece so exactly in Lamb’s vein when he is -turning a whimsical notion about and about, and at each turn enhancing -it, that I feel sure Howell _aut diabolus_ must have taught it him: - -First, the theme--“I was according to your desire to visit the late -new-married couple more than once, and to tell you true, I never -saw such a disparity between two that were made one flesh in all my -life; he handsome outwardly, but of odd conditions; she excellently -qualified, but hard-favoured; so that the one may be compared to a -cloth of tissue doublet cut upon coarse canvas, the other to a buckram -petticoat lined with satin.” - -Then, like Lamb, he begins to hang up his conceits: - - - “I think _Clotho_ had her fingers smutted in snuffing the candle - when she began to spin the thread of her life.... A blind man is - fittest to hear her sing; one would take delight to see her dance - if masked, and it would please you to discourse with her in the - dark, for then she is best company. When you marry, I wish you - such an inside of a wife, but from such an outward phisnomy the - Lord deliver you.” - - -Phisnomy, or visnomy, is a word which Lamb has made his own. - -How often has Lamb held this vein too. “The French are a free and -debonair, accostable people, both men and women.... Whereas the old -rule was that there could be no true friendship without comessation of -a bushel of salt, one may have enough there before he eat a spoonful -with them. I like that Friendship which by soft gentle passes steals -upon the affection and grows mellow with time by reciprocal offices and -trials of love.” And here is an example of pictorial quality which I -must not leave out. In the stress of Civil War he writes to a friend -in Amsterdam, “While you adorn your churches, we destroy them here. -Among others, poor Paul’s looks like a great skeleton, so pitifully -handled that you may tell her ribs through her skin. Her body looks -like the hulk of some huge Portugal Carake that having crossed the line -twelve times and made three voyages to the East Indies, lies rotting -upon the Strand.... You know that once a stable was made a temple, but -now a temple is become a stable.” - -Lamb, we all know, had a love of tags and proverbs, and could string -them with anyone. Not more surely than Howell could, who has a long -letter of advice to a friend, upon marriage, consisting entirely of -them. As thus: - - - “Sir, although I am none of those that love to have an oar in - everyone’s boat, or such a busybody as deserves to be hit in the - teeth, yet you and I having eaten a peck of salt together, and - having a hint that you are upon a business that will make or mar - you, for a man’s best fortune or his worst’s a wife, I would wish - you to look before you leap, and make more than two words to a - bargain.” - - -He keeps it up with immense zest for two full sheets, and ends all with -“yours to the altar.” If Lamb knew that, he would never have forgotten -it--and I believe he never did. - - - - -CROCUS AND PRIMROSE - - -This year, it deserves to be recorded, the first crocus and the first -primrose flowered together on January 18th. I know not when this -article will appear; it may well be that Spring will have set in -with its usual severity, in other words, that in mid-March we may be -snowbound, and in mid-winter, as is now customary, before my record -can be read. That is as may be, but my duty is clear. For the moment, -and until we have become used to the new procession of Seasons, a -first crocus and first primrose on the 18th of January constitute an -event in South Wilts, if they do not in the rest of England. And lest -any caviller should arise, as assuredly he will, and tell me that my -primrose was the last, not the first, I may as well nip him in the -bud of his endeavour by declaring that leaf and flower are alike new -growth. It is true that many primulas have a second flowering--my -_japonicas_ always do. But I do not observe that they make new leaf -twice a year. Here, the primrose, which is comparatively rare even -in the woods, and unknown in the hedges, disappears altogether, like -the cowslip, until new growth begins. The cowslip is our only native -primula. - -Such things--I don’t mean the early flowering, but the flowering of -such things at all--are events in the garden, red-letter days in its -year. The flowers themselves, to some one of them, to some another, -are vocal; for there is a real language of flowers, very different -from that made out of them by the love-sick. It has no syntax, and -is incommunicable by speech. Heard melodies are sweet, but those -unheard ...! So with flower-language. The first wild crocus talks to -me immediately of Greece, where on the top of rugged Chelmos I saw it -in perfection burning its way into the snow. I had climbed up there -to see Homer’s [Greek: Stygos hydatos aipa rheethra], a sight, I am -bound to say, not at all remarkable. Charon could have hopped over -it. It was the crocuses that I remarked: the orange, called, I think, -_bulbo-codium_, and a white striped with brown, which I have always -known as the Scotch crocus, but which in botany is named _biflorus_. -It is no use my saying that that is the way to grow them. It is -Nature’s way, but cannot be ours, unless they will seed themselves, as -some will. So far as I know, those two will not. They will increase -otherwise; but by seeding flowers alone will you get the happy -accidents which make a natural wild garden. They tell me, by the by, -that you can hardly now obtain that most beautiful of all crocus, the -blue _Imperati_, an autumn flower. I don’t know whether I am singularly -favoured--I hope not; but at any rate, I can obtain, within reason, -as much _Imperati_--not as I want, for that could never be, but as -is good for me. I put some few dozen into a rock-garden which I then -had, some fifteen years ago, and it has increased a hundredfold. So -have some other species of crocus. _Imperati_ grows very large and, -unfortunately, very lax. Heavy rain in September will beat it down to a -purple jelly. But when fair weather lasts out that loveliest month of -the year crocus _Imperati_ is a theme for poets. - -As for the nurseryman’s crocus, colour is its real point; and it should -be grown in masses for that alone; in masses where it can get the sun, -and the bees can get _it_. Unfortunately it has many enemies. In London -it lures the sparrows into Bacchic orgies; obscenely they tear it petal -from petal. In the country field-mice seek it in the bud and eat the -embryo flower. I have tried everything, Stockholm tar and sand mixed in -layers in the barrow; read lead and paraffin; strawberry netting, soot -and such like. I owe my best remedy to the discovery I have made that, -much as mice like crocuses, they like toasted cheese yet more. One or -two traps with that for a bait will save vast numbers of crocuses, -for it is a mistake to suppose that many mice are involved. A pack of -field-mice is a terrible thought, but only a nightmare happily. One -mouse, with the whole night before him, will ruin a border. - -The primrose is vocal of my childhood and the Kentish woodlands. -There they used to grow marvellously, though now I daresay that Lord -Beaconsfield and his League have made an end of them. Wherever the axe -had been there were they, in sheets, in a galaxy, even to the scent -of milk in the spicy air. I remember now, whenever I see my first -primrose of the year, the almost fainting rapture with which we used -to see, smell, taste, and handle them again--on some still warm April -day--after the waiting through the long winter. For winters really were -long, and wintry, then--or I think so. One used to wake in the morning -and find the water-bottle frozen solid, the sponge like a brick. One -used to learn to skate (for which now we go to Switzerland and catch -influenza in a super-heated hotel), make snowmen, blow on one’s fingers -to fasten one’s shirt-collar. But I have lived in the West of England -this twenty years, and can only remember one snowy Christmas. Ah, and -how many warm Aprils? Perhaps as many. - -But the primrose is not common here. You will find it over the hills -in the greensand, and again just over the Dorset border, in Cranborne -Chace: not in this valley. I make it grow, importing it, because I -can’t do without it; and so do the villagers, for the same reason. But -they like it coloured, and have a rooted belief that if you plant a -primrose upside down it will come up with red flowers. I tell them that -it is Cruelty to Primroses. They point me out red-flowering roots which -have been obtained in this way; and I end the inconsequent argument by -saying, Well, anyhow, I don’t want it--village logic. - -As I said just now, wild gardening, by which I mean the garden use of -wild flowers, is to be confessed a failure unless you can induce the -flowers to seed themselves. Once you can do that, you may talk about -your wild garden. Once I saw a corner of a man’s garden, where there -was a waterfall, and _ramondia_ growing as it does in the Pyrenees. -That was a memorable sight. I have had my own moderate successes of -the sort. Anemone _blanda_ has become as common as groundsel; but -_apennina_ refuses to seed. The Widow iris, _tuberosa_, which started -in life in a dry ditch under Vesuvius, and came to South Wilts in a -sponge bag, is another weed. I left a garden with more of that growing -in it than anybody can want. Fritillary is not a native, but seeds -freely in my water meadow; colchicum, another alien, increases like -coltsfoot. Both the cyclamens, the Neapolitan and the Greek, have large -families, which can never be too large--and so on. Such are some of my -little triumphs, of which I dare not boast lest I be rebuked as once I -was by a high lady in garden society. It was not kind of her, though -no doubt she did it for my good. It was a time when I was growing -cushion irises, with enormous pains and exiguous results. However, one -fine Spring I did induce _Iris iberica_ to utter its extraordinary -flowers--six of it, to be exact. Of that feat, meeting her at a party, -I vaunted to the high lady. I can still see the glimmering of her -eyelids, hear her dry voice commenting, “_I_ had four hundred.” It -may have been good for me, but was it good for her? If I had known -then, as I knew afterwards, that she had flowered her four hundred at -Aix-les-Bains, I think I might have rebuked her--so far as high ladies -can be rebuked--by telling her that she could have had four thousand on -such terms. But I knew nothing of it. There she had me. - -I would not now give twopence for _Iris iberica_ unless it would -increase in my plot. I have come to make that the staple of good -gardening, and would set no bounds to feats of the kind. Certainly, -I am not with the purists who say--or said--that it is inartistic to -grow foreign things in wild spaces. The Reverend William Mason, in -the eighteenth century, who turned Capability Brown into poetry, was -plainly of that opinion. It may be inartistic, but it is very jolly. I -am experimenting just now with some of the plants and shrubs from Tibet -which poor Farrer gave us before he died. I find that most of them -grow like Jack’s beanstalk, but care very little about flowering. I -have a briar-rose, a grey-leafed, bushy, spiky thing rather like _Rosa -Willmottia_, which gives me canes tree-high, but so far no flowers. -Farrer’s behymned _Viburnun fragrans_ grows apace: its fragrance -has yet to be tested. He said that it was like heliotrope, and I -hope that it may prove so. Then I have a Spiraea from Tibet, which -came to me from Wisley in a thumb-pot, marked “Rosa-species,” but is -unmitigated Spiraea. You may practically see the thing grow if, like -it, you have nothing else to do. It is now as big as a bamboo-clump, -and impervious to frost. So far as it is concerned, this might be the -valley of Avilion. Once only has the vast affair considered flowering. -Two years ago buds showed themselves at the end of August and, with a -leisureliness for which the stock had not prepared me, were ready to -expand by the middle of October. They then looked as much like bunches -of bananas as anything else, and if all had gone well, would no doubt -have been the talk of the county. But, as you might suppose, by the -time they were ready, - - - “Swift summer into the autumn flowed, - And frost in the mist of the morning rode;” - - -and the Spiraea, deeply offended, did nothing at all except slowly rot, -and, to pursue _The Sensitive Plant_, - - - “Fill the place with a monstrous undergrowth,” - - -as was only to be expected. Since that check to its ardour, it has -devoted itself to root-action and the results; and all I can do is to -admire its rapidly maturing timber, and consider whether it or the -house should be removed. - -Lucky accidents, or happy experiments, will acclimatise difficult -things sometimes. I don’t know how often or in how many places I -had tried to make the Alpine gentian, _verna_, feel at home, when I -happened to meet a soldier somewhere who lived in Ireland. He told me -of his own efforts with it in artfully prepared moraines and joy-heaps -of the kind. It lived, and it flowered, as it has lived and flowered, -and also died, here--but it did not spread. It existed, not throve. -Then, perhaps by inspiration, he put some of it into a gravel path, and -left it there. Or perhaps it drifted there by itself, as such things -will--I don’t remember how it was. There, at any rate, it increased and -multiplied and replenished the earth, growing indeed as you may see -it in Swiss pastures in early Spring, deep blue stars afloat in the -streaming waters--one of earth’s loveliest sights. Ah, what an “event” -for a gardener to nail that miracle every year as it comes round. I -would wait for that as I do for the cuckoo. But first I must wait for a -gravel path. - - - - -DAFFODILS - - -I don’t suppose that any flower in England, except the rose, has been -more bepraised, as somebodys aid, by poets who were not gardeners, and -gardeners who were not poets; and it is certainly difficult in dealing -with it to leave Wordsworth out. I shan’t be able to do it, because -I shall want him, but I shall do my best to reach the end of this -article without quoting from _A Winter’s Tale_. It is satisfactory, -at least, to be certified, as I am from Parkinson, that all of our -poets, from Shakespeare to Mr. Masefield, have been exercised about -the same plant. Parkinson says that we had two English daffodils, one -which he calls Peerless Primrose, and another which can be identified -as the double daffodil, and which, he says, Gerard found in an old -woman’s cottage garden--just where we find it now. Neither Parkinson -nor, I suspect, any of the poets had a notion that, strictly speaking, -the daffodil was the Asphodel; but how it came about that the word -changed its designation I am not able to say. Branching asphodel grows -wild in Ireland--not, I believe, in England--and classical poetry is, -of course, full of it, though it puts the stiff and stately thing to -strange uses. Poets who, as it was freely declared, reclined upon beds -of asphodel and moly had not found out the best sites in the Elysian -Fields. No flower, however, more eloquently reports the South. I never -see mine, whose seed I collected on the Acropolis at Athens, but I -remember the Pont du Gard, and the sharp smell of the box-bushes, or -Greece, where it clouds the slopes of Hymettus with pink, and burns -brown against the sky as you labour up the winding path to Acrocorinth. -It will do in England, and do well, if you can secure it sun and drouth. - -Our own name for the wild daffodil is Lent Lily, a beautiful and -sufficient one, and, to judge by the poets again, the plant has been -well distributed. Shakespeare saw it in Warwickshire, and Herrick in -Devon; Clare in Northamptonshire, and Wordsworth in the Lakes. Mr. -Housman knows it in Salop, and Mr. Masefield in Worcestershire. I -know that it is in Sussex and Cornwall, and on the edges of the New -Forest. It may be in North Wilts, almost certainly is in the upper -Thames Valley; but it is not here, to the best of my belief. I imagine -that it does not care for chalk, for though I make it do, it does not -thrive, that is, spread itself. Rather, it degenerates, as it used in -Kent, where I lived as a boy, and in two or three years turned itself -into the old “greenery-yallery” mophead which, whatever Parkinson may -say, is not a true variety at all but a bad kind of recidivist. Now, -my expert friend, Mr. George Engleheart, who lives across the hills, -but on loam, grows daffodils which are a wonder of the realm; but the -point is that his discards, which he throws into ditches or stuffs into -holes to take their chance, never degenerate into doubles. His ground -is a soapy yellow loam, on which you can grow any mortal thing; and a -visit to his daffodil fields, as it were just now, is an experience -which I have had and promise myself again. All the same, honesty -moves me to say--_miror magis!_ He, of course, is a scientist who has -grown grey in the pursuit, and I am a sciolist. The beautiful things -whose minute differences of hue and measurement are of such moment to -him; the nicety of the changes which you can ring upon perianth and -calyx--such modulations do not, in my judgment, give the thrill or -sudden glory which flowers growing freely and in masses give me: such -a thrill as you get from Poet’s Narcissus in a Swiss pasture, or such -as Wordsworth’s sister, and then Wordsworth, had from the wind-caught -drift of daffodils in Gowbarrow Park; or such as I had in an orchard in -North Cornwall, where, as it seemed, under a canopy of snow and rose -some god at a picnic had spilled curds and whey all over the sward. The -flowers were so thick together as to be distinguishable only as colour: -they streamed in long rivers of yellow and white down the hill. My -description is less poetical than literal. The things looked eatable, -they were so rich. - -If you can get such a thrill on your own ground it is by the grace -of God. Mr. Engleheart does not grow bulbs for the thrills of the -unscientific, though no doubt he has some of his own. But there is -one glory of the unskilled and another of the skilled--indeed, the -latter has two, for as well as the pure delight of having “pulled -off” a delicate bit of cross-breeding, there is added the hope of -gain. Your new daffodil should be a gold-mine, and rightly so, because -it may represent the work, the thought, and the anxieties of seven -years or even more. I heard of a grower once who, at the season of -distribution, had his bulbs out upon his studio table, where they were -being sorted, priced and bestowed. In one heap he had certain triumphs -of science which were worth, I was told, £90 the bulb. From that point -of bliss you could run down through the pounds to the shillings and -bring up finally upon the articles which went out at ten shillings a -hundred, or even less. There then they lay out, “so many and so many -and such glee.” And then, O then--“a whirl blast,” as Wordsworth says, -“from behind the hill” swept in at the open door, lifted all the sheets -of paper and their freight together, and scattered the priced bulbs -higgledy-piggledy on the floor. There was tragic work! Bang went all -your ninety pounders; for a bulb in the hand may be worth a thousand on -the floor. - -One of those unaccountable facts in entomology which are always -cropping up in gardening has much exercised my learned friend. Although -he has never imported a bulb, nevertheless into his bulb-farm there has -imported itself the daffodil parasite--out of the blue, or the black. -He showed it me one day, a winged beast somewhere in appearance between -a wasp and a hoverfly. I saw bars upon its body, and short wings which -looked as if they were made of talc. This creature has a _lues_ for -laying its eggs in the daffodil bulb, and to do so pierces it through -and through. Last of all the bulb dies also. There seems to be no -remedy but pursuit, capture and death. Just so have the figs at Tarring -called up the _beccafico_ from Italy. Can these things be, without our -special wonder? - -To grow and bring to flower every daffodil you put in the ground is -not what I call gardening. Reasonable treatment will ensure it, for -the flower is in the bulb before you plant it. As well might you buy -from the florist things in full bud, plunge them into your plots, and -call _that_ gardening. Yet it is the gardening of the London parks, -and of certain grandees, who ought to know better. If you are graced -by nature or art to make daffodils feel themselves at home, you are -in the good way. Wisley is so graced; not, I think, Kew. At Wisley -they have acclimatised those two charming narcissi, _bulbocodium_ and -_cyclamineus_, which really carpet the ground. When I was last there -they were all over the paths, in the ditches, and in the grass. I -daresay they required drastic treatment, for Wisley, after all, was -made for man, and not for daffodils. Yet if Wisley were my garden, I -know that I should be so flattered by the confidence of those pretty -Iberians that I should let them do exactly as they pleased. If a plant -chose to make itself a weed, I would as readily allow it as I would -a weed which chose to make itself a plant--within reason. I add that -qualification, that tyrant’s plea, because I have just remembered what -occurred when I was once rash enough to introduce _Mulgedium alpinum_ -from Switzerland. There is no shaking off that insatiable succubus. I -was reconciled to giving up a garden on its account, and full of hope -that I should never see it again. But I brought with me a peony and -some phloxes, and _Mulgedium_ was coiled about their vitals like a -tapeworm. It is with me to this hour. - -The prettiest thing that a narcissus ever did was done to an old lady -I used to know who lived in a cottage in Sussex. Somebody had given -her half-a-dozen Jonquil bulbs, which she planted and left alone. They -took kindly to her and her cottage garden, and seeded all over it. When -I came to know her, the little patch of ground, the dividing ditch, -the bank beyond it, and some of the arable beyond that were golden -with jonquils; and on days of sun-warmed wind you could smell them -from afar. As, with trifling exceptions, it is the sweetest and most -carrying scent in the garden, that is not surprising. Hawthorn is such -another. Somewhere in Hakluyt’s _Voyages_ is an account of the return -of an embassy from the Court of Boris Godounov. The sailors knew that -they were near Sussex before they could see the white cliffs by the -smell of the may wafted over sea. What a welcome home! - - - - -WINDFLOWERS - - “Anemones, which droop their eyes - Earthward before they dare arise - To flush the border....” - - -says the poet, and says truly, for I believe there is no exception to -his general statement. The point is really one in the argument between -the gardeners and the botanists, as to whether you are to reckon -hepaticas as anemones. I shall come to that presently, and here will -only point out that hepaticas do _not_ droop their eyes, or hang their -heads, as I prefer to say. Let that be remembered when the scientist -tries, as he is so fond of doing, to browbeat the mild Arcadian. Except -for that remark I don’t call to mind that the poets have sung about the -windflowers. None of them has likened his young woman to a windflower. -Meleager, indeed, when he is paying a compliment to his Zenophile, -pointedly leaves it out. - - - “Now bloom white violets, now the daffodils - That love the rain, now lilies of the hills,” - - -he begins; and what lilies those could have been, unless they were -lilies of the valley (which sounds absurd), I don’t know. But how could -he talk about spring flowers in his country and leave anemones out? It -is true, he was a Syrian; but politics don’t interest anemones. No one -is to tell me that Asia Minor is without _Anemone fulgens_. - -Fulgens is the typical Greek anemone, anyhow, as Coronaria always -seems to me specifically Italian. It is a wonder of the woodlands--as -of those between Olympia and Megalopolis, or of the yet denser brakes -about Tatoi, where the late Constantine used to retire and meditate -statecraft. Blanda, the starry purple flower of eighteen points, is -commoner in the open. Nothing more beautiful than the flush of these -things under the light green veil of the early year can be imagined. -The gardener in England who can compass anything like it is in a good -way. Luckily it is easy, for these are kindly plants, seed freely, -flower in their first year, and are not so affected by climate as to -change their habits to suit our calendar. Do not grow them in woods -if you want them early. Our woods, _in quella parte del giovinetto -anno_, are both cold and wet. Put them in the open, in light soil -sloping to the south, and you will have as many as you want. One thing -I have noticed about them is that in England fulgens is constant to -its colour, whereas in Greece there are albinos, pure white and very -beautiful, with black stamens. The pairing of those with the staple has -produced a pink fulgens of great attractions. I have imported it, but -it has not spread, and the seed of it comes up scarlet. Blanda has no -sports, and is so proliferous that if it is much grown in soils that -suit it very probably it will become a naturalised British subject. -Here it is a weed. - -Our own pair of windflowers are not nearly so easy to deal with as -those two Aegean tourists. Nemorosa will only grow happily in woods, -and even there does not readily transplant. Pulsatilla is subject to -winter rot, as anything which lies out at nights in a fur coat must -expect to be; and it reacts immediately and adversely to a rich soil. -Now nemorosa grows in the fields in Germany, even in water meadows; -pulsatilla in Switzerland will stand any amount of snow. But the snow -in Switzerland is as dry as salt, and no flower objects to a flood when -it is beginning to grow. The enemy in England is wet at the slack time. -The best way to treat pulsatilla is to grow it on a steep slope, for -that is how it grows itself. - -Talking of nemorosa, there is a harebell blue variety of it which I -have seen, but never had, and of course the yellow ranunculoides, to be -met with in Switzerland, though it is not a widespread plant. I found a -broad patch of it under some trees on the edge of Lake Lugano: a clear -buttercup yellow, not a dirty white. I don’t call it an exciting plant, -all the same, and am perfectly happy without it, and to know it the -only truly yellow anemone that exists. - -No offence, I hope, to the great sulphur anemone of the Alps, a noble -windflower indeed. I know few things more exhilarating than to round -a bluff and find a host of it in stately dance. And I know few things -less so than to try to dig it up. I have devoted some hours to the -pursuit, notably after a night spent at Simplon Dorf. I rose early and -toiled till breakfast. I had an inefficient trowel, bought in Florence, -and an alpenstock, and with them excavated some two feet of Simplon. At -that depth the root of the sulphur anemone was of the thickness of a -reasonable rattlesnake, and ran like the _coda_ of a sonata, strongly, -and apparently for ever. Something had to give, and it was the -anemone. I coiled up what I had, brought it back with me in a knapsack, -and made a home for it among my poor rocks. Nothing to speak of -happened for two years, except that it let me know that it lived. Then -came a Spring and a miracle. The sulphur anemone burgeoned: that is the -only word for what it did. Since then it has never failed, though more -than once the rocks have been rent asunder. In what goes on underground -this anemone is a tree. - -I do not forget--am not likely to forget--Coronaria, which in its (I -must own) somewhat sophisticated form of _Anemone de Caen_ is the glory -of my blood and state in the little hanging garden I now possess. I -own, it seems, the exact spot it likes. It is thoroughly at home, and -proves it by flowering practically all the year round. In the dog-days, -I don’t say. But who cares what happens in August? Except for that -waste month--the only one in the almanac with nothing distinctive to -report--I believe I have hardly failed of a handful of coronaria. Since -Christmas I have not failed of a bowlful, and at this time of writing -it is out in a horde. Wonderful things they are: nine inches high, four -inches across, with a palette ranging from white through the pinks to -red and crimson, through the lilacs to violet and the purple of night. -There are few better garden flowers. Untidy? Yes, they need care. Too -free with their seed? They cannot be for me. I am open to the flattery -of a flower’s confidence as (still) to that of a woman’s. Another thing -to its credit is its attraction for bees, with the range of tint and -tinge which that involves. Your whites will be flushed with auroral -rose, or clouded with violet; you will have flecks and splashes of -sudden colour, the basal ring of white, whence comes its cognomen, -annulata, sometimes invaded. Even the black centre with its stamens is -not constant: I have one with a pale green base and stamens of yellow. -With these fine things fulgens goes usefully and happily. Coronaria -has no such vermilion. A bank of the two together, growing in the sun, -can be seen half a mile away, and won’t look like scarlet geranium if -there is a judicious admixture. To qualify that dreadful sophistication -called “St. Brigid” I shall serve myself of W. S. Gilbert’s useful -locution. “Nobody,” he said, “thinks more highly of So-and-so than I -do; and _I_ think he’s a little beast.” - -Apennina, I think, wants a mountain. I should like to try it in some -favoured ghyll in Cumberland, and some day I will. I have it on a -lawn, and have had it for many years. There is no less, but no more, -than there ever was. It does not seed. The two colours, china-blue and -white, are delicious in partnership, though the blue is not so good as -that of blanda, and the white not quite so white as nemorosa’s. - -And what am I to say of hepaticas, and how _écraser_ the botanists? Who -am I to deny them with my reason--entirely satisfactory to myself--that -the _feeling_ of the two flowers is distinct and separable? What does -an anemone imply? A spring woodland on a mountain slope. What an -hepatica? A wet cleft in a rock, sodden last year’s leaves, ragged -moss, pockmarked crust of snow--and out of them a pale star raying -gold from blue. The anemone is gregarious, the hepatica solitary; the -anemone is a spring flower, the hepatica a winter flower. And lastly, -as a gardener, I say, the anemone can be moved, and is often much the -better of it; the hepatica should not be, and is always the worse. If -you plant an hepatica root and leave it alone for fifty years, you will -have something worth waiting for--a ring of it as big as a cartwheel. I -have not done it--but it has been done for me. - - - - -TULIPS - - -One day short of St. Valentine’s (when Nature still takes the liberties -which men used to allow themselves) I am able to announce tulips in -bud in the open border, which is as much of a record as my crocuses -were on the 18th of January. I don’t speak of a sheltered or fruitful -valley by any means. What they may be doing with flowers at Wilton and -Wilsford has no more relation to me than their goings-on at Torquay or -Grange-over-Sands. Up this way, for reasons which it would be tedious -to report, the spring comes slowly--as a rule. This year is like no -other that I can remember, as no doubt the reckoning will be. - -I know what tulip it is. There is only one which would be so heedlessly -daring. It is that noble wild Tuscan flower which the people of the -Mugello and thereabouts call _Occhio del Sole_, which has a sage -green leaf, a long flower-stalk of maroon, and atop of that a great -chalice of geranium red with yellow base and a black blotch in the -midst. Looking into the depths from above there is the appearance of -a lurid eye. But its real name is _Praecox_, and Parkinson says that -it flowers in January. I don’t believe him. I have had it for years, -and never saw it before mid-March. Parkinson is vague about tulips, -classing them mostly by colour and inordinate names of his own. You -may have the Crimson Prince, or Bracklar; or the Brancion Prince; or -a Duke, “that is more or less faire deep red, with greater or lesser -yellow edges, and a great yellow bottome.” Then there is a Testament -Brancion, or a Brancion Duke; and lastly The King’s Flower, “that is, a -crimson or bloud red, streamed with a gold yellow”--which ought to look -indifferent well at Buckingham Palace. _Praecox_ used to grow freely in -the hill country above Fiesole, always on cultivated ground; and I have -found lots of it in the _poderi_ of Settignano, not so much as of the -ordinary blood red, a smaller and meaner flower altogether; but enough -to make a walk under the olives in very early Spring an enchantment. -Ages ago Mrs. Ross sent me a hamper of them, which has lasted me ever -since; for this tulip increases freely, and is invaluable as the first -of its family. - -The next to appear will be the little Persian _violacea_, with its -crinkled wavy leaves flatlings, and the pointed bud, which gives a -rose-coloured flower when open, slightly retroflexed, enough so, at -least, to make it plain that the familiar ornament of Persian and -Rhodian tiles was adapted from it. I always thought its name was -_persica_; but Weathers, I see, makes that a bronze flower, and names -_violacea_ as the earliest of all the Persians, which mine certainly -is. So that, as they say, is that. I find it happiest among rocks, as -all bulbs, except lilies, are if they can get there. How else secure -the baking in summer which is so necessary? A pretty thing it is, -in short, charming to discover for yourself in a corner of a man’s -rock-garden, all the more so as you will make your discovery at a -season when you least expect tulips; but there is nothing of a “sudden -glory” to be had from it. Nobody could be knocked off his æsthetic -perch by a Persian tulip, still less off his moral perch. I have known -that done by one of the Caucasian tulips--it led to swift and stealthy -work with a penknife at Kew. But that was a long time ago, and the -delinquent can never do it again, for a final reason. - -The loveliest tulip in the world--I speak only of natural flowers, -not of nurserymen’s monsters--is, in my opinion, the little _Bandiera -di Toscana_, the sword-leaved, sanguine-edged thing with the narrow -bud of red and white, which opens in the sun to be a milky star. It -is the loveliest, alike in colour and in habit, but one of the most -fastidious. Short of lifting it, which the true gardener disdains -to do, there is no certainty that it will spring up again when the -time comes round. Your best chance is on rocks, I daresay; and I -have succeeded with it in a border under a south wall with a pent of -thatch over. It does not like frost, and abominates rain at the wrong -time of year. It clings, in fact, to its Mediterranean habits, which -some things contentedly lose--Iris _stylosa_, for instance, which -flowers here better in November than it does in April. I have my -_clusianas_--for that is their proper name--now in a terraced border, -full south, under clumps of mossy saxifrage, and they do as well as -can be expected. They return with the swallows, and open wide to the -sun; but I am not going to pretend that they ramp. If I could afford -it I would put them in a place where they could take their chance of -the spade; for there is this to be said of all the Florentine tulips -that, although they are not designedly lifted, they grow in a country -where every square yard of ground is cultivated, and consequently are -turned over by the plough of the spade every year--no doubt to their -vast benefit. But you must not mind how many of them you slice, or bury -upside down, or leave above ground at that work--and I _do_ mind. - -The truly marvellous _Greigi_ is just showing itself: no increase -there, I am sorry to say. Weathers says that it “reproduces itself -freely.” Not here, O Apollo. I cannot make any Caucasian tulips have -families; they are resolute Malthusians; nevertheless, I shall have -my few bubbles of scarlet as before, and before they have done with -me they will be as large as claret-glasses, on short stems, which are -the best kind of claret-glasses. I could do with a hundred of them, -but I don’t know what to give them that I have not given. They grow on -limestone at home, and I give them limestone. They are never disturbed -in the Caucasus, and I never disturb them. It is my distance from the -equator that beats me. So I must be content with my three or four--only -I shan’t boast of them to ladies from Aix-les-Bains. A tulip, by the -way, which I covet, but have not so far been able to obtain, is called, -I _think_, _saxatilis_. It has rather a sprawly growth, but several -flowers on the stalk, and is sweetly scented. In colour it is faint and -indeterminate; flushes of mauve, white and yellow. Several nurserymen -offer me bulbs by that name, some have induced me to buy them; but -it has never been the right thing. I may be wrong, or they may be: I -must ask an expert. It may be priceless, in which case I shan’t have -it. I bought some Peruvian _pseudo-crocus_ once, of a marvellous blue -indeed--not a gentian, but a kingfisher blue--at seven and sixpence -per bulb, and the mice, mistaking it for a real crocus, ate them all. -“These are my crosses, Mr. Wesley.” But, if we are talking about money, -Mrs. Ross _gave_ me a tulip once which was worth, so she told me, -twenty pounds. Certainly it was very handsome, a tall Darwin of bronze -feathered with gold: called _Buonarroti_. It was prolific, and in no -short time filled the border in which it grew. If its sons had been -worthy of their sire there might have been hundreds of pounds’ worth -of them, all growing naked in the open air. But I observed that they -grew paler year by year; and when I returned to the garden after a -five years’ absence I could not believe that I had ever planted such a -bilious tulip. My grand old _Occhi del Sole_, on the other hand, were -as vivid as ever. - -I have never possessed the so-called native English tulip, whose -botanical name is _silvestris_; but I have seen it. I know where it -grows, and blows, and could take you to the place--only I shall not. -My father found it by chance, and brought a flower of it home in high -feather. He found it, truly enough, in a wood, so its name describes -its habits. Now, I inquire, is it an indigenous plant? It is what I -doubt. If it is, it must have existed from all time; the Iberians must -have grown it on their lenches, or found it lower down, in the jungle. -Yet it is unknown to the poets; and the word “tulip,” remark, is a -Turkish word disguised. Parkinson knows nothing of _Tulipa silvestris_. -Far more probably it came from the South, in the maw of some straying -bird--perhaps a hoopoo, or the hold of an adventuring ship. That was -how we became possessed of the wild peony which is, or was, to be -found on an island in the Severn Sea. Who is to say how that happened? -Perhaps Spanish sailors had a peony growing in the after-cabin to Our -Lady of Seven Dolours, and were shipwrecked with her and it on the -strand of Lundy. How did two ilexes come to be growing out of the -Guinigi tower at Lucca? How did a fig-tree find itself in the middle -arch of the bridge at Cordova? There are more ways of accounting for -a wild tulip in Kent than by imagining that God Almighty bade it grow -there. - -I have left myself no room in which to treat of nurserymen’s tulips, -and the less the pity in that they can talk of them so eloquently -themselves. There is a Dutch grower who simply wallows in adjectives -about them every year. He photographs his children, smiling like -anything, up to the neck in tulips; he poses with his arms full of them -before his wife, like an Angel of the Annunciation. As for his words, -they come bubbling from him as they used from Mr. Swinburne when he -saw a baby. It is true that, like the talk about them, they get taller -every year. They are less flowers than portents, and the only thing to -do with them is to treat them as so much colour, turning your garden -for the time being into a Regent Street shop-window. Brown wallflower -and _La Rêve_ look well, so do yellow wallflower and _Othello_. Last -year I tried _Clara Butt_ and _Cheiranthus allionii_, and had a show -like Mr. Granville Barker’s _Twelfth Night_. Rose pink and orange is -not everybody’s mixture. - -The finest unrehearsed effect I ever had with cottage tulips was when -we had a heavy fall of snow one 30th of April, and I went out and saw -the great red heads swimming in the flood like strong men. They were up -to the neck, and seemed to enjoy it. But they died of the effort; for -at night it froze. - - - - -SUMMER - - -If, like me, you are more interested in seeing things happen than in -seeing them when they have happened, you will not be such an advocate -of Summer as of other, any other, seasons. For Summer is the one time -of year when practically nothing happens outdoors. From about the -middle of May--I speak of the south parts--to the middle of September -Nature sits with her hands in her lap and a pleasantly tired face. -There, my children, she says, I have done my job. I hope you like it. -Most of us, I own, do like it very much, and signify the same in the -usual manner by vigorous ball-exercise and liquid refreshment, much -of it of an explosive and delusive kind. When the Summer is over, -somewhere round about Michaelmas day, Nature rolls up her sleeves and -begins again. Properly speaking, there are only two seasons--Spring and -Summer. The people therefore who, like me, prefer the Spring to the -Summer, have more time in which to exhibit or dissemble their love--and -a good deal of it, I confess, uncommonly beastly in the matter of -weather. - -The people who like everything are the people to envy. Children, for -example, love the Winter just as much as the Summer. They whistle as -they jump their feet, or flack their arms across their bodies; and -whistling is one of the sure signs of contented youth. I remember -that we used to think it rare sport to find the sponge a solid globe -of ice, or to be able to get off cleaning our teeth on the ground -that the tooth water was frozen in the bottle. I don’t believe I ever -had cold feet in bed, and am sure that if I did I had something much -more exciting to think about. There might be skating to-morrow, or we -could finish the snow-man, or go tobogganning with the tea-tray; or -it was Christmas; or we were going to the pantomime. All seasons were -alike to us; each had its delights. That of Summer, undoubtedly, was -going to the seaside. We always had a month of that, and then a month -in some country place or other which my father did not know. That was -done for his sake, because the seaside bored him so much that even -his children noticed it. It was nothing to us, of course, as we lived -in the country, and did not, as he did, poor man, spend most days of -the year in London; but equally of course we weren’t _bored_. I never -heard of a child being bored, and can imagine few things more tragic in -a small way. No: it was always interesting to live in someone else’s -house, learn something of their ways, chance upon a family photograph, -or a discarded toy, or a dog’s grave in the shrubbery; or to read their -books and guess what bits they had liked--any little things like that. -And, of course, it was comfortable to know that one’s father wasn’t -always smothering a gape, or trying to escape from nigger-minstrels. As -for the sea--a very different thing from the seaside--I don’t believe -he ever looked at it. I am certain that I never saw him on the sands. -The sands are no place for you unless you had rather be barefoot than -not. Now, it is a fact that I never saw my father’s feet. - -At the same time, I don’t know where else one could be in August, -except at the seaside. Really, there is very little to say for the -country in that month. The trees are as near black as makes no matter, -the hills are dust-colour, the rivers are running dry. True, the -harvest is going on; but the harvest is not what it used to be. You -had, indeed, “a field full of folk” (in old Langland’s words) in -former days. All hands were at it, and the women following the men, -building the hiles, as we call them; and the children beside them, -twisting up the straw ties as fast as they could twist. And then the -bread and cheese and cider--or it might be home-brewed beer--in the -shade! But bless me--last year I saw the harvesting of a hundred acre -field--our fields run very big down here; and the whole thing was being -done by one man on a machine! The Solitary Reaper, forsooth! The man -was reaper, tyer and binder all in one; you never saw so desolate a -spectacle. So the harvest is not what it was. It may have attractions -for the farmer, but for nobody else that I can think of. Go north -for your Summer and you may do better. August is wet, generally, in -Scotland, but when you are in Scotland you won’t mind rain, or had -better not. You can catch trout in the rain in Scotland, and with a -fly too: that is the extraordinary part of it. And the Scottish summer -twilights are things to remember. They are overdone in Norway, where -they go on all night; where the sun may go behind the hill for five -minutes and begin the day before you have thought of going to bed. You -can’t keep that up--but it is exciting enough at first. The great -charm of the Norwegian Summer to me is that it includes what we call -Spring. The other season in that country is Winter, which begins in -September and ends with May. Then, immediately, Summer begins: the -grass grows and is ready for the scythe, the cherries flower and get -ripe and are eaten--all at once. You get those amazing contrasts there -which you only have in mountainous countries; which I remember most -vividly crossing the Cevennes from Le Puy to Alais. On the watershed I -was picking daffodils, only just ready to be picked; in the valley of -the Ardeche they were making hay, and roses were dusty in the hedges. -I slid from March into June--in twenty minutes. You will not be so -piqued in England; yet if your taste lies in the way of strawberries -for instance, you can do pretty work even in England. You can begin in -Cornwall, or Scilly, and have your first dish in early May, or late -April, with clotted cream, of course. Then you can eat your way through -the western shires to Hampshire, and make yourself very ill somewhere -about Fareham, in June. When you are able to stand the journey, you can -go on to the Fens and find them ready for you in early July. In August -you will find them at their best in Cumberland, and in October, weather -permitting, you will have them on your table in Scotland. After that, -if you are alive, and really care for strawberries, you must leave this -kingdom, and perhaps go to California. I don’t know. - -The Summer will give you better berries than the strawberry, in my -opinion. It will give you the _wild_ strawberry, which, if you can -find somebody to pick them for you, and then eat them with sugar and -white wine, is a dish for Olympians, ambrosial food. Then there is the -bilberry, which wants cream and a great deal of tooth-brush afterwards, -and the blaeberry, which grows in Cumberland above the 2,000 foot mark, -just where the Stagshorn moss begins; and the wild raspberry which here -is found on the tops of the hills, and in Scotland at the bottoms. -I declare the wild raspberry to be one of the most delicious fruits -God Almighty ever made. In Norway you will have the cranberry and the -saeter-berry; but in Norway you will want nothing so long as there are -cherries. I know Kent very well--but its cherries are not so good as -those of Norway. - -I had no intention, when I began, to talk about eating all the time. It -is a bad sign when one begins that, though as a matter of fact we do -think a great deal of our food in the country--because we are hungry, -and it is so awfully good; and (as I daresay the Londoner thinks) -because we have nothing else to think about. That is a mistake, and -the Summer is the time to correct it, by spending it in the country -and trying to understand us. Let me be bold enough to suggest to the -Londoner who takes the prime of Summer to learn the ways of the country -in it, that he would prove a more teachable disciple if he did not -bring his own ways with him. He is rather apt to do that. He expects, -for example, his golf, and always has his toys with him for the -purpose. Well, he should not. Golf is a suburban game, handy for the -townsman in his off hours. Country people don’t play golf. They have -too much to do. The charabanc is another town-institution, to be used -like a stagecoach. Nothing of the country can be learned by streaming -over moor and mountain in one of them. The Oreads hide from them; Pan -and old Sylvanus treat them as natural process, scourges to be endured, -like snowstorms or foot-and-mouth disease. The country is veiled from -charabancs, partly in dust, partly in disgust. For we don’t understand -hunting in gangs. The herd-instinct which such things involve and imply -is not a country instinct. We are self-sufficient here, still, in spite -of all invitation, individuals. - - - - -THE LINGERING OF THE LIGHT - - -With the West wind blowing down the valley, wet and warm from the -Atlantic, men go home leisurely from their work in the fields, happy -in the last of the light, and enjoying, though they never say so, the -delicate melancholy of the hour. It is a gift you make no account of -when the East wind brings it you, for that Scythian scourge withers -what it touches, and under its whip the light itself seems like a husk -about the day. Old people tell us that it brings the blight, whatever -they mean by that. It brought locusts into Egypt once, and brings -influenza into England. Perhaps they put the two together. It brings -sick thinking too, a cold which has the property of drying up the -springs of the blood. There’s no escape from it. The air seems thinner -that comes from the East; brickwork will not keep it out, nor glazed -windows. One fancies in the black mood of it that the “channering worm” -at his work in the churchyard must feel it, and dive deeper into the -mould. - -But now one can enjoy the sweet grave evening and turn the mind -hopefully to the prime of the year that is coming. The blackbird -whistles for it in the leafless elm; a belated white hen on the -hillside, very much at her ease, is still heeling up the turf and -inspecting the result. A cottage wife, having her fire alight and -kettle on the boil, stands for a moment at her open door. To mate the -gentle influence of the evening she has made herself trim in clean -white blouse and blue skirt, and looks what she was intended to be, a -pretty young woman with a pride in herself. A friend, going home, stops -her perambulator for a minute to exchange sentiments about the nights -“drawing out.” Almost as she speaks this one draws in--for at this time -of year twilight is a thing of moments. It will be dark before she is -home. No matter: the wind is warm and balmy; she can take her ease, and -her baby be none the worse. This is the weather that opens the human -buds as well as the snowdrops, and gems the gardens with aconites, and -the hearths with sprawling children. We do not heed Dr. Inge down here. - -Here’s the end of January, and the winter, by our calendar, over in -three weeks’ time. Since that calendar was written up we have invented -a new winter. It is more difficult to get through April with safety, at -least to garden buds, than any January we have known for forty years; -but as far as we are concerned ourselves we can stand anything in -April, with May to follow; whereas January can still intimidate, and -a cold spell then will cause twice the sickness of the Spring-winter. -January is to April as Till to Tweed: - - - “Till said to Tweed, - ’Though ye rin wi’ speed, - An’ I rin slaw, - Where ye drown ae mon - I drown twa.” - - -If you look at the graves in a country churchyard, of the two outside -generations, that is, of old people and young children, nearly all -will have found their “bane” in December and January. - -With us in the West, the thing which kills the plants in our gardens -also kills the villagers, very old or very young: excessive wet, -namely, followed by hard frost or murderous wind. The other day we had -a day of warm drenches, drifting sheets of rain, a whole day of them, -the wind in the West. About midnight, the weathercock chopped round to -meet a whirl-blast from the East: the sky cleared, and it froze like -mad. I went round my borders in the morning, quaking at the heart. The -garden was like a battle-field. Nothing can cope with that. The babies -get pneumonia, the veterans bronchitis, the sexton is busy; every -day you hear the passing bell. Yet whether it is because we observe -punctually the Laws of Being, or (as the Dean will have it) in spite -of it, the facts are that the supply of babies never fails, and that -we live to a great age. The oldest gardener I know--I shouldn’t wonder -if he were the oldest gardener in the world--lives in this village. -Eighty-nine. - - - “I know a girl--she’s eighty-five”-- - - -That was Lord Houghton’s way of beginning a poem on Mrs. Grote. My -gardener beats her by four years. To and fro, four times a day, he -walks his half-mile--to work and back. I saw him the other day half-way -up a cherry-tree, sawing off a dead branch. Mrs. Grote again: - - - “She lived to the age of a hundred and ten, - And died of a fall from a cherry-tree then.” - - -To look at his sapless limbs, you might think he could saw off one of -them and take no hurt. But not at all. Life is high in him still. His -eye is bright, his step is brisk. We have many octagenarians, but I -believe he is the patriarch of our village. Mr. Frederic Harrison, in -Bath, beats him by a year. - -We are stoics, without knowing what that means down here. Whatever our -years tell us we make no account of them, or of ailments, or physical -discomfort; and as for Death, the Antick, however close he stand to -us--the Grizzly One, we call him--we take no notice of him, so long -as we can move about. The end is not long in coming when a man must -keep the house, or his bed. Then, so sure as fate, he will stiffen at -the joints and come out no more to enjoy the lingering of the light. -The chalk, which he has been inhaling and absorbing all his life, will -harden in him, and, he will tell you, “time’s up.” Want of imagination, -that fine indifference to fate, perhaps--but I don’t know. I have never -been able to deny imagination to our country folk. The faculty takes -various forms, and is not to be refused to a man because it finds a -harsh vent and issues contorted. I prefer to put it that tradition, -which is our religion, has put obedience to the Laws of Life above -everything else. One of those laws says, Work. And work we do, until -we drop. There is a noble creature lying now, I fear, under a stroke -which will prevent her doing another hand’s turn of work. Her children -are all about her bed; I saw one of them this morning before she went -there. She confessed, with tears, the anguish it would be to see her -mother lying idle. Sixty-three, she was, and had never been a day -without work in her children’s recollection. She had never been in -bed after six in the morning, never stayed at home or abed except, of -course, for child-bed. She had had eight children, brought up six of -them to marry and prosper in the world. And now she lies stricken, -and they, those prosperous young women, all about her bed. How well -Shakespeare knew that world: - - - “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, - Nor the stormy winter’s rages; - Thou thy earthly course hast run, - Home hast gone, and ta’en thy wages.” - - -Nothing for tears, or knocking of the breast. The words ring as -solemnly as the bell. I cannot conceive of earthly thing more beautiful -than such faithful, patient, diligent, ordered lives, rounded off by -such mute and uncomplaining death-bed scenes. The fact that so they -have been lived, so rounded off, for two thousand years makes them -sacred, for me. How often has the good soul whose end I am awaiting now -stood at her cottage door to mark the lingering of the light? May her -passing be as gentle as this day’s has been! - - - - -[Illustration: Logo] - -The Westminster Press -411a Harrow Road -London -W.9 - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST ESSAYS OF MAURICE HEWLETT*** - - -******* This file should be named 65757-0.txt or 65757-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/5/7/5/65757 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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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 <a -href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: Last Essays of Maurice Hewlett</p> -<p>Author: Maurice Hewlett</p> -<p>Release Date: July 4, 2021 [eBook #65757]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST ESSAYS OF MAURICE HEWLETT***</p> -<p> </p> -<h4 class="pgx" title="">E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit,<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (https://www.pgdp.net)<br /> - from page images digitized by<br /> - the Google Books Library Project<br /> - (https://books.google.com<br /> - and generously made available by<br /> - HathiTrust Digital Library<br /> - (https://www.hathitrust.org/)</h4> -<p> </p> -<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> - <tr> - <td valign="top"> - Note: - </td> - <td> - Images of the original pages are available through - HathiTrust Digital Library. See - https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015031235537 - </td> - </tr> -</table> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pgx" /> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/front.jpg" alt="title page" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<h1>Last Essays of<br /> Maurice Hewlett</h1> - -<hr /> - -<p class="bold2">Last Essays of<br />Maurice Hewlett</p> - -<div class="center space-above"><img src="images/logo1.jpg" alt="Logo" /></div> - -<p class="bold space-above">London<br />William Heinemann, Ltd</p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="center"><i>First Published <span class="s3"> </span> 1924</i><br /><i>Second Impression May 1924</i></p> - - -<p class="center space-above">Printed in England at<br />The Westminster Press, Harrow Road<br />London, W.9</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2><i>NOTE</i></h2> - - -<p><i>Lovers of Mr. Hewlett’s work will understand that these Essays have -not been subjected to the severe revision which Mr. Hewlett would -undoubtedly have given them before publication in this book. In one or -two minor points his Executors have felt doubtful about the deletion -or insertion of a passage, but in these cases the decision has always -been the same—that his readers would prefer to have the Essays in Mr. -Hewlett’s original form.</i></p> - -<p><i>Thanks are due to the editors of “The Times” and “The Evening -Standard”; “The London Mercury,” “The Cornhill Magazine,” “The -Nineteenth Century,” and other periodicals, for permission to reprint -certain of these Essays.</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table summary="CONTENTS"> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">A Return to the Nest</td> - <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">“And now, O Lord ...”</td> - <td><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Death of the Sheep</td> - <td><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Solitary Reaper</td> - <td><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Interiors</td> - <td><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Plight of Their Graces</td> - <td><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Village</td> - <td><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Curtains</td> - <td><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Happiness in the Village</td> - <td><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Otherwhereness</td> - <td><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Journey to Cockaigne</td> - <td><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Suicide of the Novel</td> - <td><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Immortal Works</td> - <td><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Ballad-Origins</td> - <td><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Real and Temporal Creation</td> - <td><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Peasant Poets</td> - <td><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Doggerel or Not</td> - <td><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Iberian’s House</td> - <td><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Scandinavian England</td> - <td><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Our Blood and State in 1660</td> - <td><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">“Merrie” England</td> - <td><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Endings—I</td> - <td><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">“ </span> II</td> - <td><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Beaumarchais</td> - <td><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Cardinal de Retz</td> - <td><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">“L’Abbesse Universelle”: Madame de Maintenon</td> - <td><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Pierre de L’Estoile</td> - <td><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">La Bruyère</td> - <td><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Couleur de Rose</td> - <td><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Art and Heart</td> - <td><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">A Novel and a Classic</td> - <td><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Other Dorothy</td> - <td><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Realism with a Difference</td> - <td><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Mr. Pepys His Apple-cart</td> - <td><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">One of Lamb’s Creditors</td> - <td><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Crocus and Primrose</td> - <td><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Daffodils</td> - <td><a href="#Page_285">285</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Windflowers</td> - <td><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Tulips</td> - <td><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">Summer</td> - <td><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">The Lingering of the Light</td> - <td><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> - -<h2>A RETURN TO THE NEST</h2> - -<p>Why it was that my great-grandfather left the village in Somerset in -and on which his forefathers, I believe, had lived from the time of -Domesday, why he forsook agriculture and cider for the law, married -in Shoreditch, settled in Fetter Lane, went back to Somerset to bury -his first child, and returned to London to beget my grandfather, be -ultimately responsible for <i>me</i>, and break finally with his family -cradle, I never understood until the other day when, in good company, -I took the road, left the bare hills—how softly contoured, how -familiar, and how dear—of South Wilts, topped the great rock on which -Shaftesbury lifts, dived down into Blackmore Vale, and so entered my -county of origin at its nearest point, namely Wincanton (where I saw, -by the by, a palæolithic man alive and walking the world)—to find -myself in a land of corn and wine and oil, or so it seemed, such a -land as those who love deep loam, handsome women, fine manners and a -glut of apples more than most things in this life (and there are few -things better), would never leave if they could help it. That is a long -sentence with which to begin an essay, but it expresses what I did, and -very much how I did it.</p> - -<p>In a word, I left Broadchalke and drove to Yeovil, within ten miles -of which thriving town the family to which I belong itself throve -and cultivated its virtues, if any. My great-grandfather and I were -not acquainted; but I remember<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> my grandfather perfectly well, and -can testify that he had virtues. He was on the tall side of the mean -height, a deep-chested, large-headed old man, with hair snowy white, -a rosy face, and cool, extremely honest blue eyes. He was hasty in -his movements (and in his temper), trundled about rather than walked. -I used to think as a boy that it could not be wholesome, and must be -most inconvenient, to have such clean hands, such dazzling linen, and -such polished pink filberts instead of finger-nails. I never saw him -otherwise dressed than in black broadcloth, with shoes polished like -looking-glasses, and a shirt-collar just so starched that it stood up -enclosing his chin, yet so little that it took on the contours of his -cheeks where they pressed it. He had a deep voice, with a cheer in it. -I remember—for he had little else to say to me—how he used to put -his hand on my head and murmur, as if to himself, “My boy, my boy,” in -such a way that I felt in leaving him, as perhaps Jacob did with Isaac, -that it would be impossible ever to do anything wrong again and betray -such a noble affection. One other thing struck me, even then, young and -ungracious as I was, and that was his extraordinarily fine manners. -Since then, whenever I have considered manners, I have compared them -with his. He is for me the staple of courtesy. They were the manners -which bring a man more than half-way to meet you. He used them to all -the world: to me, to the servants, to the crossing-sweeper, to the -clerks from his office who used to come for papers when he was too old -to go into London. I know now where he got them. They were traditional -West Country<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> manners; and sure enough when I walked the village street -where, if my grandfather never walked, my great-grandfather did, -the first man of whom I asked information met me with just the same -forwardness of service, and seemed to know tentacularly what precisely -lay behind the question which I put him. I had always been proud of my -grandfather; now I was proud of my county. For if manners don’t make a -man, they make a gentleman.</p> - -<p>Let me call the village Bindon St. Blaise, to give myself freedom to -say that I don’t remember to have seen one more beautiful than it -looked on that sunny autumn day, drowsing, winking in the heat of noon. -The houses are of stone—and that stone saturated, as it seemed, in -centuries of sunlight. Yes, I have seen Bibury in Gloucestershire, -and Broadway in Worcestershire, Alfriston in Sussex, and Teffont in -Wilts; and Clovelly, and Boscastle, and Ponteland, and many another -haunt of peace; but never yet a place of grey and gold so established, -so decent in age, so recollected, so dignified as Bindon St. Blaise, -which my great-grandfather unwillingly, I am sure, forsook in 1780 or -thereabouts. Nobody could tell me which of its many fair houses he -had forsworn. The fancy could play with them at large. There was a -long-roofed farm with gables many and deep, with two rows of mullioned, -diamonded windows, each with its perfect dripstone, which I should -like to think was once ours, except that it faces north, and therefore -has gathered more moss than we should care about now. Perhaps it <i>was</i> -ours, and he left it, seeking the sun. But would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> he have gone to look -for it in Fetter Lane? No, no. I incline, however, to a smaller house -facing full south, with a walled garden full of apple trees, and a -pear tree reaching to the chimney stack, and a portico—whereover a -room looking straight into the eye of the sun. There was a radiant -eighteenth-century house for a man to have been born in! Could I have -brought myself to leave such a nest? Well, we shall see.</p> - -<p>After luncheon at the Boulter Arms (let us call it), and an indication -where we should find “the Great House,” we went instead to see the -house of God, which lay on our road to it, almost within its park. -Like all that I have seen in Somerset, it is a spacious, well-ordered -church, mainly perpendicular, with the square tower and lace-worked -windows which belong to the type. The churchyard was beautifully kept, -planted with roses and Irish yews: the graves were in good order, -numerous, and so eminently respectable that, at first blush, it seemed -as if we had stepped into the Peerage; for if we were not trenching -upon a lord’s remains, it was upon those of one who had had to do with -a lord. Research was encumbered by this overgrowth of dignities: the -great family, like its Great House, overshadowed the Valley of Dry -Bones; and plain men, who in life perhaps had been parasites perforce, -in death were sprawled upon by their masters. Hannah Goodbody, for -instance, “for forty years in the service of the Right Hon. John -Charles Ferdinand, sixth Earl Boulter, Viscount and Baron Boulter of -Bindon St. Blaise”—had she not earned <i>quietus</i>, and need all that be -remembered against her?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> Percival Slade, “for twenty years Groom of the -Chambers to Ferdinand Charles John, seventh Earl”; Matilda Swinton, -housekeeper; Peter Wain, gamekeeper; Thomas Duffey, storekeeper—I -began to see what had been the matter with my great-grandfather.</p> - -<p>Inside, the church revealed itself as a family vault so encumbered -with the dead that the living must have been incommoded. In the midst -of life they were in death indeed. Earls in effigy slept (like Priam’s -sons in the Iliad) beside their chaste wives—flat in brasses, worn -smooth in basalt, glaringly in plaster, as might be. A side-chapel -was so full of them that the altar was crowded out: and why not? They -were altar and sacrifice and deity in one. They spilled over on to the -floor, splayed out on the walls in tablets as massy as houseleeks; and -on the bosses of the vaulted roof one found the Boulter arms implanted -in the heart of the Mystic Rose. O too much Boulter—but we were not -shut of them yet. Discreetly curtained off was a Holy of Holies where -the shining ones who survived worshipped their ancestors; a noble -apartment, a withdrawing room, with a stove, a couple of sofas, some -club-chairs, and a deeply padded elbow cushion. Magazines, an ash-tray, -a match-stand—one missed them. There is, no doubt, a comic side to all -this. “J’ai trente mille livres de rente, et cependant je meurs!” said -the Abbé de Bonport. The same amazement might come upon an entrenched -Earl Boulter at any minute in the midst of his cushioned ease. Neither -coat-armour nor a private stove will ward off the mortal chills. -However, I forgive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> them their quality, but not their oppression of -other people’s tombstones.</p> - -<p>For we too were oppressed, and not diverted. We were seeking our -ancestors, but they were not here. They had fled to Fetter Lane, and I -cannot blame them. The doubt about my great-grandfather is solved. He -left the village of Bindon St. Blaise because he saw no other way of -escape from an Earl on his tomb. He married, his wife bore him a son, -which died young. Moved then by piety, he brought down the innocent -to be buried, secure that upon that unknown life no great name could -intrude. I should have done the same thing, I believe.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> - -<h2>“AND NOW, O LORD ...”</h2> - -<p>“And now, O Lord, permit me to relate to Thee an anecdote”: that was -how a minister, labouring with a good story, introduced it into the -midst of his extemporary prayer. I ask to be excused a better exordium, -if better there be.</p> - -<p>Heaven knows what reminded me of it, but a friend of mine had an -interesting experience at Hyde Park Corner one day. He had been riding -in the Row, and was returning leisurely to Whitehall and official cares -somewhere about eleven in the forenoon. At the gates of entry and issue -he was held up in common with the traffic of east and west, which at -that hour was almost at the flood. Omnibuses throbbed and simmered, -dray-horses chafed at their bits, motors and taxis all stood obedient, -bicyclists clung to whatever stays they could come by: in the midst -two staunch policemen stood with their arms at danger. All that mighty -heart was lying still, and there was a lane of emptiness, as if for -royalty, from Constitution Hill. Along that presently there paddled -a wild duck and her chicks in single file, the mother leading; all -necks on the stretch, all eyes wide, all beak a-twitter. Everybody was -interested, but nobody laughed, so far as he could see. I would have -given much to be there. We are a pretty degraded race, no doubt, yet -we have instincts left us which, at our best, betray us for what we -were intended to be. I myself, such as I am, once caused a motor to be -stopped while a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> stoat and her family crossed the Blandford Road, and -we have a tradition that my father once reined up a phaeton to allow -a woolly bear to get safely over. I daresay he did: such things are -inherited. I mention them in no spirit of boasting, but rather to show -that Londoners, who seem to us here so machine-made, are of the same -clay as the children of light.</p> - -<p>You may see queer things in London still, though they are rarer than -they used to be. Nature persists in spite of the electrification of -most things. I saw a battle in the upper air between a crow and a heron -one morning early, in Hyde Park. Heaven knows from what regions fair -and far they were come—but there they were at it, hammer and tongs. -I watched them for a quarter of an hour. The heron got home once, but -not a true blow. It glanced off the skull, and the black shuddered and -avoided. It was inconceivable how quick the blow was, a very lightning -flash; yet the crow swerved in time, and swopped off sideways. The -baffled heron turned heavily and gave no chase. More persistent, and -with death in it, was a duel watched by a man I knew from a Foreign -Office window, between a swan and a pelican. The broadsword there had -no chance against the longer reach. The end must have been terrific, -for the swan took his enemy by the neck and held his head under water -until the battling of his huge wings ceased to churn it into foam, -until the great creature itself became like a lump of white froth. -Then, said my friend, the swan lifted his own wings until they met -above his back, threw his head up and back to rest upon them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> and -oared away towards the bridge. I would have given a good deal to see -that also, perhaps six hours a day at the Foreign Office. There’s no -end to the tale of things you can see in London. Why, a lady in whom -I have every reason to believe came in to lunch one day saying that -she had just seen a hansom drive down Victoria Street with an eagle -standing on the horse’s back, balancing himself on outspread wings. -What was one to say, except wish that one had been as lucky?</p> - -<p>Against that extreme example of the picturesque I could only advance -that I had seen an elm-tree fall on a man in Gray’s Inn and kill him -instantly. Or that, at the corner of Montague Place, I saw a runaway -brewer’s dray barge into a four-wheeler. It missed the cab (on whose -box the driver sat intact), but caught the horse full and knocked him -and the shafts with him down some area steps across the pavement—where -indeed he remained as in his stall until he could be built up from -below. Extreme urgency had hurtled him down the steps, but no -persuasion, fore or aft, would move him up again. So they built him -up with trusses of straw. Nothing quite so good as that ever happened -to me in a four-wheeler; but I haven’t done so badly either. I was -driving once through Paris very early in the morning from the Gare de -Lyon to Saint-Lazare. You are lucky to get a cab at all at such times, -and I thought myself so to have a crazy old victoria and a horse tied -together with string. We did not exactly go, but we got, into the rue -Lafayette, where, without any warning, the victoria parted amidships. -The driver on his box and two wheels<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> went on with the horse; I and my -companion fell forward into the road and the hood of the thing atop of -us. I set up a yell, half-laughter, half-alarm, which caused our man -to look round. When he saw what had happened he pulled up, and very -carefully descended from his perch. Did he come to help us? Not so. He -went directly and deliberately into a cabaret, without any notice taken -of any kind, and we saw him put away a noggin, or whatever it is, of -cognac. Then, with the same meditated method, he came to extricate his -charges. They, however, had by that time extricated themselves, and -considered themselves shut of him.</p> - -<p>When a Frenchman begins to drive anything, horse or motor, he seems to -become intoxicated with progress, and content just to drive, not to -guide, and never, at any rate, to stop. I have been the victim also -of that generous ardour. It was in Algiers, ages ago, but not such -ages that there were not tramcars along the sea-front. A baker in his -covered cart was taking us to see some sight or other; and along the -sea-front held his course magnificently indifferent to everything -but the speed and joy of it all—aided not a little thereto by the -fine afternoon, the business of the road, and the café tables hemming -it, dense with customers. For it was the hour of absinthe. The trams -flashed past us, coming or going, but little cared he for that. His -object was to pass them, and he did pass one or two. Presently, -however, at a curve he flogged his horse to pass one, on the wrong -side, and just as he drew level, behold, another bearing swiftly down -upon us! I confess<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> that I blenched—but he did not; rather held on -his way, and not until the last tick of our last minute on earth did -it strike him that he must do something. And what did he do? He gave -a wild shout and turned his horse sharply to the left. On his left -was the overflow of a café—tin tables, bentwood chairs, syphons, -opal-brimmed glasses, citizens in straw hats, with straws to their -mouths, with cigars or newspapers—as thick as a flock of sheep. Into -the midst of this, as once Don Quixote hurled himself, we plunged, -horse, cart and passengers. Tables flew right and left, citizens were -upset, glasses shivered, waiters wrung their hands. You never saw -such a sight. And what did we do? I and my companion sat where we -were, laughing ourselves ill, fighting for breath. Our driver slowly -dismounted and looked round. He disregarded entirely the havoc he -had made, and thought only of his honour. The driver of the tram was -waiting for him. They met, and each lifted a bunched hand, in which all -the finger-tips met and formed a little cage, to within an inch of the -other’s nose. Then began <i>des injures</i>, which could only have ended in -one of two ways. The arrival of the gendarmes decided in which of the -two it was to end.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE DEATH OF THE SHEEP</h2> - -<p>Alfred de Vigny, it seems, wrote a poem of stoic intention called <i>La -Mort du Loup</i>, in which he apostrophised in his eloquent way that -particular among other <i>sublimes animaux</i>. I have never read a line of -it myself, but can well understand, when Sainte-Beuve regrets that it -should have been written too much from the standpoint of seeking in -nature at all costs subjects of meditative poetry, that Sainte-Beuve -may have been right. The pathetic fallacy is a stumbling-block to -the egoistic travellers we are. De Vigny on his dead wolf may have -been lifted as far, or nearly as far, as Sterne on his dead donkey. -Personally, I am busking for a short excursion on a dead sheep; but -although there were elements of the high sublime in the climax, and -of the horrid in the anti-climax of the tragedy, it is not on their -account that I wish to relate it; rather because it seemed to me at -the time to be representative, exactly to prefigure the countryside -in which I saw it all done. It may stand up as type, or as symbol, of -the fells and the life lived there; it has in it much of their lonely -grandeur and savagery, of their harshness and plainness, of their -entire absence of amenity; in a word, of their Nordic quality which -does not so much insist as take for granted, in a way disconcerting -to the Southerner, that neither man nor woman, dog nor sheep more or -less makes one straw’s worth of difference to the day’s work, but that -we are all alike rolled round, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> Wordsworth said, “with stocks and -stones and trees.” He himself, Nordic to the bone, saw nothing amiss -with it; and no doubt it is all right.</p> - -<p>The sheep must have died rather suddenly in the late afternoon. When I -went down the fell-side, at six, to fish in the river there was nothing -but greenness to be seen; when I came up again, round about eight -o’clock, I saw, or thought I saw, a grey rock where had been no rock -before. It was the sheep, and quite cold. She must have felt her time -at hand, withdrawn herself from her companions, and descended the hill -deliberately to be alone with fate. Then, as I see it now, she stood -there, facing down the hill, which in health her kind never does, and -awaited the end of all things. Then, as the chills crept up, she lay -down and put her muzzle flatlings to that rooty earth which in life -she had so diligently sought, and with the scent of it to comfort her -(the best thing she knew) given up what ghost she had. She looked, as I -stood over her, to be asleep—asleep with large, bare eyelids covering -her blank amber eyes—and grandly indifferent to me and the rest of -us. I left her, a warrior taking her rest. There she lay all night; -and in the morning, her former mates feeding all about her, there she -was. A windless silver rain was falling, straight as rods of glass. The -fell was blanched with it, as with hoar frost; but she took no notice -of the rain. A crow or two wheeled about, and bore off in the haze as -soon as I showed myself. I went down to look at the sheep. She lay -easily, her nose to the ground, while others of her nation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> gazed at -me, foolishly serious, heaving at the side. Whatever had taken place at -that supreme hour of yesterday evening, it had changed this corruptible -into something other than a sheep. Sheep-nature had gone; she had not a -sheep’s face any more. Her dead eyes looked wiselier through their lids -than their empty ones unveiled, and fuller, too, as if charged with -weightier news. Sterner, too, she appeared—with her lips curled back; -the rabbit-look gone.</p> - -<p>There she lay in the wet all forenoon, very dignified and at ease in -death. But distresses were at hand. After mid-day I saw a thin white -dog, come out of nowhere, high-trotting over the grass, his tail -feathering, his nose in the wind. He tacked to the corpse, sniffed at -it from a spear’s length, then spurned it after the manner of his race, -and slowly retired. Not for very long. He had discovered a hankering -as he went, which became irresistible, and drew him back to satisfy -it. I watched him. This time he came, not adventurously, but as on -secret errand, furtively, creeping cat-footed by the stone wall—much, -I thought, as Amina would have skirted the graveyard. When he had to -take to the open he approached by broad tacks north and south, and at -the last came on with a rush. I saw him attack the silent thing, pull -out large tufts of wool, from which he fiercely shook himself free. He -did more than that before I shouted, and threatened with my hand. Then -he slipped rapidly away, at a loping gallop, with many a look behind to -where I stood on the brow. He was only the first. Looking out again, I -saw a black-and-white dog,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> with his head busy in the carcase, and down -by the river another on the way. I had seen in my day jackals about a -dead camel, and did not want that sort of thing rehearsed in Eskdale. -In my own country we feed our sheep-dogs, and should discourage them -from helping themselves to braxy mutton, lest they might acquire a -taste for meat of their own killing. Besides, I respected what had -seemed to me a dignified end of days. So I drove off the two ghouls and -went down to do what I could. I was too late. She had suffered the last -indignity. She was dragged over on to her back, her head was awry, her -lips riven apart to show her teeth; and she was disembowelled. However, -I did what there was to do, covered her with a loose field-gate, heaped -upon that coping-stones from the wall, made a kind of cairn. Then I -went over to the farm to see the farmer’s wife.</p> - -<p>She said—merely humouring my queasiness—that the remains should -be shifted. And they were. A leggy young thrall made short work of -my defences, and dragged the sheep by a hind-leg into a spinney of -sycamores near by. Thereabouts I saw the dogs gather themselves -together at shut of day, and I heard their snapping and snarling over -their uneasy meal. I heard it far into the night, where under cover of -dark the dead sheep was consumed with obscene rites. Nothing but bared -bones will be left; but they will remain undisturbed to gleam in the -murky wood for a season, inchmeal to be resumed into the soil.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE SOLITARY REAPER</h2> - -<p>The Evangelist, when he said that the field was white already to -harvest, was thinking of some grain which we know not in Wilts. Our -broad acres are deep orange, some of them near the colour of rust. He -might have had oats in his mind’s eye, not a staple of ours. Here and -there they show up patches of silver-grey; but most of our corn is red -wheat, a noble increase. In a burning summer such as this the familiar -scene takes on the bleached glare and fierce hue of Spain or Provence. -I had a train journey yesterday across West Wilts through hills all -drab and tawny. The corn is shoulder-high, heavy in ear, bolt upright; -a sight, you would say, as I do, to thank God for. From all sides comes -the sound of the reaper, a rattle when horse-drawn, but a scream when -petrol drives it, a restless disagreeable noise, not only anti-social, -but unsociable. I regret the happy accidents of the vanished harvests: -the reapers with their attendant girls binding after them, the busy, -thirsty, brawling Irishmen; the sharp swish of the scythe which -succeeded the hook and was always a pleasant sound, whether as it -slashed down the straw, or when the stone tinkled rhythmically against -the blade; the work in file, the noonday rest in companies—all gone -now. I passed a hundred-acre field yesterday where cutting had just -begun. One man was reaping it. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>Alone she cuts and binds the grain,</div> -<div>And sings a melancholy strain:</div> -<div>O listen! for the vale profound</div> -<div>Is overflowing with the sound.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>It was indeed! For “she” was a machine.</p> - -<p>“It may be wholesome but it is not good,” as Nebuchadnezzar said, -munching the “unfamiliar food.” One misses the human note in -agriculture, always its most pronounced and amiable feature, the thing -in particular which gave poignancy to the festival which we shall -celebrate this year earlier than any man here can mind our doing. The -children’s holidays begin, too, this week, in obedience to what is -now a forlorn convention—a mere vestige like the human appendix. For -the children now have no part in harvesting. They used to twist the -bonds for their mothers and sisters; but the machine does all that -now, the exorbitant monster, with twine. I suppose that the hiles, -as we call them, are still set up by men’s hands—that is all there -is left of what used to be our high season of the mingling of both -sexes, all classes, and all ages. I regret, and I fear too. If the -“solitary reaper” is but the prelude to the golden age of Mr. Sidney -Webb’s dream, when farms are to be measured by their square-mileage, -and farming conducted in a box by a man with a switch-board in front of -him, a man who might be in Whitehall for anything that appears—why, -then the country will become as the town; life will be a game of -automaton chess-players; and I shall go and grow vanilla in a Pacific -island. Of all Utopias yet devised by the academic,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> Mr. Webb’s appears -to me the most ghastly, and luckily also the least likely to be -realised. There are “little men” here still growing corn, reaping it -still with sickle and hook; and perhaps some of them are threshing it -with flails, and winnowing it in the wind on floors like that of Ornan -the Jebuzite. They do that still in Greece, for I have seen the floors. -I don’t despair of seeing some here, where Mr. Webb’s <i>automata</i> are -not visible. We are most of us “little men” at heart.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> - -<h2>INTERIORS</h2> - -<p>Now is the time of year when you see interiors at their best—interiors -and all that they involve and imply. The warmth and light of the earth -concentre there, and he is unhappy—a figure for Hans Andersen—who has -not hearth to reach and household gods to await him. Meantime, however -he be hastening towards them, he will look, not without longing, -through still uncurtained windows, mark the leaping fire, the shaded -lamp, the tea-table and its attendant guests, and feel a glow and (I am -sure) a momentary pang. Perhaps we are exorbitant lovers, perhaps we -dread to know how lonely we are. I don’t care to say. But certainly we -are creatures of the light; and where that is, there must we be.</p> - -<p>Familiar as we are with ourselves, and often enough bored to tears with -the fellow, we are so blankly ignorant of each other that we can set -no bounds to our curiosity. Thence comes part, at least, of the charm -of lit interiors, that we think to surprise the inhabitants at their -mysteries, catch them unawares and find out what they do when no one -is looking at them—or they believe it. This is no case for Peeping -Tom of Coventry: the need is much too urgent for unwholesome prying. -Honestly, we require to be certified that we are not alone, unique -in the world. Besides, inspection, you may say, is invited; or it is -ignored. Your hastening steps down a village street at dusk may lead -you through a picture-gallery,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> so free are the indwellers of their -concerns: I have been gladdened by enchanting scenes through narrow -window-frames or magic casements. Once it was of children—four little -girls in pinafores, in a row behind a long table, all stooped over -bread and milk in yellow bowls. The eldest I put at about ten; from her -they ran down to four or five. So good, and so busy—“forty feeding -like one!” But there were only four of them so far as I could see. As -they stooped, their hair fell forward to curtain their faces. It was -what the French call <i>cendré</i>, very glossy and smooth, and curling at -the ends. They did not speak, just shovelled; but just as I passed I -saw the little one at the bottom of the row perform the feat of turning -a pretty large spoon completely round in a pretty small mouth; and as -she did it she looked sideways at someone hidden from me (presiding, -no doubt, over the tea-cups), to ascertain if she had been caught in -the act. I declare that I saw triumph and anxiety contending in her -eyes. And she <i>had</i> been caught, not by the president, but by her elder -sister at the other end of the line. There too I saw reproof hovering. -Happy, busy, neat little creatures! I tell you I felt myself an exile -as I passed that haunt of peace and warmth! And so one always does, I -believe, whatsoever welcome await you at the end of your journey. You -ask—or I did—How come they to leave <i>me</i> outside in the dark? Don’t -they know that I am one with them all?</p> - -<p>I have seen a mother reading to her girls at work, and longed to -know what the book was, whether I had read it. If, as I believed, it -was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> Miss Alcott, then I was all right. I have seen a boy rigging a -three-masted vessel at a table, and knew by the way he was biting his -tongue how happy he was. And I have seen comedies for Molière. I saw -topers once in a tap-room, and a man in a cut-away coat and a shocking -hat standing up and trying to make good and not succeeding. He did not -belong to their parts—that was evident. I guessed him to be an outlier -from some race-meeting or other. But there he was, inside, warm, and -at least smelling the good cheer, and there he hoped to remain. He was -doing it, or trying it, on his gift—which was tongues. I don’t suppose -that I was thirty seconds passing that window, if so much; yet I could -see decisively that he wanted them to believe in him, and how badly. -They, a plain-faced, weather-seamed row, were not taking any. They were -tired with their day’s work, leaned to the wall, their legs, I am sure, -stretched out at length. Each with one horny hand held his pipe in its -place; one and all they looked down at their feet, and listened, and -judged him for a poor thing. The things you see!</p> - -<p>They are not always so pleasant. Sometimes they can be pretty tragic -when you come to work them out. I passed a house once on the outskirts -of a country town, and across a laurel hedge and iron fence, and -between the branches of a monkey-puzzler, could see into a lighted -room. Not much to be seen, you might think. Gas was burning in a -central chandelier behind ground-glass globes. An engraving in a gilt -frame on a green wall; something in a tall glass case before the -window.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> I did not see the <i>aspidestris</i>, which must have been there. -Then, on one side of the fire a man in a black coat, asleep, and on -the other a woman in a white shawl, asleep—and that was all. Yes, but -wait. I remember a trial at some Assizes years ago, where a man was -arraigned for killing his wife. He pleaded not guilty, as of course; -but the evidence was clear. He had killed her with a chopper in the -scullery. He was convicted and sentenced to death, having had nothing -to say. Before his execution, but not long before it, he told the -chaplain of the gaol what he had done, and why. He said that he had -been married to the woman for twenty years; that they did not quarrel, -but had got out of the way of speaking to one another, and, in fact, -practically never did. It had not affected him for some time, he said; -but one evening, suddenly, it did. One evening he was struck with -horror, palsy-struck with the reflection: “Good God! I have sat dumb -before this woman, she dumb before me, for twenty years, and we may -have to sit so for another twenty.” He said that from that moment the -thought never left him, that the horror of the prospect daunted him, -and that by and by his heart failed him. He knew then that he could -not do it. Some wild resentment, some hot inconsiderate grudge wrought -madness in him—to that shocking end. By ordinary we do not use our -imagination, and so escape very likely as much misery as happiness, -glory and the like. But if the picture-making faculty awake of itself, -blaze the future at us, so vividly that we cannot doubt of its -truth—what then? Why, then, as often as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> not, despondency and madness. -I had no envy of that gas-illumined room, and was contented to be a -stranger to that disgruntled pair.</p> - -<p>I have seen other things of sharper savour, where passion clearly was -involved, and, as it seemed, the creatures themselves uncurtained as -well as the room they occupied. Two of them, related long ago, I shall -always remember: the first, seen by chance from a window of the Army -and Navy Stores, which looked out over the purlieus of Westminster -towards the river. That showed me a mean second-floor bedroom just over -the way, and a little maid-servant in it, down at heels, draggled, her -cap awry, dusting and tidying up. All familiar, uninteresting, a matter -of routine, until suddenly I saw her throw her head up—a gesture of -real abandonment—and fall on her knees beside the bed. She buried -her face in her bare arm; and I moved away. That was no place for me. -Startling though, to be jolted out of the smooth apparatus of shopping, -away from obsequious service and the accepted convention, in return for -my half-crowns, that I was a temporary lord of the earth. All a sham, -that; but there across the street, in a frowsy bedroom, was reality—a -soul and its Disposer face to face.</p> - -<p>The other was revealed when, as a very young man, I had chambers in Old -Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn. My bedroom there backed upon slums, but was -above them, being almost in the roof of a tall old house. One night, -very late, I was going to bed, and leaned far out of my window to get -air and see the stars. Before, and below me rather, rose a dark wall -of houses, entirely blind but for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> one lighted window. That revealed a -shabby sitting-room—a table with a sewing-machine and paraffin lamp; -little else. There was a man sitting by the table in his shirt-sleeves; -he was smoking while he read the evening paper. Then a door opened -and a tall, youngish woman came in. She was in white—evidently in -her nightdress—and her loose hair was about her shoulders. She stood -between door and table, resting her hand; I don’t think that she spoke. -The man, aware or unaware, went on reading. But presently he looked -up: their eyes met. He threw down pipe and paper and went to her. He -dropped to his knees, clasped hers, and bent his head to his hands. All -that I had seen before—I knew what I was doing—but I saw no more. -What did it mean? Husband and wife? Sinner and saviour? What do I know?</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE PLIGHT OF THEIR GRACES</h2> - -<p>The mills of God grind as the poet has declared, and they grind to the -same measure both the illustrious and the obscure. Naturally one hears -more of the sorrows of the great. The wailing of a duke will carry the -length of the realm, and since America is now interested domestically -in that estate it will reverberate in the Western continent also. The -Duke of Bedford has lately exhibited a part of his case to readers of -<i>The Times</i>, the Duke of Portland more explicitly his to his friends -and neighbours. Both their graces say in effect that the thing can’t be -done. They do not tell us why not; but we can infer it. To do things -properly, Welbeck and Woburn require some thirty housemaids; and how -are they to find thirty housemaids, or, having found them, as things -now are, pay for them? They do not ask, but the question follows for -the plainer sort, why should a man stand in the ridiculous position of -requiring thirty housemaids?</p> - -<p>It so happens that I have just been to Woburn for the first time -in my life, have made the circuit of the great wall, some ten feet -high and, I daresay, ten miles round, have entered at one fine gate -and issued at another after a traverse of the noble spaces of the -park, in which herds of deer, occasional ostriches, lamas, bisons, -remote and solitary buffaloes, and heaven knows what, were to be seen -peacefully feeding, as if no kind of anxiety was fretting the peace -and amplitude of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> it all. The trees, the boscages, the lake, the great -piled grey house unapproachable of the vulgar, the model villages with -their cottage-fronts all stamped with a crowned B—all these splendid -established things passed by me like an opium-eater’s dream: all so -seeming secure, inevitable and right; all, actually, so shaky, doomed, -and infernally wrong. And with the Lord of Welbeck’s wail in my ears, I -also saw that, truly, it could not be done.</p> - -<p>It is not a matter of housemaids alone. It is a matter of gardeners, -of woodmen, of a permanent staff of masons and bricklayers—for with -a wall of ten feet by ten miles there will always be repairs. Other -services in proportion. Where are we then? I avoid arithmetic for -excellent reasons; but I do see that thirty housemaids at £50 a year -apiece plus board come to £3,000 a year, and that the others will -figure out accordingly. How is it to be done? It is not. And why should -it be done? God knows.</p> - -<p>Whether their Graces know is another matter. I think that they are -beginning to know—but even so, they are only at the beginning of -the problem. For it is not so easy as it sounds just to drop Welbeck -or Woburn and live <i>en pension</i> at Dieppe. What are you to do with -Welbeck in the meantime? And if you don’t want it yourself, who, do -you suppose, will want it? And let it be remembered that their Graces, -besides Welbeck and Woburn, possess each another house, not made with -hands, an indestructible house. They are dukes for ever after the order -of Melchisedech. Like snails, wherever they go—to Dieppe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> to a flat -in the Temple, to a caravan, to the banks of the Susquehanna—they must -carry that blazoned house on their backs. And I cannot imagine a more -inhospitable or superfluous mansion for the life of me.</p> - -<p>The only nobility worth talking about is one of birth, and even that -won’t bear talking about very seriously. Lord Chesterfield, the famous -one of the family, had a gallery of ancestors which was a wonder to -behold of completeness and splendour. But he was wise enough to correct -it with two pictures: a scrubby old man, labelled Adam de Stanhope, and -a scrubby old woman, Eve de Stanhope. He had the values straightened -out thus wittily, at any rate for himself. Then there was the -family-tree of the Wynns, or another Welsh house, which had an asterisk -some distance down, with a note attached: “About this time the creation -of the world took place.” This is perhaps all very foolish, but we can -understand it.</p> - -<p>We supplemented that intelligible aristocracy in our country, first -with an aristocracy of office, and then with one of rank; and it is -on those in particular that the economic crisis presses. Noble birth -is a matter of tradition and, so to speak, of God’s grace. If you are -nobly born you may black boots, sell matches or beg at a church door. -Hidalgos, grandees of Spain, do these things in their own country, and -remain grandees of Spain. Even ignoble pursuits cannot stultify noble -birth. There it is. Official nobility, too, is very well, while ability -to office persists: but that kind died out because ability to office -refused to be hereditary. The first Earls were governors of earldoms,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> -that is of counties. The first Viscounts were Vicecomites, Sheriffs. -But Lord Viscount Northcliffe is not a sheriff. If he is an aristocrat -it is by virtue of rank. Now rank is not quite like beauty. Handsome -is as handsome does, we know; but rank is as rank is able to be. You -may make a man a duke, of course, but it is possible that he will -make himself ridiculous; and if he does that, and if he does it often -enough, and if there are enough of him, he will make the Fountain of -Honour itself ridiculous. I don’t know who was the first of our kings -to ennoble, his Quelconques, his “unfortunate females,” as Carlyle used -to say: I think it was Henry VIII; but whoever he was he sowed the -seed of a fungus in the ranks of the peers. One knows what the French -kings did, what Charles II, what the Hanoverians did. Whether, when the -politicians took control of the Fountain of Honour and commercialised -its golden waters, they did any worse, it were hard to say. They made -common what had already become vulgar. The peerage of late years is -only less absurd because it is less conspicuous. That at least is -to the good. Yet there remains this last thing to be said about it. -An aristocracy of birth is self-sufficient, but one of rank demands -self-evidence, quite a different matter. It drives you back upon -wealth, without which it is an absurdity. A grandee of Spain selling -matches will pass—but how about a Caroline or Georgian marquess -driving a taxi, or taking his turn at a music-hall?</p> - -<p>M. Henri Lavedan wrote a novel upon that theme, a cynical, witty, -bitter, rattling novel, too,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> called “Le Bon Temps.” A party of -Parisians, men about town and their ladies, is lunching <i>al fresco</i> -at Armenonville or some such on a fine morning in May. A hurdy-gurdy -sounds a familiar air outside, which touches the tender top of some -quill in one of the <i>convives</i>. “Let’s have the old chap in,” he moves -the company. “He’s playing the <i>Blue Danube</i>, and will renew the youth -for some of us.” They have him in, a tattered, bearded, bright-eyed -<i>vecchio</i>, his instrument slung by a greasy strap to one shoulder, -on the other a foolish little troubled monkey in a red velveteen -petticoat. He lifts his old hat and recommences his grinding. One of -the guests covers his eyes, and so remains until the grinder has gone. -Then he lifts his head. “Do you know who that was?” “Not I indeed!” -“That was the Duc d’Epervier.” Then he tells the story of <i>Le Bon -Temps: Wein, Weib, und Gesang</i>, a rattling tale with a croak in it.</p> - -<p>“Why do the people imagine a vain thing?” This is a case for tags.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE VILLAGE</h2> - -<p>The gardener told my housekeeper, and she told me, that the policeman’s -wife had a baby. I said, Splendid! or Good!—it was one or the -other—which will show you that I knew what I was about. To have said -less than that—to have said simply, “Oh,” or “Why not?” would have -been to fail in tact. For in the village we take such a thing as a baby -seriously. We call it Increase, not a baby, in the old fashion, and -disregard the new probability that, while it may be so in one sense, -there are several in which it may well be called Decrease. When a -patriarch’s—or, I should say here, a Druid’s—wife had a baby, both -she and the Druid knew that, barring accidents, it would work for him, -if it was a boy, and in due course bring in a wife of its own, and -Increase of its own—all to work for the Druid until he died. Or, if -it was a girl, he would sell it to a neighbouring Druid for measures -of corn or heads of cattle. Increase then all round, however it turned -out. But it is different now. We have the name without the thing. If -it is a boy, as in fact the policeman’s is, it will be no use to him -until it is fifteen, and not much then. Suppose it gets a job somewhere -handy, it will pay its mother, say, five shillings a week, a bare -subsistence. At twenty, if still living at home, that may be increased -to ten shillings. Clothes and a motor-bike will somehow come out of the -rest. Precious little Increase there. And soon after twenty it will -marry and disappear from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> household. But still the village holds -by the old fashion, and calls a boy-baby Increase. I have heard girls -dignified by the same title, though it is not so invariable. Yet there -is more chance of a girl proving useful to her parents than of a boy’s -being so. It depends entirely on the mother, whether as the child grows -up it finds out that she won’t stand any nonsense. There are still such -mothers left—I know two or three; but their numbers diminish with -every additional nonsense that crops up.</p> - -<p>Not only do we take babies seriously, but we take each other so. The -first is enforced upon us by custom, which is simply the unwritten -village law; the other comes about by circumstance, which provides that -whether we like it or not—and, on the whole, I am pretty sure that we -do like it—we are simply a large family. I don’t necessarily mean that -everybody is related to everybody else, though as a matter of fact he -is, but rather that everybody, from the time he was anybody, has always -known everybody else intimately: called him or her by his Christian -name—within limits—known the exact state of his wardrobe, the extent -of his earnings, the state of his pocket; what he had for dinner, or -will have to-morrow, where he has been, what he was doing, whom he is -courting, or by whom he is courted—and so on. I should fail entirely -to make plain the sense in which this extreme and (to a townsman) -extraordinary intimacy must be understood if I had not in reserve one -crowning example of it, beyond which I defy anybody to carry intimacy. -It is, then, the plain and literal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> fact that everybody in the village -knows, or can find out, exactly the amount, condition, value and period -of recurrence of everybody else’s underwear. There is no exception -to that. It is, it can be, it must be exposed to view and subject to -criticism every Monday afternoon in the garden of every cottage. When -you have a community with such a mutual knowledge among its members, -how can you help their taking each other seriously?</p> - -<p>Two of the fundamentals of village life have been expounded, I hope: -Custom, which is the Law, and says that what you did the day before -yesterday is sanction for doing it the day after to-morrow; that, and -exact mutual knowledge of your own and your neighbours’ affairs. There -is a third: common poverty. Everybody is poor—or if he is not, he must -seem so. That is invariable, for where everyone is poor, and everyone’s -affairs known to everyone else, a very jealous eye is kept for any -variation from the standard. Poverty—and by poverty I mean the state -where you never have quite enough for the week’s expenses, are never -more than a week’s pay off “the Parish,” and have to trust to windfalls -for mere necessaries—that kind of poverty is a state which can only -be borne in company. In the village it is the general state, and while -that is so the villagers will put up, it seems, with almost anything. -Custom, which assures them that it was like that for their forefathers, -enables them to accept their continual privations. I daresay there is -nobody in the village, of cottage rank, who has ever known an ordinary -day when he was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> hungry after a meal. They say that that is good -for you. My only comment is, Try it, and it won’t seem to be so. They -will stand that; and being cold in bed; and letting the fire out when -you are not cooking something—so that you come home wet and tired to -cold ashes, and must chop kindling before you can be warm or dry; and -working incessantly, as the women do, for almost nothing or literally -nothing; and wearing the same clothes until they fall off you; and -washing at the sink downstairs because you are too tired to take water -upstairs; and having windows that won’t open, and doors that won’t -shut—but why go on? Worse things than any of these are endured in the -slums of great towns. The village makes little of them, provided that -they are shared; but the moment it knows, or has cause to suspect that -any one of its number has had “a stroke of luck,” come into money, had -a useful present made him, or found a well-paid job, then it is at -once dissatisfied with its lot, and the lucky offender hears about it. -It is not that village people are naturally unkind to each other—far -from that, they are kindness itself in times of trouble. But they are -incurably suspicious, and quicker to believe ill than well of each -other. They grudge prosperity to a neighbour less than resent it. It -seems a slight upon themselves. A hot and bitter question surges up, -Why should that good fortune happen to her; and what have I done to be -left out? By some queer jugglery of the mind, the first half of the -question answers the second half; the happy one is so at the expense -of the less favoured. If you engage a girl in the village for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> some -daily task, her friends, as likely as not, will cut her in the street. -I knew a woman in Norfolk whose husband was killed by a fall from a -straw-stack. Compensation, insurance, club-money, presents from the -benevolent flowed in to the widow, whose neighbours saw her not only -free as air, but comfortably off according to village standards. They -called her “the Lady,” and some of her own family would have nothing to -do with her.</p> - -<p>Indiscriminate or heedless present-giving should therefore be -avoided, unless you wish harm to come to the object of your alms. -There was a man in a village over the hill who was doing a turn of -work in the house of a newcomer, a rich young man with the most -friendly intentions. Talking to his labourer one day and noticing his -unconventional leg-covering, it suddenly shot across his mind that he -had lately tried on a new pair of trousers and taken them off again -in a rage because of their cut. “By George,” he thought, “I like this -chap. Now I’ll give him those beastly trousers”—which he did. On -Sunday, then, there shone upon the church-going village young Richard -in the newest pair of trousers it had ever seen, except, of course, -upon the legs of a “gentleman,” where they would have been simply -unremarkable, <i>hors concours</i>. But now it was as if a private in a -file should show up there in a cocked hat with feathers. The trousers -were glossy from the iron, they caught the sun. The creases before or -behind would have cut a swathe. In the after-dinner time, when some -favoured corner hums with youth, it hummed to only one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> tune; and on -Monday the children going to school called out after young Richard, -“Who stole my trousers?” It will now be understood why no village can -be found without its miser. Between hiding and hoarding there is only a -difference of degree. The first is forced upon the villager, for public -opinion is too many for him; he dare not let it be known that he has -anything to put by. The mattress used to be the favourite place for -your economies. If it is not used now it is simply to save the waste -of good ticking which always followed a death. Now it will be a hole -under the hearthstone, or in the thatch, or a <i>cache</i> under the third -gooseberry bush as you go down the garden. Sometimes it is so well -hidden that, if death be sudden, it is never found at all. Sometimes -the hider will forget where he hid his money, and dig up the whole -garden in the middle of the night. Mr. Pepys was in that predicament -and, so feverishly did he hunt, lost quite a number of broad pieces. -But the worst case is where he knows the hiding-place exactly, and -going to recover his treasure, finds that somebody else had known it -too; and so it has gone. Cruel dilemma! He dare not let his loss be -known, nor, should he be able, accuse the thief. His only remedy in -such circumstance is to steal from the stealer. I heard of an old woman -who was robbed of twenty pounds, which she kept in an old beehive, and -who knew perfectly well where the money was. She said nothing at all, -continued her acquaintance, and even used to have the thief to tea with -her. I don’t know how it was done—whether it dawned upon the guilty -that she was suspected,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> and so compunction came. Anyhow, as I was -told, the money was restored.</p> - -<p>It may seem odd that when a villager rises in the world, as they often -do, he ceases to be grudged. I am not sure that he really does; but no -signs of grudging appear, simply because he ceases to be a villager. -Rank is carefully observed—but it is all outside. There is no rank in -the village itself. All are level there—except in one way. And that -exception is not odd, either.</p> - -<p>Walking down the street at certain hours of the day you will meet -certain old men, elders of the people. Although they differ in no -respect from any others you may find there, you will notice this about -them that they will be “Mr.” to everyone, and not, as is usual, Jack, -Tom, or Jimmy. What has procured them their title of honour? Not always -age, certainly never riches: as often as not the bearer of a title -will be an old-age pensioner. Or he may be “on the rates.” It doesn’t -matter. Some native worth or resident dignity forbids the use of his -Christian name, which is otherwise of invariable application. That -points to a real aristocracy, an aristocracy of character; the only -one which can hope to be permanent, as founded upon reason and nature; -and the one without which no democracy can expect to be permanent -either. Walking with one of these patricians the other day, I observed -before us a man of near his age. Presently there came towards us an -urchin homing from school, who passing our front rank, a man old enough -to be his great grandfather, lightly acclaimed him with “Afternoon, -George.” But to my companion it was, “Afternoon,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> Mr. M——.” With the -women—married, of course—the decencies are observed in salutation, -but not in reference. You will hear of one as old Liz Marchant, of -another, always, as Mrs. Catchpole, or whatever her name may be. But, -to each other, married women are strict formalists. Two girls who have -known each other from childhood and been at school together will be -Florry and Bess to the very church-porch. From the wedding day onwards, -if they should live to be a hundred, they will be “Mrs.” to each other. -That would fill me with wonder if I did not know how seriously the -married state is taken in the village, the more so, I don’t doubt, -because the single is more free than is convenient. Marriage, we say, -sets right every irregularity. Perhaps it does; but in these parts it -effectively prevents there being any more.</p> - -<p class="space-above">I have been expounding, it should be seen, what are virtually the -manners and customs of a nation widely different from that of most of -my readers. It is not really an economic, but an historic difference; -for the longer I study it the clearer it becomes that the village does -not differ in any essential respect from its remotest original, the -Neolithic settlements on the tops of these hills. From where I live, a -quarter way up the chalk down, I could conduct the inquirer to three -or four vestiges of communities exactly like this one. I could point -out the holes in which they lived, the track by which they drove their -flocks to and from the watering places, which are still <i>in situ</i> and -still used. I could lay a wreath on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> mound which covers their dust, -or I might by a chance of the spade uncover their bones, not dust yet. -There has never been discovered, so far as I am aware, anything to show -that any one man of that nation lorded it over his fellows. Lords and -masters enough there have been since. From the time when the Alpine -race invaded our country the Iberian stock which underlies us all has -never lacked a master. <i>But they have none now.</i> They have employers, -hirers, not masters. So far as I can see the West Country village -community is now once more just where it was fifteen hundred years -before Christ, or thirty-five hundred years ago. It is in the valley -instead of on the hill, it is professedly Christian instead of heathen. -But it is still guided by tradition, and governed by common opinion, -and as near a democracy as may be: a democracy tempered by character.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE CURTAINS</h2> - -<p>Your pair of muslin curtains, given time and place, may cost you -anything in the region of four, eleven, three, as the shop will tell -you; but if you add to that domestic calm, the amenities and a raw -sconce they soon mount up. That was what they cost a man I know, and -I say that they are not worth it. For, not to dwell for a moment upon -his particular pair, muslin curtains don’t fulfil the whole duty of -curtains, but only a part of it, and the wrong part. They prevent you -from seeing out of the window, which is the last thing you want of -them in the country; they don’t prevent other people from seeing into -it—which is the first thing. Particularly when you have the lamp -alight. For instance, the other evening the whole village was informed -inside of an hour that Mrs. Hobday, a young and pretty woman, had been -trying on a hat with one hand and powdering her nose with the other. -She herself was the last to know it, and the last to be allowed to -forget it.</p> - -<p>The Hobdays’ neighbours are the Cosseys, and Mrs. Hobday and Mrs. -Cossey from the first were bosom friends. That was very important if -life were to be what you might call life, for the two front doors are -under one lintel, and, said Mrs. Cossey, “’tis such close living that -if you weren’t one thing you must be t’other.” But they were always -the one thing until the affair of the curtains, though Mrs. Cossey was -large and plain-faced, and Mrs. Hobday pretty and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> small; though Mrs. -Cossey had two children and Mrs. Hobday was only expecting. However, -from the very first we were told ’twas all as pleasant as pleasant. -They lived in each other’s houses, listened to each other’s tales -of courtship and marriage, admired each other’s washing, and shook -sympathetic heads over the unreasonableness of each other’s husband. -There were no clouds in the sky, nor the makings of them. The Cosseys -had an Axminster, but the Hobdays a new drugget. Mrs. Cossey had a -copper kettle, Mrs. Hobday a silver teapot. Things were “just so,” neck -and neck, and nothing to choose between them, when you came to add -things up. O sweet content! And then, one mild morning, Mrs. Cossey was -offered a seat in a motor-car going into town, and accepted.</p> - -<p>It was a fine day; she was elated by her drive. Market-day, too. She -felt like going it, and she went it. Away flew five shillings on a pair -of muslin curtains which were selling like hot cakes at a stall. Mrs. -Cossey bought other things, but nothing to count. The curtains fair set -her up, they did. She felt as though she were treading on air. Wherever -she went about the town that day she had an eye for the windows, and -saw nothing better anywhere. “I’ll make Fred put ’em up after dark,” -she promised herself. “’Twill be a surprise for Mrs. Hobday in the -morning.” It was.</p> - -<p>When Mrs. Hobday saw her friend’s front-room window she felt her heart -jump, then stand still. But she knew what was due to herself, and let -not a sigh escape her. Mrs. Cossey found her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> busy on her knees over -the doorstep, busier certainly than she had ever been before. It became -necessary to call her attention to the curtains, which somehow took the -edge off them. You can’t explain it, but so ’twas. Then, of course, -Mrs. Hobday admired; and when she had admired enough, she was told all -about it; and when she knew all about it she said no more, but excused -herself for being busy, and withdrew. Nor, if you will believe Mrs. -Cossey, was she seen again for two days and nights; never so much as -put her head outside the door. But Mrs. Cossey did not know how she -had wept on Hobday’s shoulder that evening of discovery, how she had -pleaded (as they used to do at Assizes, poor things) her condition, and -how Hobday had said she shouldn’t want for anything, if it cost him ten -shillin’—which it did. She knew nothing of all that; but in two days’ -time, when she stood at her front door, and, happening to look at her -neighbour’s window, might, so she said, have been knocked down with a -feather—then indeed she knew all the blackness of Mrs. Hobday’s heart.</p> - -<p>Whatever she might have been knocked down with, she herself used a -club, that is to say, most injurious words. The whole village heard -them, at second-hand, from Tom Crewkomb, the sweep, who had been -passing at the time. Warmed by eloquence, it seems, and her growing -sense of triumphant suffering, Mrs. Cossey called Mrs. Hobday a saucy -young piece; whereat Mrs. Hobday, as if whipped, struck out blindly -and said that Mrs. Cossey was no better than she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> should be. It may -have been true—it is true of most of us; but Mrs. Cossey took it to -heart and, refusing all nourishment, could do nothing but repeat it -to herself over and over again. The pair of cottages, resplendently -curtained as they might be, became a house of lamentation. The -breaking-point was reached when Hobday came home to tea, and being -again wept upon, pushed fiercely into next door and called Mrs. Cossey -to her face an old tantamount—a terrible word, whose implication -no man could possibly know. For end thereof, not despondency but -madness: for when Cossey understood that Hobday had called his wife a -tantamount, he waited for him outside, and gave him what he called a -pair of clippers over the ear. Hobday was a light-weight, and did his -best, but he could not get near Cossey; and he went to grass. Mrs. -Hobday had hysterics, and asked for the doctor; and then (such is human -nature at its best) Mrs. Cossey ran in to her, called her a lamb, and -put her to bed.</p> - -<p>It is a boy.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Cossey and Mrs. Hobday have better things to admire in each other -now. But Mrs. Hobday knows that her curtains cost more. So also does -Hobday.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p> - -<h2>HAPPINESS IN THE VILLAGE</h2> - -<p>Not far from me there lives a man with wife and child in a tenement -not much better than a cowshed. It is exactly two rooms of a wooden -building, with no other conveniences of any kind, not so much as -a copper for the washing. It is built into a ledge cut out of the -southern slope of the valley, consequently never looks the sun in the -face. I know that the rain falls through into the bedroom. If one dared -one would have the place condemned, if to do that would not condemn -to the workhouse those who shelter there. Yet I have known those poor -things envied. At a certain hour of the afternoon the wife comes to her -open door, the child in her arms. After five minutes’ watching, she -sets the little creature down to totter up the road, down which comes -a man, homing from his work. He too is on the look-out, and stands to -admire. Then, when they meet, he picks up the baby, sets it on his -shoulder, and back they go together to mother at the door. I have known -that envied, I say, by the childless, by the unhappily mated, and by -those whose days for children are over and done. Life has that in -store for some of us, and I don’t know that it has anything better. An -allegory, that, in its way.</p> - -<p>Four years ago, when Agriculture had a Wages Board, and hopes were -high that a <i>carminis aetas</i> was opening for our oldest industry, a -club was formed among the members of the Board for the ventilation of -ideas. It was a gallant adventure,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> maintained with spirit so long as -the parent Board was suffered to endure. Political exigencies, however, -determined its existence, and with it perished the Agricultural Club. -Now its president and virtual founder, Sir Henry Rew, has published -its remains in “The Story of the Agricultural Club” (P. S. King and -Son), and we are able to judge of the remedies proposed for a sick -profession. It may shortly be said of the club, as of the deceased -board, that its very existence did more service to agriculture than -any of its recommendations, if only because it was solid in Pall Mall -while its remedies were, and largely remain, in the air. In that fine -room of Schomberg House, which happens to have been Gainsborough’s -studio, there met on the eve of every Board-meeting representatives of -the landed interests from all England, squires, tenant-farmers and farm -labourers, on terms of that complete equality which only clubmanship -can guarantee. How extraordinary that was is illustrated by Sir Henry -Rew as follows:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“A year ago I had occasion to attend a meeting in the market -town of a typical agricultural district. It purported to be -a conference between the representatives of farmers and of -farm-workers with regard to a dispute then in progress. I was -shown into the conference room, where I found the farmers -assembled in force round a large table, and I was honoured with a -seat at the head of the table by the side of the chairman. After -some discussion among themselves, the chairman announced that they -were ready to receive the representations of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> the workers. About -half a dozen of them entered, and were ranged on a form against -the wall at the lower end of the room. The Chairman addressed them -civilly enough, but with much the same air of condescension as -a magistrate assumes in speaking from the Bench. I am sure that -no offence was intended or taken. The position seemed perfectly -natural to both parties. It was the normal and habitual relation -of master and man in discussion.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>It is fair to conclude, with Sir Henry, that the Wages Board and its -club were “the expression of a new relationship,” not that of “master -and man,” but rather of “man and man”; and it is not difficult to -say what that may imply in latter-day village life. I am prepared by -observation to say that at least it implies a definite heightening -of status for the farm-labourer, of which he is very well aware. But -whether it will work out for village prosperity and (a very different -thing) village happiness, is still a matter of various opinion—opinion -which is reflected in the papers read before the assembled club, and in -the ensuing discussions.</p> - -<p>These papers, as one might expect, are mainly practical in purpose. -They deal with education, principally technical; they deal with -cottage-building, not very fruitfully; they offer proposals for -the formation of village-clubs; they touch, but gingerly, upon the -ownership of land. The avowed ends of every proposition are two: how to -keep the labourer in the village, and how to make him happy when he is -there. It seems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> to me that readers and debaters alike fell into the -common error of confusing prosperity with happiness, and happiness with -pleasure. The mistake is fundamental. If all men of pleasure were happy -men, legislation might accomplish what philosophers have failed to do. -If excitement had no reactions, then let village clubs abound and young -ploughmen dance all night! Bread and circuses are within the discretion -of Parliament, but not prosperity, and not happiness. A man must work -for his happiness “as some men toil after virtue”; and the education -which he must receive in order to attain it is in another technic than -that which has been in the mind of the Club. The young villager must -acquire mental alacrity, he must learn to be temperate, and he must get -charity. Having those, he may pick up happiness like gold off from Tom -Tiddler’s ground, for the world is full of it. All the specifics of the -Agricultural Club are palliatives of his lot, “consolatories writ.” The -elementals remain—to be sought elsewhere.</p> - -<p>The virtues of the villager are well known. They are such as to -deserve and frequently to obtain happiness, but they do not tend to -his prosperity in the Club’s sense. Nationalise the land to-morrow, -and parcel it out in small holdings next week; by next year more than -half of it will have run to waste. On the other half, for nine men who -gain a bare subsistence off it there may be one who will do well. What -is lacking? Mental alacrity. The peasant can plod with the best, rise -early, work till dark; but he will do the thing to-morrow which he did -yesterday.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> Mental sloth is temperamental: probably the Iberians had -it. But there is nothing to prevent him from being happy; very many of -them are so, and more than you might expect. Farm-labour, like farming, -is a way of life; and so is happiness, in the sense that the kingdom -of Heaven may be within you. One might go so far as to say that the -prosperity of which the labourer dreams would rather diminish his store -of happiness than increase it. Some of the wisest of my friends of the -village feel sure of it. There are men about here who have risen in -the world, as they call it, and are not conspicuously better citizens, -nor more contented ones for that. Getting and spending, they lay waste -their time. The wise villager sees it, and if he would rather be happy -than prosperous is in the way to remain so. In that resolve the papers -of the Agricultural Club cannot help him. The elementals remain. Others -abide our question, but not those.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p> - -<h2>OTHERWHERENESS</h2> - -<p>The man whom I found one day in the reading-room at the Club, searching -the Court Guide to find out his own name, was quite good-tempered -about it. It had suddenly occurred to him to send a telegram, and he -had written it out: when it came to signing it he was beat. I told him -at once what I believed his name to be; he verified it in Boyle. “I -might have had to get a dressing-room,” he said. “It isn’t one of those -things which you can ask the hall-porter.”</p> - -<p>The really absent-minded are not irritated by those intrusions -of the supra-liminal self. The sub-liminal so pleasantly employs -them, habitually, that they can afford to put up with the other’s -impertinence. But occasionally he goes too far, as he certainly did -with a dear and vague friend of mine when, horribly involved with a -fishing line and a fly-hook in his sleeve, he hastily put his eye-glass -into his mouth and his cigarette into his eye. Then indeed he broke -into a flood of imprecation, so very unlike himself that one part of -him “which never was heard to speak so free” really shocked the other -part. “Oh, shameful, shameful!” I heard him say, and the profaner part -was silenced. Here, of course, the whole assembled man was no further -away than the whereabouts of the fly-hook, and not at all pleasantly -occupied. Mostly, as Lamb says of his good friend, George Dyer: </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> - -<blockquote><p>“With G. D., to be absent from the body, is sometimes (not to -speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord. At the very -time when, personally encountering thee, he passes on with no -recognition—or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprised—at -that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor—or Parnassus—or -co-sphered with Plato—or, with Harrington, framing ‘immortal -commonwealths.’”</p></blockquote> - -<p>If he interrupted those happy sojournings, as he did once, to make -a call in Bedford Square, and on learning that no one was at home, -solemnly to sign his name in the visitors’ book, it is not at all -surprising that, wandering on and on, he should presently find himself -again in Bedford Square, again inquire for his friends, again ask for -the visitors’ book and be brought up short, on the point of signing it -again, by his own name scarcely dry—as if, says Lamb, “a man should -suddenly encounter his own duplicate.” He may have been a little -mortified, I daresay, but—it was worth it. A thing of the same sort -happened to a very delightful lady of my friends—a lady of commanding -presence, but occasional remarkable absences too. She went to call at -a house in Eaton Square, no less, and found herself, when the door was -opened by a footman, totally deprived of the name of the houselady. -What did she? There was a moment of heart-beating and wild surmise; -and then, with a smile of ineffable courtesy and sweetness, she held -out her hand to the wondering man, pressed his own warmly as she said -“<i>Good</i>-bye,” and sailed serenely away to resume<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> her commerce with -the infinite. Such commerce, I know, she had. She told me the story -herself, and saw nothing amiss with it. Nor was there anything amiss. -She was one who could do simple things simply—which is a great and -rich possession; but occasionally she presumed upon it—as when she -assured herself of the same virtue in her daughters and expected them -to carry out her simplifications. That, of course, was a very different -thing; but I don’t think she understood it. There is this also to be -said, that women are much less self-conscious than men and do not go in -such terror of being made ridiculous. Tell me of a man who could enter -his drawing-room full of guests, and discovering himself without, say, -his teeth, could laugh in the first face his eye encountered. “Forgive -me—one moment—I must get my teeth”—tell me of such a man. <i>Mutatis -mutandis</i>, I have been told of such a woman—and a great lady she was, -too—by somebody who was there. It was not teeth, however.</p> - -<p>The best of men—the George Dyers, whom, happily, we have always with -us somewhere or other—are as content as most women with their natural -destiny. George Dyer dined one night with Leigh Hunt at Hampstead, -dined, talked, and took his leave. Twenty minutes later the knocker -announced a late-comer. It was G. D. “What is the matter?” asked Hunt. -“I think sir,” said Dyer, in his simpering, apologetic way, “I think -I have left one of my shoes behind me.” He had indeed shuffled it off -under the table, and did not discover his loss until he had gone a -long way. As I read that story, which is Ollier’s (but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> I get it from -Mr. Lucas), G. D.’s apologetics were directed to Hunt, whose rest he -had disturbed, by no means to himself. A man less sublimely lifted was -one with whom I had been staying in a Scotch country house. We came -away together, and half-way to the station he struck himself on the -forehead, and “Good God!” he said, “I have tipped the same man three -times!” It appeared too true that he had: once in his bedroom, once -in the hall, and once at the carriage door. Now he, if you like, was -excessively mortified, and his reason may well have been that he had -not been better employed, on Helikon or elsewhere, when he might have -been noticing menservants. He was as blind as a bat, poor man, and a -sense of infirmity may have stung him. The otherwhere men have no sense -of infirmity—on the contrary, one of great gain. An ampler æther, a -diviner air is theirs in which to exercise.</p> - -<p>But of all divinely preoccupied men the best—unless Dyer be the -best—is Brancas—the Comte de Brancas of whom you may read in -Saint-Simon, in the Correspondence of “Madame,” and in Tallemant des -Réaux. Brancas was to the Paris of the <i>Grand Siècle</i> what Dyer was to -the London of the Regency, or Dr. Spooner to the wits of my younger -days. La Bruyère, summarising him as <i>Ménalque</i>, overdid his study, and -made him appear like the clown in a circus who gets horribly involved -in the carpet, or kicks away the hat he stoops to pick up. It may be -perfectly true that Brancas went downstairs, opened his front door, -and shut it again, thinking that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> he had just come in—that I can -perfectly understand. It is a thing I might have done myself. But to -add to it that he presently discovered his nightcap on his head, his -stockings down about his ankles, and his shirt outside his <i>chausses</i>, -is to spoil the story. Never mind, he is out in the street finally, -and walking briskly along, with his mind leagues away. By and by he -is brought up short by a violent blow on the nose. “Who has attacked -me?” he cries. Nobody. He has walked fiercely into the tilt of a -market cart, which he had overtaken in his briskness. Or he goes to -Versailles to pay his court, enters the <i>appartement</i>, and passing -under the central chandelier, his perruque is caught and held there; -but he forges along. The company gapes, then bursts into laughter. -Brancas stops, looks inquiringly about, sees the swinging perruque and -is delighted. “Whose is that?” He looks all about him to find the bare -pate and exposed ears. Finally, of course, somebody claps it on his -head. A good story, which may be true.</p> - -<p>Two of them, at least, may be, as they are told by Madame in letters -to her friends. Brancas went to church—to the <i>Salut</i>: he knelt -down, and feeling in his pocket for his Book of Hours, pulled out a -slipper which he had put there instead of it. Just outside the church, -on leaving, he is accosted by a lackey who, with much deprecation, -asks him if he happens to have taken Monseigneur’s shoe by mistake. -“Monseigneur’s shoe!” It is the fact that he had paid a call upon a -bishop that afternoon. “No, no—certainly not”—then he remembers that -he has, in fact, a slipper in his pocket. His hand goes in, to make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> -sure that it is there. It is; but so is another slipper—which is -precisely—Monseigneur’s.</p> - -<p>The next is even better. Brancas goes to mass at Versailles. He is -late, and bustles up the nave between the kneeling company. He sees, as -he thinks, a <i>prie-dieu</i> facing the altar. Most convenient—just the -thing. He hastens, throws himself upon it. To his amazement it emits a -strangled cry, gives way before him, and he finds himself intricately -struggling on the pavement with a stout lady. His <i>prie-dieu</i> had been -the Queen-Mother.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE JOURNEY TO COCKAIGNE</h2> - -<p>I remember being taken ill in a small town on the Marne in 1906, -desperately ill with copper poisoning. I say that I remember, as if -there was a chance that I should ever forget it. The agony, the rigour -and all the rest of it, were accompanied by high fever and delirium, -which lasted all through a burning August night. It happened that a -<i>fête nationale</i> had possession of the town: there were a fair, a steam -roundabout, a horrible organ accompaniment. The grinding, remorseless -tune, the uproar, the slapping of countless feet (though I tried to -count them) on the pavement wove themselves into my racing dreams. -I seemed to be a party to some Witches’ Sabbath; and now, if I ever -try to imagine Hell, it always comes out like that. A dry, crackling, -reiterated business, without rest, without mirth, without hope, without -reason. One suffered incredibly, one was desperately concerned; the -brain was involved in it; the more frivolous it was the more deeply the -mind must work. I knew it was a festivity; all the familiar features -of revel were there—and all horrible. The mind was so tired that you -seemed to hear it wailing for mercy; but it went on jigging after the -organ. The feet of the dancers were burnt by the paving stones, yet -never stayed. Some mocking devil possessed the people, rode them with -spurs. There was no zest, yet no pause; and through it all was the -blare of the organ.</p> - -<p>Life in London, in Ascot week, struck me,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> coming up after six months -in the country, as very much like that night of fever. There was the -same dry crackling, the same strife of noise, the symptoms of mirth -without reality. London, of course, is much too big to be generalised -from. The best is hidden behind shut doors. It is the froth of the -ferment that you see. But there is now too much froth; one wonders what -is working in the lees.</p> - -<p>Londoners, as you pass them in a cab, are a crowd; you don’t even -suspect individuality there. They drift along the streets like -clouds. The colours of them are so blurred down by the dust and din -that they seem a uniform drab. Here and there a yellow jumper, or -a grass-green sunshade catches the eye; but no personality behind -it, no reasonable soul in human flesh subsisting. It requires stern -attention on a fixed point if you would candidly consider your fellow -creatures as London has made them, and, no doubt, been made by them. -It happened to me that I was held up by a block in Piccadilly, at a -favourable point between Bond Street and the arcade of the Ritz. Four -o’clock on a glaring afternoon; tea-shops crammed; motor buses piled -skywards like market-carts: extraordinarily over-dressed young men, and -extraordinarily undressed girls were on the pavement, all very much -alike, and all apparently of one age.</p> - -<p>Observe that I have not seen London in the season since the Armistice. -Well, it seemed to me that the scythe had mown down much that I used to -know. Here instead was a saturnalia of extreme youth. I saw thin girls -in single garments<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of silk, with long white legs and Russian opera -shoes; and young men walking with them, looking curiously at them, -or talking to them urgently at shop windows. The girls said little; -they were not there to talk, but to be talked to; they accepted what -was said as a matter of routine. Their eyes wandered from article to -article displayed. They seemed to me as purposeless as moths hovering -about flowers at dusk. Love, I suppose, was their food—it ought to -have been; but neither they nor their lovers showed any of the pride or -triumph, the joy or the longing of love. Love, for once, was not a new -thing; the wonder had left it. Fever had dried up the juices of nymph -and swain alike. It was like a dinner off husks.</p> - -<p>Next day was the first of Ascot, and I watched for some time the -endless procession of motors in the Hammersmith Road. I had often -seen it before—I mean before the war. It had been a big thing then; -but now it was a monstrous thing, a nightmare of going to the races. -A continuous stream there was, of long, low, swift, smooth-gliding -machines, never stopping, almost noiseless. They were all covered -and glazed, all filled inside with doll-like, silent, half-clad, -vaguely-gazing girls; with stiff and starched, black-coated, -silk-hatted young men. I saw no one laughing; I thought the whole -business a dream on that account; for, though you see and mix with -crowds in dreams, there is never either talking or laughing. It was -that absence of heart in the thing, or of zest for it, which made one -so uncomfortable. Lavish outlay is rather shocking nowadays; but if you -take away the only excuse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> for it, which is high spirits, it is much -more than shocking; it is terrifying, it is hideous.</p> - -<p>Where on earth, I asked myself, did the money come from? Who floated, -and how did they float the balances at the banks? Every one of those -motors must have cost a thousand pounds; every one of the chauffeurs -(you could see at a glance) must have cost five pounds a week. The -clothes, no doubt, you could have on tick; but not the champagne, and -not the chauffeurs. From where I stood in Addison Road I could see, at -the lowest, fifty thousand pounds’ worth of motors. And the stream, -mind you, at that hour reached from Ascot to Piccadilly, and was -repeating itself on the Fulham Road and the King’s Road, to say nothing -of the Uxbridge Road. Who were those people? Were they all profiteers, -or all in other peoples’ debt? It was very odd. In the county where I -live we are rather put to it how to keep going. The great houses are -mostly shut up or in the market; the smaller houses are all too big for -their owners and occupiers. There is a scale of general descent. The -marquesses let their castles, if they can, and go in to the manors; the -squires let their manors, and convert the farmhouses to their domestic -use. I leave my old Rectory and hide in a cottage. We are all a peg or -two down. Income-tax and the rates had done their fell work when there -came upon us a coal strike of three months long—a knock-out blow to -many. Did it not touch London? Or were all those pleasurers Colonel and -Mrs. Rawdon Crawleys who live at the rate of seven thousand a year, on -tick? The Lord knows. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p> - -<p>On the whole, I thought it well that the miners’ wives, in the -scorching grey villages of Durham and the Tyne, were not standing -with me in Addison Road that first day of Ascot. Or if South Wales -and Lanark had been there! I should not have wished them let loose on -London just then. Nothing was further from London’s mind than either -of those vexed and seething provinces. It neither talked of them nor -read about them. <i>The Westminster Gazette’s</i> front page was entirely -filled up with a cricket match; so, by the by, was the second. <i>The -Times</i>—but since <i>The Times</i> has become sprightly I confess it is -too much for me. An elephant on hot bricks! Nowadays, if I want to -read the news I must send to Manchester for it. Thence I learn that -the coal strike is in its third month, the English and Irish still -murdering each other, and the Government still throwing overboard its -own legislation. Golf news, cricket, polo, lawn tennis I can have from -<i>The Westminster Gazette</i>.</p> - -<p>The sea saw that and fled; Jordan was driven back. I stood it for -three days, then came home to find the mallow in flower in the hedges, -and men and women still afield getting in the last of the hay. Wilts -was being careful over many things, but Ascot and thin girls were not -of them. In London I was puzzled by the way the money was flying; -but I was shocked, not by that, but by the absence of zest for a -time-honoured pastime. If only some young couple had laughed! Or made -love as if it was the only thing in the world worth doing! But they -were all as weary as the King Ecclesiast. That seemed to me the serious matter.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> - -<h2>SUICIDE OF THE NOVEL</h2> - -<p>The epic faculty in us is never likely to atrophy, but will break -out again presently in some unsuspected place; for while all men are -children once, most of them remain so all their lives. Winter’s Tales -will go on, because there will always be winter evenings, and the most -interesting thing, next to playing at life, is to talk about it. “There -was a man—dwelt by a churchyard ...”, or “Andra moi ennepé, Mousa....” -So the romantic or the adventurous tale should begin, as it always did -and always will. It is when he adds love to his chronicle of events -and allows that to modify them that the tale-teller turns novelist -and, in danger of over-sophistication, begins the road to Avernus; for -love involves passion, and passion means sex, and sex invites curious -philosophy, and philosophy calls in pathology; then comes Herr Freud -with his abhorred complexes; and then you have something which may -stimulate, may divert, may do you good, but (as the old tale goes) -“is not Emily.” There is no love in the <i>Odyssey</i>, none in <i>Robinson -Crusoe</i>, none worth talking about (only gallantry) in <i>Gil Blas</i>. The -animalism in <i>Tom Jones</i>, as in Smollett’s gross tales, was but a vent -for high spirits in a century which reckoned love among the appetites, -and put women and claret roughly in the same category. Speaking only -for my own countrymen, I doubt if sex took on its romantic aspect or -became a final cause of narrative fiction until<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> the latter half of -the last century. In Walter Scott and Jane Austen it does not exist. -It hardly exists in Dickens, hardly, except as a butt, in Thackeray. -Trollope’s charming girls are satisfied with extremely little in the -way of wooing. The Luftons and young Frank Greshams and Major Grantleys -choose by liking, wait seven months or years for their Rachels, kiss -them and go home—to write once in a while. Johnny Eames cherishes a -flame—if it may be called a flame. We are asked to believe in Mr. -Grey’s passion for Miss Vavasour—but do we believe it, or are we the -less entertained for our strong doubts? No, indeed.</p> - -<p>In the latter half of the last century, Rossetti wrote sensuous poetry -of a kind which was new to English literature, very different, say, -from that of Keats. Swinburne wrote sexual poetry, as I apprehend, of -a highly theoretical kind. I don’t know exactly when Mr. George Moore -began to write novels, but cannot recall any striking example of the -French novel in English before his time, and should be inclined to -commence our series of the grubby and illicit with him. George Meredith -and Mr. Hardy were both well-established before that; but though there -is passion in Meredith, and lyric passion too, and sex in Mr. Hardy, -with much intensive imagining about it, <i>non ragioniam di lor</i>. They -were alike in the old tradition. Neither Aphrodite or Priapus sat on -the Muse’s throne. At the utmost they did but “donner la chemise!” -Meredith and Mr. Hardy wrote stories, not sex-fantasias. Mr. Moore will -do very well as an illustration of the change<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> which came over our -novels when Trollope ceased to write, the change which, as I say, made -them French novels written in English. Before that change, love, sex, -passion, as manifestations of life, had been part of the entertainment -which the novel as a redaction of life had to offer. After it they -<i>were</i> the entertainment, and thereupon and thereby the novel ceased to -be a redaction of life. For, <i>pace</i> Herr Freud, all life is not sex. -One resultant of the changed objective will account for that. There was -no room for life in a sex-novel. If you set out to write a dithyramb of -lust, or sex, your novel will be short. The subject is absorbing, once -it takes hold of you, and the celebration of it will exhaust itself -as the reality does. Such tales have always been short: <i>Daphnis and -Chloe</i>, for instance, <i>Manon Lescaut</i>. One could not have filled the -old three-decker with that kind of thing. Nobody except Richardson ever -tried it. With the change of theme, then, conspired the change of form, -and the bookseller and the novelist in a concatenation accordingly.</p> - -<p>Other things followed of necessity. The novel ceased to be an -interpretation of life and became a kind of poem. The preoccupied -novelist wrote <i>à priori</i>. Observation ceased to procure novels to -be written; the novelist, rather, stung by his gadfly into action, -observed for his own purposes and those of his theme. His novel clothed -his thought in appropriate draperies, to call them so, with which life -had little or nothing to do. He did not in fact set up an image of -life at all, but instead, a Hermes, on which he could hang garlands -corresponding to his passion or indicative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> of his complaint. Novels -of this sort, to call them so, are still being produced: I read three -of them the other day, all written by women. One of them, which was -“crowned” with a cheque for a hundred pounds, was a real pæan of sex: -in the other two sophistication had set in. They did not so much hymn -the function as “peep and botanise” upon its grave. The three were -episodic, “all for love, and the world well lost.” The world indeed, -for all that appeared, was standing still while half a dozen persons to -a book were enacting their secret rites. If the end of all this be not -despondency and madness it will be something quite as unpleasant.</p> - -<p>That which led me into these speculations was Mrs. Stirling’s excellent -memoir of her sister and brother-in-law, Evelyn and William De Morgan, -that happily-mated pair. She tells in its place the manner in which De -Morgan fell into the writing of novels, how without effort they came -to him. They were certainly the last of our novels which have offered -us a comprehensive reading of life. It seems absurd to say of them -that they are able, because ability, in the common use of the word, -implies the conscious exercise of it. De Morgan’s novels, however, seem -effortless; they read as the most spontaneous things in the world, and -Mrs. Stirling now says that they really were so. There is no apparent -design, no contrivance. They are as formless as life itself.</p> - -<blockquote><p>“‘Be good enough to note,’ he says in one of them, ‘that none of -the characters in this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> story are picturesque or heroic—only -chance samples of folk you may see pass your window now, at this -moment, if you will only lay your book down and look out. They are -passing—passing—all day long, each with a story. And some little -thing you see, a meeting, a parting, may make the next hour the -turning point of existence.... This is a tale made up of trifles.’”</p></blockquote> - -<p>What he made of those stored and treasured-up trifles, with what -humour, with what tenderness, what wisdom he combined and related -them, what in fact was the harvest of his quiet eye, cannot be entered -upon here. De Morgan had been harvesting for sixty-five years when he -began! To me his books seem to be the wisest of our time. I know of -none which, as Matthew Arnold said of Homer, produce the sense in the -reader “of having, within short limits of time, a large portion of -human life presented to him.” They contain—like the <i>Iliad</i> in that, -like <i>Tom Jones</i>, like <i>David Copperfield</i> and <i>Vanity Fair</i>, and <i>War -and Peace</i>—sufficient of the world to create in us a strong illusion -of the whole labouring, blundering, groaning, laughing, praying affair.</p> - -<p>But De Morgan is too good for the end of an essay—he who has -inspired so many. And he will write no more of his friendly, wise and -comprehending books. And he is not the point. The point is that the -novelist has bled his art down and out by urging it to make a poem -of itself instead of a digest. I say nothing now of the pamphlet and -the tract. Those things also the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> novelist has done without leaving -the other undone. He, or his novel, is now dying of exhaustion, -self-induced. Worst sign of all—he is beginning to note his own symptoms.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> - -<h2>IMMORTAL WORKS</h2> - -<p>An editor—one, that is, of a race suspect to my species; for, as the -herbivores fear the carnivores, so is it with the likes of me and of -him—an editor, I say, has lately spread his nets before me, inviting -me to “a symposium of well-known poets and critics.” A banquet, I -fear, like that last one of Polonius, “not where he eats but where he -is eaten.” The subject of our symposium, the staple of our feast, was -to be “What poets since Wordsworth, <i>especially what living poets</i>, -and which one or two of their poems ... should be given a place in the -Golden Treasury of English poetry.” Excellent, i’ faith! Will you walk -into my parlour? said the spider to the fly. I am by this time a fly -getting on in years. I dine out as little as may be, and have developed -something of an intuitive sense which tells me whether I am to dine or -to be dined upon. So I decline the invitation in the following terms:</p> - -<p>“Dear Sir,—I deprecate such proposals as yours, because I cannot think -them intended seriously, or (even if they are) likely to be taken so. -It seems to me that you are inviting me less to a symposium than to an -exhibition, in which I am to be an exhibit. You are asking me, among -others, to grant immortality, or deny it, to certain living persons, -many of whom are my friends or acquaintances. Entry into a Golden -Treasury is the hall-mark of no less a thing, the end and aim of every -poet in the world. Once there, a poet is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> a peer, a knight of a round -table. And you expect me to make of myself a Fountain of Honour, to dub -knights, deal round coronets? No, indeed, my dear sir. I am many bad -things, but I hope not so arrogant, nor such an ass. No man living can -predict immortality for his friend, though he may dearly wish that he -could.</p> - -<p>“It is not possible to be sure of current literature for the plain -reason that local and temporary interests must inevitably bias the -judgment. I don’t mean by that one’s interest in one’s friend. At this -hour the war of 1914-18 is the most portentous thing we know or can -think of. I would not mind staking a round sum upon the probability -of nine out of ten of your banquetters selecting recent war poems by -recent young warriors. And yet how many war poems are there in the -existing Golden Treasury? <i>The Burial of Sir John Moore</i>, of course; -but what others? And yet again, is it not only too possible that, -before your new Golden Treasury were in the printer’s hands, another -war would be burning out the memory of its forerunner, and wringing -from us new war poems whose appositeness would make immortality more -obviously theirs than of any which you had in type? You see? That is -one of the difficulties in which you would land me, supposing that you -were serious.”</p> - -<p>So much for the editor of ——. We do not know, indeed, though -we sometimes think and always hope that we do, what makes for -immortality. Shakespeare, you say? Who (except Shakespeare himself) -thought Shakespeare immortal on the day when he was alive and dead?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> -Who thought Johnson’s Dictionary immortal? Gibbon’s <i>Decline and -Fall</i>? Yes, I fancy that any serious reader of that book, when it was -published, knew in his heart that it would live. But take smaller -things. Why, out of all Landor’s verse, was <i>Rose Aylmer</i> taken, and -why were others left, many of them technically as perfect? You don’t -know. Nor do I. Well, then, which out of the beautiful numbers of <i>A -Shropshire Lad</i> will live for six hundred years—as long as Chaucer? -Which out of the quatrains of Fitzgerald’s <i>Omar</i>? We may think that we -know. But do we? Really, all that we do know is that among the copious -poets (and Landor was very copious) some produced more perdurable -lyrics than others. We know that Burns did, that Heine did: we don’t -know how or why. Universality we say goes to immortality. It certainly -does: the thing must go home to everybody. So does heart, whatever -that is; the “lyric cry,” the sense of tears. Look at <i>Auld Robin -Gray</i>: that is immortal. Look at <i>The Wife of Usher’s Well</i>. Those -things might last as long as Homer or the Bible. The exact proportion, -the exquisite admixture of those qualities I have mentioned, with -others—felicity, limpidity, grace, and so on—do make certain poems as -immortal as you please; and the want of them cuts others out. That is -all there is to say.</p> - -<p>On the whole, it is a good thing that we don’t know the recipe. It -is one of several things we had better not know. Immortality in this -world, immortality in another! Suppose that we were as certain of the -latter as we are of getting to Paris<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> by the 11 a.m. from Victoria. -Either the world would be emptied by suicide, or—it wouldn’t! -Suppose that immortality for a poem was a matter of formula. Take of -universality so much, of heart so much, of grace so much: add tears, -so much, and simmer gently till done ...! What would be the result? -Everybody’s poems would be immortal. The Golden Treasury would stretch -from here to Easter. It would be as bad as the Order of the British -Empire. Nobody would want to be in it. And the result of that would be -that mortal poems would be the only immortal ones. To be too bad for -the Golden Treasury would be a real title of honour. And somebody would -compile a Platinum Treasury to put you in.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> - -<h2>BALLAD-ORIGINS</h2> - -<p>Discussion and research into the origin of folk-songs, or epic poetry, -or children’s games, afford permanent recreation to a number of learned -hands; and so they have ever since we left off taking things for -granted. If nobody except the explorer is any the better, nobody except -the other explorers is any the worse. There the ballads are, fruit for -the thirsty mouth, as they were to Sir Philip Sidney. But research -is good hunting, and discussion good talk: all makes for pattern and -diversity in a life which, for most of us, runs too easily into drab. -Whether Homer was written by Homer, or “by another man of the same -name,” has been, and still is being, debated. Herr Wolff started the -ingenious suggestion that, instead of one or two Homers, there were -dozens of him. The late Mr. Butler put up a woman for author of the -Odyssey, and gave her a name. But Mr. Butler loved two things above -all else in life: little jokes and annoying other people. He must not -be taken seriously. Similarly, the authorship of the ballads has ever -been in debate. The man of our time who knew more about them than any -man who ever lived—Professor Child, to wit—knew so much about them -that he never committed himself to any hypothesis of their origin. That -showed indeed the supreme of knowledge of his subject. But Professor -Kittredge, who followed him, built himself a little bungalow of theory; -and Professor Gummere presently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> reared a mansion of it; and now comes -Professor Louise Pound from Nebraska with pick and crowbar to level -them with the ground. It is very good fun, as I have admitted, except -perhaps for Professors Kittredge and Gummere.</p> - -<p>Professor Gummere gets the worst of it; but then he has put himself -up a mansion of surmise. Professor Kittredge went no further than -to declare a peasant-origin for ballad-poetry. Professor Gummere, -according to his present housebreaker, erected a theory of something -like spontaneous generation—a truly daring conception, one which makes -ballad-poetry unlike any other poetry in the world. Throng-inspiration -does not commend itself to me, knowing something of throngs and of -inspiration. As Professor Pound has no difficulty in establishing, -such a thing never happens now, and never happened to anything else, -unless Horace Walpole’s account of the effect of putting horsehair into -a bottle of water may be accepted. But if it may not, and if it never -happened to any other kind of poetry, why should it have happened to -ballad-poetry? <i>Queste cose non si fanno.</i> These things are not done.</p> - -<p>However, when Professor Gummere argues that the folk-ballads originated -in folk-dancing he is building his house of theory upon a footing -of rock. <i>Ballare</i> means “to dance”; there’s no escape from that; -and if ballads, or ballets, had nothing to do with dancing, why were -they called ballads or ballets? Then he can put forward the refrains -or burthens which a goodly number of ballads still retain: jingles -like “Bow down,” like “Eh, wow, bonnie,” like “Three, three, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> -thirty-three.” The first of those describes an act of dancing; the -second is foolishness unless you dance it; the third, even now, insists -on being danced. If he had left it at that, without piling upon it his -additament of spontaneous generation, I don’t think Professor Pound -could have done any good with her crowbar. But he was too ingenious by -half; he soared—he soared into the inane. So down he comes, and we are -where we were before.</p> - -<p>With all respect for the courage and learning of Professor Pound, I -don’t think she has disproved the close connection of song and dance -in my country’s youthful days. But “dance” is a word of special -connotation now, and it is necessary to remember a much wider -application of it in times gone by. It was once a word of ritual -significance, as when “David danced before the Lord,” as now when the -Canons of Seville dance at Easter; and it was once a word of sport. -That, in all probability, is the right connotation of it where ballads -are concerned. In certain phases of the dance as a game drama comes in. -Drama involves dialogue, and may easily involve narration. “Here we go -round the mulberry bush” is both drama, dance, and narration. “Sally, -Sally Waters” is the same. So too “Ring a ring of Roses.” But to say of -such things, as I suppose Professor Gummere says, that the dancing-game -generated the dialogue or narration is to put the cart before the -horse. If, as I have said, the jingle “three, three and thirty-three” -insists on being danced, is it not more reasonable to suppose that in -all cases the jingle, or lilt, or sentiment—“the broom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> blooms bonnie -and says it is fair”—inspired the dance? Personally, I can conceive -of spontaneous throng-generation of a dance much more readily. Let the -Professor try it, when next he has a throng of children in his garden. -Let him begin to jig up and down, saying repeatedly “three, three, and -thirty-three,” and see what happens.</p> - -<p>I am not at all concerned to say that all ballad-poetry originated in -dancing-games, nor concerned to argue against Professor Pound when she -suggests that they began in church. She has there the support of the -fact, for what it is worth, that the earliest ballads we can find are -concerned with religion. That is a fact, though it will not take her as -far as she would like. Unfortunately very few such things can be dated -before the fifteenth century; and the Professor must remember that -preoccupation with religion was by no means confined to the clerical -caste. The thirteenth century was the flowering time of the friars. -They carried religion into corners where no cleric would ever have set -his foot. If religious balladry had a religious origin it would be -Franciscan. She does not insist upon all this, however, and certainly -I do not. All the concern I have with a possible religious origin of -ballad-poetry is with the certainty it affords that, if the friars -had anything to do with the beginning of popular epic-narration, as -they undoubtedly had to do with that of popular drama, their efforts -were addressed to the populace rather than to the court, to the -market-square and village green rather than to the hall. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> - -<p>What does Professor Pound herself believe about this obscure matter? -She quotes, and quarrels with, Andrew Lang, who said that “Ballads -spring from the very heart of the people, and flit from age to age, -from lip to lip of shepherds, peasants, nurses, of all that continue -nearest to the natural state of man.... The whole soul of the peasant -class breathes in their burdens, as the great sea resounds in the -shells cast up from its shores.” That seems to me so obviously true -of most of the ballads that I should require a stronger case than -Professor Pound’s, and a case less weakened by strange oversights, -to cause me to think twice of it. Apparently Professor Pound’s main -belief about ballads is that they were by origin “literary.” Being -literature, that may be supposed by anybody without taking a body very -far. But if she means by that that they were composed by professional -“literary men,” and not by or for the peasants, I have to suggest -to her that there is much in the peasantry and much in the ballads -themselves which she has not brought into account; and that that must -be sought <i>within</i> the peasantry, and <i>within</i> the ballads, rather than -round about them. It is, for instance, a serious error to assume a -courtly origin—courtly poet or courtly auditory—in all ballads which -deal with courtly people—Lord Thomases, Estmere Kings, Child Horns, -Little Musgraves, and so on. Such personages are the stock-in-trade -of romance, from Homer to the <i>Family Herald</i>. Reasoning of that kind -will land the Professor in uncharted seas. There is a fallacy in it -comparable to that in “Who drives fat oxen must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> himself be fat.” Not -a doubt of it but Professor Child’s great book contains a number of -courtly ballads—“Chevy Chase” and the like; it needs nothing but a -knowledge of literature and the texts to settle it. I should compute -the number of such in Child to be between a third and a half of the -whole.</p> - -<p>To decide upon the remainder, whether they are written by or for the -peasantry (and it does not matter which, because in either case the -traditions of the peasantry would be preserved), one must go to the -ballads themselves. Within them such literary tact and peasant-lore -as you possess—and you cannot have too much—will infallibly detect -the origin of a given ballad. So much as that, at least, is involved -in the very nature of literature. A ballad—any ballad—was either -written <i>up</i> to the height of his own powers by an original poet (a -Burns, a Clare), or written <i>down</i> to the auditory’s capacity, which is -the way of the hack, or professional minstrel. According as you judge -(<i>a</i>) apprehensions of fact, (<i>b</i>) locutions, (<i>c</i>) <i>parti pris</i>, you -will put the thing down to the idiosyncrasy and origin of the poet -<i>or</i> to the idiosyncrasy and <i>milieu</i> of the auditory; and you will -nearly always be right. It may not be possible to be sure whether a -peasant-poet wrote, though the probabilities will be high; it will -always be possible to be sure whether a peasant-audience was addressed, -and whether, consequently, by a peasant-audience the ballad was learned -and preserved. Who in particular the poet may have been does not -matter. But it matters very much, to us, that we should have all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> we -can collect of the nature of our indigenes, though we shall never be -able to get it with the clearness and precision with which Professor -Pound can get at the nature of hers.</p> - -<p>As good an example as anyone could want of the truth of the preceding -paragraph is furnished by “The Twa Corbies.” Everybody knows “The Twa -Corbies,” a cynical, romantic, highly literary, and most successful -thing in the Scots manner; assuredly written for the gentry. But -Professor Child juxtaposes to it an English version, called “The -Three Ravens,” and provides an instructive comparison. The earliest -copy he finds of that is of 1611. It is as surely of peasant origin -as the “Twa Corbies” is not. Firstly, it has a rollicking chorus, -neither to be desired nor approved by the gentry; secondly, instead -of being romantic, it is sentimental; thirdly, instead of ending with -a wry mouth, it ends as genially as the circumstances allow. Cynicism -has never “gone down” with the peasantry. I don’t quote it, for -considerations of space. Another interesting comparison can be made by -means of “Thomas Rymer” in Child’s versions A. and C. In each Thomas -takes the Queen of Faëry for her of Heaven, and in each she denies it. -In A. she says:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“‘O no, O no, True Thomas,’ she says,</div> -<div>‘That name does not belong to me;</div> -<div>I am but the Queen of fair Elfland,</div> -<div>And I’m come to visit thee.’”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But in C. she says: </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“‘I’m no the Queen of Heaven, Thomas;</div> -<div>I <i>never carried my head sae hie</i>;</div> -<div>For I am but a lady gay,</div> -<div>Come out to hunt in my follee.’”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The idiom there is quite enough to settle the question for me. But -there is another point. The peasantry will never name the fairies if -they can help it. They call them the “Good People” or the “Little -People,” and go no nearer. Well, observe, and let Professor Pound -observe, how C. version gets round that difficulty.</p> - -<p>Lastly, I will touch upon the delicate subject of ballads like -“Sheath and Knife”, “Lizzie Wan”, “The King’s Daughter, Lady Jean”, -and others. The romantic treatment of that subject is very rare in -literature. Ford’s play I believe to be the first case of it in ours; -and after Ford you must travel down to Shelley for another. With a -peasant poet or a peasant auditory there would be no difficulty. For -all sorts of reasons, that class knew a great deal about such matters. -If you are to conceive those particular ballads as written for the -gentry you are adding to fine literature things unknown before the -seventeenth century, and then out of sight until the nineteenth. Let -the Professor perpend. It does not do to be too exclusive in estimating -ballad-origins.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> - -<h2>REAL AND TEMPORAL CREATION</h2> - -<p>A chance remark of mine the other day to the effect that the worth of a -novelist could be best ascertained by the number of souls he had added -to the population has drawn me into more correspondence than I care -for. You don’t look—at least, I don’t—for precision in such <i>obiter -dicta</i>, but you must have plausibility, and I do think it plausible. -You read your novel—say, <i>Emma</i>, and while you read, Emma and Jane -Fairfax, Miss Bates and Mrs. Weston and all the rest of them live, and -their affairs are your affairs. But when you have shut up the book -and put it back in its place, Mr. Woodhouse and Miss Bates have not -disappeared with their circle of acquaintance. You feel about them that -they are in history. They have lived in a different way altogether. -They have lived as Charles Lamb lived, or Oliver Goldsmith. You would -know them if you met them; your great-grandfather may have met them. -If you went to Leatherhead (if it <i>was</i> Leatherhead) you would want to -visit their houses. Jane Fairfax is a girl in a book; Miss Bates is a -person.</p> - -<p>Surely that is true. Consider other cases. There’s no doubt but that -Falstaff has reality in a way in which Hamlet has not. Hamlet, so to -say, is an <i>ad hoc</i> creation. He lives in the play. Falstaff lived -in Eastcheap. There’s no doubt about “my” Uncle Toby. Certainly he -must have served under Marlborough in Flanders. Neither of Tom Jones -nor Sir Charles Grandison<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> could so much be said. They were nobody’s -Uncle Tom or Uncle Charles, out of their books. Amelia would have been -a delicious aunt, but I doubt if she was one. Well, then, there’s no -doubt about Mrs. Gamp, or Mr. F.’s Aunt, or Betsy Trotwood or Captain -Cuttle. Dickens enriched the population enormously—but not always. -There’s a sense in which Dr. Blimber lived, and Major Bagstock did not. -Generation was capricious, even with Dickens. Squeers never lived, -Creakle did. Micawber lived, Pecksniff didn’t. Trabb’s Boy lived, the -Fat Boy didn’t. Cousin Feenix didn’t, Inspector Buckett didn’t—and -so on. But if you go through Dickens methodically, as I did during a -wakeful two hours in bed the other night, you will find five scores to -one miss—in the minor characters. With leading parts it is another -thing. I shall come to that presently.</p> - -<p>Let me go on. The Wife of Bath—certainly a British subject. In -Shakespeare—all the Eastcheap set, and Shallow and Slender; and -Parolles, and Dogberry and Verges, and Bottom, and Sir Andrew -Aguecheek; and Polonius, the only one in <i>Hamlet</i>; and Launcelot Gobbo, -the only one in <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>. Walter Scott: the Baillie and -Dandie Dinmont; Andrew Fairservice and Dugald Dalgetty. Last we have -Don Quixote and Sancho, much more real to most of us than Philip II or -IV, or Alva or Medina-Sidonia, or, for that matter, Miguel de Cervantes -himself.</p> - -<p>Those two last are enough to prove that it is not only eccentrics who -have stepped out of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> book-covers and found dusty death in the -real world: though generally, no doubt, it is the few lines which give -life, and provide that the reader shall be one of the parents. You -need bold undercutting, and elaboration is apt to blur the outline. -The second part of the book might have robbed the pair of their -immortality. Yet they live, and have lived, in spite of the Duke and -Duchess and the Island. Falstaff, with the better part of two plays to -his credit, is the only hero of Shakespeare’s whose reality gets out -of the theatre. I can’t admit Hamlet or Macbeth or Othello or Shylock. -At Malvolio I hesitate—but if you make a hero of Malvolio you turn -<i>Twelfth Night</i> into a tragedy. In 1623, the year of Shakespeare’s -death, the play was called <i>Malvolio</i>; and King Charles I annotated -the title, <i>Twelfth Night</i>, in his folio with the true name in his own -hand. <i>Tantum religio potuit suadere—bonorum.</i> So is it with the women -in Shakespeare: the heavy leads are not so persuasive as the small. Of -Mrs. Quickly and Juliet’s nurse there can be no doubt whatever. But of -the heroines, I can only put forward Rosalind—but even Rosalind won’t -do. Compare her objectivity with Becky Sharp’s. Who has not felt the -immanence of Becky in Brussels? I am afraid that settles Rosalind.</p> - -<p>Neither Scott nor Dickens succeeded with heroes and heroines; but Scott -has a girl to his credit whose reality is historical: Jeannie Deans. -I cannot listen to a doubt about that noble creature. If Scott had -given her a burial-place I should have gone to look for her tomb, and -never doubted of finding her name in the parish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> register. In that he -beats Dickens, with whom and Shakespeare he must strive for the crown -in this matter of adding to the population. In heroes Dickens has a -slight apparent advantage with David Copperfield. At first blush you -might think he had lived: turn it over and you won’t think so. Even if -you decided for him that would only put Dickens level with Scott and -Shakespeare; for his girls don’t live in the pages of their books, and -have not so much as temporal creation. I would put Colonel Newcome to -Thackeray’s score (with dozens of <i>minora sidera</i>: Major Pendennis, -for instance!) and, personally, the handsome Ethel, on whose account -I myself have been to Brighton, and who can bring strong testimony -forward in the horde of maidens she has stood for at the font. Surely -no other heroine of fiction has been so many times a godmother! Guy -Livingstone and Sir Guy Morville, in their day, gave their names pretty -handsomely, but—! I had nearly left out, but must by all means add, -Alexandre Dumas, who devoted three novels to his musketeers, and, in -Porthos, made a living soul. D’Artagnan had been one already, but Dumas -barely added anything for all his pains; and with Athos whom he loved -and Aramis whom he hated failed altogether. It was not, of course, -Dumas’ line to create an illusion by dialogue or description. His was -the historical method; his people lived by incident. But Porthos lived -anyhow, and would have lived without incident if needs were. “‘En -effet,’ fît Porthos, ‘je suis très incrédule.’” The man who said that -was once a breathing giant. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> - -<p>What, then, is requisite to the production of this prolonged illusion? -A relish, on the writer’s part, a sudden glory, a saliency; nothing -which will be a hair’s-breadth out of character, and nothing too much. -On the reader’s part intimacy, relish too, the sort of affection you -feel towards Sir Roger de Coverley, and a faith which is, like that of -a lover, a point of honour. Just as—if I may hazard the comparison—to -millions of simple Christians their Saviour, though dead and risen, is -still a Child, a <i>bambino</i>, so it is with them who have accepted Don -Quixote, and have stood by his death-bed. Such a death must have been -died, such a life lived indeed. “Believing where we cannot prove.” The -heart plays queer tricks with us.</p> - -<p>Stevenson’s is an odd case. He really spent himself to give reality to -Alan Breck, and failed. He played with Theophilus Godall, the superb -tobacconist, and with the Chevalier Burke, and behold, they lived! He -added those two to the population. He could not go wrong with them, had -them to a tick. It is observable that extravagance of matter is no bar -to illusion. But what is wrong with Alan Breck?</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PEASANT POETS</h2> - -<p>The peasant is a shy bird, by nature wild, by habit as secret as a -creature of the night. If he is ever vocal you and I are the last -to hear of it. He is as nearly inarticulate as anyone living in -civilisation may be. Consequently a peasant sufficiently moved, or when -moved, sufficiently armed with vocables to become a poet, even a bad -poet, has always been rare. When you need to add genius to sensibility -and equipment, as you must to get a good poet, you may judge of the -rarity. Indeed, to put a name to him, <i>exceptis excipiendis</i>, I can -only find John Clare. Other names occur, but for various reasons have -to be cut out. There was a postman poet in Devonshire, a policeman poet -in Yorkshire; and there was a footman poet. One of those certainly had -merit, even genius, and any one of them may have been a peasant in -origin. But by the time they began to make poetry they had ceased to -be peasants; and that rules them out, as it does Robert Blomfield and -Thomas Hardy. Then there is Burns. But Burns was not a peasant. We in -England should have called him a yeoman. Besides, his is one of those -cases of transcendent genius where origin goes for nothing, but all -seems the grace of God. At that rate the corn-chandlers might claim -Shakespeare, or the chemists’ assistants Keats.</p> - -<p>But there’s no doubt about Clare, a Northamptonshire peasant, son of -peasants, brought up at a dame-school, and at farm labour all his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> -working life. It is true that he was “discovered” by Taylor and Hessey, -published, sold; that his first book ran into three editions in a year; -that he was lionised, became one of the Lamb-Hazlitt-Haydon circle, -and thus inevitably sophisticated with the speculations not of his own -world. But roughly speaking, from start to close, his merits were the -merits of the peasantry, and his faults as pardonable as theirs. He was -never gross, as they never are; he was never common, as the pick of -them are not; he was deeply rooted, as “The Flitting”, one of his best -poems, will prove; he was exceedingly amorous, but a constant lover; -nothing in nature escaped his eye; and lastly, in his technique he was -a realist out and out. Of his quality take this from “Summer Evening”:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“In tall grass, by fountain head,</div> -<div>Weary then he crops to bed.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>“He” is the evening moth.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“From the haycocks’ moistened heaps</div> -<div>Startled frogs take sudden leaps;</div> -<div>And along the shaven mead,</div> -<div>Jumping travellers, they proceed:</div> -<div>Quick the dewy grass divides,</div> -<div>Moistening sweet their speckled sides;</div> -<div>From the grass or flowret’s cup</div> -<div>Quick the dew-drop bounces up.</div> -<div>Now the blue fog creeps along,</div> -<div>And the bird’s forgot his song:</div> -<div>Flowers now sleep within their hoods;</div> -<div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>Daisies button into buds;</div> -<div>From soiling dew the buttercup</div> -<div>Shuts his golden jewels up;</div> -<div>And the rose and woodbine they</div> -<div>Wait again the smiles of day.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The poem runs to length, as most of Clare’s do, but the amount of -exact, close and loving observation in it may be gauged from my -extract. It is remarkable, and worthy of memory for the sake of what -is to follow. You may say that such microscopic work may be outmatched -by gentle poets; you may tell me of sandblind Tennyson, who missed -nothing, of Cockney Keats and the “Ode to Autumn,” and say that it -is a matter of the passion which drives the poet. There is, I think, -this difference to be noted. Observation induces emotion in the -peasant-poet, whereas the gentle or scholar poet will not observe -intensely, if at all, until he is deeply stirred. I don’t say that that -will account for everybody: it will not dispose of Tennyson, nor of -Wordsworth—but it is true of the great majority.</p> - -<p>There is one other quality I should look for in a peasant-poet, and -that is what I can only go on calling “the lyric cry.” It is a thing -unmistakable when you find it, the pure and simple utterance in words -of the passion in the heart. “Had we never lov’d sae kindly”, “Come -away, come away, Death”, “The Sun to the Summer, my Willie to me”, -“Toll for the brave”, “Ariel to Miranda, take”, “I have had playmates”, -“Young Jamie lou’d me weel”,—they crowd upon me. Absolute simplicity, -water-clear sincerity are of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> the essence of it, and of both qualities -the peasant is possessed; but to them it is requisite to add the fire -of passion and the hue of beauty before they can tremble into music. -These things cannot be told, since private grief is sacred, but I have -had experience of late years in my intercourse with village people: men -bereaved of their sons, girls mourning their lovers. Words, phrases -have broken from them to which a very little more was needed to make -them sound like this:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“The wind doth blow to-day, my love,</div> -<div>And a few small drops of rain;</div> -<div>I never had but one true-love,</div> -<div>In cold grave she was lain.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>That is a perfect example of what I mean. It comes from Sussex, and -if there could be any doubt of its peasant-origin the weather lore of -the first two lines should settle it. And this from Scotland may be -compared with it:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“It fell about the Martinmass,</div> -<div>When nights were lang and mirk,</div> -<div>The carlin wife’s three sons came hame,</div> -<div>And their hats were of the birk.</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div>“It neither grew in dyke nor ditch,</div> -<div>Nor yet in any sheugh;</div> -<div>But at the gates o’ Paradise</div> -<div>That birk grew fair eneugh.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>No gentle poet short of Shakespeare could get the awful simplicity -of that; and Shakespeare,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> I think, only achieved it when, as for -Ophelia’s faltered songs, he used peasant-rhymes.</p> - -<p>It is, to me, a task of absorbing interest to go through Child’s -huge repertorium piece by piece and pick out the folk-ballads which -have the marks of peasant origin. So far as I can tell at present, -certainly one half, and it may be three-fourths of them are peasant -songs—I don’t say necessarily made by peasants, but in any case made -<i>for</i> them. If one could, by such means, form a <i>Corpus Poeticum -Villanum</i> there would be a treasure-house worth plundering by more -students than one. For as nothing moves a people more than poetry, -when it is good poetry, so nothing needs truth for its indispensable -food so much as poetry. If you have what most deeply touched and -stirred a people you have that which was dearest to them, the blood -as it were of their hearts. The <i>criteria</i> are as I have indicated: -minute observation, stark simplicity, the lyric cry, and realism. You -may add to those a preference of sentiment to romance, and a decided -adherence to the law of nature when that is counter to the law of the -Church. Thus incontinence in love is not judged hardly when passion -in the man or kindness in the woman has brought it about; on the -other hand, infidelity to the marriage vow never escapes. Again, that -which the Italians call “assassino per amore” is a matter of course -in peasant-poetry; and another crime, universally condemned, except -by about two of our gentle poets, is freely treated, and—not to say -condoned—freely pitied. Perhaps one of the most curious of all the -ballads is “Little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> Musgrave,” which is English and of unknown age. -It is quoted in <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> of 1611. Little -Musgrave and Lord Barnard’s wife fall in love, and betray his lordship. -He, however, is informed by his page, and rides out to clear his -honour. Musgrave hears something:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Methinks I hear the thresel-cock,</div> -<div>Methinks I hear the jay;</div> -<div>Methinks I hear my Lord Barnard,</div> -<div>And I would I were away.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But she answers him:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Lye still, lye still, thou Little Musgrave,</div> -<div>And huddle me from the cold;</div> -<div>’Tis nothing but a shepherd’s boy</div> -<div>A-driving his sheep to the fold.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Lord Barnard breaks in and does his affair with the two of them. Then:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“‘A grave, a grave,’ Lord Barnard cryd,</div> -<div>‘To put these lovers in;</div> -<div>But lay my lady on the upper hand,</div> -<div>For she came of the better kin!’”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Realism indeed: but a poem.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> - -<h2>DOGGEREL OR NOT</h2> - -<p>If Mr. Cecil Sharp, as I hope, is collecting his many and scattered -publications under one roof, so to speak, he will be doing a service -to a number of people besides me. I await his learned leisure, having -now possessed myself of his <i>English Folk-Songs</i>, Vols. I and II. -He will not achieve what I want to see done before I die, a <i>Corpus -Poeticum Villanum</i>, because, being a musician before all things, he -is only interested in peasant verse of which the music has survived. -He won’t do that, but he will help somebody else towards it with an -indispensable supplement to Child, in an accessible form; and that will -be great gain—goodliness with contentment, in fact.</p> - -<p>Valuable variants of many and many a folk-song are to be found in his -first instalment; though such was the phenomenal patience and far-flung -activity of the American that in two volumes of a hundred songs Mr. -Sharp has only been able to find one which is not in the great work. -That is one which would have delighted the Professor—“Bruton Town.” -The <i>English and Scottish Popular Ballads</i> contains nothing at all like -“Bruton Town”; yet the theme of it is one of those which was common to -every folk, no doubt, in Europe. Boccaccio gave it its first fame, Hans -Sachs followed him. In England we had to wait for Keats, who, so far as -we are concerned, supplanted the Florentine and the Nuremberger; for -all the Britains know something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> of Isabella and the Pot of Basil. It -must, however, be noted that the specific note of those masterpieces -is not the real theme, and never could have been. The horrid dealings -with the murdered man’s head are macabre embroidery altogether too -sophisticated for a folk-tale. The real theme is the Squire of Low -Degree. You get it in the “Duchess of Malfy,” and you get it in -“Bruton Town.” There is no instance of the morbid in a peasant-ballad. -Elemental human beings dealt in elemental passions. Love, pride, scorn, -birth, death were concern enough for them. So, in “Bruton Town,” the -theme is the trusty servant, his master’s daughter, the young men’s -reprobation and vindication of their sister’s “honour.” Here is the -opening:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“In Bruton Town there lived a farmer</div> -<div>Who had two sons and one daughter dear.</div> -<div>By day and night they were a-contriving</div> -<div>To fill their parents’ hearts with fear.</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div>“One told his secret to none other,</div> -<div>But to his brother this he said:</div> -<div>I think our servant courts our sister,</div> -<div>I think they have a mind to wed.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Doggerel or not, I don’t see how that could be bettered. Mr. Sharp -thinks something has been lost, but I think not. What could heighten -the note of mystery and dread with which the second quatrain -opens—“One told his secret to none other”? Mr. Sharp has not—he -confesses it—been able to refrain from the temptation which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> has -always beset the ballad-hunter, from Percy and Sir Walter onwards, of -working on the ore which he finds; but that stroke of art in particular -is unpremeditated and original, I feel sure. It is constant to all the -versions of “Bruton Town” which I have seen.</p> - -<p>The hasty whispered plot follows, the preparation of the “day of -hunting,” the murder, and the sister’s discovery of the deed. She rises -early and finds the corpse. Then comes:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“She took her kerchief from her pocket,</div> -<div>And wiped his eyes though he was blind;</div> -<div>‘Because he was my own true lover,</div> -<div>My own true lover and friend of mine.’”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>That again is constant, and could not be mended: though Mr. Sharp would -mend it if he could, thinking that the hasty shifting of persons, -from third to first, is awkward. It may be awkward, but is very -characteristic and, as I think, evidence of authenticity. One more -verse, which devotes the mourner to a shared grave, ends “Bruton Town” -in pure tragedy; pity, terror, but not disgust. Boccaccio’s additament -is nasty, and Keats did not avoid it, though he was not so nasty as -Boccaccio.</p> - -<p>“Bruton Town” comes from Somerset, and is worthy of that songful shire. -It carries in itself its own conviction of peasant origin. No other -race of our people would have conceived the verse last quoted exactly -like that, nor any other audience have accepted it as adequate. “Friend -of mine” is the <i>pièce de conviction</i>: the sweetest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> name a village -girl can give her lover is that of her friend. The pathos of “And wiped -his eyes though he was blind” is the pathos of a wounded bird. It is -beyond the compass of art altogether, one of those strokes of truth -which puts art out of court. It is Nature’s justification before the -schools.</p> - -<p>Doggerel, then, or not? There are other things in Mr. Sharp’s volumes -which may help to determine. There is the well-known “Little Sir Hugh,” -where the sacrifice of a Christian child by the Jews is sung. Mr. -Sharp’s version is in parts new. Take this out of it for good doggerel:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“She set him up in a gilty chair,</div> -<div>She gave him sugar sweet;</div> -<div>She laid him out on a dresser board,</div> -<div>And stabbed him like a sheep.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Well, without any pretence at <i>curiosa felicitas</i>, that does its work. -It is terse, tense, yet easy and colloquial. It is shocking rather -than pitiful; but it means to be so. It might be evidence at the -Assizes, where, term by term, they supply just the kind of thing which -would have given that versifier what he wanted. Mr. Sharp’s “Little -Sir Hugh” in fact is not far from Catnachery, of which he gives some -avowed examples. It has only to be set beside “Bruton Town” to settle -it that if “Sir Hugh” is doggerel, the other is not. Ease, tensity, -colloquialism both have; but then comes the difference. “Sir Hugh” -shocks, “Bruton Town” moves; “Bruton Town” has in it the lyric cry, -“Sir Hugh” has it not. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p> - -<p>Take as a last case “The True Lover’s Farewell,” pure doggerel, but -excellent of its kind. Everybody knows it, for a reason:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“O fare you well, I must be gone</div> -<div>And leave you for a while;</div> -<div>But wherever I go I will return,</div> -<div>If I go ten thousand mile,</div> -<div class="i6">My dear,</div> -<div>If I go ten thousand mile.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Now for the reason. Burns lifted that for his occasions, and hardly -altered it. He took it and fitted it into its place among other verses -on the same model—but this is how he began:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“O my luve’s like a red, red rose</div> -<div>That’s newly sprung in June:</div> -<div>O my luve’s like the melodie</div> -<div>That’s sweetly played in tune—”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>An opening, observe, of three beats; and then, as a kind of chorus, the -emotions quickened up, three four-beat verses of abandonment increasing -in reckless simile, and ending with:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“And fare thee well, my only luve;</div> -<div>And fare thee well awhile!</div> -<div>And I will come again, my luve,</div> -<div>Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>That is drawing poetry out of doggerel, the work of genius.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE IBERIAN’S HOUSE</h2> - -<p>Not long ago I was on the Downs in pursuit of wild raspberries, which, -as the old phrase goes, are very plenty this year. Although the days -are still those of the dog, there was autumn in the air even then: a -grey sky with a cool stream of wind from the west in which was that -familiar taint of things dying which autumn always brings. The flowers -were of autumn too—scabious, bedstraw and rest-harrow; mushrooms were -to be had for the stooping, which we usually seek in dewy September -dawns. On the other hand, there were the raspberries; the brambles were -in flower, and the corn just tinged with yellow. After a burning May -and June, a dripping July, the times are out of joint—but I filled a -hat full of raspberries.</p> - -<p>I found the best of them in a pear-shaped hollow in the ground, a place -rather like a giant’s sauce-boat, in depth perhaps some six feet. -Allowing for the slow accumulation of soil tumbled from the sides, for -growth by vegetation and decay spread over many centuries, it may once -have been another three feet down. Call it, then, nine feet deep. By -outside measurements it was fourteen yards long by nine at the broad -end of the pear, narrowing down to three where the stalk would have -been. To-day the actual floor-space is barely two yards at the broad -end. That is because the sides have fallen in, and made descent a -matter of walking, which originally, no doubt, was contrived by some -sort of a ladder, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> by slithering down a tree-trunk. Vegetation -is profuse in there: the turf like a sponge, the scabious as big as -ladies’ watches, the raspberries good enough for Bond Street. Well -they may be, for they are rooted in the bones and household spoil of -more than two thousand years. The place was a house long before Cæsar -knew Britain, before the Belgae were in Wilts, before Wilts was Wilts. -To revert to a convenient term, I picked my raspberries in an Iberian -house.</p> - -<p>I considered it that day in the light thrown upon its proportions -for me (all unknown to the author) by a terrible little book, the -more terrible for its dispassionate statement, called “The Woman in -the Little House,” whose author, Mrs. Margaret Eyles, has herself -experienced what she writes of. Her Little House is one of, I daresay, -a million; one of those narrow, flat-faced boxes of brick—“two up and -two down,” as they are expressed—sprawling far and wide over the home -counties about London, in which the artisans and operatives who work -thereabout contrive, as best they may, to bestow themselves. It does -not need—or should not—Mrs. Eyles’s calm and good-tempered account to -realise that such dwellings are bad for health and morals, fatal to the -nerves and ruinous to the purses of their occupants. Yet she mentions -more than one simple truth which proves immediately that the smallest -house at the lowest possible rent may be much more costly than a large -one—for instance, she points out that the smallness of the house and -the want of storage room make purchase of stores in any kind of bulk -out of the question. But I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> have neither the time nor the knowledge to -develop these questions properly. I have only one criticism to make, -and that is that the sufferings of the small householder cannot all be -laid to size; that the difficulties of the Woman in the Little House -are not only economic. Fecklessness in the Woman must take its share of -blame. It is hard to bring up a family in the fear of God and the use -of soap, where there seems to be neither room for the one nor chance -for the other. It is wearing-down work to be nurse to many small and -fretful children while you are carrying yet another, to keep order in -a household which has neither scope for, nor desire of order, to deal -with drunken husband, grudging landlord, quarrelsome neighbour—and so -on. But Mrs. Eyles knows that these things can be done by the woman who -realises that they must, that they have been done and are being done; -and though both of us may grudge, as we do, the waste of nerve, youth, -beauty, vitality which they involve, yet had we rather preach the -gospel of such heroic dumb endurance, such constancy in adversity, such -piety, <i>and their reward</i>, than have the heroines fall back, flounder -in the trough of the wave, or the “sensual sty.” But for their lamps -held up, indeed would “universal darkness cover all.”</p> - -<p>I seem to be far from my neolithic dwelling; yet am close to it; for -that itself was not much smaller than the “Little House” of to-day, -and yet is three thousand years older at the very least. To its -successor, the Celtic and early English wattle-and-daub hut this brick -box has succeeded,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> while here in the village under the Down there -are two-roomed, three-roomed tenements in which may be found man, -wife, and eight or ten children. So far as floor-space, air-space, -headroom, sanitation go, they will be very little better than the hole -in the chalk. So far as intellectual and moral outlook go, so far as -foresight, restraint of members, mental capacity, while tradition -is still the universal guide—a tradition which it is not easy to -distinguish from mere instinct—there is little reason to suppose the -occupants of the one differ materially from those of the other. I am -not to regret it or reprove it, but to state it; and go on to say -that when tradition is modified by character the state of a family -so conditioned may be not only orderly, not only prosperous, but -happy—and by that I don’t mean merely contented, but consciously and -avowedly happy. I know several which are so; and while I see, or hear, -of their well-being I have no reason for being anything but glad of it. -Sir Alfred Mond, to be sure, has had nothing to do with it; but it is -my belief that when it comes to a tug-of-war between character and Sir -Alfred Mond, character will pull the right honourable baronet all over -the place.</p> - -<p>I cannot bring myself to be that whole-hearted kind of reformer who -says, my sauce must be your sauce, or there is no health for the world. -If I must provide a villager (as surely I must) with store-room for -his potatoes, I would not give him a bath-room for the purpose. I am -uncomfortable myself if I don’t souse every morning in warm water; -but I know several persons who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> do nothing of the sort, and are not -in the least uncomfortable, nor (to the senses) unclean. I have been -a guest in a house in Northumberland of the right Iberian kind, which -consisted of one room only. A better-conditioned, more wholesome, more -intelligent family than I found there I don’t expect to find easily -anywhere. Tradition explained, and character made tolerable, such a -dwelling. I have not actually seen, but know the appearance of the -house in Ecclefechan, where Carlyle was reared. I should be surprised -to learn that it was more than “two up and one down,” rather surprised -if it was so much. I don’t put Thomas Carlyle forward as an example of -the modification of circumstance by character: he was much the reverse. -But all that he tells me of his father and mother was written for my -learning. The rule of Saint Use was well kept in Ecclefechan, or I am -the more deceived. If Carlyle’s mother would have exchanged her lot for -that of any woman born she was not the woman he celebrates. And have -we not heard of Margaret Ogilvie, and been the better of it? It is not -the present-day practice to consider our social troubles from the moral -end, and I am sorry for it. The economic end engrosses us altogether; -yet it is not, strictly speaking, the “business-end.” It is little use -abolishing this or that institution while human nature remains as it -always was.</p> - -<p>There is one serious subject which Mrs. Eyles has had to deal with, -into which I hesitate to intrude. Iberian women are kind, and their men -clamative. As she has heard it said by many a one of them, the day may -be endured, but not the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> night. Well, there again character can modify -use-and-wont, either by teaching acquiescence or by inspiring revolt. -And yet I cannot but remember what was said to a friend of mine in a -neighbouring village in the first of our terrible four years of war. -The speaker was a woman, a mother of children, who for the first time -in her life had enough money and her house to herself. “Ah, ma’am,” she -said, “you may depend upon it, this war has made many happy homes.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p> - -<h2>SCANDINAVIAN ENGLAND</h2> - -<p>The valley is narrow, not much more than a hundred and fifty yards -wide, where I am stationed now. Of them some twenty are claimed by -the headlong river and its beaches of flat grey stones, and perhaps -eighty more by small green garths, divided by walls. Then broken ground -of boulders, bent and bracken, and then, immediately, the fells rise -up like walls to a ragged skyline. They stream with water at every -fissure, are quickly clouded, blurred and blotted by rain; then clear, -and shining like glass in the sun. The look of things is not the same -for half an hour at a time. Fleets of cloud come up from the Atlantic, -anchor themselves on the mountain-tops, and descend in floods of rain, -sharp and swift as arrows. Or if the wind drive them they will fleet -across the landscape like white curtains, and whelm the world in blown -water. You don’t “make” your hay in this country, you “win” it if you -can: you steal it, as they say. As for your patches of oats, as likely -as not you will use them for green fodder. Roots would be your crop -if you had room for them among the stones—but in Eskdale you are a -sheep-farmer, with a thousand head of sheep and a thousand acres of -fell to feed them on.</p> - -<p>I am new to this corner of our country, where Lancashire and Cumberland -run so much in and out of each other that the people have given up -county categories and call it all indifferently Furness Fells. I don’t -know any other part of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> England so sparely occupied. The farms are few, -large and far apart; there are practically no villages; and my own -cottage (which was built for a dead and buried mining scheme, and is -the last of its clan) is the only one to be found within miles of empty -country. A plain-faced, plain-dealing, plain-spoken race lives here, -in a countryside where every natural landmark has a Norse name, and -one is recalled to the Sagas at every turn of the valley, and by every -common occupation of man. The economy of life exactly follows that -told of in the Icelandic tales. In the homestead live the farmer and -his thralls, the wife and her maids. There are no married labourers, -and board and lodging is part of every young man’s and young woman’s -hire. Twelve such people live in the farmhouse nearest to me—twelve -people, eleven dogs, an uncertain number of children, and a bottle-fed -black lamb. Not only so, but it is true that the dalesmen and their -servants are Icelandic in favour and way of speech. Dialect is not much -to the point; intonation is a great deal to it. That runs flat, level -and monotonous—unemotionally, like Danish. It makes a kind of muted -speech, so that it is hard to know whether a woman is pleased or angry, -or a man of agreeable or offensive intention.</p> - -<p>I never met with a people more innately democratic than the Danes -until I met this year with this people of Eskdale. It is not at all -that they seek to assert their equality: it is that they know it. -The manners depicted in the Sagas are those of men dealing with men. -Neither inflation nor deflation is deemed necessary, neither arrogance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> -nor condescension. You make a statement, short and unadorned: it is -for the other man to take or leave. Speech is not epigrammatic because -minds move slowly here. But it is very terse—because it may rain -before you have finished. Plainer than speech are manners. They were -that in the Sagas, in more than one of which the starting-point of feud -and vendetta was the persistent and obtuse besetting of a daughter of -one house by the son of another. She was busy, or busied, as in all -primitive societies the women are; but he was not. So he hung about her -house, not attempting speech with her, not explaining or justifying or -extenuating his oppressive behaviour, simply overshadowing the poor -thing, causing her to be talked about, and scandalising her family. -There was but one way of dealing with him in those days, which was -to crack his skull. That was done, and so the drama put on its legs. -Things are better than that now, yet the principle is the same. I -remember the discomfort and alarm of three southern maids whom we once -brought up with us to a farmhouse in Selkirk. At their supper-hour -three strange young men were discovered sitting on a gate in full view -of the kitchen window. Nothing makes an Iberian so uncomfortable as to -be watched at a meal. But nothing would move the young men, not even -the drawing of the curtains. They had no explanation to give, no excuse -to make. One faintly whistled between his teeth, and then said that it -was a free country. So it was, if to make free is to be so.</p> - -<p>It is much the same here. The young men of the farm regard every young -woman, of whatever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> walk in life, as a thing to be whistled in, like -a sheep-dog. They have the Saga knack of declaring the state of their -feelings by imposing themselves upon its object. They beleaguer the -house, shadow the desired, trust to wearing her down, hope to bore her -into love. Or, rather, they don’t care whether she love or not, so long -as they are allowed it. Woman in the Sagas is a chattel, a thing to be -bought or stolen. So she was to the Homeric hero. So she seems to be here.</p> - -<p>The Danes, as we loosely call our Norse invaders, were a more dominant -strain than whatever people they found in Furness. Not only have they -implanted their form, feature and hue upon the Cumbrians, not only -named their rivers and hills for them, or a great many of them, but -they have established their social code. “Whistle and I’ll come to you, -my lad,” is not a sentiment of Southern Britain. It is firmly implanted -in the mind of the young Dalesman, who finds it right and proper.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p> - -<h2>OUR BLOOD AND STATE IN 1660</h2> - -<p>I believe that we have always had the good conceit of ourselves which -we have still. We complain freely of our weather, institutions, habits, -manners and customs—but that is a freedom which we arrogate to -ourselves: when foreigners do the same we are merely amused, not for a -moment supposing either that their charges are true or that they really -mean them. Though our grousing can hardly be dated with safety before -Horace Walpole, our complacency is of pretty old standing, and goes -back to the time when we began to look Europe over, to say nothing of -America, and incidentally grew curious about our own country. Leland, -Speed, Camden, Drayton, Coryat, and finally old Thomas Fuller, between -them have fairly summed up what there can have been to say for us when -we had emerged from the Middle Ages and were beginning to shape for -posterity; and of all those Fuller is perhaps the least known and the -best worth a thought, if only because his eyes were upon what he saw -rather than what he knew. The rock upon which most of our eulogists -split was archæology. There Leland foundered, Speed and Camden too. -Drayton had his troubles elsewhere, and plenty of them, as a poet -would. Avoiding Scylla, he barged into Charybdis, where mythopoiesis -lurked for him like a mermaid, and sank him so deep that he never came -up again. He is very nearly unreadable; he invites ridicule and wins<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> -disgust. Over and over his bemused corpus of rime, John Selden, a most -learned spider, spun webs of erudition. It is difficult to read either -of them, but of the two I prefer the poet. The present Laureate puts -the antiquary first. But when you come to Thomas Fuller, D.D., his -<i>Worthies of England</i>, that wordy work, encumbered though it be with -texts of divinity, you do at least get your teeth into something upon -which to bite. He did not live to finish it, though, and the piety of -his son John, “the author’s orphan,” as he described himself, erected -it as a monument to his memory in 1672.</p> - -<p>Fuller, I think, set out with the intention of belauding the human -products of our realm. He cast all mankind into categories and, with -them for a sieve, shook out the shires to see what he could find. -To that he added matter concerning the natural and manufactured -commodities of England, which forms the best reading in him to-day. -One does not particularly want to know what he had to say about Sir -Walter Raleigh or Cardinal Wolsey; even his opinion of Shakespeare -and Ben Jonson need not detain us long, though he seems to have known -personally the pair of them, and to have considered Jonson considerably -the greater man. Wit was always reckoned above genius in that day. -But he admits Shakespeare as a worthy of Warwickshire, accords him -exactly as much space as Michael Drayton, “a pious poet,” and thinks -that in our greatest man “three eminent poets may seem in some sort -to be compounded”; a sufficiently qualified judgment. Those three -are—“Martial, in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> warlike sound of his surname”; Ovid, “the most -natural and witty of all the poets”; and Plautus, “an exact comedian, -yet never any scholar, as our Shakespeare (if alive) would confess -himself.” He goes on, “Add to all these, that though his genius -generally was jocular, and inclining him to festivity, yet he could -(when so disposed) be solemn and serious.” Not extravagant praise. He -does not know the date of his death, leaves it blank. And so much for -Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>It doesn’t matter; nor are his judgments of Jonson and Donne of any -more moment. But it is interesting to know what the counties were doing -in 1660, though, except grazing, it was little enough. In fact, what he -does not say is surprising. I had certainly understood, for instance, -that Newcastle was exporting coal long before that; but Fuller has -no “natural commodities” to report of Northumberland. No coal in -Lancashire, either. Lancashire’s products were “oates,” “allume,” and -“oxen,” and her only manufacture, so declared, “fustians.” Bolton, -he tells you, “is the staple place for this commodity, being brought -thither” from all parts of the county. But Manchester was spinning -cotton. “As for Manchester, the cottons thereof carry away the credit -in our nation, and so they did an hundred and fifty years ago. For when -learned Leland on the cost of King Henry the Eighth, with his guide -travailed Lancashire, he called Manchester the fairest and quickest -town in this county, and sure I am it has lost neither spruceness nor -spirits since that time.” That is a good report, made no worse probably -by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> entire absence of Liverpool from the record. But there is -more to come. “Other commodities made in Manchester are so small in -themselves, and various in their kinds, they will fill the shop of an -haberdasher of small wares. Being therefore too many for me to reckon -up or remember, it will be the safest way to wrap them all together in -some <i>Manchester-Tickin</i>, and to fasten them with the <i>pinns</i>, or tye -them with the <i>tape</i>, and also (because sure bind sure find) to bind -them about with <i>points</i> and <i>laces</i>, all made in the same place.” -That is as near to jocularity as Dr. Fuller can go. With much the same -elephantine gambols used Mr. Pecksniff in a later day to entertain his -daughters and pupils.</p> - -<p>He records as proverbial of Lancashire her “fair women,” not without -pointing a moral. “I believe that the God of nature having given fair -complections to the women in this county art may save her <i>pains</i> -(not to say her <i>sinnes</i>) in endeavouring to better them. But let the -females of this county know, that though in the Old Testament express -notice be taken of the beauty of many women, <i>a.</i> Sarah, <i>b.</i> Rebekah, -<i>c.</i> Rachel, <i>e.</i> Thamar, <i>f.</i> Abishaig, <i>g.</i> Esther; yet in the New -Testament no mention is made at all of the fairness of any woman.” -Grace, he would have you know, is all, and “soul-piercing perfection -far better than skin-deep fairness.” Two other facts about Lancashire -are noteworthy: “It is written upon a wall in Rome, <i>Ribchester</i> was -as rich as any town in Christendom”—that is one; and the other is -that “About Wiggin and elsewhere in this county men go a-fishing with -spades<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> and matthooks.” As thus: “First they pierce the turfie ground, -and under it meet with a black and deadish water, and in it small -fishes do swim.” Such fish, he thinks, are likely unwholesome, and so -do I; therefore I am pleased with his comfortable conclusion. “Let them -be thankful to God in the first place who need not such meat to feed -upon. And next them let those be thankful which have such meat to feed -upon, when they need it.” Very much in the manner of Dr. Pangloss.</p> - -<p>Fuller’s own fishing after “natural commodities” obliges him to use a -small mesh. Even so he sometimes wins nothing. Cambridgeshire gives him -eels, hares, saffron, and willows—a mixed bag; Essex oysters, hops -and <i>puitts</i>, by which he intends peewits. Hants does better, with red -deer, honey, wax, and hogs; but Wilts can only offer tobacco-pipes, -and wool. Cornwall gives him diamonds! “In blackness and hardness -they are far short of the Indian”—but there they are. He tops up -a bumper basket down there with ambergris, garlic, pilchards, blue -slate, and tin. Cornwall is easily his richest county, and next comes -Cumberland, with pearls, blacklead and copper. Here are some poor ones: -Dorset, “tenches,” pipe-clay, and hemp; Berks, “oakes, bark, trouts”; -Bedfordshire, “barley, malt, fullers’-earth and <i>larks</i>”; slightly -better are Bucks, with “beeves, sheep and tame pheasants”; Kent, -“cherries, sainfoin, madder”; Hereford, “wool and salmons.” Clearly it -was a day of small things. Staffordshire was making nails; Derbyshire -mining lead and brewing mild<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> ale; Somerset produced serges at Taunton; -Yorkshire bred horses and made knives at Sheffield, as she did in -Chaucer’s time; and that is about all that “the painted counties” were -doing in 1660. For the rest, it was grazing and small-farming, large -families and the beginning of religious ferment which was to work for -another hundred years before it came to a head.</p> - -<p>But old Fuller himself was what he calls somebody else, “a cordial -protestant,” and does not allow us to forget it for a page at a time. -He cannot speak of salt in Cheshire without remembering Lot’s wife, -nor of polled cattle without head-shaking over the calf in Horeb. “The -historian,” he reminds himself, “must not devour the divine in me.” He -never does. The Scriptures are his real affair, as they were coming to -be ours in 1660. It would be an edifying exercise, remembering that, to -reckon up our gains and losses out of his meandering pages.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> - -<h2>“MERRIE” ENGLAND</h2> - -<p>The Athenians, I believe, used to round off their bouts of high tragedy -with a farce of satyrs and clowns, and the practice has survived almost -to our own day. When Charles Lamb and his sister went to Drury Lane, -<i>Pizzaro</i> or <i>Artaxerxes</i> would be followed by <i>Harlequin Dame Trot</i>, -or <i>Harlequin Dick Whittington and his Cat</i>. I am not scholar enough to -say of the Elizabethans that they were in the same tradition; but if -they were I can perceive some intention in <i>Gammer Gurton’s Needle</i>, -which has been newly edited and printed for Mr. Basil Blackwell of -Oxford. Otherwise I confess myself at a loss. It is an Elizabethan or, -as I think, an even earlier knockabout, in which those only who saw fun -in a harlequinade would find the kind of thing that they liked. That it -should have been contrived for the amusement of the Master and Fellows -of Christ’s College, Cambridge, is perhaps not so wonderful as it would -have been if Ben Jonson’s <i>Bartholomew’s Fair</i> had not been revived the -other day with some measure of success. And I suppose that the persons -who were diverted by seeing Malvolio in the cage were very capable -of being pleased with <i>Gammer Gurion’s Needle</i>. It is no worse than -Shakespeare at his worst, and much better than Ben Jonson in that it is -much shorter. Launcelot Gobbos, Speeds, Launces fill the stage. There -are no Dogberrys, nor Dame Quickleys; no Master Shallow, no Bottom, and -of course no Falstaff. But the difference is of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> degree, not of kind. -<i>Gammer Gurton</i> is written <i>de haut en bas</i>, as Shakespeare also wrote -of rural life and manners. Its author, “Mr. S., Mr. of Art,” whoever -he was—and the editor thinks that he was William Stevenson, Fellow of -Christ’s in the fifteen-fifties—as heartily scorned the peasantry as -William Shakespeare ever did; and I think that he knew quite as much -about them. In fact, I am led to believe that the thing is not far from -being a faithful picture, as nearly so, indeed, as its comic intention -will allow it to be. If that is so it deserves study. When we talk, as -we are apt to do, of “Merrie England,” it is as well that we should -know in what England’s merriment consisted.</p> - -<p>Gammer Gurton is mending the breeches of her man Hodge when she -sees the cat at the milk-bowl. Starting up to trounce the thief, -she drops her needle, her “fayre long strayght neele that was her -onely treasure.” That is serious. The house is turned inside out and -upside down. Tib the maid has to sift the rubbish-heap; Cock the -boy spends his day on all-fours and his nose to the ground. Enters -here the villain of the piece, the village half-wit, Bedlam Dick, -and says that Dame Chat has the “neele.” That prepares for the great -scene of the play, a slanging match between the two old women, which -ends in a tooth-and-nail affair. Gammer Gurton sends for the priest; -Bedlam Dick primes Dame Chat. He tells her that Hodge is going to rob -her hen-roost; and later, to the priest, he suggests a hiding-place -whence he can spy on Dame Chat and the “neele” in felonious use. The -priest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> edges in; Dame Chat thinks he is the chicken-thief, and cracks -his skull for him. Mighty hullabaloo: the bailiff is called in to -arbitrate. Bedlam Dick gives Hodge a smack on the buttocks, and drives -the needle home. That is the plot, expounded in plain words which, no -doubt, were exceedingly close to the bone.</p> - -<p>According to Christ’s College, Cambridge, the life of the English -peasant in Reformation days was a purely animal process, punctuated -only by foul language. Eating and drinking were the pleasures, working -was the pain, contriving how to get liquor without working for it the -only intellectual exercise. In <i>Gammer Gurton’s Needle</i> there was not -even love to complicate existence. Ale was the Good, and the only good.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“I cannot eate but lytle meate,</div> -<div class="i1">my stomacke is not good;</div> -<div>But sure I thinke that I can drynke</div> -<div class="i1">with him that weares a hood.</div> -<div>Thoughe I go bare, take ye no care,</div> -<div class="i1">I am nothinge acolde:</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div>“I stuffe my skyn so full within</div> -<div class="i1">of joly good Ale and olde.</div> -<div>Back and syde go bare, go bare,</div> -<div class="i1">both foote and hand go colde:</div> -<div>But, belly, God send thee good ale inoughe</div> -<div class="i1">whether it be new or olde”:—</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>and so on for four clinking verses. The thing is a triumph; it sings -itself. Out of its rollicking rhythm a kind of haze of romance has -piled up,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> which select spirits like Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton -still see as a rosy cloud. I suppose it is all right.</p> - -<p>But the language of those “merrie” people! There was only one injurious -thing for woman to call woman: it was reflected in man’s accusation of -man. If you named a woman the thing—and you always did—you named a -man the thing’s son. The impact varied according to the temper of the -accuser. It pricked you to madness if anger lay behind it; often it was -a term of affection. Gammer Gurton so called Tib her maid, Dame Chat -her girl Doll; but that was to coax them. When the beldams belaboured -each other with the imputation they made the fur to fly. Exactly -that impotence of expression, even in moods of malice, is observable -to-day—but in towns, not in the country. I have lived twenty years -in a village and never heard the taunt so much as whispered by one to -another. But then nobody gets drunk out here now. Is there a holding -link between ale and sterility of language? I suppose there must be.</p> - -<p>Religion provides the only other expletives there are in <i>Gammer -Gurton</i>, and that makes the date of it an interesting matter. No -earlier edition appears to be known than that of 1575; but a play -called <i>Dyccon of Bedlam</i> was licensed to be printed in 1562, and one -by the presumed author of <i>Gammer Gurton</i> was acted at Christ’s College -in 1553-4. However all that may fit in, there are internal evidences -very much to the point. In the fifth act the bailiff is charged by -the priest with Dick of Bedlam’s arrest. “In the King’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> name, Master -Bayly, I charge you set him fast,” he says. That might be Edward VI if -the Prologue had not an allusion directly in conflict with it:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Dame Chat her deare gossyp this needle had found;</div> -<div>Yet knew shee no more of this matter (alas)</div> -<div>Than knoeth Tom our Clarke what the Priest saith at masse.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Is that reminiscence of old practice? Hardly that, for if the mass was -then being said in English it would be quite pointless. Beyond that, -the play is crammed with Catholic catchwords, all of them oaths. “Gog’s -bread,” “Gog’s sydes,” “Gog’s malte”; numberless Our Ladys; “by gys” -(by Jesus); finally this:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“There I will have you sweare by our dere Lady of Bullaine,</div> -<div>S. Dunstone, and S. Donnyke, with the three Kings of Kullaine,</div> -<div>That ye shall keepe it secret....”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>These things point to a familiarity with Catholic usage, whichever -way you take them, exceedingly interesting. The chief thing which -they point out to me is that there was no religious sense in the -peasantry at all. The names and symbols of worship were augmentives of -conversation, but no more. They meant nothing, and implied nothing but -use and wont. Catholicism expired and Calvinism did not thrive, for the -same reason.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Neither of them touched the heart of the peasantry, which -remained what it had been throughout, innately pagan, follower (as I -put it) of Saint Use, but of no other divinity. That is as far as one -has been able to go. Certainly <i>Gammer Gurton</i> will take us no further.</p> - -<p>Dullness, bestiality, grossness: these stare you in the face. Between -the lines of them you may discern the squalor and the penury of village -life in Merrie England. Take this:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div><i>Gammer</i>: “Come hether, Cocke; what, Cocke I say.</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div><i>Cocke</i>: Howe, Gammer?</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div><i>Gammer</i>: Goe hy thee soone, and grope behind the old brasse pan,</div> -<div>Ther shalt thou fynd an old shooe, wherin if thou looke well</div> -<div>Thou shalt fynd lyeng an inche of whyte tallow candell,</div> -<div>Lyght it, and brynge it tite awaye.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>If that does not bring them home to us nothing will do it—except -perhaps this:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“And home she went as brag, as it had ben a bodelouce.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p> - -<h2>ENDINGS</h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p>Not very long ago I took occasion to inquire into the beginnings of -books. I found that the rules were simple, the formulæ few, and the -practice seldom varied until near our own times. If you were an Epic -poet, you invoked the Muse and stated the theme in which you desired -her assistance; if you wrote prose narrative, you began with “Once -upon a time,” or “There was a man,” and went on from there. You began, -in fact, at the beginning; but if you were romantically inclined you -contrived somehow to insinuate a hint of colour and what the artists -call atmosphere. Whichever you were, poet or prosateur, like a -musician, you had a prelude, and gave it as much work as it was capable -of bearing, and sometimes rather more than it could bear. No matter for -that: everything was in your favour: hope was high in your breast, and, -no doubt, in your hearer’s or reader’s. The rules were simple; you laid -out the theme, and off you went.</p> - -<p>But the <i>ending</i> of your work is a very different thing. There are -no formulæ for that. You are at the stretch of your tether, either -thankfully or not; you are in your public’s discretion; however you -take it, you are judged already. You may amend all by your ending, or -you may make weariness more weary. In any case, you have somehow to -“get off with it,” and will find that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> your shifts to make a good end -to your adventure are not easily reduced to rule or comfortably suited -by convention. We don’t hear so many sermons as we did; yet most of us -know by experience that it is one thing for a clergyman to open upon -his text, and quite another for him to turn to the East with credit. -If he have prepared his peroration, and the way to it—what I may call -his <i>coda</i> and <i>finale</i>—well or ill, he will let it off. If he have -not, then in addition to his anxious care for what he is to say, he -will have another for what he must by no means say. Let him beware, for -example, of using the hortatory words “And now”; for so surely as he -pronounces them the congregation will rise as one man, and then nothing -for it but the rest of the Ascription. I have known that happen more -than once, and never faced the preacher with nerve enough to reseat the -congregation for one more turn.</p> - -<p>The writer and the orator may be compared, since literature, by origin -a spoken word, has never lost the habits it then acquired—or has only -just now lost them. As the ancient bard, Homer or Demodocus, as the -wandering minstrel, trouvère or balladist, faced his assize, somehow or -other he had to get off his platform. What was he to do? He desired a -supper, perhaps a bed: one need not shirk the probability that he was -to send round his hat. Could he be sure of them without some kind of a -bang? Should it be a long or a short bang? Was he to sum up the whole -argument of his poem in its last twenty lines, condense it all into one -compendious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> epigrammatic sentence? As we shall see, that was the means -of one of our great prose-writers. Then, otherwise, should he perorate, -and, in the musician’s way, recall the theme with which he began? As -poet, perhaps he should—so indeed Tennyson more than once did; but -as epic poet it was not always possible. No better poet than Homer -ever lived, no better ending to an epic was ever made than that to the -Iliad, whose last book shows Achilles, for once, generous, and Priam, -in his simplicity, noble. But the Iliad does not end upon the matter of -its beginning, nor with the hero of it. On the contrary, it ends with -the hero’s chief enemy; and its very last line,</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“So served they the last rites of Hector, tamer of horses,”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>is remarkable, because it shows that the interest of poet and hearers -alike had shifted during the progress of the poem. Homer, a Greek, -singing to a Greek audience, finds it necessary to close his poem with -Priam and Hector of Troy!</p> - -<p>That shows you how difficult it is to end an epic. The Odyssey shows -it you from another side. Everybody now agrees that what happens in -that after the return of Ulysses, his revenge upon the suitors and -recognition by Penelope, is anti-climax. We are not prepared, at the -end of a long poem, to descend once more into Hades and listen to the -ghosts of the wooers relate their griefs to the ghosts of Agamemnon -and Achilles. We are not prepared for an outbreak of retaliatory war -between the Ithacans and their recovered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> prince. <i>Nor were Homer’s -auditors.</i> Therefore Homer turned to the old stage device of the god -from the machine; he brought an Athené to shut all down. No other means -was open to him, and the knot was worthy.</p> - -<p>I don’t intend to deal with the drama in this place. It has its own -conventions, only occasionally of use to narrative writers. Most of -them are impossible: the Chorus, for instance, which is an easy way of -bringing down the curtain; or the attendants who carry off the dead -bodies; or the curtain itself. The nearest approach to the curtain -which a book can have is the <i>Explicit</i>, or <i>Colophon</i>; but I only -know one case of its use in a great poem, and in that case it is used -in a hurry, and (as I believe) certainly not by the poet. The poem I -mean is the <i>Song of Roland</i>, which, as we have it now, has neither -beginning nor end. Of what may have once been either there is no trace -to be found. As it stands now, the last stave of it shows Charlemagne -reposing after justice done upon Roland’s betrayer, and the Archangel -Gabriel announcing to him the call for new enterprise. Whereupon—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“‘God!’ said the King, ‘my life is hard indeed!’</div> -<div>Tears filled his eyes, he tore his snowy beard”;</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>and then the famous colophon which nobody can translate:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Ci falt la Geste que Turoldus declinet.”</div> -</div></div></div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> -<p>Clearly, if Turoldus made the <i>Song of Roland</i>, he did not put his -colophon just there. Mr. Chesterton, in an introduction to the very -accomplished version of the song made by Captain Scott-Moncrieff, -devotes some eloquent lines to its defence; but he does it at the -expense of criticism. It will not do. A poet is, after all, a man -singing to, or writing for men. No man in the world would end a long -story by beginning another. These things are not done.</p> - -<p>The ending of the <i>Divine Comedy</i> is original and characteristic at -once. There is deliberate art in it; there is a kind of artifice or -trick in it. But the trick is justified because it is both beautiful -and, philosophically, true. Each of the three canticas ends with the -same word and the same thought. The aim of the pilgrim through Hell, -Purgatory and Heaven is to reach the stars. From the darkness and -lamentation of Hell he issues</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“a riveder le stelle”;</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>after his painful climbing of the Mount of Purgation he finds himself</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle”;</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>the Paradise begins by describing the glory of the Prime Mover of -things; and ends by discovering that this Prime Mover of the universe -is Love, and that Love it is which</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“muove il sole e l’altre stelle.”</div> -</div></div></div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> -<p>As I say, there is artifice in that. After it we are not surprised to -learn that the number of cantos in each cantica, the number of verses, -the number of words in each was approximately planned out and very -closely kept. It is much of a question what is gained by such joinery; -but there is no question at all of the starry endings. Philosophically -and poetically they are beautiful and right.</p> - -<p>Dante belonged to the scholastic age, and to the Middle Age; but he -stood alone both in his art and his artifice. Poets less serious than -he, poets like Boccaccio and Chaucer, had other cares. As they drew -near the end of their occasionally very light-hearted poems, they began -to think about their own end as well as that of their poesy. Fears of -the Archdeacon and his “Somonour,” fears of a summons still more dread -beset them. The more they had written about pagan antiquity as if -they believed in it, the more necessary it became to make their peace -with Heaven before they had done. <i>The Canterbury Tales</i> were never -finished, so one cannot say whether Chaucer’s wholesale recantation of -the “worldly vanitees” of them, of <i>Troilus</i>, and of practically all -that has made him immortal was really designed to fit on to the end of -them or not. It certainly looks as if it was; and one can believe that -The Wife of Bath, mine Host and others of the joyful company may have -required some extenuation before the Recording Angel. So perhaps did -<i>Troilus and Cresseide</i>, for which he provides a careful and solemn -ending, following Boccaccio there as elsewhere. He shades off Troilus’ -death very artfully by the translation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> his “light gooste” to the -eighth sphere of Heaven, from which elevation he was able to look down -at the mourners bewailing his decease. And then the poet is elevated in -his turn and, dropping all his debonair detachment, himself translated, -becomes a pulpiteer of the best. “Such fyn,” he cries:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Such fyn hath then this Troilus for love!</div> -<div>Such fyn hath all his greté worthinesse!”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>It is fierce and powerful pulpit eloquence, mounting up and up until he -reaches a height of scorning what he had previously loved, from which -invective may be poured out like lava from Vesuvius:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Lo here, of payen’s curséd oldé rights!</div> -<div>Lo here, what all their Goddés may availe!”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>which, considering he began his poem by invoking the help of those same -gods, seems ungrateful, not to say ungracious. The last stanza is quite -simply a doxology:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Thou one, and two, and three, eterne in life,</div> -<div>That reignest aye in three, and two, and one,”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>just such an accomplished and charming doxology as might be expected -from Chaucer—but, all the same, a doxology. To such strange uses did -poets lend their muse when they loved paynimry and were horribly afraid -of it too. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> - -<p>Freed from the overshadowing of a wrath to come, Milton was able to -concentrate upon poetic excellence, as indeed he did. You will look far -before you find so serene and beautiful a close to a long poem as that -of <i>Paradise Lost.</i> Pity and terror contend in the last paragraph. When -the Archangel with his burning brand, and the attendant Cherubim, faces -in the fire, descend and take possession of Eden, terror holds us; but -then, pity:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“They, looking back, all th’ eastern side beheld</div> -<div>Of Paradise so late their happy seat....”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>They were mortal, that pair. Mortals have short memories, but long -hopes. So—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;</div> -<div>The world was all before them where to choose</div> -<div>Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.</div> -<div>They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,</div> -<div>Through Eden took their solitary way.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The dream was over. Life began its “search for rest.” Beautiful indeed, -and exactly observed.</p> - -<p>I must here leave the Muse with barely a glance at the Victorians, -which suffices nevertheless to reveal that they adopted the rhetorical -device of the peroration. Tennyson uses it in <i>In Memoriam</i> and <i>Maud</i>, -Browning in <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, Swinburne, very finely, in -<i>Tristram of Lyonesse</i>, and very characteristically too with his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> usual -catchword. I don’t know how many considerable poems there may be of -Swinburne’s which do not end with the word “sea,” but believe that the -fingers of one hand would be too many for them. In <i>Sordello</i> Browning -chose the mediæval colophon, the <i>Ci falt la geste</i>, when he shut down -his long enigma with</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Who would has heard Sordello’s story told,”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>and laid himself open to the easy retort that it was not at all true. -But the grandest finale of our times remains to be told: Tennyson’s -closing lines of <i>Idylls of the King</i>. I do not refer to the Envoy, -which is only a postscript to the Dedication. I mean rather the end of -“The Passing of Arthur”: Sir Bedivere on the shore, “straining his eyes -beneath an arch of hand” to see the barge out of sight, “down that long -water opening on the deep”; to see it go,</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“From less to less and vanish into light—”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Then one more line, one more picture:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“And the new sun rose bringing the new year.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Superb! Nothing in the <i>Idylls</i> became Tennyson like the leaving them. -They do not form an epic; but the end is epical.</p> - -<p>And now for prose. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>You cannot end a book of prose as you can a poem, for the simple reason -that prose does not appeal to the emotions directly, as poetry does, -but by way of the reason. By emotion you can carry off anything that -you may have had the passion to begin and continue; but the reason asks -another satisfaction. You may win emotional assent to a proposition -that two and two make three, or five. In the heat of the moment it -will pass. Reason won’t take it in on the mere statement. If some such -result is to be the outcome of your book—and it is that of many and -many a novel—you must be careful how you conclude; and it will be -seen, I think, that so the novelists have been.</p> - -<p>The simplest way of ending a story, you might think, would be to say -That’s all, and get off your tub. It was the way, we saw, of the -rough-and-ready intelligence which carved the <i>Song of Roland</i> out of -some huge rhymed chronicle: <i>Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet</i>. -It is the way of the colophon. But even the colophon must be meditated -and prepared for; so it is not the real end but only part of it. Sir -Thomas Malory had a long colophon to the <i>Mort d’Arthur</i>, including a -bidding prayer on his own account; and then Caxton his printer puts in -a word for himself; but it is led up to by a page which sees Lancelot -and Guinevere dead and buried, the realm of England disposed of, and -the later fortunes of the few knights left alive. It is a deliberate, -not a summary end to a great book—the end “in calm of mind, all -passion spent,” which such a book should have.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> It is, again, the way -chosen by Gibbon for <i>The Decline and Fall</i>. You have a dignified -and sufficient summary of the whole work in a sentence of twelve -co-ordinate clauses, set stately apart by their semicolons. Then comes -a brief reflection of the author’s—“It was among the ruins of the -Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which....” And then, -after that momentary tribute to his personal share in it, he makes a -formal submission of it “to the curiosity and candour of the public.” -Mannerly and contained to the last, the good Gibbon. Nobody ever came -down from a tub with more self-respect; yet Boswell came down pretty -well too:</p> - -<p>“Such,” he concludes, “was Samuel Johnson, a man whose talents, -acquirements and virtues were so extraordinary, that the more his -character is considered, the more he will be regarded by the present -age, and by posterity, with admiration and reverence.” He was, at -least, sufficiently moved to forget himself altogether—which is very -much to his credit. Yet he does not satisfy like Gibbon.</p> - -<p>Carlyle was tired with <i>Frederick</i>, and, may be, out of conceit with -it. His conclusion is short, and his colophon barbarous. “Adieu, -good readers; bad also, adieu,” is rather bravado than bravery. More -courteous, more inclusive, serener and braver is the conclusion of -<i>The French Revolution</i>. One sniff there is, at the “Citizen King, -frequently shot at, not yet shot,” recollection of a Teufelsdröckian -prophecy, neither here nor there; and then a paragraph of valediction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> -“Toilsome was our journeying together; not without offence; but it is -done.... Ill stands it with me if I have spoken falsely; thine also it -was to hear truly. Farewell.” A beautiful colophon.</p> - -<p>Carlyle was a scolding philosopher; Montaigne had been a shrugging one. -His last essai, <i>De l’Expérience</i>, is very long, but appropriately the -conclusion of a ripe and profitable book. The end of the matter deals -with what, according to him, is the end of life itself, “de scavoir -jouyr loyallement de son estre.” “So much art thou God,” he continues, -“as thou knowest thyself for man.” His bidding prayer is on behalf -of old age, addressed to the God of Health and Wisdom—“mais gaye et -sociale.” It is very French to lay down in terms at once the nature of -your God and your need of him. Compare with it old Burton’s “corollary -and conclusion” of the <i>Anatomy</i>:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Be not alone, be not idle”:</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>then, as he must always be quoting,</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Hope on, ye wretched,</div> -<div>Beware, ye fortunate”—</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>encouragement and warning in one.</p> - -<p class="space-above">The novelist, whose aim has been your entertainment, and who has never -lost the habit of the market-place in which he certainly began, had -his own peculiar cares as the time approached for his last words. If -he had earned applause<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> and assent to heights and moments of his tale, -could he make sure of them by a quiet end? Or must he earn them by a -final shock? Should he burst into a bouquet of stars in the upper air, -like a rocket, or come down like its stick? Each way has been chosen. -<i>The Mill on the Floss</i> ends sublimely in the air, or, strictly, the -water; so in its own way—not at all sublimely—does <i>Tristram Shandy</i>; -but the majority of novelists have favoured the gentle decline of the -narrative to the marriage or death-bed, and generally speaking, the -longer the novel the quieter the end. Efforts to endear, however, can -always be discerned. The earliest novel of all shows us an expedient -in practice which has remained in use down to the Victorian age, and -only been discarded by the ultra-moderns even now. Daphnis and Chloe in -Longus’s old tale are married at the end of the book. The last picture -in it shows the lovers in each other’s arms; and the last words of it -are these:</p> - -<p>“And Daphnis now profited by Lykainion’s lesson; and Chloe then first -knew that those things that were done in the wood were only the sweet -sports of children.”</p> - -<p>The shift is very plain. It is to recall to the memory the most moving -or provocative episodes in your tale, in the hope that the thrill they -afforded him once will revive in the reader and lift you over the -end. It is a sound rhetorical device by no means disdained by high -practitioners in the art. Sir Walter used it in <i>Waverley</i>, when, on -the last page, he recovered the <i>poculum potatorium</i> for the Baron of -Bradwardine. He had an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> affection for the Baron, it is obvious; but -he rightly felt him to have been his strongest card, and relied on -him to win him the last trick. Often the novelist may be mistaken and -table the wrong card, as Dickens certainly was when he ended <i>Nicholas -Nickleby</i> with tears upon Smike’s grave, believing that shadow to have -been a trump. He should have led Mrs. Nickleby. How wisely Jane Austen -played out her hand in <i>Emma</i>, whose last paragraph is enjewelled with -reflections of Mrs. Elton’s:</p> - -<p>“Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business! -Selina would stare when she heard of it!”</p> - -<p>Jane Austen was incomparable alike in beginnings and endings.</p> - -<p class="space-above">Instead of recalling with insistence your strongest points, you may -make a last effort to carry off what you doubt have been your weakest. -There is much of that in both Dickens and Thackeray. In <i>Dombey and -Son</i>, for example, it is evident that Dickens desired to extenuate what -he felt had been an excess of starch in Mr. Dombey. The last page and a -half of the book deglutinates him with a vengeance. The man of buckram -ends up as a weeping goose. Agnes Wickfield in <i>Copperfield</i> had never -been convincing, nor had Estella in <i>Great Expectations</i>. The last -pages of those novels are devoted to the service of the pair of ladies; -but the effort is too plain, and the reader withholds assent. So with -Thackeray, who spends his last drop of ink in <i>Pendennis</i> on Laura, -and in <i>Esmond</i> to pulling off the amazing marriage of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> a man and his -grandmother. In vain! The end of <i>Vanity Fair</i> is tame, because Dobbin -is tame; the true end of <i>The Newcomes</i> is the <i>Adsum</i> of Colonel -Newcome: very beautiful and not to be bettered. The epilogue, with its -trite exhibition of strings and wires, had been better omitted. It is -on all fours with <i>Don Quixote</i>, which really ends with the epitaph of -Samson Carrasco upon the Ingenious Gentleman. The ensuing reflections -of Cid Hamet Benengeli are not to the purpose, but, in fact, counter to -it.</p> - -<p>I have left almost to the last that conventional ending to novels -best described as the Wedding Bells ending, or, in the consecrated -fairy-tale phrase, “And they lived happily ever after.” I wonder what -is the attitude of the ordinary novelist to that? Fielding, now. Did -he write the end of <i>Tom Jones</i> and <i>Amelia</i> with a shrug, or did -he really believe that all was going to be for the best for the two -charming women married to a couple of scamps? Moralist and satirist -as he was to the roots, are those cynical endings? I cannot help -suspecting it. No such doubt afflicts you with Anthony Trollope, who -nearly always tied all his knots at the close. But Trollope worked -in sober tones. His heroes and heroines had few rapturous moments, -but loved temperately, hoped moderately, and if they longed, said -little about it. His fondness for carrying over shows us some of his -young people sedately and reasonably jogging along: Mr. and Mrs. -Frank Gresham, Lord and Lady Lufton, Dr. Thorne and his Dunstable. We -see them seated in the mean, contented if not happy. On the whole, I -commend the cradle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> rather than the altar as a more hopeful ending. It -is charmingly used by M. Anatole France in the most charming of all his -books. M. France does not often incline to the idyll. The French do -not. Consider the last words of Stendhal’s <i>Chartreuse de Parme</i>:</p> - -<p>“Les prisons de Parme étaient vides, le comte immensément riche, Ernest -V. adoré de ses sujets, qui comparaient son gouvernement à celui des -grands-ducs de Toscane.”</p> - -<p>Well may he have added to that the final address, To the happy few! I -should do him wrong if I did not remark that it is on the last page of -the novel that Stendhal mentions, for the first and only time in it, -the Chartreuse de Parme itself.</p> - -<p>The French novelists favour irony at the close. It may be that they owe -it to Voltaire:</p> - -<p>“Pangloss used to say sometimes to Candide: All the things that happen -to us are linked one to another in this best of all possible worlds; -for indeed if you had not been driven out of a fine castle by kicks -behind for Cunégonde’s sake, if you had not endured the Inquisition, -traversed America on your two feet, driven your sword through the -Baron’s body, lost all your fine sheep of Eldorado, you would not at -this moment be eating lemon preserve and pistachio nuts. It is well -said, replied Candide; but we must go on digging our garden.”</p> - -<p>Flaubert adopted that sort of thing for <i>l’Education Sentimentale</i>, -whose last is its best page. It is good to have arrived there, anyhow; -and pleasant to depart on a happy thought. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> - -<p>How nearly the latter-day, strictly modern method allies the novel -to the story of Cambuscan bold, I have no space left in which to -tell the strictly modern reader—who also knows more about it than -I do. Aposiopesis has its points, one of which certainly is that as -anything you please has happened already, it can happen again, and may -as well. But it presumes too much upon the immunity afforded by the -printing-press. If the modern story-teller tried that game upon an -auditorium, and proposed to take himself off with his characters left -sitting, it is long odds that he himself would not have anything worth -talking about left to sit upon. The only requital open to the reader, -unfortunately, is to cease to be one; and that is very much what I -understand him to be doing.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p> - -<h2>BEAUMARCHAIS</h2> - -<p>I have often wondered what were the feelings of the growing boy -upon whom it slowly dawned that his sponsors had had him christened -Hyacinth, or Achilles. Was he conscious of inspiration or the reverse? -The discovery must have been frequent in France, where the reign of -Louis XV in particular was a flowering time for names. There was an -Anarcharsis Klootz, there was a Maximilien Robespierre. When to the -unremarkable patronym of Caron there were prefixed the resounding -syllables, Pierre-Augustin, to the wearer of them at least the things -became a trumpet. He shrilled himself upon them into the far corners -of Europe. The Empress Catherine chuckled over him in her Winter -Palace; her august neighbour had him read to her, evenings, in Vienna. -Horace Walpole, while declining his acquaintance, wrote of him with -astonishment to Mme. du Deffand; Voltaire at Ferney thought that there -must be something in him. And there was. First and always, impudence. -He would look anyone in the face, and never be discountenanced himself. -Next, good humour: in his worst hours he bore no grudges, and in his -best so few as make no matter. When he had his enemy face to face, -and was really at grips with him, he could always hold back from the -fray to let off a joke or turn an attack by a compliment. There was -a Madame Goëzman with whom he was badly embroiled in civil process. -When they were before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> registrar, and she was asked, Did she -know the plaintiff—“I neither know nor desire ever to know him,” -said she. “Neither have I the honour of Madame’s acquaintance,” said -Pierre-Augustin in his turn; “but having seen her, I am constrained to -a desire exactly the opposite of hers.” A happy gallantry which ought -to have touched the court, but did not.</p> - -<p>Morally, he was like an india-rubber ball: the harder you hit him the -higher he leapt. The Goëzman pair, husband and wife, in the legal -broil just referred to, thought to crush him out of hand by scorn of -his degree in the world. They more than hinted that his father had -been a watchmaker, that they themselves were “noble.” Pierre-Augustin -saw his chance and took it. He held up the Mémoire in which those -injudicious nods and winks had appeared. “You open your <i>chef d’œuvre</i> -by reproaching me with the fortunes of my ancestry. It is too true, -Madame, that the latest of them added to other branches of industry -some celebrity in the art of watchmaking. Forced as I am to suffer -judgment upon that point, I confess with sorrow that nothing can -cleanse me from your just reproach that I am the son of my father.... -But there I pause, for I feel that he is behind me at this moment, -looking at what I write, and laughing while he pats my shoulder.”</p> - -<blockquote><p>“You,” he goes on, “who think to shame me through my father, have -little conception of the generosity of his heart. Truly, apart -altogether from watchmaking, I have never found another for which -I would exchange it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> But I know too well the worth of time, -which he taught me how to measure, to waste it in picking up such -trifles. It is not everyone who can say with M. Goëzman:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘Je suis le fils d’un Bailli; oui:</div> -<div>Je ne suis pas Caron; non.’”</div> -</div></div></div></blockquote> - -<p>And so he left it.</p> - -<p class="space-above">However high he leapt, his aims were not high. I don’t think he ever -failed of his heart’s desire. He wanted a title of nobility, and -obtained one, or indeed, some. He was “Ecuyer, Conseiller-Secrétaire -du Roi, Lieutenant Général des Chasses, Baillage et Capitainerie de la -Varenne du Louvre, Grande Vénerie et Fauconnerie de France,” which can -hardly mean more, and may mean considerably less than it sounds; and -all that, when he had earned a territorial name by marriage, enabled -him to become Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Next, he wanted -money, and had it, and lost it, many times over. Then he wanted to be -talked about; and for a long time Paris, and for some time Europe, -talked of little else. That was when he was conducting two interminable -lawsuits, one growing out of the other, and not only conducting them -with a vivacity and geniality which nothing could tire, but issuing -from the press bulletins of progress of the kind I have attempted -to sample above. It was those Mémoires which entertained equally -Petersburg and Strawberry Hill. Delightful as they must have been to -read when all the actors were alive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> and buzzing in the courts or on -the quays, they are difficult to follow now. The original suit, which -was to recover a debt on an estate from an executor, was made complex -by French legal process, but the second (in which the Goëzmans were -involved) was complex in itself. The exceedingly delicate point in it -was that Beaumarchais had attempted to bribe a member of the Court, and -actually got the money as far as his wife, where some of it remained, -though the bulk was restored. To recover by law what was still held it -was necessary for Beaumarchais to reject with vehemence the suggestion -that he had tried to suborn justice, while bringing home the fact that -Madame Goëzman had undoubtedly taken his money. He did not, naturally, -succeed; but he incriminated the Goëzman pair, and with them was -condemned in “infamy and civil degradation.” But in reporting his daily -engagements with them, and his verbal victories, he became simply the -hero of the hour, and ultimately carried his main action against the -Comte de la Blache with damages and costs.</p> - -<p>That must be a parenthesis, to show how Beaumarchais climbed to his -point of desire, whatever it was at the moment, serving himself alike -of disaster and success. Many were his affairs of the kind, all pursued -with unflagging <i>enjouement</i>—as, a breach of promise in Madrid on -behalf of his sister, a row with the mad Duc de Chaulnes about an -“unfortunate female,” a more than dubious, a not at all dubious, plant -upon Maria-Teresa, underground transactions with the Chevalier d’Eon, -gun-running for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> United States of America; and finally that upon -which his present fame rests—two comedies which broke all the records -of the theatre for anticipation and realisation. I would not go so far -as to say that he engineered the repeated delays in their performance -which brought expectation up to hysteria if not delirium, but have no -doubt that he courted them, and deserved, if not earned, the proud -result that more people were crushed to death crowding in to the -<i>Barbier de Seville</i> than had ever been so crushed before, and that it -and its sequel, <i>Le Mariage de Figaro</i>, ran longer on end than any such -things had ever done. When they threatened to flag their author was the -man to revive them. He knew as much about advertising as Mr. Selfridge, -and had as little use for modesty as Mr. Bernard Shaw. Like that -salient dramatist, he published his plays, and wrote prefaces to them -which are better reading than the text. The pair still hold the stage, -as they were written, and as opera; and I should not be surprised to -hear that they and their author were as generally known as most of -Molière’s and theirs. After all, the same could be said of Sheridan, -with his pair, at the expense of Shakespeare.</p> - -<p class="space-above">Mr. John Rivers,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1">[1]</a> Beaumarchais’ first English biographer, I believe, -has evidently enjoyed his work, and will be read with enjoyment. He is -right in claiming the Life of his hero as a challenge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> to fiction. It -is first-rate picaresque, nearly as good as Gil Blas, and much better -than Casanova. But I think he rates him too highly as a dramatist. He -considers that Figaro ranks with “Falstaff or Tartufe.” If he does, -it is thanks to Rossini and Mozart: without their help the claim is -surely preposterous. Luckily, he has taken the trouble to translate -large portions of both plays, and so furnished the best corrective -to exaggerated pretensions that we could wish to have. Taken in such -liberal doses, they don’t march. In their original they are not easy -reading, for Beaumarchais, though a brisk, was not a good writer. One -does not ask for fine writing necessarily of a dramatist, but that he -shall attend to his business. Beaumarchais conceives his to be the -making of points. He is apt to be diffuse in reaching them, and to -clinch them tightly when he has them. In French he is often difficult; -in English he is both dull and difficult. It is like reading bad -handwriting on foreign letter-paper. You never seem to get on with the thing.</p> - -<p>The <i>Barbier</i> is not much more than a Commedia dell’ Arte. It is a play -of manœuvring, intrigue the whole affair. Stock characters will do for -that, and you can manage without humour, if you have a sufficiency -of wit. There is perhaps more effervescence than wit, and what wit -there is not of the best kind. It is not concerned with ludicrous -appositions; rather it is paradox, verbal antithesis, the Gratiano -vein. Here is an example. Figaro is reporting to Rosine that Lindor is -her lover, and asks leave to tell her so: </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p> - -<blockquote><p>“<i>Rosine</i>: Vous me faites trembler, monsieur Figaro.</p> - -<p>“<i>Figaro</i>: Fi donc, trembler! mauvais calcul, madame. Quand on -cède à la peur du mal, on ressent déjà le mal de la peur....</p> - -<p>“<i>Rosine</i>: S’il m’aime, il doit me le prouver en restant -absolument tranquille.</p> - -<p>“<i>Figaro</i>: Eh! madame! amour et repos peuvent-ils habiter en meme -cœur? La pauvre jeunesse est si malheureux aujourd’hui, qu’elle -n’a que ce terrible choix: amour sans repos, ou repos sans amour.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Beaumarchais can better that, though it is a fair sample of his -handling. In the second Act, where Bartholo (Pantaloon) has patched up -a reconciliation with Rosine (Columbine), whom he intends to marry, he -closes the scene like this:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“<i>Bartholo</i>: Puisque la paix est faite, mignonne, donne-moi ta -main. Si tu pouvais m’aimer, ah! comme tu serais heureuse!</p> - -<p>“<i>Rosine</i> (baissant les yeux): Si vous pouviez me plaire, ah! -comme je vous aimerais!</p> - -<p>“<i>Bartholo</i>: Je te plairai, je te plairai; quand je te dis que je -te plairai! (Il sort.)”</p></blockquote> - -<p>That is very happy, because it has humour as well as wit. Pantaloon and -Columbine have become human beings.</p> - -<p>It is not all so good as that, and some of it is not good at all. It -was written originally for an opera libretto, for which it is well -suited. It would do equally well for marionettes. To such things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> the -spectator can lend himself, because in the former the music, and in the -latter the puppets, take the responsibility off him; nothing of his -own is involved. But in a play the action and the dialogue perform the -resolution of life into art, with the audience as accomplice. Human -nature is implicated; if we allow the cheap, we must cheat ourselves. -If there is any resolution in the <i>Barbier</i>, it is into a jig, and -condescension is difficult. Life is only there in so far as some of the -personages wear breeches, and some petticoats. It is a mere trifle that -the scene is laid in Spain, while all the characters are Italian.</p> - -<p>The <i>Mariage de Figaro</i> is a more considerable work, if only because -it is much longer and more complicated. Everybody is older, including -Beaumarchais. Since the end of the <i>Barbier</i>, Count Almaviva has -pursued hundreds of ladies, Rosina has almost left off being jealous, -Figaro has become a cynic, and is inclined to give lectures. The -romance would seem to have been rubbed off seduction, as you might -expect when you consider that the Count has been at it all his life, -and is now a middle-aged man, old enough to be Ambassador. It has been -said—and Mr. Rivers says it—that Beaumarchais was deliberate in -contriving the effect of satiety, which he certainly obtains—as if -an author would set himself to work to be wearisome! Subversion, Mr. -Rivers thinks, was his aim, moral revolt. He wrote, and it was played, -on the eve of the Revolution. Was the <i>Mariage</i> not, therefore, a -contributory cause? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p> - -<blockquote><p>“<i>Figaro</i>, soliloquising: Parceque vous êtes un grand seigneur, -vous vous croyez un grand génie!... Noblesse, fortune, un rang, -des places, tout cela rend si fier! Qu’avez-vous fait pour tant de -biens? Vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître, et rien de plus. -Du reste, homme assez ordinaire; tandis que moi, morbleu! perdu -dans la foule obscure, il m’a fallu déployer plus de science et de -calculs pour subsister seulement, qu’on n’en a mis depuis cent ans -à gouverner toutes les Espagnes: et vous voulez jouter ...!”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Is that contributory to revolution—or revolution contributory to -it? It was surely current coin in 1784. Voltaire and Rousseau had -encouraged cats to look at kings; everybody had made fun of the -nobility. Titles of honour can have held little intimidation since -Louis XIV had had the handling of them, and turned out dukes where -his grandfather made marquises. What little there might be left to do -had been done handsomely by his grandson. It is far more likely that -Beaumarchais was easing grudges of his own, or that in the famous -flight of paradoxes aimed at “la politique” he was recalling recent -experiences in London and Vienna, where he came into collision with the -real thing. Much out of character as it is, it is a good example of -what both Figaro and Beaumarchais had become by 1784:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Feindre ignorer ce qu’on sait, de savoir tout ce qu’on ignore; -d’entendre ce qu’on ne comprend pas, de ne point ouïr ce qu’on -entend; surtout de pouvoir au delà de ses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> forces; avoir souvent -pour grand secret de cachet qu’il n’y en a point; s’enfermer pour -tailler des plumes, et paraître profond quand on n’est, comme on -dit, que vide et creux; jouer bien ou mal un personnage; répandre -des espions et pensionner des traîtres; amollir des cachets, -intercepter des lettres, et tacher d’ennoblir la pauvreté des -moyens par l’importance des objets: voilà toute la politique, ou -je meure!”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Very brisk. But when Count Almaviva shortly comments, “Ah! c’est -l’intrigue que tu définis!” the criticism is final, because it is -completely just. Curious that a playwright should light up his Roman -candle, and damp it down the next moment. Such speeches imperil the -character of Figaro by making him so dominant a personality that there -can be no fun in seeing him dupe his betters. Beaumarchais, I think, -may have felt that objection, and attempted to restore the balance by -having Figaro duped himself in the last act.</p> - -<p>The balance is really adjusted in quite another way. Two new characters -are brought in, one of whom, Marceline, a <i>vieille fille</i>, designs to -marry Figaro, but presently finds out that she is his long-lost mother! -The other is Chérubin, who saves the play, to my thinking, just as -surely as Polly Peachum saves <i>The Beggar’s Opera</i>. Chérubin—“création -exquise et enchanteresse,” says Sainte-Beuve—is the making of the -<i>Mariage</i>, partly because he keys it down to its proper pitch, which -is that of children playing grown-ups, and partly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> because he is truly -observed and poetically presented. I don’t see how the adage, “Si -jeunesse savait,” could be more tenderly exploited. All his scenes are -good—the first with Suzanne, in which the young scamp, after betraying -his occupation with three love affairs at once, snatches his mistress’s -hair-ribbon and dodges behind tables and chairs while the maid pursues -him; the second, with the Countess, where she is dressing him as a -girl, and discovers her ribbon staunching a cut in his arm: in each of -these scenes the delicious distress of his complaint is painted with a -subtlety and sensibility combined which are first-rate art. Delicate -provocation can go no further, or had better not. Beaumarchais’ triumph -is that he knows that, and does not add a touch in excess. The final -touch is that the Countess, instead of feigning a desire for the -restoration of the ribbon (which she did very badly), now really does -desire, and obtains it. Enough said: there is no more. “Tu sais trop -bien, méchante, que je n’ose pas oser,” says the youth to Suzanne. That -is his trouble, and a real one it is.</p> - -<p>The imbroglio in this play is a thing of nightmare. “Que diable est-ce -qu’on trompe ici?” The answer is the audience. Everybody deceives -everybody, twice over and all the time. It surprises, if you like, by -“a fine excess.” It is not surprising, anyhow, that the last act was -too much for Sainte-Beuve, has been too much for Mr. Rivers, and is -too much for me. I do not, simply, know what is happening, but I do -know that none of it is very funny. Compare it with <i>Sganarelle</i>, and -you will see. In that little masterpiece you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> have four characters: -Lélie and Clélie, the lovers, Sganarelle the jealous husband, and -Sganarelle’s wife. Clélie lets drop Lélie’s portrait in the street, -Sganarelle’s wife picks it up, and is caught by Sganarelle admiring it. -Presently, when Clélie faints, and is picked up by Sganarelle, it is -his wife’s turn to be jealous. Then Lélie, overcome by his feelings, is -pitied by Madame Sganarelle and helped into her house. The fat is in -the fire. Madame Sganarelle flies at Clélie for carrying on with her -husband; Lélie believes that Sganarelle has married Clélie. Sganarelle -pursues Lélie with a sword, and when he is confronted, pretends that he -brought it out because the weather looked threatening. It is a complete -cat’s cradle of a play, and as easily untied. The action is swift, the -intrigue is easy to follow, the appositions are really comic. But who -believes that Almaviva seriously wants Suzanne, or that Figaro has -really promised Marceline, or that the Countess really loves Chérubin? -The lack of plausibility causes the <i>Mariage</i> to turn unwillingly, -like a mangle. It took four hours and a half to play: I can hardly -believe that Figaro’s inordinate soliloquy in the last act survived -the first night. Figaro himself is overweight; Marceline is a very -bad shot. She has at first a good Polly-and-Lucy slanging match with -Suzanne; but in the discovery scene she grows serious—very serious, -and rightly serious, no doubt, in any other play but this. But to -suspend all the gallantries in progress for the sake of her diatribes -upon gallantry, to shake the head over them, to say “True,” and “Too -true”—and then immediately to resume gallantries, has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> the effect of -exhibiting neither gallantry nor the reprobation of it as serious; -and as something in a play must be taken seriously, the Comédie -Française, rightly deciding in favour of gallantry, cut out the whole -scene; and it is so marked in my edition of Beaumarchais. It would -have been a pleasant toil for Edward FitzGerald, who loved such work, -to hew and shape this comedy. It has fine moments, but wants both the -speed and the gaiety of the <i>Barbier</i>. Mozart gave it them—we owe to -Beaumarchais the most delightful opera in the world.</p> - -<p>Mr. Rivers translates the two plays freely, but I don’t think very -successfully. I have said already that Beaumarchais is not a good -writer—too diffuse at one time, too terse at others—but no doubt he -is very difficult. Literal translation is useless. “Miss” is not a -translation of “Mademoiselle.” “Mistress,” or “Young Lady” would be -better—and so on. You cannot get the points sharply enough unless you -translate ideas as well as idiom; and to do that you must take a wide -cast. Rhetoric is rhetoric in whatever language you cast it. It has its -own rules. Dialogue is another matter. There come in the familiarities, -secrets of the toilette, secrets of the bower. How are these things to -be done? I don’t know; but if Andrew Lang could not be natural with the -15th Idyll of Theocritus, it is no shame to Mr. Rivers to have failed -with Beaumarchais.</p> - -<p>If he desired to try his hand I wonder why he omitted one of his -liveliest and wittiest sallies—the letter which he addressed to <i>The -Morning Chronicle</i> in 1776, on one of his confidential visits<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> to -London. It is too long to give entire, but I must have a shot at pieces -of it:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Mr. Editor,” he says, “I am a stranger, a Frenchman and the soul -of honour. If this will not completely inform you who I am, it -will at least tell you, in more senses than one, who I am not; and -in times likes these, that is not without its importance in London.</p> - -<p>“The day before yesterday at the Pantheon, after the concert and -during the dancing which ensued, I found at my feet a lady’s cloak -of black taffetas, turned back with the same and edged with lace. -I do not know to whom it belongs; I have never seen, even at the -Pantheon, the person who wore it; all my inquiries since the -discovery have taught me nothing about her. I beg of you then, Mr. -Editor, to announce in your journal the discovery of the cloak, in -order that I may punctually return it to her who may lay claim to -it.</p> - -<p>“That there may be no possible mistake in the matter, I have -the honour to give you notice that the loser, upon the day in -question, had a head-dress of rose-coloured feathers. She had, I -believe, diamond ear-rings; but of that I am not so positive as -of the remainder of my description. She is tall and of elegant -appearance; her hair is a flaxen blonde, her skin dazzlingly -white. She has a fine and graceful neck, a striking shape, and the -prettiest foot in the world. I observe that she is very young, -very lively and inattentive, that she carries herself easily, and -has a marked taste for dancing.”</p></blockquote> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p> - -<p>He then proceeds to deduce all these charming properties from the -taffetas cloak—some from a single hair which he finds in the hood, -some from minute particles of fluff and fur; others, more carefully, -from measurements; others, again, from the position in which the cloak -was lying—all of which led him to conclude infallibly that “the young -lady was the most alert beauty of England, Scotland and Ireland, and -if I do not add, of America, it is because of late they have become -uncommonly alert in that particular country.” Sherlock Holmes!</p> - -<blockquote><p>“If I had pushed my inquiries,” he concludes, “it is possible that -I might have learned from her cloak what was her quality and rank. -But when one has concluded that a woman is young and handsome, has -one not in fact learned all that one needs to learn? That at any -rate was the opinion held in my time in many good towns in France, -and even in certain villages, such as Marly, Versailles, etc.</p> - -<p>“Do not then be surprised, Mr. Editor, if a Frenchman who all -his life long has made a philosophical and particular study of -the fair sex, has discovered in the mere appearance of a lady’s -cloak, without ever having seen her, that the fair one with the -rosy plumes who let it fall unites in her person the radiance of -Venus, the free carriage of the nymphs, the shape of the Graces, -the youth of Hebe; that she is quick and preoccupied, and that -she loves the dance, to the extent of forgetting everything else -in order to run to it, on a foot as small as Cinderella’s, and as -light as Atalanta’s own.”</p></blockquote> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p> - -<p>He has done it with the unfailing humour and neatness which carried -him in and out of the lawcourts, took him to prison and enlarged him -again. And he was then only forty-four, and had another twenty years -before him. Impudence and good humour. The first was his shield and -buckler—triple brass. The other enabled him to support it in all -companies without offence. When at long last his suit with La Blache -was ended, and in his favour, the Comte not only restored the estate -without a murmur, but gave him a fine portrait of the testator. -Beaumarchais may have been a bad lot; but he was evidently a good sort.</p> - -<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> “Figaro: the Life of Beaumarchais,” by John Rivers. -Hutchinson. 18s.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE CARDINAL DE RETZ</h2> - -<p>No student of France and literature can afford to neglect this gay and -hardy little sinner, though the use of that very word might show that -I was not fitted to expound him. It has here, however, an æsthetic -significance and not an ethical. Poets and moralists have this in -common that, owing their power to the strength of their prejudice, they -make bad historians. Carlyle, very much of a poet, illuminating his -heroes with his own fire, did no harm to Cromwell, whose wart was a -part of his glory; but Frederick the Great showed up oddly. The higher -the light rayed upon him the more ghastly stared his gashes under the -paint. Michelet was a good deal of a poet too, and rootedly a moralist. -Naturally he came to blows with the history of his country. The Fronde -made him angry, the <i>grand siècle</i> shocked him. Edification may be -served that way, not truth. It is, I grant, difficult to read the -History of France as that of a sane, hard-working, penurious people; -difficult to decide why the Revolution, instead of coming in 1789, did -not come in 1689; or why, having begun in 1649, it did no more, as -Bossuet said, than “enfanter le siècle de Louis.” To understand that -would be to understand the Fronde, but not how the state of things -which evoked the Fronde and made possible the Memoirs of de Retz, -could have come about. A royal minority, a foreign regent, a foreign -minister, and a feudal aristocracy will account for a good deal—not -for all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> The Italianisation of manners which began with the last -Valois kings, and was renewed by Henry’s Florentine wife, has to be -reckoned up. To a nobility convinced of privilege it opened the ways of -<i>Il Talento</i>.</p> - -<p><i>Il Talento</i> is the Italian description of the state of mind induced by -desire and the means to gratify it on the spot. Iago is the standing -type; but Cæsar Borgia is a better. For him and his likes, <i>The -Prince</i> of Machiavelli was the golden book. In France the princely -families—those of Lorraine, Bouillon, Condé and Savoie—found it a -kindly soil; and one of its best products was naturally the Cardinal -de Retz, whose memoirs are as good as Dumas, very much like him, and -the source of the best chapters of <i>Vingt Ans Après</i>. Here was <i>Il -Talento</i> in fine flower, existing for its own sake; whereas Mazarin hid -it in avarice, and Richelieu had lost it in statecraft. You cannot read -Retz with pleasure, to say nothing of profit, if you do not allow for -the point of view—which you will have no difficulty in doing if you -remember that, less than a hundred years before the Cardinal’s day, his -ancestor, Alberto Gondi, had been as familiar with the Ponte Vecchio as -he himself was with the Pont-Neuf.</p> - -<p>In his “portrait” of Mazarin, Retz accused his brother-cardinal of -common origin, but if you went back to his own family’s beginnings I do -not know that the Gondis were more than respectable according to French -standards. But the future Cardinal, Jean-Francois-Paul, was born the -son of a Duc de Retz, a great man of Brittany, was a Knight of Malta in -the cradle,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> and when, later, it was thought well to make a churchman -of him, tumbled into abbacies as became a young prince, and had a -bishopric as soon as he cared. He says of Mazarin’s youth that it was -shameful, that he was by bent and disposition a cardsharper. He might -have said worse and not been wrong; yet the account he gives of himself -is so frank, shameless and extremely flagrant that the reproof has an -odd sound.</p> - -<blockquote><p>“I did not affect devotion,” he says of himself as Abbé, “because -I could never be sure that I should be able to keep up the cheat. -But I had great consideration for the devout, and from their point -of view that is in itself a mark of piety. I suited my pleasures -to the rest of my habits. I could hardly get on without gallantry, -but I continued it with Madame de Pommereux, young and a coquette, -whose ways suited me because, as she had all the young people not -only about her but in her confidence, her apparent affairs with -them were a mask for mine with her.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>This equivocal conduct so far succeeded that the pious agreed with St. -Vincent de Paul that, though the Abbé de Retz was not truly religious, -he was “not far from the Kingdom of Heaven”—quite as near, in fact, as -the young gentleman desired to be. And then he tells a story which he -thinks is to his credit:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“A short time after I left college, my governor’s valet, who was -my humble servant,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> found living with a wretched pin-maker a niece -of hers, fourteen years old and of remarkable beauty. After he had -shown her to me, he bought her for one hundred and fifty pistoles, -took a little house for her at Issy, and put his sister in to -look after her. I went there the day after she was installed, and -found her extremely cast down, but attributing it to her modesty, -was not at all surprised. She was still more so the next day, a -fact about her even more remarkable than her good looks, which -is saying a great deal. She talked with me straightforwardly, -piously, without extravagance, and cried no more than she could -possibly help. I saw that she was so much afraid of her aunt that -I felt truly sorry for her, admired her disposition, and presently -her virtue. I tested that so far as it could be done, and took -shame to myself. I waited till it was dark, then put her into my -coach and took her to my aunt de Meignelais. She put the child -into a convent of religious, where eight or ten years later she -died in the odour of sanctity.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>One must not expect too much from a <i>grand seigneur</i> in a cassock. The -story has more implication than he was able to perceive; but at least -it shows that he had pity in him, if not piety.</p> - -<p>In time he was appointed coadjutor to his uncle, the Archbishop of -Paris, with a promise of survivorship, and a fancy title of Archbishop -of Corinth. He tells us that he took six days to consider how he should -regulate his conduct, how restore the credit of the archiepiscopate -(which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> was very necessary) without losing any of his pleasures. “I -decided to do evil with deliberation—no doubt the most criminal course -in the eyes of God, but no doubt also the most discreet in those of the -world.” In his opinion that was the only way open to him of avoiding -“the most dangerous <i>absurdity</i> which can be met with in the clerical -profession, that of mixing sin and devotion.” “Absurdity” is remarkable.</p> - -<p>His first duty as coadjutor was a severe trial to his fortitude. It was -necessary to make a Visitation of the Nuns of the Conception; and as -the convent held eighty young ladies, “of whom several were handsome -and some adventurous,” he had many qualms about exposing his virtue -to such a test. “It had to be done, though; and I preserved it to the -edification of my neighbour. I did not see the face of a single one, -and never spoke to one unless her veil was down. This behaviour, which -lasted six weeks, gave a wonderful lustre to my chastity. I believe, -however, that the lessons which I received every evening from Madame de -Pommereux strengthened it materially against the morrow.”</p> - -<p class="space-above">Such was the Coadjutor-Archbishop of Paris, and such his efforts to -restore the credit of that see. He did not continue them long. Other -things engrossed him, one being to obtain from Mazarin a recommendation -to the Cardinalate, another by all, or any, means to obtain his -benefactor’s disgrace. Before the first could take effect, or the -second be effected, the parliamentary Fronde<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> began, and Retz was in -it to the neck. What he wanted, except to enjoy himself, is not at -all clear. He despised rather than hated Mazarin; he forsook the only -man—Condé—for whom he seems to have had any real regard; he invited -his country’s enemies to Paris; and he got nothing out of it. But I am -sure he enjoyed himself.</p> - -<p>His strong card was his popularity with the Parisians. He earned that -partly by hard money—the Barricades, he says, cost him some thirty-six -thousand <i>écus</i>—and somewhat on his own account too. After he had -been enthroned as Coadjutor, he gave himself no airs. On the contrary, -“Je donnai la main chez moi à tout le monde; j’accompagnai tout le -monde jusqu’au carrosse.” Then, when he was firmly established as the -most affable seigneur in the city, suddenly he jumped in a claim for -precedence before M. de Guise, and had it adjudged him. It enhanced -his prestige incalculably. “To condescend to the humble is the surest -way of measuring yourself against the great,” is the moral he draws, -but another is that if you aim at popularity, you should stand up to a -great man, and beat him. Retz had courage, and the Parisians loved him -for it. So did the Parisiennes, according to his own account, though -many things were against him. He was an ugly little man, a little -deformed, black man, Tallemant reports him, very nearsighted, badly -made, clumsy with his hands, unable to fasten his clothes or put on -his spurs. No matter. Whatever he could or could not do, there is no -doubt he could give a good account of himself in the world, upstairs -and downstairs and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> in my lady’s chamber. Not only does he say so in -Memoirs, written, as he is careful to say, for the instruction of -Madame de Caumartin’s children, but his enemies allowed it. It may -even be that Mazarin paid him the compliment of being jealous of his -midnight conferences with Anne of Austria; at any rate, Retz seriously -thought of cutting him out. Then he was a good preacher, a ready -debater, and a born lobbyist to whom intrigue was daily bread. Those -were his cards for beggar-my-neighbour with Mazarin, and not bad ones. -The weakness of the hand resided in the player. He had as little heart -as conscience. He cared nothing for his country, for his friends or -for his mistresses when their interests conflicted with what for the -moment were his. If he had an affection for anyone it was for Condé. -Yet he was against him all through, and chose rather to back the poor -creature, Monsieur—to his own undoing, as he must have foreseen if he -had given it a moment’s thought. Gaston simply let in Mazarin again, -through mere poltroonery; and Mazarin once in, Retz must be out. And so -he was.</p> - -<p>The Fronde, the first Fronde, began seriously, like our Civil War, on -a question of principle. The Parlement of Paris took advantage of the -Regency to restore its old claim to be more than a Court of Record. It -claimed the right to examine edicts before registering them—in fact, -to be a Parliament. Atop of that came the grievance of the Masters -of Requests, who, having paid heavily for their offices, found their -value substantially reduced by the creation of twelve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> new ones. The -masters struck, and their offices were sequestrated. Then came the 26th -August 1648, when the Court, exalted by Condé’s victory at Lens, first -celebrated the occasion by <i>Te Deum</i> in Notre Dame, and immediately -afterwards by causing Councillor Broussel, Father of the People, to be -arrested and carried off to Saint-Germain. Retz, the coadjutor, was in -both celebrations, as we can read in <i>Vingt Ans Après</i>. It was the day -before the Barricades. Directly the news of the arrest became known the -town, as he says, exploded like a bomb: “the people rose; they ran, -they shouted, they shut up their shops.” Retz went out in rochet and -hood—to watch, no doubt, over the harvest of his 36,000 sown <i>écus</i>. -“No sooner was I in the Marché-Neuf than I was encompassed by masses -of people who howled rather than shouted.” He extricated himself by -comfortable words, and made his way to the Pont-Neuf, where he found -the Maréchal de La Meilleraye, with the Guards, enduring as best he -could showers of stones, but far from happy at the look of things. He -urged Retz, who (though he had had an interchange of repartees with -the Queen overnight) did not need much urging, to accompany him to the -Palais-Royal and report. Off they went together, followed by a horde of -people crying, “Broussel! Broussel!”</p> - -<blockquote><p>“We found the Queen in the great Cabinet with the Duc d’Orléans, -Cardinal Mazarin, Duc de Longueville.... She received me neither -well nor ill, being too proud and too hot to be ashamed of what -she had said the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> night before. As for the Cardinal, he had -not the decency to feel anything of that kind. Yet he did seem -embarrassed, and pronounced to me a sort of rigmarole in which, -though he did not venture to say so, he would have been relieved -if I had found some new explanation of what had moved the Queen. -I pretended to take in all that he was pleased to tell me, and -answered him simply that I was come to report myself for duty, to -receive the Queen’s commands, and contribute everything that lay -in my power towards peace and order. The Queen turned her head -sharply as if to thank me; but I knew afterwards that she had -noticed and taken badly my last phrase, innocent as it was and -very much to the point from the lips of a Coadjutor of Paris.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Then follows one of his famous Machiavellian aphorisms: “<i>But it is -very true that with princes it is as dangerous, almost as criminal, to -be able to do good as to wish to do harm.</i>”</p> - -<p>Retz might play the innocent, no one better, but neither Queen nor -minister were fools. It is not to be supposed that they had heard -nothing of his distribution of <i>écus</i>. Then the Maréchal grew angry, -finding that the rioting was taken lightly, and said what he had seen. -He called for Retz’s testimony, and had it.</p> - -<blockquote><p>“The Cardinal smiled sourly, the Queen flew into a rage.... ‘There -is a revolt even in the intention to revolt,’ she said. ‘These are -the stories of people who desire revolt.’ The Cardinal, who saw -in my face what I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> thought of such talk, put in a word, and in a -soft voice replied to the Queen: ‘Would to God, madame, that all -the world spoke with the same sincerity as M. le Coadjuteur. He -fears for his flock, for the city, for your Majesty’s authority. I -am persuaded that the danger is not so great as he believes; but -scruple in such a matter is worthy of his religion.’ The Queen, -understanding this jargon, immediately altered her tone, talked -civilly, and was answered by me with great respect, and a face so -smug that La Rivière whispered to Bautru, ... ‘See what it is not -to spend day and night in a place like this. The Coadjutor is a -man of the world. He knows what he is about, and takes what she -says for what it is worth.’”</p></blockquote> - -<p>The whole scene, he says, was comedy. “I played the innocent, which -I by no means was; the Cardinal the confident, though he had no -confidence at all. The Queen pretended to drop honey though she had -never been more choked with gall.” But what comedy there was was not -there very long. The Queen, who had declared that she would strangle -Broussel with her own hands sooner than release him, was to change her -mind. La Meilleraye and Retz were sent out again to report, and La -Meilleraye, losing his head, nearly lost his life. At the head of his -cavalry, he pushed out into the crowd, “sword in hand, crying with all -his might, ‘Vive le Roi! Broussel au large!’” More people, naturally, -saw him than could hear what he said. His sword had an offensive look; -there was a cry to arms, and other swords were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> out besides his. The -Maréchal killed a man with a pistol-shot, the crowd closed in upon him; -he was saved by Retz, who himself escaped by the use of his wits. An -apothecary’s apprentice, he says, put a musket at his head.</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Although I did not know him from Adam, I thought it better not -to let him know that. On the contrary, ‘Ah, my poor lad,’ I said, -‘if your father were to see this!’ He thought that I had been -his father’s best friend, though in fact I had never seen his -father, and asked me if I was the Coadjutor. When he understood -that I was, he cried out, ‘Vive le Coadjuteur!’ and they all came -crowding round me with the same cry.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>La Meilleraye knew very well what he had done. He said to Retz, “I am a -fool, a brute—I have nearly ruined the State, and it is you that have -saved it. Come, we will talk to the Queen like Frenchmen and men of -worth.” So they did, but to no purpose. She believed that Retz was at -the bottom of the whole <i>émeute</i>, and was not far wrong. But there was -no stopping it now. The barricades were up at dawn the next morning, -and it was clear that Broussel must be given back. He was. Then came -the flight of the Court, which Dumas tells so admirably.</p> - -<p class="space-above">After the evasion of the royalties, the Fronde became largely comic -opera. Certain of the princes—for reasons of their own—joined the -popular party: Beaufort, le roi des Halles, who wanted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> the Admiralty; -Bouillon, with claims upon his principality of Sedan; Conti, Elbeuf, -Longueville. Retz had the idea of bringing their, and his, ladies into -it. He himself fetched Mesdames de Longueville and de Bouillon with -their children to the Hôtel de Ville, “avec une espèce de triomphe.”</p> - -<blockquote><p>“The small-pox had spared Mme. de Longueville all her astounding -beauty; Mme. de Bouillon’s, though on the wane, was still -remarkable. Now imagine, I beg you, those two upon the steps of -the Hôtel de Ville, the handsomer in that they appeared to be in -undress, though they were not at all so. Each held one of her -children in her arms, as lovely as its mother. The Grève was full -of people over the roofs of the houses. The men shouted their joy, -the women wept for pity. I threw five hundred pistoles out of the -window of the Hôtel de Ville.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>After their debonair fashion these high people played at revolution. -“Then you might see the blue scarves of ladies mingling with steel -cuirasses, hear violins in the halls of the Hôtel de Ville, and drums -and trumpets in the Place—the sort of thing which you find more of in -romance than elsewhere.” Nothing came of it all; a peace was patched up -with the Parlement, and each of the grandees got something for himself, -which had been his only reason for levying civil war. Beaufort was -assured of his Admiralty, Longueville was made Viceroy of Normandy, -Bouillon compensated for Sedan—and so on. La Rochefoucauld,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> too, who -had taken up arms for the sake of Mme. de Longueville—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Pour mériter son cœur, pour plaire à ses beaux yeux,</div> -<div>J’ai fait la guerre aux rois; je l’aurais fait aux dieux”—</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>we must suppose that he also was rewarded. There is an interesting -page in the Memoirs of André d’Ormesson, one of an upright family of -lawyers, which by stating the mere facts lets in the light upon the -Fronde. All he does is to draw up a list of the <i>grands seigneurs</i> of -1648-55, with a statement of how often they changed sides in the seven -years. It should be studied by all who wish to know how not to make -civil war. But Retz too gives the spirit of the thing equally well. -When his quarrel with Condé was coming to a head, and he was preparing, -as he threatened, to push that prince off the pavement, he collected -his friends about him, and among them two light-hearted marquises, -Rouillac and Canillac. But when Canillac saw Rouillac he said to Retz, -“I came to you, sir, to assure you of my services; but it is not -reasonable that the two greatest asses in the kingdom should be on the -same side. So I am off to the Hôtel de Condé.” And, he adds, you are to -observe that he went there!</p> - -<p>Retz alone, who, if he had been serious, might have been master of -Paris, had nothing—except, of course, his Cardinal’s hat, which he -would have had anyhow. The Court came back, Mazarin was forced out of -France for a couple of years.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> But the Queen had him in again; and then -it was <i>his</i> turn. Retz was persuaded into the Louvre, immediately -arrested and carried off to Vincennes. It was a shock to his vanity -that the populace took it calmly. There were no barricades for him. -From Vincennes he was presently removed to Nantes, whence, with the -assistance of his friends—and I cannot but suspect the connivance -of the governor—he escaped to the coast, landed at San Sebastian, -was allowed to cross Spain and re-embark for Italy. He fetched up in -Rome, where he remained for a year or two, taking part in conclaves -and thoroughly enjoying himself. He spent large sums of money, which -he did not possess, but never failed to receive from his friends. The -French Ambassador and all the French clergy steadily cut him—but he -did not take any notice. The Pope did, though, and Retz was given to -understand that he had better remove himself. He went to Germany, to -Switzerland, Holland, England in turn. Mazarin was dead, and Charles II -restored by the time he came here. I don’t think that he did anything -to the purpose with our Court, though no doubt Charles was glad of -him. Neither Evelyn nor Pepys have anything to say about him; and I -fancy that he was only a passing guest. As soon as he could he crept -back to Court, to which he had already surrendered his coadjutorship. -Louis employed him once or twice; but his day was over. He lived mostly -at Commercy, where he tried economy, and made periodical retreats, -as La Rochefoucauld unkindly says, “withdrawing himself from the -Court which was withdrawing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> itself from him.” He was four million -<i>livres</i> in debt, but managed to pay them off, and even to contemplate -a snug residuary estate which he intended for Mme. de Grignan, Mme. -de Sévigné’s high-stomached daughter. But Mme. de Grignan snubbed him -consistently and severely, and nothing came of it. He died in 1679, -drained of his fiery juices, making a “good end.” The stormy Coadjutor -had become “notre cher Cardinal.”</p> - -<p class="space-above">His Memoirs, taken on end, are wearisome, because endless intrigue, -diamond-cut-diamond and chicanery are wearisome, as well as intricate, -unless some discernible principle can be made out of them. It seems -that Retz did nothing except talk—but, as Michelet points out, that -was what France at large did when the Gascons were let into Paris with -Henri IV. Read desultorily, they are delightful, witty, worldly-wise, -untirably vivacious, thrilling and glittering like broken ice. His -Machiavellisms are worth hunting out:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“The great inconvenience of civil war is that you must be more -careful of what you ought not to tell your friends than of what -you ought to do to your enemies.</p> - -<p>“The most common source of disaster among men is that they are too -much afraid of the present and not enough of the future.</p> - -<p>“In dealing with princes it is as dangerous, if not as criminal, -to be able to do good as to wish to do harm. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> - -<p>“One of Cardinal Mazarin’s greatest faults was that he was never -able to believe that anyone spoke to him with honest intention.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>When the Queen-Regent was working her hardest for Mazarin’s return, -she tried to win Retz over to help her. He told her bluntly that such -a move would mean the ruin of the State. How so, she asked him, if -Monsieur and M. le Prince should agree to it? “Because, Madam,” said -Retz, “Monsieur would never agree to it until the State was already in -danger, and M. le Prince never, except to put it in danger.” Excellent, -and quite true.</p> - -<p class="space-above">After Retz’s death, the Président Hénault, writing about his Memoirs, -asked how one was to believe that a man would have the courage, or the -folly, to say worse things about himself than his greatest enemy could -have said. The answer, of course, is that Retz had no suspicion that -he was saying bad things about himself. He said a great deal that was -not true. Other chronicles of the Fronde give detailed accounts of -such days as that of the Barricades, with not a word of the Coadjutor -in them. But even if it had all been true, it would have seemed a -perfectly simple matter to him. If you have no moral sense, the words -“good” and “bad” have only a relative meaning. It is much harder to -understand why he did the things which he relates, or why, if he did -not do them, he said that he did. What was he trying to get done? Did -he hate Mazarin? There is no evidence that he did anything more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> than -despise him. La Rochefoucauld, whom he accuses, by the way, of having -tried to assassinate him, explains him and his Memoirs alike by vanity. -“Far from declaring himself Mazarin’s enemy in order to supplant him, -his only aim was to seem formidable, and to indulge the foolish vanity -of opposing him.” If Retz knew of that “portrait”—and he did, because -Mme. de Sévigné sent it him—his own more benevolent one of its author -must be reckoned in his favour. He had written it in his Memoirs, but -allowed it to stand there unaltered except for one little word. He -had originally said that La Rochefoucauld was the most accomplished -courtier and most honest man of his age. He scratched out the honesty.</p> - -<p>Personally, I picture a happy <i>rencontre</i> in the Elysian Fields in -or about 1679, when the Cardinal de Retz should have arrived and -greeted his brother in the purple. A lifting of red hats, a pressing -of hands—“Caro Signore, sta sempre bene?” and so on. There had been -bitter war on earth; each was a keen blade, each an Italian. Each -had had his triumphs. Retz had twice driven Mazarin out of Paris and -once out of France. But Mazarin had proved the better stayer. He had -returned, put Retz to flight, and died worth forty millions. Retz came -back, made a good end, and only just cleared his debts. And what had it -all been about? Some say, Anne of Austria, an elderly, ill-tempered, -fat woman; some say vanity, some ambition. I say, <i>Il Talento</i> and the -joy of battle: the brain taut, the eye alert, the sword-hand flickering -like lightning on a summer night. Greek was meeting Greek. Inevitably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> -that must have been. There was not room for two Italians of that stamp -in France.</p> - -<p>But let us always remember that he was mourned by Mme. de Sévigné, who -said that he had been her friend for thirty years. There is the best -thing to be known about him.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> - -<h2>“L’ABBESSE UNIVERSELLE”: MADAME DE MAINTENON</h2> - -<p>Few of the outstanding names in history have received the hard measure -which has been meted out to Madame de Maintenon’s. She has had it, so -to speak, both ways; been blamed for what she did not, and for what -she did. First, she was to be held abominable because she was not the -King’s wife; next, and even more so, because she was. All that falls -to the ground if it can be shown that her life before the marriage -was as irreproachable, morally, as it was after it. Madame Saint-René -Taillandier, in a recent admirable study of the misjudged lady, has -no difficulty in proving that it was so. She proves it positively by -showing of what nature Madame de Maintenon really was, and negatively -by exploring all possible sources of contemporary evidence, and -finding nothing worth consideration. Dull, narrow, bigoted, obstinate, -over-busy about many things, more occupied with to-day than to-morrow, -falling in too readily with Louis’ view of himself and his place in the -universe (a view which she shared with the entire French nation)—these -things she may have been, and done. But she was a good woman, a pious -woman, one who was severely tried, one who did her immediate duty and -gave to the poor. She had a long and unhappy life, and died worn out. -There can be no doubt of all this. All sorts of reasons for hating and -slandering her can be urged: none of them good ones. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> - -<p>The reproaches of the historians are not so summarily to be dismissed. -It is not necessary to go so far as Michelet did when he said that -the price of her marriage with Louis was the revocation of the Edict -of Nantes. That’s absurd. Madame de Maintenon neither bargained nor -sold her hand. But it is hard to believe—impossible to believe—that -she was not in consultation with the King, and Louvois, and the -priests about the Revocation, or that, if consulted, she would not -have urged it. Saint-Simon, who is her first accuser here, is writing -after her death, and writing as an historian. I feel sure that he is -right. It is, of course, true that she was a Huguenot by descent, a -grand-daughter of that truculent, serio-comic old Agrippa d’Aubigné, -whose portrait, savagely grinning, is so extraordinarily like those -of his king, <i>le Béarnais;</i> and it is true also that, though she was -converted before she was a grown woman, she never lost her fanatic hold -upon religion, but simply changed its direction. Throughout her life, -says Madame Taillandier, she showed Huguenot characteristics. She could -never take to the devotion of the rosary; she could never find any -enthusiasm for convents; she invoked neither the Virgin nor the Saints; -continued the reading of her Bible. No matter for that: she was hungry -for souls. As Saint-Simon puts it, with evident truth: “Elle eut la -maladie des directions ... elle se croyait l’abbesse universelle.... -Elle se figurait être une mère d’église.” She converted whomsoever -she could touch, and as she grew in influence she could touch a many. -Concerned in the Revocation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> besides Louis, there were Louvois, -Father le Tellier, Bossuet, her own spiritual director, the Bishop of -Chartres, and all the Jesuits. Everything that we know about her shows -to which side she would incline; and nothing that we know about her -makes it likely that she had any conception what statesmanship meant. -Louis called her “Sa Solidité.” Her solidity showed itself in her -care for detail: nothing was too small for her—she loved to order a -household, knew how many chickens you should get in for a small family, -how much wine for the servants, how many pounds of candles. She could -design the quasi-conventual robes for Saint-Cyr, costumes for ballets -and so on. But the economic or political outcome of the Revocation of -the Edict; the ruin of her country, the humiliation of the King, all -the immediate results of the “affreux complot” were entirely outside -her power of vision. “Four regiments of infantry,” Madame Taillandier -pleasantly says, “two of cavalry were ordered to follow the Duc de -Noailles into Languedoc, and <i>trample a little</i> on the Huguenots.” My -italics! Well, Madame de Maintenon expected to save souls like that. I -don’t think that she can be let off her share in the <i>dragonnades</i>, or -in the Revocation.</p> - -<p>Never mind. She was more of a saint than a sinner, though she lacked -the severity and suavity, the “sweet reasonableness” of the true -Saints. She was bleak, in herself and in her outlook; her life had -always been, and after her marriage was long to be, cheerless and -unutterably dull. What a life it was, throughout its eighty-three -years! Born in a prison in 1635, and living thereafter on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> charity, -with one relative or another; hounded from Huguenot pillar to Catholic -post; clinging to the faith in which she had been reared until she -was “converted” almost literally by force; still a pauper, often a -drudge; then at seventeen married to an elderly balladist, crippled by -disease, Paul Scarron, a scribbler of pasquinades and squibs, author -of a travesty of Virgil and what not; married to this incapacitated -rip; living with him in Grub Street on what he could pick up by the -hire of his pen—a libel here, a dedication there, a lampoon elsewhere, -a broadside for the street corner or bridge-end; living so from hand -to mouth, married but not a wife—what a life for a young girl gently -born, grand-daughter of King Henry’s old friend! Nothing is more -pathetic in Madame Taillandier’s account of her than the gallant fight -she put up in her little salon in the Rue Neuve Saint-Louis—polite -conversation in her bed-chamber with her friends, while Paul and his -tore the decencies to shreds below-stairs. And she succeeded, too, in -making good and herself respected. She had valuable friends. Madame -de Sévigné was one, Madame de Coulanges another, Madame de Lafayette -a third. Through them she became acquainted with yet higher persons, -among them with Madame de Montespan, then in league with the highest -of all. By those means she fell under the King’s eye. He did not like, -but he esteemed her, and chose her out of all the Court and all Paris -to govern Madame de Montespan’s children. She did it, by all accounts, -admirably. If she had no other qualities, she had two rare ones: she -did her duty, and held her tongue. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> - -<p>When, by public Act, the children were made Enfants de France, they -were removed from Paris to Saint-Germain; and there was Madame -Scarron in daily intercourse with Louis. That was the beginning of -her astounding ascent. Madame de Montespan was uneasy, and had reason -to be. The <i>gouvernante’s</i> influence was steadily against her. Madame -Scarron disapproved of her and all her kind; and sure enough, from the -hour of her entry into the King’s family, the mistress’s star began -to wane. Finally, what the preachers—Bossuet, Bourdaloue—could not -do the ghastly business of “the Poisons” settled. La Montespan was in -that up to the neck, and Louis knew that she was, and held his peace, -not to save her neck, but to save his face. Montespan was exiled, and -took, as George Meredith said, “to religion and little dogs.” Madame -Scarron remained in charge of the children, and was ennobled with a -fief and a Marquisate. The Court called her “Madame de Maintenant”—but -she had not fully earned that. The Queen died—and Louis almost -immediately married the Marquise. There is not a ghost of a doubt of -it. Saint-Simon gives the date, the hour, and the names of celebrant, -assistants, and witnesses. Everybody knew it—but nothing was said. -From that hour Louis was hardly ever out of her company until the end, -when she was forced to leave him before the breath was out of his body.</p> - -<p>What did she gain except unutterable weariness, suspicion, fear, -slander, and unending labour? Read Dangeau’s diary of the dreary, -splendid routine of Versailles, Marly and Fontainebleau;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> read in -Madame Taillandier a letter from the poor woman describing one of her -days. She had her Saint-Cyr in which she really delighted. She could -play universal Abbess there, and be interested and at peace for a time. -But even there chagrin and disappointment dogged her. She brought in -Madame Guyon, Quietism, and other things taboo. She became involved in -Fénélon’s disgrace; and presently she had to submit to Rome and turn -her beloved “Institution” of ladies into a convent of nuns.</p> - -<p>No—she was bleak, and had a narrow mind; but, as she saw her duty, so -she did it. Her duty led her into thorny wastes and desert places; it -led her to be one of the thousand idle parasites yawning and stretching -at Versailles, slowly and endlessly revolving like dead moons round le -Roi Soleil. We may pity Madame de Maintenon for what life made of her, -but not blame her.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PIERRE DE L’ESTOILE</h2> - -<p>Rich as they are in the possession of the <i>diverticula amoena</i> of -history—and much richer than we are—for all that the French have no -Pepys. “Many an old fool,” said Byron of Coleridge at his lecture, -“but such as this, never.” So it may be put of the French memoirists: -many a burgess of plain habit and shrewd observation, many a rogue -husband too; but the like of one who, being both, turned himself inside -out for the wonder of posterity, never. Indeed, it would be hard to -imagine a Latin Pepys. The French do not discharge their bosoms on -paper without reason; and the reasons which moved Pepys, whatever -they were, would not approve themselves to their minds. Cynicism, or -vanity, might suggest self-exhibition to one or another, as it did to -Casanova the Venetian, but the truth is not served that way. There was -a leaven of puritanism in Pepys such as Huguenotry never deposited -in a Frenchman. That leaven did double work in our man. It seasoned -for him his pleasant vices, and gave also a peculiar thrill to his -confessions, as if his pen, like his hair, was standing on end as he -wrote. No Frenchman needed a relish for his foibles of the kind; and -as for thrills, his nation has always kept faith and works in separate -compartments. We cannot do that.</p> - -<p>However, they are rich enough without him. If they have no Pepys, they -have in their Pierre de L’Estoile one whom we cannot match. Imagine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> -a citizen of London in Elizabeth’s last and James’s first years, -observing, recording each day as it came. We have in John Evelyn, fifty -years later, a diarist of higher quality, who yet, and for that reason, -was of less historical value. He seldom stooped to the detail in which -the Parisian was versed: would that he had! L’Estoile will furnish no -such picture as Evelyn’s of the Gallery at Hampton Court on a specimen -afternoon. On the other hand, in L’Estoile, the brawling, buzzing, -swarming streets of old Paris come before us at every turn of the -leaf—and there at least he was like Pepys. If by happy chance one John -Chamberlain, a private citizen of London, whose letters were published -last year, had kept a diary, and could have kept it out of harm’s way, -he might have given just such a particularised account of his town -as L’Estoile gives of the Paris of the League, the Seize, and <i>La -Religion</i>. But he was fearful of the post, and never committed himself. -Nor would he, of course, have had such cataclysmic matter to report, -England in James’s reign was drifting towards the whirlpool: France was -already spinning madly in it.</p> - -<p>Pierre de L’Estoile was an official of the Chancellery in Paris. -His title was “Audiencier,” and his duties, as nearly as I can -ascertain, were more like those of one of the Six Clerks of our Court -than of him whom we call Auditor. He was a man of family, of the -<i>noblesse de Robe</i>, of landed estate, of education, and of taste. -He had Greek, and Latin, bigotry and virtue; he collected coins and -medals, books, ballads, pamphlets, bibelots of all sorts. He began -to keep a diary on the day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> when Charles IX died, “enferme, comme un -chien qui enrage”—Whitsunday, 1574; maintained it through the riot -and effrontery, the anarchy and intrigue in which Henry III and the -<i>mignons</i> killed and were killed; through the open war of the League, -and through the Siege of Paris. He saw the entry of Henry IV; judged -while he loved that ribald king; and caught up the flying rumours of -that day which hushed all the city, that day when he was stabbed to the -heart, “au coing de la rue de la Ferronnerie, vis-à-vis d’un notaire -nommé Poutrain,” as he sat in his coach listening to a letter which -Epernon was reading to him. He went on until 1611, and only laid his -pen down because he was about to lay down his life. His last entry is -of the 27th September: on the 8th October he was buried. He had lived -under six kings of France, had three of them die violent deaths, had -been an eyewitness of the Saint-Bartholomew. A seasoned vessel.</p> - -<p>As he was never a courtier he could not have witnessed all the great -events which he relates. I think he saw the entry of Henry of Navarre, -if not his shocking exit. But he was out and about, all agog; he had -highly placed friends; and collected for his diary as he did for his -cabinet. I imagine he must be a “source” for such a tragic scene as -the murder of the Duc de Guise, which might have gone bodily into <i>Les -Quarante-Cinq</i> if that fine novel had not stopped a few months short of -it. Everything is there to the hand. As first, the presages: how on the -21st of December (1588), </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p> - -<blockquote><p>“the Archbishop of Lyon, having overheard the proud speeches -which the Duke had made the King in the gardens of Blois, told -him that he would have done well to use more respect, and that a -more modest bearing would have been becoming: whereupon, ‘You are -wrong,’ the Duke replied: ‘I know him better than you do. You have -to take him boldly. He is a king who likes to be made frightened.’”</p></blockquote> - -<p>And then another: on the next day,</p> - -<blockquote><p>“As the Duke went to table, to his dinner, he found a note under -his napkin wherein was written that he ought to be on his guard, -because they were on the point of doing him a bad turn. Having -read it, he wrote upon it these three words, ‘They dare not,’ and -threw it under the table. The same day he was told by his cousin -the Duc d’Elbœuf that on the morrow there would be an attempt -against his life, and answered with a laugh that, plainly, he had -been searching the almanacs.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>On the 23rd he and his brother the Cardinal attended the Council, on summons:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“They found the guard strengthened, and more hardy than usual. -They demanded money, and asked the Duke to see to it that they -were paid, using (as it seemed) a new manner of address, less -respectful than he had been accustomed to hear. Taking no notice, -they went their ways; and for all that the Duke had had warnings -from many quarters of what was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> working against him—nine of them, -indeed, on that very day, whereof he put the last in his pocket, -saying aloud, ‘That is the ninth to-day’—nevertheless, so blind -was that high mind of his to things as clear as daylight, he could -not bring himself to believe that the King intended to do him an -ill turn; for God had blindfolded his eyes, as He generally does -of those whom He designs to chasten. Being then come into the -Council, in a new coat, grey in colour and very light for the time -of year, the eye on the scarred side of his face was seen to weep, -and he to let two or three drops at the nose—on account of which -he sent a page out for a handkerchief.... Presently the King sent -Revel, one of the Secretaries of State, for him, who came up just -as he was shutting down into the silver box he used to carry, the -plums and raisins which he used for his heart-weakness. He rose -immediately to attend his Majesty, and just as he came into the -ante-chamber one of the Guards in there trod upon his toe; and -though he knew very well what that meant, notwithstanding he made -no sign, but went on his way to the Chamber, as one who cannot -avoid his fate. Then, suddenly, he was seized by the arms and legs -by ten or a dozen of the Quarante-Cinq ambushed behind the arras, -and by them stabbed and murdered, uttering among other lamentable -cries this last, which was plainly heard, ‘God! I am dying! My -sins have found me out. Have mercy on me!’ Over his poor body they -flung a mean carpet, and there he lay exposed to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> gibes and -indignities of them of the Court, who hailed him ‘fair King of -Paris’—the King’s name for him.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Detail like that must have been got at first hand. When he comes to -the Cardinal, he contents himself by saying that he was despatched in -the Capuchin Convent on Christmas Eve. But the account of the Duke -carries conviction. L’Estoile had a friend at Blois—an official of the -Council, or an usher of the door. Though there is pity in his words, -“Sur ce pauvre corps fut jetté un meschant tapis,” his judgment was not -disturbed. His account closes with the stern words,</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Et ici finist le règne de Nembrot le Lorrain.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Henry being what he was, and whose son he was, it was plain to him that -the only thing to do with the head, and crownable head, of the League -was to remove it. After the Saint-Bartholomew murder was a recognised -arm of kingship, a sort of <i>jus regale</i>, in France. But Catherine de -Médicis, who taught her sons the uses of the dagger and the dark, was -not consenting to this particular use of them. Her worthless son might -be the last of the Valois; but she dreaded the first of the Bourbons -much more than the extinction of her own race; and when Henry was -fool enough to boast, “Now I am the only King,” and (says L’Estoile) -“began immediately to be less of one than ever,” she, sickening of -such inanity, took<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> to her bed, and died in it on the 5th of January -following the <i>coup d’état</i>.</p> - -<p class="space-above">A year later the League gave the counterstroke. Henry was murdered -at Blois by its creature, Clément the Jacobin: “poorly and miserably -slain,” says L’Estoile, “in the flower of his age, in the midst of -his garrison, surrounded, as always, by guards; in his chamber, close -to his bed, by a little rapscallion of a monk, with a jerk of his -nasty little knife.” The thing was miraculously simple, a touch-and-go -which just came off. Clément asked for an audience, was refused: Henry -heard of it and insisted on seeing him. The man was let in, found his -victim undressed and at disadvantage, gave him a letter, and while he -was reading, drove a knife into his bowels and left it there. He was -himself killed on the spot, having done what the League intended, and -more than that by a good deal. L’Estoile notes it at the moment: “The -King of Navarre is made King of France by the League.” So he was.</p> - -<p>Civil war followed: Paris in the grip of the Seize, with the Duc de -Mayenne as Regent for the League. L’Estoile lost his appointment; for -the Chancery followed the King, and he himself could not. A Court of a -kind was maintained in the city, and he, in order to live, was forced -to serve the Seize, whom he detested and feared. He had good reason for -that. Famine and pestilence were on all sides of him, and treachery -and suspicion—under the bed, at the street corners, in the churches, -wherever people came together<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>—and the gibbet expecting its daily -tribute. When the news came in of Arques or Ivry, of the capitulation -of Chartres or what not, it was as much as your neck was worth to be -seen to smile. Lists of names went about—you might see your own on -it any day. By a letter attached to it you could know your portion. -P. stood for <i>pendu</i>, D. for <i>dagué</i>, C. for <i>chassé</i>. L’Estoile -saw his own, with D. against it. He went in fear, naturally, but I -think he was more scandalised than afraid when they began their new -Saint-Bartholomew by hanging the President of the Council, Brisson, -and two of his fellow members. It took place in prison, and L’Estoile, -though he was not present, reports the manner of it, and the harangues -of the victims. His conclusion is good enough: “Thus, on this day, -a First President of the Court was hanged—by his clerk.” The King, -he hears, “gossant à sa manière accoustoumée,” said that he had no -better servants in all Paris than the Seize, who did his business for -him better than anything they did for their masters, and cost him no -doubloons neither.</p> - -<p>Meantime the city was beleaguered, and very soon hungry. Cauldrons -of broth and boiled horse were set up at street-corners, and people -fought each other to get at them; bread was made of oats and bran, and -doled out by pennyweights as long as it lasted. When they had eaten -all the horses they came to the dogs, then to the cats. The siege was -maintained, the people starved. They ate tallow, dog-skin, rat-skin, -cat-skin. They made bread of men’s bones from the cemeteries;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> they -hunted children—L’Estoile has no doubts; many lay still, awaiting the -mercy of death. “The only things which went cheap in Paris,” he says, -“were sermons, where they served out wind to the famished people, -giving them to understand that it was very pleasing to God to die of -starvation—yea, and far better to kill one’s children than to admit -a heretic as king.” A man, he says, came to his door to beg a crust -of him to save a child’s life. While L’Estoile was fetching the bread -the baby died, in the father’s arms. He himself sent away his wife and -infant son to Corbeil: the leaguer had been raised for that purpose, -and many took advantage of the grace. Unfortunately Corbeil was taken -by the Spaniards, and his people held to ransom. There were fierce -riots; but the Seize knew that their own necks were in peril (as proved -to be true), and held out. Finally, after the farce of conversion -solemnly enacted, Henry entered his good town. As a last resource -the League had ordered the descent and procession of the Châsse of -Ste-Geneviève a few days before. L’Estoile gives the warrant in full, -with this note in addition: “Its virtue was shown forth, five days -afterwards, in the reduction of Paris.” He always girded at the Châsse. -It was brought down in July 1587 to make the rain stop. “She did no -miracle, though liberally assisted. The moon before had been a rainy -one, and they brought her down on the fifth of the new moon when there -was promise of a little fine weather. Nevertheless, it began to rain -harder than ever the next day.” He called Madame Sainte-Geneviève Diana -of the Parisians. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> - -<p>Well, the Béarnois came in, and heard <i>Te Deum</i> at Notre Dame. He -made a torchlight entry, dressed in grey velvet, with a grey hat -and white <i>panache</i>. His face was “fort riant”; his hat always in -his hand to the ladies at the windows, particularly to three, “very -handsome, who were in mourning, and at a window high up, opposite -Saint-Denys-de-la-Chartre.” L’Estoile must have seen that, and admired -the ladies. And he certainly saw—he says so—the reception of Mesdames -de Nemours and Montpensier. They were held up by the passing of troops, -and put out of countenance by the insolence of the bystanders, who -“stared them full in the face without any sign of knowing who they -were.” And that to Madame de Montpensier—“Queen-Mother” to Paris -besieged!</p> - -<p>Next day Henry played tennis all the afternoon, and hazard all night; -but L’Estoile loved that king without approving of him. His tales tell -for him and against, his esteem rises and falls. He liked his easy -manners, his old clothes, his <i>Ventre-Saint-Gris</i>, his cynicisms and -mocking humour. He does not seem to think the monarchy let down by such -<i>sans façon</i>. Anyhow, there it is; and two things are made clear by -the diary—first, that Henry was not the good fellow he is generally -reputed, and second, that he was not then thought to be so. He himself, -may be, had been too much knocked about by the world to have any -illusions left him. There was an attempt against his life in 1595. The -people seemed frantic with delight at his escape. L’Estoile relates how -he went in procession to Notre Dame. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> - -<blockquote><p>“You never heard,” he says, “such approbation of a king by his -people as was given that day to our good Prince whenever he showed -himself. Seeing it, a lord who was close to his Majesty, said to -him, ‘Remark, sir, how happy are all your subjects at the sight of -you.’ Shaking his head, the King replied, ‘That is the people all -over. And if my greatest enemy was where I am now, and they saw -him go by, they would do as much for him as for me, and shout even -louder than they are doing now.’”</p></blockquote> - -<p>No, there were no rose-coloured curtains between Henry of Navarre and -this transitory life. He did not even pretend to approve of himself; -and if he was ashamed, as it seems he was, of his amorous entanglements -with the young Princesse de Condé, it is certain that they shocked -L’Estoile to the heart. When it comes to apologies there, there was no -spirit left in the respectable man. For this diarist was as moral as -our John Evelyn, and so far as I can find out on as good a foundation. -He could express himself on such matters with point. For instance:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Sunday the 12th February, which was Dimanche des Brandons, Madame -had a splendid ballet at the Louvre, where nothing was forgotten -that could possibly be remembered—except God.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>A sharper saying than Evelyn would have allowed himself. But it is -the fact, as I have said, that good King Henry was not found so good -living as dead.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> Afterwards—under Richelieu, under Mazarin, during -the Fronde, under the Edict of Nantes—by comparison he shone. During -his lifetime he had many more enemies and far fewer friends than was -supposed. The Maréchal D’Ornano, in 1609, told him in so many words -that he was not beloved by his people, and that a very little more on -the taxes would bring back the civil war. The King said that he knew -all that, and was ready for it. D’Ornano then said that he could not -advise rough measures. “I shall freely tell you, sir, that the late -King had more of the <i>noblesse</i> for him than you have for yourself, -and more of the people too than you will have if there be trouble. For -all that, he was obliged to leave Paris and his own house to rebels -and mutineers, and the rest of us thought ourselves lucky to get off -with our heads on our shoulders.” L’Estoile had that from “a brave and -trustworthy gentleman” who was close by at the time. The gentleman said -that the King was at first moved to anger by D’Ornano’s plain speaking, -but thanked him for it afterwards.</p> - -<p>Bad stories of King Henry are to be had for the asking; perhaps the -worst in L’Estoile is told in a poem which he picked up, and reports. -A Madame Esther had been the King’s mistress in La Rochelle, and had -borne him a son. The child died, the King tired, and forsook her. She -came to see him at Saint-Denis when he was busy, distracted, seeking -other game: he refused to see her or hear what she had to say. She -was ill, and died in the town where he actually was, and being of the -religion, a grave was denied her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> What became of her body is not -known, but “they raised to her memory,” L’Estoile says, “the following -<i>Tombeau</i> (epitaph), which was rehearsed at Saint-Denis and everywhere:</p> - -<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Tombeau de Madame Esther</span></p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Here Esther lies, who from Rochelle,</div> -<div>Called by the King, her master, came,</div> -<div>Risking the life of her fair fame</div> -<div>With him to whom her beauty fell.</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Faithful she was, and served him well,</div> -<div>Bore him a son who had no name,</div> -<div>And died: so then her lover’s flame</div> -<div>Sought other kindling for a spell.</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Forsaken, hitherward her steps</div> -<div>Strayed, and to God she tuned her lips</div> -<div>For mercy, dying so: but earth</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Was closed against her. Ah, it’s bad—</div> -<div>No yard of all his lands and worth</div> -<div>For her who gave him all she had!”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>A touching and simple piece. It should have gone home to a man whose -intentions were always better than his inclinations, yet always gave -way to them. The end of him, sudden and shocking as it was, can have -surprised nobody. He had enemies everywhere, and few friends. The -Catholics had never believed in him, the Protestants had ceased to -believe in him. The day before his last he had had Marie de Médicis -crowned with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> all the forms, though unwillingly. L’Estoile was there, -and observed two notable facts: “the first was that it had been thought -proper, on account of the subject-matter, to change the gospel of the -day, which is from Mark x—“<i>And the Pharisees came to him, and asked -him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife, tempting him.</i>” That -sounds to me a little too apt to be likely.</p> - -<p>“The other was that at the <i>largesse</i> of gold and silver coins, which -is usual at coronations of kings and queens, there was never a cry -<i>Vive le Roy</i>, nor yet a <i>Vive la Reine</i>—which, it was remarked, had -never happened but at this coronation.” His next entry relates to the -assassination:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“<i>Luctus ubique, pavor, et plurima mortis imago</i>,” is his -conclusion of it all: “the shops are shut; everyone goes weeping -or holding up his hands, great and small, young and old; women and -maids pluck at their hair. The whole town is very quiet: instead -of running for arms we run to our prayers, and make vows for -the health and welfare of the new king. The fury of the people, -contrary to the expectation and intent of the wicked, is turned -upon the infamous parricide and his accomplices, seeking only to -ensue vengeance and to have it.”</p></blockquote> - -<p><i>De mortuis!</i> That is always the way. And distrusting the Queen as he -plainly did, and abhorring Concini, not the first, and not the best, -of the implanted Italians, there is little wonder at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> diarist’s -dismay. He goes on, without circumlocution, to lay the crime at the -door of the “Society of Judas,” as he calls a famous companionship, -a society to whose new church the King’s heart had been promised, by -whose means, he as good as says, it was now obtained. Not without -scandal, it was presently conveyed there.</p> - -<p>Enormous crowds viewed the king’s body, which lay in state in the -Louvre. The Jesuits were among the first to come; he says:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Class them as you please: everybody knows the maxim they preach, -that it is lawful to kill the king who suffers two religions -in his realm. Nevertheless (<i>vultibus compositis ad luctum</i>) -they played affliction above everyone. Father Cotton, with an -exclamation truly smacking of the Court and the Society, ‘Who is -the villain,’ cries he, ‘to have killed this good prince, this -pious, this great king? Was it not a Huguenot, then?’ They tell -him, No, it was a Roman Catholic. ‘Ah, deplorable, if it be so!’ -he says, and signs himself with three great crosses. Someone -present, who had overheard him, was himself overheard to say, ‘The -Huguenots don’t play those tricks.’”</p></blockquote> - -<p>But the Society took the heart to Notre-Dame-de-Boulogne.</p> - -<p>L’Estoile survived to see the little king in Paris. He watched him -benevolently always, and has tales to tell of him, of which the -prettiest is about Pierrot, a village boy of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. -When Louis had been there as Dauphin, Pierrot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> used to play with him; -and now that he was King, and at the Tuileries, he had the notion of -going to see him.</p> - -<blockquote><p>“The King was playing down by the lake, with a fine company about -him; but as soon as he was aware of Pierrot, his old play-fellow -(who still called him M. le Dauphin, and to those who reproved -him, swore his round Mordienne that he did not know what else to -call him), he left them all where they were to go to Pierrot, into -whose arms he flew, and kissed him in the face of everybody. He -told M. de Souvrai that they must find clothes for his friend the -very next day, so that he might stay with him, but Pierrot said he -could not do that, but must go home for fear of being beaten. His -father and mother had not been willing to let him go—but he had -gone for all that, and had brought M. le Dauphin (he called him) a -present of some sparrows.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>“Simplicité rustique,” L’Estoile calls it, and praises Louis for going -half-way to meet it. He is then very near the end of his record, and of -his earthly tether too.</p> - -<p>Misfortunes were gathered thickly about the honest man. He was out of -his employment through age; money was very short with him. He sold -his collections piecemeal, and was glad to make fifty francs or so -here and there. He does not name the most serious of his ailments, -but I fear that it was malignant, and put recovery out of the case. -In September 1610, feeling himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> in extremities, he demanded the -Sacrament, and it became a question of confession. Father des Landes, -a Jacobin and a friend of his, was chosen for the office, and demanded -of him a protestation that he would die in the Catholic, Apostolic, -Roman faith. The first two—yes, said L’Estoile; but boggled over the -third. He relates the course of the argument which he held with the -Jacobin. It branched off, as they will, into all sorts of side issues: -invocation of the Saints, Council of Trent, errors of the Popes, and -what not. He comes as near as he ever does here to putting down what -he really did—or at least what he really did not—believe. He was an -eclectic, but desperate of remedy. He would have seen the Reformed -Church Catholic, and the Catholic reformed. But that, he is aware, is a -counsel of perfection. “Three things forbid: lack of charity, lack of -zeal for the glory of God, and stubbornness, which is the last trench -of the ignorant.” And he concludes on the whole matter: “I shall hold -on then to that old stock, rotten as it is, of the Papacy. The Church -is in it, though it is not the Church.” And thereupon he had his -absolution and the Sacrament. Father des Landes was a liberal-minded Jacobin.</p> - -<p>I have fallen into the old easy way of confounding historical persons -and history, but that is L’Estoile’s fault at least as much as mine. -I might have stuffed my account of his book with criminal records, or -with sermons; for next to the doings of the great those are the matters -which concern him. Few days pass, never a week, in which he does not -record an execution or several of them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> I don’t know whether the -Paris of the Henrys was worse than the London of James, and failing -an English L’Estoile, I shall never know. But Paris would be bad to -beat—not only for bestial crime but for bestial requital of it. In -London you might be decapitated or hanged: burning was rare towards the -end of Elizabeth’s reign. In Paris you might be hanged, or hanged and -strangled, or broken on the wheel, or hanged and burned; or, if you -were respectable enough you could be executed with a sword. Burning was -reserved for heresy: for <i>lèse-majesté</i> there was death by horses—four -of them. L’Estoile saw Ravaillac die that death. He died, the wretch, -at the “deuxième tirage.” These things are shocking, as the crimes -were which they were designed, after the ideas of the times, to fit. -Then there were the duels which reached in France a point not known in -our country. The <i>mignons</i> quarrelled in companies. That happened when -Quélus, Maugiron and Livarrot met d’Entragues, Ribérac and Schomberg in -the Marché-aux-Chevaux. Maugiron and Schomberg were killed outright; -Ribérac died the next day, and Quélus, with nineteen wounds, lingered -for a month, and died then. The King kissed the dead, cut off and -kept their fair hair, and took from Quélus the ear-rings which he had -himself put into his ears. “Such and the like ways of doing,” says -L’Estoile, “unworthy indeed of a great king and a high-hearted, as -this one was, caused him by degrees to be despised ... and in the -Third-Estate, to be made little by little their faction, which was the -League.” No doubt that is true. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> - -<p>Let me remember, as I end, this curious piece of news: on January 8th, -1608, it was so cold that the chalice froze in Saint-André-des-Ars, -and they had to get a brazier from the baker’s to thaw it. Saint-André -was L’Estoile’s favourite, or perhaps his parish church. The law cares -nothing for trifles, but history lives upon them. My last scrap, -however, is not of an age but of all time. “J’ay trente mil livres de -rente, et cependant je meurs!” said the Abbé of Bonport in his last agony.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p> - -<h2>LA BRUYÈRE</h2> - -<p>If we can still contrive to hold up our heads in the world it is -not the fault of the writers of maxims, who have seldom had a good -word to say for us. We may ask, as we wilt but read on, Have we then -nothing which can face unashamed the microscopic eye? Does not virtue -lend itself to aphorism? Should it not be possible to make pithy -summaries of our good qualities, of our reasonable institutions? La -Rochefoucauld’s answer would be, Inform me of your virtues, show me -your tolerable institutions, and I will tell you if I can reduce them -to maxims. Nobody took the trouble to do it. He was read, as he wrote, -for entertainment; and entertainment certainly comes if we don’t read -too much of him at a time. He is for the bedside or the dressing-table. -You can glance at him as you shave: but if you linger on him, you had -better put away the razors. He has himself detected the source of the -entertainment. “In the misfortunes of our best friends we can always -find something which is not unpleasing.” He is dreadfully right; and -it was his accuracy, no doubt, which Madame de Sévigné found to be -“divine.” I obtain my own consolation out of the fact that, poor things -as we are, it has been possible for one at least of us to write us -down so well. But I am under no delusions about this duke. He is not -necessarily a good man struggling with adversity, but as human as the -rest of us. His only right to the microscope is that of user; and the -pose that he who sees so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> many beams in his neighbour’s eyes has no -motes in his own, it is fair to say, is not consciously assumed, but -inseparable from the aphoristic method.</p> - -<p>In La Bruyère, the French Theophrastus, who has tempered his maxims -with “portraits,” I think that the Rhadamanthus-attitude is deliberate. -La Bruyère is indignant, and takes it for righteousness. You cannot -call him cynical; he is a <i>censor morum</i>. He combines the methods of La -Rochefoucauld and Tallemant des Réaux, but is more human than the first -because he condescends to scold his victims, and much less so than -the other because he cannot bring himself to consider them as of the -same clay with himself. La Bruyère, you may say, never takes off his -wig and gown; Tallemant never puts his on. In <i>Les Caractères</i> is but -one paragraph of unstinted praise; the <i>Historiettes</i> is full of them. -Tallemant, however, did not write for publication, and La Bruyère did. -It is possible that he would have praised more generally than he did -if it had been as safe to praise as to condemn. But it was not. He had -been rash enough at starting to call attention to Bishop Le Camus, and -to be astonished at the red hat conferred upon a pious and devoted man. -Then he learned, first, that the King had been very much offended by -the Pope’s action, and secondly, that the Pope had intended him to be. -Just in time he cancelled the passage. No—a writer had to be sure of -his ground when he went about to praise. You were only perfectly safe, -indeed, in praising His Majesty.</p> - -<p>His “pleasant” saying of Dangeau, as Saint-Simon calls it, that he was -not a grandee, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> “after a grandee,” is typical of him, at once acute -and direct. It says more exactly what Dangeau was than a page. The -page is there too, but the few words shine out of it like an electric -light. It is as if he was talking round about his subject, seeking the -best aspect of it, and then, suddenly, with a pointing finger, you -get “<i>Pamphilius</i> in a word desires to be a great man, and believes -himself to be one; but he is not; he is after a great man.” The rest -of the page goes for little. It is Thackerayan, as we should say. -Whether Thackeray owed anything directly to La Bruyère I am not able to -determine; but he owed a fair amount to Steele, who assuredly did.</p> - -<p class="space-above">If La Bruyère had desired to learn the worst of mankind he could not -have been trained in a better school than that which he found for -himself. He had been one of the Accountants-General in the Bureau -of Finance at Caen for a few years when M. le Prince—le Grand -Condé—called him to Chantilly to be tutor—one of several—to his -grandson the Duc de Bourbon. There, and at Versailles, he remained -for the rest of his life, and at Versailles he died. Of Condé, of -Henri-Jules, his terrible son, and of the grandson, “very considerably -smaller than the smallest of men,” as Saint-Simon declares him, and -very considerably more of a degenerate than most men, this learned, -accurate, all-observant, deeply-meditating man was content to be the -servant and the butt. When his pupil left his hands he stayed on as -“gentleman” to the father, who was in his turn M. le Prince. Prince as -he was, he was also, quite simply,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> a wild beast, biting mad; and his -son was little better: a pervert and proud of it, crafty, malicious, -tyrannical, and “extremely ferocious.” One does not know how life with -such masters can have been tolerable. La Bruyère was both neglected -and despised. He had nothing to do, for even as “gentleman” he was -a supernumerary—yet he must be there. To understand it you must -accept the <i>sang royal</i> in its fullest implications. His book, which -yielded eight editions in his lifetime, went for nothing at Chantilly, -though the King himself had heard of it, and had his harangue at the -Academy read to him at Marly. Yet one of the inmates of Chantilly -(Valincourt), while admitting that “La Bruyère meditated profoundly -and agreeably, two things which are rarely found together,” went on -to say that “he was a good fellow at bottom, whom, however, the fear -of seeming pedantic had thrown into its ridiculous opposite ... with -the result that during all the time he spent in the household of M. -le Duc, in which he died, he was always held for a figure of fun.” -It seems that he tried to be sprightly, would dance, put on airs and -graces, make jokes, and walk on his toes. We may regard all that -as protective colouring, the instinct of the creature to hide his -continual mortifications. Elsewhere—in Paris, naturally—he had made -himself a personage. His book sold, if not to his profit, very much to -his credit; he had made himself imposing enemies, and had the better -of them at every turn; Bossuet was his friend, Pontchartrain, Racine -and the like. He still held his sinecure office at Caen. Why, then, did -he hang about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> Chantilly, and lodge in an attic at Versailles when M. -le Prince was there? Who is to say? That particular prince was a human -tiger—but in his service he lived on, and died. I think he ought to -have put himself into his own book—and perhaps he did:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“I see a man surrounded, and followed—he is in office. I see -another man whom all the world salutes—he is in favour. Here is -one caressed and flattered, even by the great—he is rich. There -is another, observed curiously on all hands—he is learned. Here -is another whom nobody omits to greet—a dangerous man.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>At any rate, his experiences provided that one of the shrewdest -sections of <i>Les Caractères</i> is that headed “Of the Court.”</p> - -<blockquote><p>“The Court does not satisfy; it prevents you from satisfaction -anywhere else.</p> - -<p>“It is like a house built of marble: I mean that it is made up of -men, very hard, but polished.</p> - -<p>“One goes there very often in order to come away again and be -therefore respected by one’s country gentry, or the bishop.</p> - -<p>“The most honourable reproach which can be made against a man is -to say of him that he knows nothing of the Court. In that one -remark there are no virtues unimputed to him.</p> - -<p>“You speak well of a man at Court for two reasons: the first, that -he may learn that you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> have done so; the second that he may so -speak of you.</p> - -<p>“It is as dangerous at Court to make advances as it is awkward not -to make them.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>The man who penned those caustic little sentences knew what he was -talking of. Yet La Bruyère’s portrait of himself sets him forth as a -creature apart, pointedly distinguishes him from <i>Clitiphon</i>, who has -been too busy to heed him.</p> - -<blockquote><p>“O man of consequence and many affairs,” he says to <i>Clitiphon</i>, -“when you in your turn have need of my good offices, walk into -my lonely study. The philosopher is at your service, and will -not put you off to another day. You will find him there, deep -in Plato’s dialogues, dealing with the spiritual nature of the -soul, distinguishing its essence from that of the body; or, pen -in hand, calculating the distance from us of Jupiter or Saturn. -I am adoring God in those books of his, seeking by knowledge of -the truth to conduct my own spiritual part into better ways. Nay, -come in, the door is open; there is no ante-chamber in which to be -wearied while you wait. Come straight in, without announcement. -You are bringing me something more to be desired than gold and -silver if it is a chance of serving you. Speak then, what do you -desire me to do for you? Am I to leave my books, studies, work, -the very line which I am now penning? Happy interruption, which is -to make me of service to you!”</p></blockquote> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> - -<p>Overwhelming invitation! The butter, you will agree, is spread too -thick. On another page he quotes the saying of the Roman patriarch, -that he had rather people should inquire why there was no statue to -Cato, than why there was one. But it had perhaps not occurred to Cato -as calculable that he might have to erect a statue to himself.</p> - -<p>“Voilà de quoi vous attirer beaucoup de lecteurs, et beaucoup -d’ennemis,” said M. de Malezieu to La Bruyère on perusing <i>Les -Caractères</i>. There was no doubt about that. Although he set out with a -translation of Theophrastus, in going on to be a Theophrastus himself -the temptation to draw from nature was obvious, and not resisted. -Theophrastus generalised; he wrote of abstractions, Stupidity, -Brutality, Avarice and what not. If he had had instances in his head, -nobody knew what they were, and nobody cared. But La Bruyère did not -write of qualities: he wrote of things and of people—women, men, -the Court, the sovereign; and by his treatment of them in examples, -in short paragraphs, with italicised names, with anecdotes, snatches -of dialogue and other aids to attention, provided the quidnuncs with -a fascinating game. “Keys” sprang up like mushrooms in a night. The -guess-work was dangerously unanimous. The instances he had chosen -were recent: there could not be much doubt who were <i>Menalcas</i> and -<i>Pamphilius</i>, <i>Clitiphon</i> and <i>Arténice</i>. Three editions were called -for in 1688, a fourth in 1689, and then one a year until 1694. On the -whole he came off very lightly. The <i>Mercure Galant</i> and its supporters -furiously raged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> together. But the King had been elaborately flattered, -and no harm came to La Bruyère.</p> - -<p><i>Les Caractères</i> is a book both provocative and diverting, written in -the clear, sinewy, reasonable language of Pascal and Fénélon: by no -means without malice, but with a malice robbed of its virus by the -air of detachment which La Bruyère has been careful to give it. When -he pleases to be severe he uses the dramatic method. The portraits -interspersed with his judgments enable him to move more freely than La -Rochefoucauld. He is better, because livelier, reading, and the effect -is not so depressing. However, his debt cannot be denied. He would be -an acute critic who knew which was which in these:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“A woman with but one lover believes that she is not a coquette: -she who has several that she is only that.</p> - -<p>“A woman forgets of the man she no longer loves even the favours -he has had of her.</p> - -<p>“In her first passion a woman loves her lover. In the others she -loves love.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Here is La Rochefoucauld at his best: “Hypocrisy is the tribute which -vice pays to virtue”; and here is La Bruyère when he chooses to sting: -“There is wanting nothing to an old lover from the woman who claims him -except the name of husband; but that is much. If it were not for that -he would be a thousand times lost.” As a rule he is more of a moralist -than the Duke, as here where his reflection flows from his axiom: </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p> - -<blockquote><p>“A woman unfaithful, if the interested party knows it, is just -faithless; if he believes her true, she is false. This advantage -at least accrues from a woman’s falsity, that you are cured of -jealousy.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>The reflection flows, I say—but is it true? It is safe to say that the -man who generalises about women is as often wrong as right. “Women,” he -says, “are always in the extreme, better or worse than men”; and again, -“The generality of women have no principles. Their hearts direct them; -they depend for their conduct upon those they love.” I should say that -there were as many exceptions to those rules as examples of them. Then, -what of this: “It costs a woman very little to say something which she -does not feel; and a man still less to say something which he does”? It -needs La Bruyère himself to determine from that which of the sexes is -the more sentimental; but he leaves it there. I like the following, and -believe it to be entirely true:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“It is certain that a woman who writes with transport is carried -away, less so that she is touched. It would seem that a tender -passion would render her mournful and taciturn; and that the most -urgent need of a woman whose heart is engaged is less to persuade -that she loves than to be sure that she is loved.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>The second term of that aphorism is an enlargement of the first. A -woman, he would say, really in love would hide it by instinct. Her need -is rather to be loved. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> - -<p>Try him on another tack. Here is a parallel with La Rochefoucauld. -The Duke says, “Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console -themselves for being no longer able to set bad examples.” La Bruyère’s -is equally sharp:</p> - -<p>“A modern writer will generally prove to you that the ancients are -inferior in two ways—by reason and example. The reason will be drawn -from his own taste, and the examples from his own works.” Very neat -both, but I think La Bruyère’s has the more comic turn. If the Duke -had had less prudence, or more bitterness (with as much reason for -it), we might have been able to compare his treatment of <i>la Cour</i>. -But he hardly touches it. La Bruyère cannot leave it alone. “Let a -favourite,” he says, “have a sharp eye on himself; for if he keep me in -his ante-chamber a shorter time than usual; if his look be more open; -if he frown less, listen more willingly, show me a little further from -the door, I shall be thinking him in the way of losing credit; and I -shall be right.” Then he breaks into this bitter reflection: “A man -can have little resource in himself if he must fall into disgrace or -be mortified in order to become more human, more tractable, less of a -brute and more of a good fellow.”</p> - -<p>There is a note very familiar to us in this:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“How comes it about that <i>Alciopus</i> bows to me this morning, -smiles, throws himself half-way out of the carriage window for -fear of missing my eye? I am not a rich man—and I am on foot. By -all the rules he ought not to have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> seen me. Is it not rather so -that he himself may be seen in the same coach with a lord?”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Thackeray all over; but I don’t think Thackeray had it straight from -<i>Les Caractères</i>. The first translation into English was in 1699, and -by “Eustace Budgell, Esq.” There were many others—two, anonymous, -in 1700 and 1702, one by Nicholas Rowe in 1709, one by “H. Gally” in -1725. Was not Budgell one of the <i>Spectator’s</i> men? Steele and Addison -both may have quarried in his version. Here is a specimen <i>Spectator</i> paragraph:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“<i>Narcissus</i> rises in the morning in order that he may go to bed -at night. He takes his time for dressing like a woman, and goes -every day regularly to mass at the <i>Feuillants</i> or the <i>Minims</i>. -He is an affable fellow, who may be counted on in a certain -quarter of the town to take a <i>tierce</i> or a <i>cinquième</i> at Ombre -or Reversi. So engaged you will see him in his chair for hours -on end at <i>Aricia’s</i>, where every evening he will lay out his -five gold pistoles. He reads punctually the <i>Gazette de Hollande</i> -and the <i>Mercure Galant</i>; he will have read his Cyrano, his des -Marete, his Lesclache, Barbin’s story books, assorted poetry. He -walks abroad with the ladies; he is serious in paying calls. He -will do to-morrow what he does to-day and did yesterday; and after -having so lived, so he will die.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>The sting in the tail is perhaps too sharp for Steele, though it is not -for Addison. You will find the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> former more exactly foreshadowed in -the fable of <i>Emira</i>, an insensible beauty of Smyrna, who finds that -she cannot love until she has first been jealous, and finds that out -too late. Style and handling are the very spit of Steele’s. I have not -seen the suggestion anywhere, and put it forward for what it may be -worth, that Budgell’s translation inspired our pair of essayists to hit -off friends and foes under the stock names of <i>Belinda</i>, <i>Sacharissa</i>, -<i>Eugenio</i> and the like. The “portrait” had been a popular literary -form in France from the days of Richelieu; but it was new to England -when Addison and Steele went into journalism. Are there “keys” to the -<i>Spectator</i> and <i>Tatler</i>? I suppose so.</p> - -<p>Not all his portraits are malicious, not all of them so simple as -that of Narcissus; but some of them are really malignant. It is -safe to say that a man of whom Saint-Simon had nothing but good to -report, had nothing but good to be reported. Such a man was the Duc -de Beauvilliers. La Bruyère says of him that he was greedy after -office—exactly what he was not. The Comte de Brancas, who figures as -<i>Menalcas</i>, is very good fun. Brancas was the George Dyer of Paris and -his day, <i>distrait</i> in ways which a knowledge of his time will excuse. -The best story of him, when he failed to see the Queen Mother using a -certain <i>prie-dieu</i>, and knelt on her, has been told. Another shows -him at home, putting down his book to nurse a grandchild; then, when a -visitor was announced, jumping to his feet, and flinging the baby on to -the floor, where he had just flung the book. There are dozens of such -tales, none<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> of them ill-natured. Probably even La Bruyère could not -have been unkind to Brancas.</p> - -<p>He is certainly more severe than Tallemant, but that is because he -will always introduce himself into the story, and always to his own -advantage. Tallemant never does that, but uses the historical method -invariably. A good example of La Bruyère’s intrusion is in his dealing -with a Lord Strafford of ours, a peer whom Saint-Simon calls “une -espèce d’imbécile,” and accuses of having 50,000 <i>livres de rentes</i> in -England and spending them in Paris. La Bruyère calls him Philémon, and -strikes the attitude of Diogenes in his regard:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Gold, you tell me, glitters upon <i>Philémon’s</i> coat? It glitters -as keenly at the tailor’s. He is clothed in the finest tissue? Is -it less well displayed in shop-lengths? But the embroideries, the -enrichments make him splendid! I praise the needlewoman. But ask -him the time, and he will pull out a masterpiece of a watch: the -guard of his sword is of onyx; there is a diamond on his finger -of a water ...! You have managed to make me curious at last. I -must see these priceless things. Send me Philémon’s clothes and -gimcracks. You may keep Philémon.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>That is the better part of it. In the next paragraph he turns to scold -the old lord, and calls him a fool in so many words. That is a mistake -of his. It is not playing the game of satire, but the kind of game -which is played at the street corner. On<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> the same page is Harlay, the -very unepiscopal Archbishop of Paris, but only a part of him. He leaves -the bishop out of the question (as assuredly he was), and gives us the -courtier. Harlay was famous for his manners. <i>Theognis</i>, as he calls him,</p> - -<blockquote><p>“is careful of his appearance, goeth forth adorned like a woman. -He is hardly out of doors before he has composed his looks and -countenance so that he may appear all of a piece when he is in -public, the same thing to all men. Passers-by are to find him -graciously smiling upon them; and nobody must miss it. He goes -into the corridor, turns to the right where everybody is, or to -the left where there is no one: he will salute those who are -there, and those who are not. He will embrace the first man he -comes across and press his head to his bosom; then he will ask -you who it was he was greeting. Perhaps you have need of him in -some little business or other, you go to him, ask him to help. -<i>Theognis</i> lends you a ready ear, is overjoyed to be of use, -implores you to find him other chances of serving your occasions. -Then, when you urge your immediate affair, he will tell you that -he cannot manage that; he will ask you to put yourself in his -place, judge for yourself. So you take your leave, escorted to the -door, caressed, and puzzled, but almost gratified to have been -refused.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>That is excellent, done with a light-hearted malice worth all the -<i>coquins</i>, <i>fats</i> and <i>sots</i> in the world.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> But of all his “portraits” -by far the most agreeable is that of Madame de Boislandry, whom -he calls <i>Arténice</i>. It appears as a fragment in the section <i>Des -Jugements</i>, but I don’t think really belongs there. There is nothing -else like it; it has a gusto and charm of its own. Steele comes to mind -again, with his Lady Elizabeth Hastings. It must be my last example:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“ ... He was saying that the mind of that beautiful person was -like a well-cut diamond; and continuing his talk of her, ‘There -is,’ he added, ‘a ray of reasonableness and charm in it which -engages at once the eyes and the hearts of those who converse -with her. One hardly knows whether one loves or admires: she has -that in her to make her a perfect friend, and that too which -might lead you beyond friendship. Too young and too lovely not -to please, too modest to dream of it, she makes little account -of men but upon their merits, and looks for no more from them -than their friendship. Brimming over with life and quick to -feel, she surprises and attracts; and while perfectly aware of -the delicate shades and subtleties of the best conversation, she -is yet capable of happy improvisations which among other charms -have that of inspiring repartee. Her intercourse is that of one -who, without learning of her own, is aware of it, and desires to -inform herself; and yet she listens to you as one who, after all, -knows a good deal, can appraise the worth of what you say and will -lose nothing that you may choose to impart. Far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> from seeking to -contradict you, she takes up your points, considers them as her -own, enlarges and enhances them. You find yourself gratified to -have thought them out so well and to have put them forward better -than you had supposed....’”</p></blockquote> - -<p>There is more in that strain of intense appreciation, done by a writer -who knows that what he says of you is worth having, even if it be -flattery. La Bruyère had his reasons for flattering <i>Arténice</i>: it is -agreed that he was very fond of her. So were many others: she had her -adventures, though he did not share them. Evidently he knew that she -was not for him; for there is no tarnish of jealousy upon his praise. -He was one whom there were few to love, and he found very few to -praise. But he praised and loved Madame de Boislandry.</p> - -<p class="space-above">Although he became a person of consequence from the day his book was -out, he was not chosen to the Academy until 1693, and then not without -several postponements, considerable effort on the side of his friends -and strenuous opposition from Fontenelle and his partisans, whom he had -fustigated as Les Théobaldes in his <i>Caractères</i>. When he was in fact -chosen it was a very near thing. A M. de la Loubère, who blocked his -road, retired in his favour and transferred to him the suffrages of his -own supporters. For that generous act La Bruyère paid him a handsome -and a happy compliment in his address of reception:</p> - -<p>“A father,” he said, “takes his son to the theatre: a great crowd, the -door besieged. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> he is a tall man and a stout. He breaks a way to -the turnstile, and as he is on the point of passing in, puts the lad -before him, who, without that foresight, would either have come in late -or not come in at all.”</p> - -<p>A pretty turn to give his gratitude! Apart from that he was -unnecessarily provocative. He went out of his way to praise Racine at -the expense of Corneille, which, seeing that Thomas Corneille was a -brother, and Fontenelle a nephew of the great man, and that both were -present was asking for trouble. Trouble there was—efforts to refuse -him inscription in the archives, a foaming attack in the <i>Mercure -Galant</i>, a plot to print and publish separately the address of his -co-nominee, and so on. But the Abbé Bignon stood by him; both addresses -were published together, La Bruyère’s with a fighting preface, and -inscription in the records followed.</p> - -<p>In his preface he girds at his critics for not having seen what he -was driving at in <i>Les Caractères</i>. They had taken it, he says, for a -collection of aphorisms and sentences loosely assorted under headings, -with portraits here and there of distinguished persons, scandalous or -malicious as might be. They took it, in short, for a nosegay of flowers -of speech, selected more for their pungency than their fragrance, -relieved by foliage luxuriant enough, but beset with thorns. That was -not at all his own idea of it.</p> - -<p>“Have they not observed,” he asks, “that of the sixteen chapters -comprised in it, there are fifteen which, applied to the discovery -of what is false and absurd in the objects of the passions and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> -attachments of mankind, aim only at breaking down the growths which -first enfeeble and presently extinguish the knowledge of God in -men—nothing therefore but preliminary to the sixteenth and last, in -which atheism is attacked, and possibly routed.”</p> - -<p>I confess that if the critics had not detected all that in the plan -or content of Sections I-XV, there is much excuse for them. I am in -the same condemnation. It is true that those sections may be said to -attack false gods in general: folly, ostentation, vainglory, evil -concupiscence and such like. It is true that La Bruyère is a <i>censor -morum</i>, like many a man before him and since. But it is not at all -obvious that he is clearing a way by his analytic philosophy for a -synthetic which will seat the true God firmly on his throne in the -heart. Nor is the effort to do that conspicuous. “I feel that there -is a God,” he says in his sixteenth section, “and I do not feel that -there is no God. That is enough for me; all the reasoning in the world -is beyond the purpose: I conclude that God is.” Very good; but then, -why all the reasoning in the book? Pascal said the same thing, rather -better. “It is the heart that feels God, not the reason. That is faith: -God sensible to the heart, not to the reason.” It is probably as near -as one can go. But how does La Bruyère make it more pointed by what -has gone before? If you prove to demonstration that the goods of this -world are but vanity, does that of itself imply, first that there is -another world, whose goods (secondly) are not vain? Not at all. My -impression is that La Bruyère had no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> such large intention when he -began, and that if he had had it, he would have declared it in his -opening observations. He was moralist and satirist both; but as much of -one as the other. Character rather than characteristics attracted him, -as I think, and the sharp sentences he aimed at were more literary than -ethical. As for maxim-drawing, although he drew plenty, he expressly -disavowed it. “I ought to say that I have had no desire to write -maxims. Maxims are the laws of morality, and I own that I have neither -the authority nor the genius which would fit me to legislate.... Those, -in a word, who make maxims desire to be believed. I, on the other hand, -am willing that anyone should say of me that I have not always well -observed, provided that he himself observe better.”</p> - -<p>And the last sentence in the book is this: “If these <i>Caractères</i> of -mine are not relished I shall be surprised; and if they are I shall be -equally so.”</p> - -<p>There is a pose in that; but it is a literary pose.</p> - -<p class="space-above">He did not live long to enjoy his academic dignity. He made but one -appearance at the table, and then supported the candidature of somebody -whose name was not before the assembly. His proposal was of Dacier -the classic, but he owned that he should prefer to see Madame Dacier -chosen. On the 10th of May 1696, just a month after Madame de Sévigné, -he died of apoplexy at Versailles. He had rooms in the Chateau opening -on to the leads—bedroom, book-closet, and dressing-room. The inventory -of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> effects shows him to have been possessed of some three hundred -books. Very few of his letters exist: one to Ménage about Theophrastus, -one to Bussy, thanking him for his vote and sending him the sixth -edition of <i>Les Caractères</i>, others to Condé, of earlier date, -about the progress of his grandson. Two letters to him from Jérôme -Phélypeaux, the son of Pontchartrain, survive, which hint at a happy -relationship between the scholar and the young blade. Phélypeaux, who -was just one-and-twenty, chaffs the philosopher; calls him a “fort joli -garçon,” suspects him of being “un des plus rudes joueurs de lansquenet -qui soit au monde.” La Bruyère’s solitary letter to his young friend is -in a light-hearted vein too, chiefly about the weather.</p> - -<p>It is so hot, he says, that yesterday he cooked a cake on his leads, -and an excellent cake. To-day it has rained a little. Then he plays the -fool very pleasantly. “Whether it will rain to-morrow, or whether it -won’t, is a thing, sir, which I could not pronounce if the health of -all Europe depended upon it. All the same, I believe, morally speaking, -that there will be a little rain; that when that rain shall have ceased -it will leave off raining, unless indeed it should begin to rain -again.” It is evidence of a sound heart that a learned man can write -so to a young friend; and as it is much better to love a man than not, -I close upon that frivolous, but happy note. La Bruyère was to live a -year more in his attic on the leads. Let us hope that he baked some -more cakes and wrote many more letters to young M. Phélypeaux.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p> - -<h2>COULEUR DE ROSE</h2> - -<p>Sainte-Beuve, in one of his early <i>Lundis</i>, tells a touching story -of Madame de Pompadour, the frail and pretty lady who was forced by -circumstances rather than native bent into becoming a Minister of -State, and one, at that, who had to measure swords with the great -Frederick of Prussia. At one stage of her career she had hopes of a -match between a daughter of her married state and a natural son of -Louis. There seemed to be the makings of a Duc du Maine in the lad, -of a Duchess consequently for her family. And that was the simple -objective of those of her faction who favoured the scheme. But her -own was simpler still. She spoke her real mind about it to Madame de -Hausset, her lady-in-waiting, from whose Mémoires Sainte-Beuve quotes -it.</p> - -<p>“Un brevet de duc pour mon fils,” she said, “c’est bien peu; et c’est à -cause que c’est son fils que je le préfère, ma bonne, à tous les petits -ducs de la Cour. Mes petits enfants participeraient en ressemblance du -grand-père et de la grand’-mère, et ce mélange que j’ai l’espoir de -voir ferait mon bonheur un jour.”</p> - -<p>Interesting revelation. “Les larmes lui vinrent aux yeux,” says Madame -de Hausset. She was bourgeoise, you see, this poor Pompadour, with -the homely instincts, the longing for the snug interior, the home, -the family life which characterise the plainly-born. She had been a -Mademoiselle Poisson. Poisson indeed! What had a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> Mademoiselle Poisson -to do with a Fils de Saint-Louis, or in a Parc aux Cerfs? Nothing -whatever in first intention, at least; rather she was all for love and -the world well lost. She had had her dreams, wherein Louis was to be -her “jo,” and they were to climb the hill together. The ideal remained -with her, for ever unrealised, always, it seemed, just realisable; and -her foreign and military adventures, the certain ruin of her country, -were so many shifts to arrive—she and Louis together, hand in hand—at -some Island of the Blest. No beautiful end will justify means so -unbeautiful, but to some extent it excuses them.</p> - -<p>Exactly on a level with that tale is one which I read somewhere lately: -also a French tale. It was about the exorbitantly-loved mistress of -some officer, who craved the rights of a wife, and worried him until -she had them—with the result that she obtained also the wrongs. She in -fact became what the man’s wife was at the moment: in her turn she was -<i>trompée</i>. And what were the rights for which she risked, and indeed -lost, everything she had? To preside at his breakfast-table, to dine -<i>vis-à-vis</i> at home instead of at a restaurant, to sleep with her head -on his shoulder. That was all. And when she had it, her pride and joy -became his ineffable weariness. He carried his vice elsewhere. There -is the whole difference between two classes there—between Louis le -Désiré and his Poisson; between two instincts—Sentiment and Curiosity; -between two ideals—Distraction and Fulfilment. There is very nearly -all the essential difference that exists between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> men and women, the -active and the passive principle in human nature.</p> - -<p>Behind the sentimental there is always a moral reality. It may not be -all the sentimentalists believe it; they may mistake appearance of the -thing for the thing itself; but there is a reality. To preside over a -man’s tea-cups is symbolic; to be his wife is more than symbolic, for -a symbol may be a sacrament—and that is a reality. The wedding-ring -is a sacrament for those who seek fulfilment of their being. To those -who seek distraction of it, it simply puts a point to their need. -To the seekers of distraction there is neither end, nor symbol, nor -sacrament. Mr. Hardy once wrote a parable upon the theme—the Pursuit -of the Well-Beloved it was called; and after his manner he gave a -mocking twist to it. In it a nympholept, a sort of Louis XV, pursued -successively a woman, her daughter and her grand-daughter, and having -caught them one after another, found that there was nothing in it. Last -of all, the man died also, but not without feeling pretty sure that if -he could have waited for the great-grand-daughter all would have been -well with him. Such shadows we are, pursuing shadows. But women are -realists. They can see detail and fulfil themselves with that, failing -the great thing. That is a strength which is also a weakness, fatal -to them in many cases. Only, even so, it is not always easy to decide -which it is. Was it strength or weakness in Romney’s wife? She nursed -him through a fever, herself then a young girl, and he married her for -her pains. He lived with her for five years, gave her a family, and -left her. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> hardly saw her again for forty years, when he returned, -broken and old, to Kendal, where he had left her, to be nursed once -more out of illness. So far as we know, she had no reproaches for -him. He died in her arms. What reality she may have found to support -her constancy one can hardly say; but at least she had more than the -nympholept had ever found in his forty years in the wilderness. Enough -indeed to give her fulfilment at the last.</p> - -<p>I have touched a thing there, or I am the more deceived, which Mr. -Lucas has entirely overlooked in a recent book of his. By so doing he -has turned what might have been a touching piece of sentiment into -something which, luckily for us, exists mainly in club arm-chairs. We -have had <i>Science from an Easy-Chair</i>, and none the worse for being -so delivered. But arm-chair ethics is another matter. In Mr. Lucas’s -<i>Rose and Rose</i> a doctor, with a good cook (an important factor) and -an Epicurean friend, who has the knack of making cynicisms sound true, -by using a genial manner, becomes guardian of a child, who grows up -into a nice girl, and in due course falls in love. She chooses a man -whom the doctor dislikes, whom she, however, prefers to several other -candidates, against whom there are really only nods and winks from the -doctor and the Epicurean on the sofa. She marries, and isn’t happy. Her -husband, without being a prig—he had not enough colour for that—was a -precisian, careful of his money, who did his own housekeeping. He had -not such a good cook as the doctor had, and may have felt that Rose’s -education in housewifery had been neglected. Probably it had. A good -cook will coddle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> her clients, but not impart her mystery. I daresay -the husband was trying; but he seems to have been good-tempered and -honourable; he paid his way, and he gave Rose I a Rose II. That at -least should have been an asset on his side of the account. But not at -all. After a time, not clearly illuminated, in which nothing particular -seems to have happened—except one thing—Rose I ups and elopes with -the one thing, leaving her husband and Rose II in the lurch. She had -known her lover before marriage. He had very white teeth, and she had -nursed him through an illness. Well, when she found him again, his -teeth were still quite white, and he had another illness. So there you -were. She went off with him, I think to Singapore, and did not reappear -until the last chapter, by which time her ailing lover had cleaned his -teeth for the last time. The doctor, who still had the good cook, and -had adopted and brought up Rose II to the marriage-point, then received -back with a beating heart his Rose I.</p> - -<p>A doctor of seventy, with a good cook and digestion, an arm-chair -and a rather good cellar of port, fortified also by the caustic wit -of an epicurean patient, is capable of much. He might think (as Mr. -Lucas’s did) that it was all right. He would be for the line of least -resistance, and that would certainly be the baby. He happened to like -them—which put him in a strong position. But his Rose I went much -further than even Jean-Jacques had gone. He took his superfluous -children to the <i>Enfants Trouvés</i>. Rose simply dropped hers. “De Charon -pas un mot!” And so far as I can find out not a word afterwards, until<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> -she came home in the last chapter, as if nothing had happened. Then, if -you please, Rose II takes the prodigal mother to her bosom, and they -all lived happily ever after. Life is not so simple as all that. It -could not be while women were women.</p> - -<p>The poor “unfortunate females” with whom I began this article are -against it. Mrs. Romney is against it. To the best of my belief the -middle-class, to which the Roses belong, is still against it. Many -marriages are unhappy, and many children left to shift; but not yet in -the middle-class to any dangerous extent. A doctor in an easy-chair, -with a good cook and cellar, does not count. His cook has unclassed him.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p> - -<h2>ART AND HEART</h2> - -<p class="bold">GEORGE SAND AND FLAUBERT</p> - -<p>Flaubert is, or was, the fashion in high-art circles; George Sand was -never that, and to-day is little more than a name in any circle. Yet in -the familiar letters, lately published in translation, translated by -Aimée McKenzie, between a pair so ill-assorted in temperament, so far -apart in the pigeon-holes of memory, it is she who proves herself the -better man.</p> - -<p>Gustave Flaubert will live for times to come less by what he did than -by his gesture in doing it. He was, before all, the explicit artist, -the art-for-art’s-sake, neck-or-nothing artist; and as such he will -stand in history when these strange creatures come up for review. He -made the enormous assumption of an aristocracy of intelligence. As, -once upon a time, Venice, and later on we British, claimed to hold the -gorgeous East in fee, so Flaubert, and the handful of poets, novelists -and playwrights whom he admitted as his equals, looked upon the world -at large with its hordes of busy people as so much stuff for the -workshop. Bourgeois all, Philistines all. They were the quarry; upon -them as they went about their affairs he would peep and botanise. He -would lay bare their hearts in action, their scheming brains, their -secret longings, dreams, agonies of remorse, desire, fear. All this as -a god might do it, a being apart, and for the diversion of a select -Olympus. It was useless to write for the rest, for they could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> -even begin to understand you. More, it was an unworthy condescension. -It exposed you either to infamy, as when they prosecuted you for an -outrage against morals, or to ridicule, as when they asked you what -your novel “proved.” Write for ever, wear yourself to a thread, hunting -word or <i>nuance</i>; but write for the Olympians, not for the many. Such -was the doctrine of Flaubert, gigantic, bald, cavern-eyed, with the -moustaches of a Viking, and the voice of a bull; and so Anatole France -saw him in 1873:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“I had hardly been five minutes with him when the little parlour -hung with Arab curtains swam in the blood of twenty thousand -bourgeois with their throats cut. Striding to and fro, the -honest giant ground under his heels the brains of the municipal -councillors of Rouen.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>That was the sort of man who, in 1863, struck up a friendship with -George Sand.</p> - -<p>And she, the overflowing, mannish, brown old woman, his antithesis; her -vast heart still smouldering like a sleepy volcano; she who had kicked -over all the traces, sown all the wild oats, made spillikins of the Ten -Commandments, played leapfrog with the frying-pan and the fire; written -a hundred novels, as many plays, a thousand reviews, ten thousand -love-letters; grandmother now at Nohant, with a son whom she adored, -a little Aurore whom she idolised; still enormously busy, writing a -novel with each hand, a play with each foot, and reviews (perhaps) with -her nose; she of <i>Elle et Lui</i>, of <i>Consuelo</i> and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> <i>Valentine</i> and -<i>François le Champi</i>—how on earth came she to cope with the Berserk of -Croisset, who hated every other person in the world, took four years -to write a novel, and read through a whole library for the purpose? -The answer is easy. She made herself his grandmother, took him to her -capacious bosom, and handled him as he had never been handled before. -Affectionately—to him she was “cher maitre,” to her he was her “pauvre -enfant” or her “cher vieux”—but she could poke fun at him too. She -used to send him letters from imaginary bourgeois, injured by his -attacks, or stimulated by them, as might be. One was signed, “Victoire -Potelet, called Marengo Lirondelle, Veuve Dodin”:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“I have read your distinguished works, notably Madame Bavarie, -of which I think I am capable of being a model to you.... I am -well preserved for my advanced age and if you have a repugnance -for an artist in misfortune I should be content with your ideal -sentiments. You can then count on my heart not being able to -dispose of my person being married to a man of light character who -squandered my wax cabinet wherein were all figures of celebrities, -Kings, Emperors ancient and modern and celebrated crimes....”</p></blockquote> - -<p>A delicious letter to write and to receive.</p> - -<p>With all that, in spite of her impulse to love, to admire, to fall -at his feet, she saw what was the matter with her “pauvre enfant.” -<i>Madame Bovary</i> hurt her because it was heartless. She understood -the prosecution of that dreadful book;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> she saw that the passionless -analysis of passion may be exceedingly indecent. She is guarded in her -references to it, but she saw quite well that the book was condemned, -not because it was indecent (though it was indecent), but because it -was cruel. She thought <i>L’Education Sentimentale</i> a failure; ugly -without being reasonable:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“All the characters in that book are feeble and come to nothing, -except those with bad instincts; that is what you are reproached -with ... when people do not understand us it is always our -fault.... You say that it ought to be like that, and that M. -Flaubert will violate the rules of good taste if he shows his -thought and the aim of his literary enterprise. It is false in the -highest degree. When M. Flaubert writes well and seriously, one -attaches oneself to his personality. One wants to sink or swim -with him. If he leaves you in doubt, you lose interest in his -work, you neglect it, or you give it up.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Not a doubt but she was right. You cannot with impunity leave your -heart out of your affair. I will not say that a good book cannot be -written with the intellect and the will; but I am convinced that a -great book was never yet so written. The greatest books in the world’s -history are those which the world at large knows to be good; and to the -making of such books goes the heart of a man as well as his brain.</p> - -<p>But eighteen-seventy was at hand. Isidore, as they called him, was -diddled into war. Everything went badly. French armies blew away like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> -smoke, France was invaded, the Prussians were at Rouen, and there was -no time to theorise about art. Sedan; the Prussians in Paris; then the -senseless rage of the Commune. Flaubert took it all <i>à sa manière</i>:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“I shall not tell you all I have suffered since September. Why -didn’t I die from it?... And I cannot get over it! I am not -consoled! I have no hope!”</p></blockquote> - -<p>And in another letter:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Ah! dear and good master, <i>if you could only hate!</i> That is what -you lack—hate.... Come now. Cry out! Thunder! Take your lyre and -touch the brazen string; the monsters will flee.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Poor wretch, with the only remedy of the arrogant! But the fine old -priestess of another heaven and earth did as he bid her; cried out, -thundered, in a noble letter, which should be engraved on gold plates -and hung up on the Quai d’Orsay:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“What then, you want me to stop loving? You want me to say that -I have been mistaken all my life, that humanity is contemptible, -hateful, that it has always been and will always be so?... -You assert that the people has always been ferocious, the -priest always a hypocrite, the bourgeois a coward, the soldier -a brigand, the peasant a beast?... The people, you say? The -people is yourself and myself.... Whoever denies the people -cheapens himself, and gives the world the shameful spectacle of -apostasy....”</p></blockquote> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> - -<p>That is plain speaking; but she goes on to be prophetic. It would seem -as if she had foreseen a war and its aftermath infinitely more terrible -than that of 1870:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“We shall have to pity the German nation for its victories as much -as ourselves for our defeats, because this is the first act of its -moral dissolution. The drama of its degradation has begun.... It -will move very quickly.... <i>Well, the moral abasement of Germany -is not the future safety of France, and if we are called upon to -return to her the evil that has been done us, her collapse will -not give us back her life.</i>”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Is not that nobly said? And then her great cry:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Frenchmen, let us love one another ... let us love one another or -we are lost.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>She was but five years off her death-bed when she wrote that. In a -sense it was her swan-song. Had she never loved so blindly, she might -have been a better woman it may be. But she loved kindly, too, and will -be forgiven no doubt because she loved much. Love at any rate inspired -her to better purpose than Flaubert’s hate could have done. The world -is not to be advantaged by intellectual arrogance; nor does it appear -from these letters that poor Flaubert was at all advantaged either. It -served him but ill in literature and not at all in the adventure of -life. One must be a man before one can be an artist. Whether George -Sand was an artist or not, she neither knew nor cared. There is no -doubt at all, though, of her manliness.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> - -<h2>A NOVEL AND A CLASSIC</h2> - -<p class="bold">LA PRINCESS DE CLÈVES</p> - -<p>The first novelist in the world as we know it (I say nothing of the -Greeks and Romans) was, I believe, a Pope—Pius II. It is not what -we have come to expect from the Vatican; but his novel, I ought to -add, was “only a little one.” The second, if I don’t mistake, was -Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who did the thing on a large scale. <i>Artamène, -ou Le Grand Cyrus</i> is in twenty volumes; and though men be so strong -(some of them) as to have read it, it is not unkind to say that, for -the general, it is as dead as King Pandion. “Works,” then, won’t secure -more for an author than his name in a dictionary. You must have quality -to do that. The little <i>Princesse de Clèves</i>, written by a contemporary -of Mademoiselle’s, all compact in a small octavo of 170 pp., has -quality. First published in 1678, at this hour, says Mr. Ashton, in -his study of its author,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" >[2]</a> “there are preparing simultaneously an art -edition, a critical edition, and an édition de luxe, to say nothing of -the popular edition, which has just appeared.” Here is “that eternity -of fame,” or something like it, hoped for by the poet. I suppose the -nearest we can approach to that would be <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>.</p> - -<p>The authoress of the little classic was Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La -Vergne, who was born in 1634. She was of <i>petite noblesse</i> on both -sides,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> but her mother’s remarriage to the Chevalier Renaud de Sévigné -lifted her into high society, and brought her acquainted with the -incomparable Marquise. If it had done nothing else for her, in doing -that it served two delightful women, and the world ever after. But it -did more. It procured for Mlle. de La Vergne her entry to the Hôtel -de Rambouillet; it gave her the wits for her masters; it gave her the -companionship of La Rochefoucauld; and it gave <i>us</i> the Princesse de -Clèves. She married, or was married to, a provincial seigneur of so -little importance that everybody thought he was separated from his wife -some twenty years before he was. When separation did come, it was only -that insisted on by death; and through Mr. Ashton’s diligence we now -know when he died. Nothing about him, however, seems to matter much, -except the bare possibility that the relations between him, his wife, -and La Rochefoucauld, which may have been difficult and must have been -delicate, may also have given Madame de Lafayette the theme of her -novels.</p> - -<p>She wrote three novels altogether, and it is a curious thing about them -that they all deal with the same subject—namely, jealousy. Love, of -course, the everlasting French triangular love, is at the bottom of -them: inclination and duty contend for the heroine. But the jealousy -which consumes husband and lover alike is the real theme. Only in -the <i>Princesse de Clèves</i> is the treatment fresh, the subject deeply -plumbed, the <i>dénoument</i> original and unexpected. Those valuable -considerations, and the eloquence with which they are brought to bear, -may account for its instant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> popularity. It has another quality which -recommends it to readers of to-day—psychology. To a surprising extent, -considering its epoch, it does consider of men and women from within -outwards—not as clothes-props to be decked with rhetoric, but as -reasonable souls in human bodies, and sometimes as unreasonable souls.</p> - -<p>Here’s the story. Mademoiselle de Chartres, a high-born young beauty -of the Court of Henri II—is there any other novel in the world the -name of whose heroine is never revealed?—is married by her mother in -the opening pages to the Prince de Clèves, without inclination of her -own, or any marked distaste. The prince, we are told, is “parfaitement -bien fait,” brave, splendid, “with a prudence which is not at all -consistent with youth.” I do not learn that he was, in fact, a youth. -All goes well, nevertheless, until the return to Court of a certain Duc -de Nemours, a renowned breaker of hearts, more brave, more splendid, -more “bien fait,” and much less prudent, certainly, than the Prince de -Clèves. He arrives during a ball at the Louvre; Madame de Clèves nearly -steps into his arms by accident; their eyes meet; his are dazzled, hers -troubled, and the seed is sown. For a space of time she does not know -that she loves, or guess that <i>he</i> does: the necessary discoveries are -provided for by some very good inventions. An accident to Nemours in a -tournament, in the trouble which it causes her, reveals him the truth; -his stealing of her picture, which she happens to witness, reveals it -to her.</p> - -<p>Discovery of the state of affairs, naturally, spurs the young man; -but it terrifies the lady. Greatly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> agitated, she prevails upon her -unsuspecting lord to take her into the country. Nemours follows them, -as she presently learns. Then, when her husband insists on her return -with him to Paris and the daily intercourse with the person she dreads, -driven into a corner, she confesses that she dare not obey him, since -her heart is not her own. Nothing will induce her to say more; and -the prince, disturbed as he is, is greatly touched by the nobility -and candour of her avowal. Unfortunately, he is not the only one to -be touched; for Nemours, who had been on the point of paying a visit -to his enchantress, stands in the ante-room and overhears the whole -conversation. He knew it all before, no doubt—but wait a moment. He is -so exalted by the sense of his mistress’s virtue that, on his way back -to Paris, he casts the whole story into a tale of “a friend” of his, -but with such a spirit of conviction thrilling in his tones, that it is -quite easy for him who receives it to be certain that “the friend” was -Nemours himself. That is really excellent invention, quite unforced, -and as simple as kissing. Naturally the tale is repeated, and puts -husband and wife at cross-purposes, since it makes either suspect the -other of having betrayed the secret. More, it tells the husband the -name of his wife’s lover. Further misunderstandings ensue, and last of -all, the husband dies of it. I confess that that seems to me rather -stiff. Men have died and worms have eaten them—but not the worms of -jealousy.</p> - -<p>The end of the book is perfectly original. When her grief and remorse -have worn themselves out, what is to prevent the lovers coming -together?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> A curious blend in her of piety and prudence, which again -seems to me very reasonable. Madame de Clèves feels that, practically, -Nemours was the death of her husband. He had not meant to be, did not -suspect that he was: she knows that, and allows that time might work -in his favour. “M. de Clèves,” she admits, “has only just expired, -and the melancholy object is too close at hand to allow me to take a -clear view of things.” Leave all that to time, then, by all means. But, -says she, at this moment “I am happy in the certainty of your love; -and though I know that my own will last for ever, can I be so sure of -yours? Do men keep their passion alight in these lifelong unions? Have -I the right to expect a miracle in my favour? Dare I put myself in the -position of seeing the certain end of that passion which constitutes -the whole of my happiness?” M. de Clèves, she goes on, was remarkable -for constancy—a lover throughout his married life. Was it not probable -that that was precisely because she did not at all respond? “You,” she -tells the young man, “have had many affairs of the heart, and will no -doubt have more. I shall not always be your happiness. I shall see you -kneel to some other woman as now you kneel to me.” No—she prefers him -to dangle, “always to be blest!” “I believe,” she owns, with remarkable -frankness, “that as the memory of M. de Clèves would be weakened -were it not kept awake by the interests of my peace of mind, so also -those interests themselves have need to be kept alive in me by the -remembrance of my duty.” This lady would rather be loved than love, it -is clear; but how long M. de Nemours would continue to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> sigh, being -given so unmistakably to understand that there would be nothing to sigh -for, is not so well established.</p> - -<p>He was very much distressed, but she would not budge. “The reasons that -she had for not marrying again appeared to her strong on the score of -duty, insurmountable on that of repose.” So she retired to a convent, -“and her life, which was not a long one, left behind her an example of -inimitable virtues.”</p> - -<p>So far as we are concerned to-day, the <i>Princesse de Clèves</i> lives -upon its psychological insight. But for that I don’t see how it could -possibly have survived. It is a recital, in solid blocks of narrative -interspersed with harangues. It is extremely well-written in a terse, -measured style of the best tradition; Love is its only affair; nobody -under the rank of a Duke is referred to; as Horace Walpole said of -Vauxhall in its glory, the floor seems to be of beaten princes. None of -these excellencies are in its favour to-day. Why then does it exist? -Because it exhibits mental process logically and amusingly; and because -it offers a fresh and striking aspect of a situation as old as Abraham.</p> - -<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> <i>Madame de Lafayette: La vie et ses Œuvres</i>, par H. -Ashton. Cambridge University Press.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE OTHER DOROTHY</h2> - -<p>Two Dorothys in our literature showed themselves worthy of a name -declaratory of so much. Dorothy Osborne was one, Dorothy Wordsworth, -much more famous, was another. If I were teacher of the Sixth Form in -a girls’ school I should take my class methodically through the pair, -satisfied that if I did my duty by them it would have as fair a view -of the moral and mystical philosophy of its sex as needs could ask -or require. The text-books exist; little but appreciation could be -expected from the teacher. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Letters and Journals -fill the better part of three small volumes. They need but little -annotation, save cross-references to her brother’s poems, and to -Coleridge’s. She was the muse of those two, and had perhaps more of -the soul, or substance, of poetry in her than either. They informed -what she taught them, and she taught them through the great years. -Of the two Dorothean voices hers was of the heights. More beautiful -interpretation of nature hardly exists in our tongue. “She tells us -much, but implies more. We may see deeply into ourselves, but she sees -deeply into a deeper self than most of us can discern. It is not only -that, knowing her, we are grounded in the rudiments of honour and -lovely living; it is to learn that human life can be so lived, and to -conclude that of that at least is the Kingdom of Heaven.” If I quote -from a paragraph of my own about her, it is only to save myself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> from -saying the same thing in other words. It is the only thing to say of a -woman long enskied and sainted by her lovers.</p> - -<p>Dorothy Osborne, whose little budget of seventy-seven letters and a -few scraps more has been exquisitely edited by the late Judge Parry, -did not dwell apart: starry as she was, she was much before her world. -She was daughter of a stout old cavalier, Sir Peter, and shared with -him the troubles of Civil War and sequestration of goods under the -Commonwealth. For six years, also, she was the lover and beloved of -William Temple, whom, until the end of that term, she had little hope -or prospect of marrying. Her father and his had other ideas of the -marriage of their children, and means of carrying them out. Sir Peter -Osborne had lost heavily by his defence of Guernsey for the King, and -sought to re-establish himself in the settlement of Dorothy. Sir John -Temple gave his son an allowance and was not disposed to increase it, -except for a handsome equivalent from the other side. When Sir Peter -died it was no better. Dorothy’s brothers brought up suitor after -suitor, of whom Henry Cromwell, the Protector’s second son, was the -most formidable, and Sir Justinian Isham, an elderly widower, with -four daughters older than herself, the most persistent. She was fairly -beset; and when she made her guardians understand that her heart was -fixed, the truth came out that they disliked and distrusted William -Temple. They doubted his principles, accused him of being sceptical in -religion, and (not without cause) of lukewarmness in politics. Temple -was a prudent youth, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> was already on the fence, which he rarely -left all his life. During the Commonwealth he was a good deal abroad, -but whether abroad or at home, neither for the King nor his enemies. -He was moderately educated—Macaulay says that he had no Greek—but it -may have been too much for the Osbornes. Possibly he gave himself airs, -though Dorothy did not think so. However it was, the lovers could only -meet by accident, and must correspond under cover. That correspondence, -a year and a half of it, is all we have of her writing, and good as it -is, the thing it does best of all is to measure the extent of our loss. -Love-letters apart—and there must have been the worth of five years or -more of them lost—she was writing, we hear, at one time weekly to her -bosom-friend, Lady Diana Rich, a beauty of whose mind she had as high -an opinion as of her person. All that has gone. Later, when she had -been many years married, she made another close friend in Queen Mary -II, but the letters which went to her address in what a relative of -Dorothy’s describes as a “constant correspondence,” letters which were -greatly admired for their “fine style, delicate turn of wit and good -sense,” are supposed to have been burnt among her private papers just -before the Queen died. So they have gone too, and with them what chance -we may have had—as I think, a fair chance—of possessing ourselves of -a native Madame de Sévigné. It does not do, and is foolish, to press -might-have-beens too far, if only because you cannot press them home. -How are you to set off seventy-odd letters, for one thing, against -seventeen hundred? There are obvious parallels,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> however, with Madame -de Sévigné which there is no harm in remarking. She and Dorothy were -almost exactly coevals. Both were born in 1627; Madame died in 1696, -Miladi Temple (as she became) in 1695. Each was well-born, each had -one absorbing attachment, each was handsome. Dorothy, in the portrait -prefixed to the <i>Wayfarer</i> edition, has a calm, grave face, remarkable -for its broad brow, level-gazing, uncompromising eyes, and fine Greek -nose, not at all a “petit nez carré.” She looks, as her letters prove -her to have been, a young woman of character and breeding. She does not -show the enchanting mobility of Madame de Sévigné, nor can she have -had it. At any rate, she was a beautiful woman, whose conversation, as -I judge, would have been distinguished by originality and a “delicate -turn of wit,” as her letters certainly are. Further resemblances, if -there are any, must be sought in the documents, to which I shall now -turn.</p> - -<p class="space-above">We are to read a woman’s love-letters, always “kittle work,” however -long ago the pen has fallen still, whether they are the letters of a -fond mother to her child or of a girl to her sweetheart; yet there is -no reason why we should shrink from the one intrusion and make light -of the other. Indeed, of the two, it is Madame de Sévigné who displays -the pageant of her bleeding heart, and is able more than once to make -the judicious grieve, and even the injudicious uncomfortable. There -was nothing of the “jolie païenne” in Dorothy Osborne. She served no -dangerous idolatry. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> is not a phrase in her touching and often -beautiful letters, not even in those where her heart wails within -her and the sound of it enfolds and enhances her words—not there, -even, is there a word or a phrase which imperils her maiden dignity. -She loved, in her own way of speaking, “passionately and nobly.” It -is perfectly true. At all times, under all stresses, her nobility -held her passion bitted and bridled. She rode it on the curb, not, as -was Madame’s delightful weakness, “la bride sur le cou.” Her extreme -tenderness for the man she loved is implicit in every line. Nobody -could mistake; but when, man-like, he seemed to demand of her more and -ever more testimony, she was not to be turned further from her taste in -expression than from “dear” to “dearest.” Towards the end of the long -probation—and in our seventy-seven letters we have, in fact, the last -year and a half of it—a certain quickening of the pulse is discernible -in her writing, a certain breathlessness in the phraseology. “Dear! -Shall we ever be so happy, think you? Ah! I dare not hope it,” she -writes to him in one of the later letters, and cutting short the -formalities, ends very plainly, “Dear, I am yours.” Nothing more ardent -escapes her throughout, yet in that very frugality of utterance, -never was exalted and faithful love made more manifest. When—as did -happen—misunderstandings were magnified by Temple’s jealousy, and -aggravated by her honesty, she was hurt and showed it. Separation then -seemed the only remedy; despair gave her eloquence, and we have for -once a real cry of the heart: </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p> - -<p>“If you have ever loved me, do not refuse the last request I shall ever -make you; ’tis to preserve yourself from the violence of your passion. -Vent it all upon me; call me and think me what you please; make me, -if it be possible, more wretched than I am. I’ll bear it without the -least murmur. Nay, I deserve it all, for had you never seen me you had -certainly been happy.... I am the most unfortunate woman breathing, but -I was never false. No; I call Heaven to witness that if my life could -satisfy for the least injury my fortune has done you ... I would lay it -down with greater joy than any person ever received a crown; and if I -ever forget what I owe you, or ever entertain a thought of kindness for -any person in the world besides, may I live a long and miserable life. -’Tis the greatest curse I can invent: if there be a greater, may I feel -it. This is all I can say. Tell me if it be possible I can do anything -for you, and tell me how I can deserve your pardon for all the trouble -I have given you. I would not die without it.”</p> - -<p>Eloquent, fierce words, indignant, dry with offended honour, but -certainly not lacking in nobility. It is the highest note struck in the -series, and can hurt nobody’s delicacy to read now. Happily the storm -passed over, the sky cleared, and the sun came out. From the sounding -of that wounded note there is a <i>diminuendo</i> to be observed. The very -next letter is lower in tone, though she has some sarcasms for him -which probably did him good. In the next but one: “I will not reproach -you how ill an interpretation you made (of the attentions of Henry -Cromwell), because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> we’ll have no more quarrels.” Nor did they, though -they were still a year off marriage. So much of the love affair which -called the letters into being I must needs have given. I shall not -refer to it again.</p> - -<p>Her head went into her letters as well as her heart; and though love -was naturally the fount of her inspiration, she wrote as much to -entertain and enhearten her lover as to relieve herself. There is -enough literary quality in what we have left to make it a valuable -possession. It is by no means only to be learned from her with what -courage a seven years of star-crossed love may be borne; how gently -the fretting and chafing of a self-conscious man turned; how modesty -can veil passion without hiding it. At her discretion raillery can be -pungent without ceasing to be playful, and the rough and dirty currency -of the world handled without soiling her fingers, with a freedom bred -of innocence of thought. This still and well-bred Dorothy was a critic -of her day, and though she was pious had no fugitive and cloistered -virtue. All about her were living the survivors of a Court not quite so -profligate, perhaps, as that of the first or the third Stuart king, but -profligate enough. It was not the less so for being in hiding. She did -not approve of much that her acquaintance did, but she accepted it and, -as far as might be, excused it. “I am altogether of your mind,” she -writes, “that my Lady Sunderland is not to be followed in her marrying -fashion, and that Mr. Smith never appeared less her servant than in -desiring it. To speak truth, ’twas convenient for neither of them, and -in meaner people had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> plain undoing of one another, which I cannot -understand to be kindness of either side. She had lost by it much of -the repute she had gained by keeping herself a widow; it was then -believed that wit and discretion were to be reconciled in her person -that have so seldom been persuaded to meet in anybody else. But we are -all mortal.” From that, which is temperate statement, go on to consider -a passage of temperate argument which is surely notable in a girl of -her age. She was twenty-six when she wrote:</p> - -<p>“’Tis strange to see the folly that possesses the young people of this -age, and the liberties they take to themselves. I have the charity to -believe they appear very much worse than they are, and that the want -of a Court to govern themselves by is in great part the cause of their -ruin. Though that was no perfect school of virtue, yet vice there wore -her mask, and appeared so unlike herself that she gave no scandal. Such -as were really as discreet as they seemed to be gave good example, and -the eminency of their condition made others strive to imitate them, -or at least they durst not own a contrary course. All who had good -principles and inclinations were encouraged in them, and such as had -neither were forced to put on a handsome disguise that they might not -be out of countenance at themselves.”</p> - -<p>Is that not excellent discourse upon the subject of “young people” -from a girl of six-and-twenty? Dorothy, it will be seen, writes the -modern as opposed to the seventeenth-century English, but does it -in mid-career of the century. Comparison with her contemporary, the -Duchess of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> Newcastle, is proof enough. “Madam,” writes that very -“blue” lady, “here was the Lord W. N. to visit me, whose discourse, as -you say, is like a pair of bellows to a spark of fire in a chimney, -where are coals or wood, for as this spark would sooner go out than -inkindle the fuel, if it were not blown, so his discourse doth set the -hearer’s brain on a light flame, which heats the wit, and inlightens -the understanding.” And so on—like a wounded snake. Dorothy, I think, -was almost the first to do what Milton never did, and what Dryden -was to make the standard of good prose. James Howell preceded her -slightly in that use, but was not so sure a hand at it. In cogency -and simplicity of expression hers is like good eighteenth-century -letter-writing. She apologises to her lover for “disputing again.” He -had been a churl to find fault with such sagacious reflections.</p> - -<p>There is no sign that she was the least bit “blue,” though she read -the books of that <i>coterie</i>, and esteemed them, with reservations. She -had the Cléopâtre of Calprenède, the <i>Grand Cyrus</i> of la Scudéri, and -passed them on, volume by volume, to Temple, remarking of “L’amant -non aimé” in the latter that he was an ass. She had Lord Broghill’s -<i>Parthenissa</i> hot from the press. “’Tis handsome language,” she says of -it. “You would know it to be writ by a person of good quality, though -you were not told it; but, on the whole, I am not much taken with -it.” The stories were too much like all the others, she thought—and -certainly they were: “the ladies are so kind they make no sport.” One -thing in <i>Parthenissa</i> made her angry. “I confess I have no patience -for our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> <i>faiseurs de Romance</i> when they make women court. It will -never enter into my head that ’tis possible any woman can love where -she is not first loved; and much less that if they should do that, they -could have the face to own it.” That is high doctrine, yet inquiry -yields the best sort of support to it.</p> - -<p>So far from being a <i>précieuse</i>, Dorothy quarrelled with <i>Parthenissa</i> -on account of preciosity. “Another fault I find, too, in the -style—’tis affected. <i>Ambitioned</i> is a great word with him, and -<i>ignore</i>; <i>my concern</i>, or <i>of great concern</i> is, it seems, properer -than <i>concernment</i>?” She expects Temple, nevertheless, to fit her -up with the newest town-phrases. “Pray what is meant by <i>wellness</i> -and <i>unwellness</i>; and why is <i>to some extreme</i> better than <i>to some -extremity</i>?” She has her own ideas about style. “All letters, methinks, -should be free and easy as one’s discourse; not studied as an oration, -nor made up of hard words like a charm.” Then she pillories “a -gentleman I knew, who would never say ‘the weather grew cold,’ but that -‘winter began to salute us.’” She had “no patience with such coxcombs.” -A jolly word of her own is “pleasinger.” I have not met it anywhere -else. “’Twill be pleasinger to you, I am sure, to tell you how fond I -am of your lock.” His “lock” was a lock of hair which he had sent her -on demand before he went to Ireland. For a moment it charmed her out -of her reserve. “Cut no more on’t, I would not have it spoiled for -the world. If you love me be careful on’t.” For once she lets herself -go. “I would not have the rule absolutely true without exceptions -that hard hairs are ill-natured, for then I should be so. But I can -allow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> that soft hairs are good, and so are you, or I am deceived as -much as you are if you think I do not love you enough. Tell me, my -dearest, am I? You will not be if you think I am yours.” That charming -little outbreak, written <i>à bride abattue</i>, concludes a letter which -begins, as all of them do, with the formal “Sir.” In its complete -unaffectedness and spontaneity it is not far behind <i>Notre Dame des -Rochers</i>.</p> - -<p>To return to Dorothy’s reading, I do not know that, country for -country, she was far behind her contemporary. Novel apart, she is -reading the travels of Mendez Pinto, quotes the action, not the words, -of Shakespeare’s <i>Richard III</i>, has Spanish proverbs at command, writes -a note in French, takes a part in <i>The Lost Lady</i>, knows Cowley’s -poems, and was a “devote” of Dr. Jeremy Taylor. From that goodly divine -she takes a long argument upon resignation of the will, nearly word for -word, and holds it up for Temple’s admiration. She is more reticent -about her religious opinions than Madame was, having to deal with a -lover suspected of being something of a Gallic instead of a daughter -adept in Descartes. If she was primed with Jeremy Taylor she was in a -good way. Yet I don’t know what that doctor would have said to this:</p> - -<p>“We complain of this world,” she says, “and the variety of crosses -and afflictions it abounds in, and for all this, who is weary on’t -(more than in discourse), who thinks with pleasure of leaving it, or -preparing for the next? We see old folks that have outlived all the -comforts of life, desire to continue it, and nothing can wean us from -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> folly of preferring a mortal being, subject to great infirmity and -unavoidable decays, before an immortal one, and all the glories that -are promised with it.”</p> - -<p>“Is not this very like preaching?” she asks. It is less like the -preaching of the author of <i>Holy Dying</i> than that of six-and-twenty -in love; but undoubtedly it proceeds from common experience. She was -merciless to bad sermons, able to make such good ones of her own. “God -forgive me, I was as near laughing yesterday where I should not. Would -you believe that I had the grace to go hear a sermon upon a week-day?” -Stephen Marshall was the preacher, a roaring divine of the prevailing -type. “He is so famed that I expected rare things of him, and seriously -I listened to him at first with as much reverence as if he had been -St. Paul; and what do you think he told us? Why, that if there were no -Kings, no Queens, no lords, no ladies, nor gentlemen, nor gentlewomen -in the world, ’twould be no loss at all to God Almighty. This we had -over some forty times, which made me remember it whether I would or -not.... Yet, I’ll say for him, he stood stoutly for tithes, though, in -my opinion, few deserved them less than he; and it may be he would be -better without them.” Marshall should have known better than to try his -levelling doctrine at Chicksands.</p> - -<p>To the making of all good letter-writers, all those to whom it is a -natural vent for the emotions, goes quality, that which we call style, -an entire naturalness of expression turned in a manner of one’s own, -an incommunicable something not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> to be mistaken. All the best have -it; the second-best have something of it. Into literary quality goes, -of course, moral quality, <i>l’homme même</i>. Now, Dorothy Osborne has -quality: little as we have, there is enough to show that. She can -be playful, but not sparkle, not ripple like the Marquise nor set a -whole letter twinkling like the sea in a fresh wind; hers is a still -wind. Nor has she such news to impart, to be “le dessus de touts ses -panniers.” Chicksands was not Paris. She has spirit, but not gallantry. -Madame de Sévigné’s chosen defence was always attack. Dorothy is as -quick to see her advantage, but has a more staid manner of execution. -She will be slower to believe herself menaced; and when she discovers -it will reason plainly with the offender, as much for his good as for -her justification. Take this for an example. Temple, who was a fussy -man, a precisian, had been scolding her for fruit-eating. You could -hardly expect a lady to approve lectures upon her digestion from her -lover. She replied:</p> - -<p>“In my opinion you do not understand the laws of friendship aright. -’Tis generally believed it owes its birth to an agreement and -conformity of humours, and that it lives no longer than ’tis preserved -by the mutual care of those that bred it.” Is there no style in that? -“’Tis wholly governed by equality, and can there be such a thing in -it as distinction of power? No, sure, if we are friends we must both -command and both obey alike; indeed, a mistress and a servant sounds -otherwise; but that is ceremony and this is truth. Yet what reason had -I to furnish you with a stick to beat myself withal, or desire that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> -you should command, that do it so severely?” Observe her conduct of the -relative there! “I must eat fruit no longer than I could be content you -should be in a fever; is not that an absolute forbidding of me? It has -frighted me just now from a basket of the most tempting cherries that -e’er I saw, though I know you did not mean that I should eat none. But -if you had I think I should have obeyed you.”</p> - -<p>Evidently she had tossed her head over his dictation; but how well in -hand is her temper, how admirable her style! It is very much in the -manner of Madame when her querulous daughter had hurt her feelings; and -entirely in that manner Madame would throw up the sponge at the end -of a successful attack—entirely as Dorothy does here, with her, “If -you had I think I should have obeyed you.” Dorothy is not, however, so -quick to veer from the stormy to the rainy quarter. She can be fierce, -as I have shown, when her feelings are overstrained, but there is no -hysterical passion. Modesty forbade. “Love is a terrible word,” she -says, “and I should blush to death if anything but a letter accused me -on’t.” She could be bold on such occasions; she could be as saucy as -Rosalind, and as tender. When it is a case of his going to Ireland, on -business of his father’s, which may advance their personal affair, she -urges him to be off. But when the hour has come—“You must give Nan -leave to cut off a lock of your hair for me.... Oh, my heart! What a -sigh was there! I will not tell you how many this journey causes, nor -the fears and apprehensions I have for you. No, I long to be rid of -you—am afraid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> you will not go soon enough. Do not you believe this? -No, my dearest, I know you do not, whate’er you say....” Any good girl -in love would feel like that, but not everyone could let you hear the -quickened breath in a letter three hundred years old.</p> - -<p>Sévigné was wise, and so is Dorothy. She read and could criticise, -she read and remembered. With less philosophy, and no fatalism, she -looked her world in the face, and had no illusions about it. But she -was in love, and it was a good world. Cheerfulness kept breaking in. -“What an age we live in, where ’tis a miracle if in ten couples that -are married, two of them live so as not to publish to the world that -they cannot agree.” Yet she thinks that one should follow the Saviour’s -precept, take up the cross and follow. She believes that the trouble is -mostly of the woman’s making, for as for the husband, if he grumbles, -and the wife says nothing, he will stop for lack of nutriment, and -nobody be any the worse. A splenetic husband of her acquaintance had -the trick, when harassed, of rising in the night and banging the table -with a club. His wife provided a stout cushion for the table, and was -not disturbed.</p> - -<p>Sévigné is merry, and so is Dorothy, though much more demure. In her -seventy letters you will find no <i>tours de force</i>—nothing like the -“prairie” letter, the marriage-of-Mademoiselle, or the “incendie” -letter. She can touch you off a situation in a phrase excellently -well, as when after a quarrel comes a reconciliation between her and -her brother Henry, and she says, “’Tis wonderful to see what curtseys -and legs pass between us; and as before we were thought the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> kindest -brother and sister, we are certainly now the most complimental -couple in England”; or, asking “Is it true my Lord Whitelocke goes -Ambassador?” she comments upon him, “He was never meant for a courtier -at home, I believe. Yet ’tis a gracious Prince.” Another Commonwealth -lord, whose title depended upon the standing of the Court of Chancery, -has a flick in the same letter: “’Twill be sad news for my Lord Keble’s -son. He will have nothing left to say when ‘my Lord, my father,’ is -taken from him.” Those are both brisk and pleasant; more ambitious is -her discussion of the “ingredients” of a husband, which opens with -sketches of impossible husbands. He “must not be so much of a country -gentleman as to understand nothing but horses and dogs, and be fonder -of either than his wife”; nor one “whose aim reaches no further than -to be Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff”; nor “a -thing that began the world in a free school ... and is at his furthest -when he reaches the Inns of Court.” He must not be “a town gallant -neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary,” who “makes court -to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is -laughed at equally”; nor a “travelled Monsieur, whose head is all -feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but dances and -duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes when everybody else dies -of cold to see him.” In fact, “he must love me, and I him, as much as -we are capable of.” Those impersonations might have come as well from -Belmont as from Chicksands. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> - -<p>I said just now that we have no “prairie” letter from Dorothy. We have -something not far from it, though, and I will give as much of it as I -dare. It is of her very best in the way of unforced, happy description; -but after it I must give no more. The date of it is early May, 1653:</p> - -<p>“You ask me how I pass my time here. I can give you a perfect account -not only of what I do for the present, but of what I am likely to -do this seven years if I stay here so long. I rise in the morning -reasonably early, and before I am ready I go round the house till I -am weary of that, and then into the garden till it grows too hot for -me. About ten o’clock I think of making me ready, and when that’s done -I go into my father’s chamber, and from thence to dinner, where my -cousin Mollie and I sit in great state in a room and at a table that -would hold a great many more. After dinner we sit and talk till Mr. B. -(a suitor of Dorothy’s, a Mr. Levinus Bennet) comes in question, and -then I am gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and -about six or seven o’clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by -the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and -sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare their -voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, -and find a vast difference there; but, trust me, I think these are as -innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find they want nothing -to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that -they are so.”</p> - -<p>I could go on to empty the whole paragraph on to the page, for it is -all excellent; but will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> stop with that happily rounded period. Charm, -or the deuce, is in it.</p> - -<p>Beyond it I will not go. Too little straw has been allowed to the -making of my brick. With twice as much more—with some of the letters -to Lady Diana or Queen Mary, freed from the preoccupations of a love -affair—who can say that we might not have had something to set off -against the letters to Mesdames de Lafayette, de Coulanges, de Guitant? -We have something very distinctive and charming, at any rate, enough -to certify us that we have missed of a letter-writer of excellence -who need not have feared comparison with our best. She had not the -vivacity, or the opportunities of Lady Mary; but she had what that -lively observer missed of, a heart wherewith to inform her writing. She -had not the wit of Lady Harriet Granville, but she had more humanity. -I would not put her up, in a Court of Claims, to “walk” before Mrs. -Carlyle, or plead her sagacity and tenderness against that unhappy -woman’s brilliancy. Yet who would hesitate in the choice of one of them -for correspondent? Whose book would you sooner have at the bed’s head? -Such questions, however, do not arise. You judge Literature like coins -at the Mint. You are either good or bad. If you ring false—out you go.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p> - -<h2>REALISM WITH A DIFFERENCE</h2> - -<p><i>Moll Flanders</i>, which has now received the large octavo honours due -to a classic, was written, Defoe tells us, in 1683. The statement is -almost certainly part of the cheat, for it was published in 1722, two -years after <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>; and if it had been true he would have -performed a feat which has never been equalled, that of writing his -first novel with the accomplishment shown in that of his prime. Nothing -in the technique of <i>Crusoe</i> shows any advance upon <i>Moll Flanders</i>. -Its greater popularity is, of course, due to its matter: it is more -<i>simpatico</i>, more moving, more endearing to youth. The adventures upon -the island are more arbitrary and more surprising. They come from -outside the hero, not from his inside. Anything shocking may happen -upon a desert island, even the greatest shock of all, which is to find -that it is not deserted. <i>Suave mari magno</i> ... the tag holds good when -you are thrilled by a tale in the first person. The flesh creeps; but -it is like being tickled by a kindly hand. The pleasure to be had from -<i>Moll Flanders</i> comes when we know enough of the world to have need of -large allowances. Then it is that we are interested in the liabilities -of character, and love to see the oracle worked out. In <i>Moll Flanders</i> -we do. With the single premise that Moll was the abandoned child of a -thief and baggage, cast upon the parish by gypsies, everything that -happens to her follows as inevitably as night the day. She engages -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> compassion of a genteel family, and is taken in quasi-adoption. -She grows up with the children of the house, petted by the daughters, -and in due time, naturally, by the sons, one of whom “undoes” her. -But by the time that happens we know something of Moll’s temperament, -and nod sagaciously at what, we say, was bound to be. So it goes on -from stave to stave to make out the promise of the title-page that, -born in Newgate, she was “Twelve Year a <i>Whore</i>, five times a <i>Wife</i> -(whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a <i>Thief</i>, Eight Year a -transported <i>Felon</i> in <i>Virginia</i>, at last grew <i>Rich</i>, liv’d Honest, -and died a <i>Penitent</i>.” It sounds uncommonly like Boccaccio’s tale of -the Princess of Babylon, not at all unlike <i>Gil Blas</i>; but the point is -that it is most of all like Life, that the lurid programme is smoothly -and punctually kept, and that we never withhold our assent for a -moment—not even from the added statement that it was “Written from her -own Memorandums.” It is no more necessary to believe that than that it -was written in 1683; but there is no difficulty in believing either.</p> - -<p>Defoe, if he began to write novels at fifty-eight, came by his method -as Athené by her ægis; it sprang fully armed from his brain. He never -varied it for a worse, and could not have for a better. It was to -tell his story in plain English without emotion, and to get his facts -right. That is his secret, which nobody since his time has ever worked -so well. The <i>Police News</i> style has often been used, and many a -writer has laboured after his facts. Some have succeeded—very few—in -smothering their feelings, and some, of course,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> have had no feelings -to smother. Defoe alone accomplishes his ends with consummate mastery. -He is certainly our greatest realist, and there are few in France to -beat him. Perhaps the nearest approach to him was made by the Abbé -Prevost in <i>Manon Lescaut</i> (1731)—but put Zola beside him if you -would judge his method fairly. Zola, who went about his business with -stuffed notebooks, succeeded in various aims of the novelist, but not -in commanding assent. He could not control himself; the poor man had an -itch. Artistically speaking, he did unpardonable things. Some of the -bestiality of <i>La Terre</i> might have happened in a Norman village; a -Norman village <i>might</i> have been called Rognes. To conjoin the two in -a realistic romance is paltry. It absolutely disenchants the reader, -and gives away the writer and his malady with both hands. You may -call a town Eatanswill in a satire; but <i>La Terre</i> is not a satire. -As for <i>Manon</i>, astonishingly documented as it is, the conviction -which it carries does not survive perusal, though it revives in every -re-perusal. Its intention, which is rather to suggest than to narrate, -to provoke than to satisfy, is apparent when the book is shut. No such -aims are to be detected in <i>Moll Flanders</i>, concerned apparently with -the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.</p> - -<p>The triumph of the method, used as Defoe only can use it, remains -to be told. <i>Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.</i> We can all see -round Moll Flanders, behind her as well as before. The current of the -tale, every coil and eddy and backwash of it, is not only exactly -like life, it puts us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> in a position to appraise life. Conviction of -such a matter, rare as it is, is not so difficult to secure as the -understanding of it. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances -in every guilty course. One finds them for oneself as a neighbour, in -the jury box, on the bench. One finds them or invents them. In <i>Moll -Flanders</i> they steal upon us unawares until, quite suddenly, we find -ourselves with her in a human relationship. Her close shaves, her -near-run things in shop-lifting give us thrills; but when she is rash -enough to steal a horse we are aghast. Mad-woman! how can she dispose -of a horse in a common lodging-house? When she is finally lagged we -agonise with her. Why? We know that she could not help herself. But -there’s more than that. She is never put beyond our moral pale. She -steals from children, but suffers both shame and sorrow. She robs a -poor householder of her valuables in a fire, but cannot forget the -treachery. She picks the pocket of a generous lover when he is drunk, -but repents and confesses. He forgives her, and so do we. All her -normal relations with her fellow-creatures are warm with the milk of -human kindness. For instance, she puts herself, for business purposes, -in the disposition of a “Governess,” that is, an old gentlewoman who -is procuress, midwife, baby-farmer, and receiver of stolen goods. But -the pair are on happy and natural terms. Moll calls her Mother; the -old thing calls Moll Child; and when she is transported as a convicted -thief she entrusts “Mother” with all her little fortune, and is -faithfully served in that and other concerns. The pair of them, rascals -together, are bad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> lots, if you will—and good sorts too. That’s the -virtue of the realistic method when you are not on the look out for bad -smells.</p> - -<p>In her dealings with my sex, certainly she was often and unguardedly -a wife, as well as something else not so proper. Yet kindness was her -only fault. Whatever else she may have been as a wife, she was a good -one, faithful, affectionate, sympathetic, and most responsive. If the -young man who undid her had kept his promises, I daresay she would have -lived to be Mayoress of Colchester and mother to some sixteen children, -without a stain upon her character. As it was, she must have had half -that number. She is never a beast. She never revels, nor wallows, nor -is besotted; she is no slave to appetite. She plays hazard one night -and wins a matter of fifty guineas. She will not play again for fear of -becoming a gamester. She continues a thief for many years, though often -moved to break away. Why does she not break away?</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Though by this job I was become considerably richer than before, -yet the resolution I had formerly taken of leaving off this horrid -trade when I had gotten a little more, did not return, but I -must still get farther, and more; and the avarice joined so with -the success, that I had no more thoughts of coming to a timely -alteration of life, though without it I could expect no safety, no -tranquillity in the possession of what I had so wickedly gained; -but a little more, and a little more, was the case still.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>What could be more human, and on our footing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> more reasonable, than -that? That, in fact, which saved <i>The Beggar’s Opera</i> from being an -immoral, cynical, even a flagrant work, was precisely that which gives -Moll Flanders our sympathy—its large humanity. There is heart in -every average human being, as well as much vice and an amazing amount -of indolence; but to see it there you must have it yourself, and to -exhibit it there you must be a good deal of a genius. We feel for Moll -without esteeming her: we say, “There but for the grace of God....” -What saves us? Well, caution, timidity, the likes of those; but chiefly -the grace of God.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p> - -<h2>MR. PEPYS HIS APPLE-CART</h2> - -<p>It is hard to deal fairly by Samuel Pepys, and that because he has -dealt so fairly by himself. You cannot even put that amazing candour of -his down to his credit, for reasons which grow upon you as you read. -If he was candid it was to please himself, and, as one must suppose, -nobody else in the world. Whatever his motive was, it certainly was not -to read a moral lesson to mankind. But that he is all in his Diary, the -whole of him, inside and out, is evident upon any prolonged perusal of -it. He has neither been blind to himself, nor kind; he never excuses -himself, and rarely accuses. He pities himself, when he has been found -out, and hugs himself when he has made a good deal, or played the -fortunate gallant; but he rarely indeed pities anybody else, and if he -hugs other persons, always mentions it. Though we cannot impute his -honesty to righteousness, nevertheless it seems rather hard that he -should have to suffer for it.</p> - -<p>Anyhow, his merits would have transpired without a diary. State -papers exist to testify to them; his mounting credit is its own -record. Evelyn liked him, so did the King and his brother, so did -Sir William Coventry. Undoubtedly he was an able Clerk of the Acts, -and by the standard of any times but some which are still modern -history, an honest public servant. Had he lived in the golden age of -the Civil Service, an age which only ended a few years ago, he would -not have taken any commissions at all. As things are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> now, he took -very few; as they were in his day, what he took was negligible. I -feel sure that the Crown did uncommonly well by him. Then, socially, -he was a brisk, companionable creature, with an infectious laugh, a -taste for languages, the drama, parlour-science and chamber-music. -He had curiosity, which always makes a man good company; he was -both dilettante and connoisseur; he was affable with all sorts and -conditions, gave himself no airs, had vanity, but little conceit. Women -liked him; he had a way with him. And then he liked them. I cannot -imagine Pepys for five minutes in a woman’s company without her knowing -all that she need about him, and about it. Morally, he was a beast, -without pity or scruple, or personal shame, or courage, or honour. He -was depraved, and knew it, and didn’t care so long as no one else knew -it. He was the slave of public opinion, and in moments of apprehension -what that might be, sacrificed his companion in his dealing without a -thought. And yet women liked him, and suffered him. Psychologically, he -is, so far, an unsolved problem. Nobody has found out why on earth he -wrote himself down what he did write down; I have seen no account which -satisfies. To that I should add that no attempt to explain him seems to -have been made since we received all that we ever can receive of his -Diary.</p> - -<p>R. L. Stevenson’s exegesis was based upon Minors Bright, who is now -superseded by Wheatley. It is elaborate, and I think fanciful. I doubt -if it could have been accepted upon the then available evidence: it -is clean out of date now. Shortly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> it was that Pepys, taking (as he -did) infinite pleasure in the minutiæ of memory, was careful to make a -hoard of such things for his after-needs. But even when that theory was -propounded we knew that Pepys recorded his shames and humiliations, and -it is difficult to allow that he might have looked forward to recalling -those towards his latter end. Now, however, we know the worst that -Pepys could say of himself, and lack nothing but the literal details of -his acts. We know how he glorifies and how he humiliates himself—for -he writes down all his failures along with his triumphs; we can see him -splash in the bagnio, and afterwards get rolled in the gutter. It can -be no question of remembrance. What is it, then? Any man may conceive, -and many will do the things which Pepys did: but not record them, -complacently, with the grin of relish. Why on earth did he do that? -I have a suggestion to make, though I am not certain that it meets -the whole case. My first opinion was that he derived that cerebral -excitation out of his details which it is to be supposed the lad may -who defaces walls with a stump of pencil, or the lover who, writing -about kisses, or craving them as he writes, ends up his letter with -a pullulation of little crosses—paraphrases of his passion. Reading -him again, I see that that is not all. It is part of the truth; it is -true of the middle of the Diary. But it is not the whole truth—not -true of the beginning, not true of the end. I now believe that he -originally intended his entries of delinquency as an act of penance or -humiliation—and that is supported by the accounts he gives of all his -shifts and turns<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> under the screw of jealousy—but that out of that -act he found himself obtaining a perverse pleasure, which overlaid his -first intention and supplanted it. In the earlier diary you will find -him expressing his relief over lapses avoided or temptations withstood; -from 1663 onwards that is exceedingly rare; then, at the very end, -when he has been found out and has lost conceit in his delight, -his reflections are as contrite as you please. For the moment that -explanation satisfies me.</p> - -<p class="space-above">Pepys’s Diary covers ten years of his life, his twenty-seventh to his -thirty-eighth. They would be critical years in the life of any married -man, particularly when, as was the case, they coincided with the -Restoration and the sudden unlocking of all doors. When he began to -record he had been married five years, to a woman seven years younger -than himself, a diligent, handsome, thrifty, responsive little French -girl, whom he ruled, evidently, upon a theory; for he says more than -once that he found it desirable to give way when she showed a knowledge -of what her rights were. Being, as she was, exceedingly alive to them -in one essential matter, so long as those were observed she was easy -about others. Therefore, for the first two recorded years, Pepys had -very much of his own way. He kept her short of money, stinted her in -clothes and fal-lals<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" >[3]</a>; and left her much alone while he pursued -business and pleasure abroad. All that she took in good part, until -her eyes were opened to what was going on. She did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> not, for instance, -mind his going to the theatre three or four times a week, until she -found out what he did when he was there. But when she became aware of -Mrs. Knipp and Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Gwynne, and of relations which were -not scenic, there was great trouble at home. After it she insisted -on going with him, and he hardly dared show his nose in a playhouse -without her. But that was later on: for for the first three years of -the diary, beyond a little kissing, or staying up “playing the fool -with the lass of the house” when he was on a jaunt, there was little -for Mrs. Pepys to worry over. Kissing, indeed, of the ceremonial kind, -she did not mind in the least. It was the English habit, as it still is -in one class of life at least. Pepys himself was advised to put up with -it when his wife was so distinguished. “So to Mrs. Hunt, where I found -a Frenchman, a lodger of hers, at dinner, and just as I came in was -kissing my wife, which I did not like, though there could not be any -hurt in it.” Surely not.</p> - -<p>But Pepys himself was not content with kisses of ceremony, nor did he -select proper objects of ceremony for his attentions of the sort—that -is, when once he was fairly on the primrose path. At first it was, “God -forgive me! what a mind I had to her, but did not meddle with her.” -That did not last. In September of that very year—it was 1662—he both -had the mind and the opportunity; he followed his inclination; and -though he recorded his first total lapse with great contrition, he was -past praying for, and with increasing frequency past writing about. -Vivacious man of pleasure as he was, and as his portrait shows him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> -he discovers himself to us as voracious too. He cast a wide net, and -took all fish that came, gentle and simple, mistress and maid, mother -and daughter. Not a shop that had a handsome woman in it, not a tavern -with a pretty maid, between Fish Street Hill and Westminster Hall, but -he drew it regularly, like a covert. I am sure he was no worse than his -superiors; I think he may have been a good deal better than most of -them; he was never a corsair, like Rochester, Sedley, Jermyn; he was in -too small a way for that. But we can only guess at the whole of their -malpractice by adding two to two, and we know all about his; therefore -our gorges rise. Even his peculiar depravity was probably not peculiar -at all.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Yet to our buzzards overfed</div> -<div>Virtue was Pandarus to Vice;</div> -<div>A maiden was a maidenhead,</div> -<div>A maidenhead a matter of price....”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>That was the foible of a hateful age, and it was Pepys’s. He preyed -upon modesty. He must overcome virtue. He could not tire of that, and -wrought in his way incurable mischief. In short, he was a middle-class -Minotaur, a devourer of virgins.</p> - -<p>I shall not follow him in his hateful bird-netting except just as far -as may be necessary to relate the manner of his discomfiture. It is -sufficient to say that, given time to spread his lures, he succeeded -often enough. His office and patronage were favourite decoys of his. -So Mrs. Bagwell, who pleased him as “a virtuous modest woman,” became -something else by his leading her to suppose that he would get her -husband a good job,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> he being a carpenter in Deptford Yard. So it was -with other unfortunate creatures who courted his dispensing of places -to their men. But he had an easier prey, a natural prey nearer home, -in his wife’s maids. It lay among their duties, it seems, to assist -him at his levee and coucher: he certainly had a way with him—so what -were the poor girls to do? They had no chance. It does not appear that -any one of them escaped altogether, though, thanks to his lively fear -of Mrs. Pepys, no one of them found Mrs. Bagwell’s fate. That was not -their fault, poor things; they were mostly as wax under his hands. But -Mercer, Mary Mercer, faced him and got off with nothing worse than a -little fondling. She was a girl with both wit and courage; remained on -friendly terms with the household afterwards, visiting terms; and, when -once she had shown him her mind, was not chased by the destroyer. But -she, who came of good people—“a decayed tradesman’s daughter”—was -an accomplished young woman, with a singing-voice which had been well -trained, and plenty of <i>savoir faire</i>. Really, I think, Pepys, taught -by a rebuff, came to respect Mercer. In August 1665 he noted of her in -his jargon that he had his head combed “by my little girle, to whom -I confess que je sum demasiado kind ... mais il faut que je leave it -lest it bring me to alcum major inconvenience.” That was just what it -did lead to. Mercer left the house on the day the Fire of London broke -out, and for the best Pepys could do did not choose to return. The -Fire gave him other and healthier thoughts for a time: presently when -he met her in church,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> she refused to look at him. So she escaped, -slightly chipped; and afterwards, when, as I say, she came to be on -visiting terms with Mrs. Pepys, there are signs that she came and went -unmolested. But to her succeeded by-and-by Deb Willett, the last victim -of the Minotaur of Axe Yard. It was the addition of this girl to his -harvest which upset his load of Hesperian apples.</p> - -<p>He was disposed to her on hearsay, before he saw her; for Mrs. Pepys -had been light-minded enough to declare the engagement of a pretty -girl—the very thing to set him on fire. So presently, on the 27th -September 1667, “while I was busy at the office, my wife sends for me -to come home, and what was it but to see the pretty girl which she is -taking to wait upon her: and though she seems not altogether so great a -beauty as she had before told me, yet indeed she is mighty pretty; and -so pretty that I find I shall be too pleased with it.... She seems, by -her discourse, to be grave beyond her bigness and age, and exceeding -well bred as to her deportment, having been a scholar in a school at -Bow these seven or eight years. To the office again, my head running -on this pretty girl.” It certainly did, if we may trust the Diary. She -kept him awake at night; and when she came, brought by Mr. Batelier, he -was more than smitten with her, he was impressed. “So grave as I never -saw a little thing in my life,” he says. “Indeed, I think her a little -too good for my family, and so well carriaged as I hardly ever saw.” -His next recorded sentiment is, “I wish my wife may use her well.” How -are you to deal with a man like that—except by remembering that all -men are like that? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> - -<p>She accompanied her employers to Brampton and gave satisfaction at -least to one of them. By the middle of October that had been observed -by the other, for he writes of that day that they had been to see “The -Coffee House” at the Duke’s Theatre; and “here, before the play began, -my wife begun to complain of Willett’s confidence in sitting cheek -by jowl by us, which was a poor thing; but I perceive she is already -jealous of my kindness to her, so that I begin to fear this girl is -not likely to stay long with us.” She stayed too long for her comfort, -or for his. On December 22nd Pepys “first did give her a little kiss, -she being a very pretty humoured girle, and so one that I do love -mightily.” In January she is promoted to be “Deb” in the Diary; in -March she is kissed, and more than kissed. Then comes the last volume.</p> - -<p>By the time that was reached, Pepys’s weakness had become a mania. His -apple-cart, so to speak, was full to overflowing, Deb Willett, though -he had no suspicion of it, the last fruit he was to add to it. His -work suffered, his mind suffered; there were omens of dirty weather. -June 18th, 1668: “At noon home to dinner, where my wife still in a -melancholy, fusty humour, and crying, and do not tell me plainly what -it is; but I by little words find that she hath heard of my going to -plays, and carrying people abroad every day in her absence; and that -I cannot help [fearing] but the storm will break out, I think, in a -little time.” At night it was no better: “My wife troubled all night, -and about one o’clock goes out of bed to the girl’s bed, which did -trouble me, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> crying and sobbing, without telling me the cause.” -That ought to have warned him, if he had not gone too far. But he had. -He pursued his course unabated; and then, October 25th, came the crash. -It was Sunday. He rose, “discoursing with my wife about our house and -the many new things we are doing of”; he went to church, saw Jack Fenn -and his wife, “a pretty black woman”; he dined at home, had his wife -and the boy to read to him; at night “W. Batelier comes and sups with -us”—all well so far. And then—thunder, out of a clear sky, pealing -about his ears. “After supper, to have my head combed by Deb, which -occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world, -for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl....” -(<i>sic</i>).</p> - -<p>A comic scene, but humiliating to all three. “I was,” he says, “at a -wonderful loss upon it, and the girle also, and I endeavoured to put it -off, but my wife was struck mute, and grew angry, and so her voice come -to her, grew quite out of order, and I to say little, but to bed.” To -bed, but not to sleep. At two in the morning the storm which had been -massing itself in the heart and mind of Mrs. Pepys broke over his head, -at first in tears and a secret. That—and it was a shrewd hit—was that -“she was a Roman Catholic, and had received the Holy Sacrament.” Pepys, -who had always been a Puritan at heart, was very much disturbed, yet -dared no reproaches, so that the blow failed of its mark. She went on, -then, “from one thing to another,” until “at last it appears plainly -her trouble was at what she saw.” Yes, but what had she seen? “I did -not know how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> much she saw, and therefore said nothing to her.” Towards -morning “a little sleep.” If he thought that the end of it, he was -to find it only the beginning. Mrs. Pepys, outraged on her tenderest -side, grew from strength to strength; and as for her deplorable spouse, -for the first time in his Diary, if not in his days, he really felt -something which reads like remorse. His mind, he says of it next day, -“was mightily troubled for the poor girle, whom I fear I have undone by -this, my wife telling me that she would turn her out of doors.” That -threat was not at once executed. Deb was treated with severe clemency -for the better part of a month, allowed to visit her friends and suit -herself with a new situation; made to feel, however, that she was in -disgrace, and definitely cut off from any further assistance at her -master’s toilette. The miserable man hardly dared look at her; not a -word seems to have passed between them, though after a while, forced -to take a line of conduct by his wife’s reiterated attacks, Pepys “did -by a little note ... advise her (Deb) that I did continue to deny that -ever I kissed her, and so she might govern herself.” Deb read it and -threw it back again as he bade her; but she could not “govern herself.” -The very next day Mrs. Pepys examined her, and everything came out. -Pepys had to dine alone that night, for his wife kept her room, and -when he went up to see her, blazed out upon him his infidelity and -perjury together. To make it all the worse for him, she then told him -of temptations which had been put in her own way—by Captain Ferrers, -Lord Sandwich and other friends of his. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span><i>A la guerre comme à la -guerre.</i> All which “I did acknowledge, and was troubled for, and wept.”</p> - -<p>Without a leg to stand on, he must do as he was told. On the 12th -November, therefore, he must call Deb to his chamber in the presence -of his wife, “and there did, with tears in my eyes, which I could not -help, discharge her, and advise her to be gone as soon as she could, -and never to see me, or let me see her more while she was in the house, -which she took with tears too.” She had found herself a place, and -went to it; and Pepys looked forward now to a peace which he had not -known, he says, for twenty days. He did not get it, because he was both -knave and fool. Which this shows him to be I don’t pretend to decide. -He writes on the very day the girl left: “The truth is, I have a good -mind to have the maidenhead of this girl, which I should not doubt to -have if je could get time para be con her.” The Italians used to call -the compound of inclination and ability <i>il talento</i>, a word which our -language lacks. Under the spur of <i>il talento</i> this incurable rascal -hunted London to find Deb’s whereabouts. He had reason for suspecting -Holborn, and quartered that; then Whetstone Park seemed probable, in -the service of one Dr. Allbon. Not known there. In Eagle Court, off the -Strand, he presently found out that “this Dr. Allbon is a kind of poor -broken fellow that dare not show his head, nor to be known where he is -gone.” Nevertheless, he did finally run down his doctor in Fleet Street -or thereby, even met a man in his employ, bribed him to take a message -“to a little gentlewoman, one Mrs. Willett, that is with him,” and -waited<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> in the court of Somerset House for an answer. He did not have -it till after dark. She was well, and he might see her if he would, -“but no more.” That was enough for Pepys. Off he went in a coach, “it -being now dark,” and “she come into the coach to me, and je did baiser -her....” Then the real, the incredible Pepys: “I did nevertheless give -her the best council I could, to have a care of her honour, and to -fear God, and suffer no man para avoir to do con her as je have done, -which she promised.” The advice was sound and, from him, infallible. -To-morrow was to prove that much to him. I must afford myself the -morrow’s entry.</p> - -<p>“19th. Up and at the office all the morning, with my heart full of joy -to think in what a safe condition all my matters now stand between -my wife and Deb and me, and at noon, running upstairs to see the -upholsterers, who are at work hanging my best room ... I find my wife -sitting sad in the dining-room; which enquiring into the reason of, she -begun to call me all the false, rotten-hearted rogues in the world, -letting me understand that I was with Deb yesterday, which, thinking it -impossible for her ever to understand, I did a while deny, but at last -did, for the ease of my mind and hers, and for ever to discharge my -heart of this wicked business, I did confess all, and above stairs in -our bed chamber there I did endure the sorrow of her threats and vows -and curses all the afternoon.... So with most perfect confusion of face -and heart, and sorrow and shame, in the greatest agony in the world I -did pass this afternoon, fearing that it will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> never have an end; but -at last I did call for W. Hewer, who I was forced to make privy now -to all, and the poor fellow did cry like a child, and obtained what I -could not, that she would be pacified upon condition that I would give -it under my hand never to see or speak with Deb while I live, as I had -before with Pierce and Knipp, and which I did also, God knows, promise -for Deb too, but I have the confidence to deny it to the perjury of -myself.”</p> - -<p>It is extraordinary that Pepys, who could face with sangfroid -committees of Lords and Commons, marshal his facts and figures and come -off with credit, could be such a poltroon in this domestic inquest as -to deny what was obviously within his wife’s knowledge. But when to -terror you add a sense of guilt, a man will tell you anything. It is -still more incredible that that did not finish the story—but it did -not. The next day, what must he do but send W. Hewer off to Deb, “to -tell her that I had told my wife all of my being with her the other -night, so that if my wife should send she might not make the business -worse by denying it.” The alert Mrs. Pepys made it her business to find -out the whole of that, no doubt from W. Hewer himself; so that when -Pepys came home the whole thing began all over again, and this time -with violence. She “did fall to revile me in the bitterest manner in -the world, and could not refrain to strike me and pull my hair, which I -resolved to bear with, and had good reason to bear it.” He was driven -to call in Hewer again as intermediary; but this time the conditions -were terrible. Nothing would suit Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> Pepys but a letter conceived -in the most insulting and outrageous terms to the girl, who was not -what it styled her, from Pepys, who had done his best to make her so. -Even he was shocked at it, and once wrote it out without the word. Mrs. -Pepys tore it up. Then, on a wink passing from Hewer, he wrote it down, -and domestic fury was satisfied. It was handed to Hewer to deliver, -with “a sharp message” from Mrs. Pepys. That was the climax. No man -could be more deeply degraded than that; and to do Pepys credit, he -knew it, and could hardly bear himself. Hewer, on his own motion, it -would seem, delivered but half of the letter; the other, the injurious -half, was brought back to the unfortunate sinner. Deb never knew the -worst of him, and, so far as the Diary reveals, never saw him again.</p> - -<p>Love will lead a man any lengths, and justify itself, at least to -himself; but not lust. That is a sensitive plant, and shrivels in the -cold. Pepys, it will have been seen, was not prepared to go a yard out -of his prosperous way in pursuit or defence of the favourites of his -whim. If it is to his credit that he reports at length his humiliating -rebuffs, that is all that can be said for him. If he affords a -disagreeable spectacle, luckily it is also exceedingly ridiculous, -and the only thing about it difficult to understand is that he <i>does</i> -afford it. To me it is much more interesting to speculate upon the -attitude of his victims towards these amorous advances. Concerned they -must have been; but were they interested, amused, embarrassed, or -bored? Did they take it as all in the day’s work; had they resentment -and feared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> to show it; or were they, poor children, led to take him -seriously? I am not thinking of the Knipps and Pierces, Betty Lanes -and half-dozen Nells—hardy perennials—but of his fresh young Mercer, -“decayed tradesman’s daughter,” or grave young Deb, carefully educated -at Bow, come also of a good Bristol family, with established aunts and -uncles, and all the rest of it—girls who certainly came new to the -kind of thing. Is it possible that Deb thrilled to a possible romance? -And how did she accept the discovery of what in fact it was? With the -one exception of Mercer, they are almost lay figures in the Diary, -mute and passive under his greedy hands. Some were baggages, no doubt, -or baggages-elect. They cannot all have been baggages. Deb, with her -gravity and measured speech, what was she? There’s no telling. I don’t -commend her for having seen him again, certainly not for sitting with -him in the coach. Then I remember that she was barely twenty years old. -She escaped, however, with some smirches, and one may hope that she -found a good husband. <i>Bocca baciata non perde ventura.</i></p> - -<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> In 1665, for instance, he laid out, at one blow, £55 on -his own, and £12 on her clothes.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p> - -<h2>ONE OF LAMB’S CREDITORS</h2> - -<p>There are writers upon the roll of whom nobody demands, “How begot, -how nourishéd”—not many, but one or two. Milton, for instance: does -anyone try to derive Milton? Or Cowper? Or Wordsworth? Others, nearly -all the others, abide our question, and no wonder. Is not all creative -effort the agony of recalling? Is not the brain a sponge? Is there -anything new except arrangement? Very well—then Defoe must have been a -borrower, though he seems stark new. We know that Charles Lamb picked -up words, phrases, cadences as a magnet steel-filings; but his latest -and best biographer now goes further and seeks to lay his mental habit -to somebody. He has devoted an essay to deriving his whimsicality, as -he calls it, for want of a more comprehensive term, which shall include -the freakish humour which is peculiarly Lamb’s, and the “unreluctant -egoism” which he thinks Lamb was the first of us to signalise. I could -quarrel with him there, “if I had the mind,” being very sure that Lamb -was not the first egoist in English Literature by a very long way. -If he was, then Mr. Lucas must devote another essay dealing with the -claims of Sterne, Colley Cibber, Sir Thomas Browne, Cowley, Pepys, -and Lord Herbert of Cherbury, to name no more. However, let that go. -Lamb’s cast of humour, a glancing, many-faceted thing, as wayward as -the wind, but like the wind, from whatever airt it blow, bringing upon -it the scent of what garden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> plots, hedgerows, beanfields and thymy -uplands it may have crossed—<i>that</i> Mr. Lucas has been driven, seeing -that he must needs buckle it to his egoism, to obtain from the mild -mock-epic of Cowper, which does seem to me a wide cast to have made, -with a small fry netted for his pains. When I came upon and had read -that essay, in Mr. Lucas’s <i>Giving and Receiving</i>, I gazed for a few -minutes thoughtfully into the fire, then got up and took down from the -shelf the second volume of the <i>Life</i> of Charles by the same hand. In a -useful Appendix III, upon “Charles Lamb’s Books,” I found what I wanted.</p> - -<p>Before I say what it was I wanted, and what found, I ought to -acknowledge that Mr. Lucas draws a proper distinction between the -Essays of Elia and the Letters of Charles Lamb, one, however, which he -might not have drawn if the Letters of Cowper had not been published -long after Lamb began to write letters. That being the fact, he has -to derive Lamb’s Letters from Cowper’s Poems, and Elia’s Essays from -Cowper’s Letters, rather a <i>chassez-croisez</i> piece of work. Except for -that necessity I think he might have gone as near as Mr. Saintsbury -does (in <i>A Letter Book</i>) to fining the difference between Essays and -Letters to one of “full dress” and “undress.” To me the difference is -much greater, is precisely, indeed, the difference between Charles -Lamb and Elia. Lamb’s alias was not (like Sterne’s) a stalking-horse; -it was a mask and domino. With the name he put on the thing signified, -or as much of it as he cared for, gave himself Lincolnshire ancestry, -shifted at ease his own relatives, his early<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> loves, the haunts of his -youth, and used them the more freely for his occasions. Yet he treated -his form with respect, neither let it run down, nor stepped out of -character. Elia sometimes borrowed from Lamb. The “Convict” letter to -Barron Field yielded its bitter-sweet to an essay, but was transformed -in the taking. Not to speak profanely, there was an Assumption of the -Lamb. In the Letters whim is master: Lamb is Will o’ the Wisp. From -essay to essay Elia may change like Harlequin, but each single essay -is ruled by one mood. Elia was evidently, if not avowedly, a debtor. -Whiffs of Sir Thomas Browne, of Addison, Burton, Shakespeare, Montaigne -(or Florio) float up from the page as you read. So they do in Lamb’s -Letters. But there is one very signally in Lamb, not so evident in -Elia, and it was that which I looked for in Mr. Lucas’s Appendix III, -where, sure enough, among Lamb’s books I found:</p> - -<p class="center">Howell (James), <i>Epistolae Ho-Elianae</i>, 1645-55.</p> - -<p>There, beyond doubt, is the source of more than a little of Lamb’s -whimsicality.</p> - -<p>James Howell, who was born in 1593, third of the many children of the -Reverend Thomas Howell, curate of Llangammarch and other places in -Brecknockshire, was a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, a good deal -of a scholar (able, as he boasted, to say his prayers in a different -language on every day of the week and in all of them on Sundays), -something of an adventurer, much of a traveller, and a man who never -lost a job for lack of asking for it. He was variously employed, -commercially in France and Italy, diplomatically in Spain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> (where he -was when Prince Charles would, and did, a-wooing go), in Germany also, -and the North of England: a traveller to better purpose than Coryat, -who slightly preceded him. He returned from each country he visited -set up in its language, and able to discourse reasonably upon its -politics, religion and economics. None the less, as I suppose, he was -idle, for he never made money or kept an employment. He was perpetually -scribbling, if you can call that an employment; the bibliographical -list of his “Works” contains something like seventy numbers. Many of -them are pamphlets, political, controversial, allegorical and what not. -If there had been any journals he would have been a journalist—for -that, out of due time, was he born. He wrote much on philology, and -pretty well; he wrote a deal of poetry too, and very badly. I shall -only inflict two specimens upon the reader. This is the opening of a -“small hymn” for Christmas Day:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Hail holy Tyde</div> -<div>Wherein a Bride,</div> -<div>A Virgin (which is more)</div> -<div>Brought forth a Son,</div> -<div>The lyke was done</div> -<div>Ne’er in this world before—;”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>and this is the beginning of an elegy upon the Earl of Dorset,</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“But is great Sackville dead? Do we him lack,</div> -<div>And will not all the Elements wear black?”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>and this the middle, </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Thus have I blubber’d out some tears and verse</div> -<div>On this renownéd heroe and his herse,”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>and this the end,</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“In the meantime this Epitaph shall shut,</div> -<div>And to my Elegy a period put—”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>on which the only commentary I feel able to make is, Oh!</p> - -<p>He wrote in all the languages he had. “I would have you know,” he -writes to his friend Young, “that I have, though never married, -divers children already, some French, some Latin, one Italian, and -many English; and though they be but poor brats of the brain, yet -are they legitimate, and Apollo himself vouchsafed to co-operate in -their production.” It may be doubted whether any of them survived -their father except his <i>Familiar Letters</i>, those Epistolae Ho-Elianae -which were published and republished in his lifetime, and many times -afterwards, have survived even to this day, been favourites with -Thackeray as well as Charles Lamb; and are in fact the first of our -private letters to each other to enter an admitted chapter of our -Literature. If we could hope to see ourselves abreast of France it -would be by means of Howell that we should get there. Exactly at the -time when Guy Patin was writing his vivacious, very modern letters -to his confrère in Lyons, here was our man, quite as brisk and even -more modern in tone. Unfortunately for us, France had her Balzac, -well under way, and writing in a prose as easy and reasonable as -Renan’s. But Howell is strikingly modern compared, say, with Donne or -Milton. He reports,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> for example, that the Prince Palatine has got -together “a jolly considerable army”; and to a poetical friend he avows -his ambition (on what pretence we have seen) to become a “Lord of -Parnassus,” and to be the choice of “those nice girls,” the Muses! It -has been said by more than one critic, that not all Howell’s bullets -found, or were intended to find, their billets, that in fact letters -addressed to Sir K. D., to the Lord Sa., and more explicitly to the -Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Clare and so on, were really addressed -to the air, or the public. It may be so. Others were certainly real -enough. There is little doubt, though, that he wrote with an eye -to publication. Some of the longest of them are less letters than -treatises, and good as they are of their kind, contain none of the -additaments which make a letter a much better thing than a library of -treatises. By far the greater part are real letters, and excellent -letters too. Howell was something of a pedant, something perhaps of -a coxcomb. Thackeray called him a prig. Certainly, to address a long -letter containing many anecdotes <i>ad hoc</i> and a “Gradual Hymn tending -to the honour of the holy name of God” to a ship’s captain upon his -“frailty” of “swearing in all his discourses deep and far-fetched -oaths,” is the act of prig or coxcomb—but I think Howell was the -latter. A prig believes that he can do you good, and the coxcomb -desires to air his talents. That was Howell’s simple design, and so I -am sure the captain took it. But I should like to know how Ben Jonson, -of whose tribe at the Devil Tavern Howell professed himself, took a -similar reproof.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> The burly poet had hurt the feelings of Inigo Jones -by putting him in a play as Vitruvius Hoop: whereupon Howell addressed -his “Father Ben” as follows:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“You know,</p> - -<p>Anser, apis, vitulus, populos et regna gubernant ... but of -the three the pen is the most predominant. I know you have a -commanding one, but you must not let it tyrannise in that manner, -as you have done lately. Some give it out that there was a hair -in it, or that your ink was too thick with gall, else it would -not have so bespattered and shaken the reputation of a royal -architect.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Of his whimsicality I find examples enough to drown in. There is his -pleasant tale to a cousin just off to the Dutch wars, of the soldier -who had been there and returned, and being asked what exploits he had -done, answered, That he had cut off a Spaniard’s legs. “Reply being -made that that was no great matter, it had been something if he had cut -off his head; O, said he, you must consider his head was off before.” -And the other, truly excellent, of that Earl of Kildare who, arraigned -before the Lord-Deputy for having set fire to, and burned down, the -Church of Cashel, excused himself by saying that he would never have -done such a thing had he not understood that the Bishop was inside. -But here is from a letter a piece so exactly in Lamb’s vein when he is -turning a whimsical notion about and about, and at each turn enhancing -it, that I feel sure Howell <i>aut diabolus</i> must have taught it him: </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p> - -<p>First, the theme—“I was according to your desire to visit the late -new-married couple more than once, and to tell you true, I never -saw such a disparity between two that were made one flesh in all my -life; he handsome outwardly, but of odd conditions; she excellently -qualified, but hard-favoured; so that the one may be compared to a -cloth of tissue doublet cut upon coarse canvas, the other to a buckram -petticoat lined with satin.”</p> - -<p>Then, like Lamb, he begins to hang up his conceits:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“I think <i>Clotho</i> had her fingers smutted in snuffing the candle -when she began to spin the thread of her life.... A blind man is -fittest to hear her sing; one would take delight to see her dance -if masked, and it would please you to discourse with her in the -dark, for then she is best company. When you marry, I wish you -such an inside of a wife, but from such an outward phisnomy the -Lord deliver you.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>Phisnomy, or visnomy, is a word which Lamb has made his own.</p> - -<p>How often has Lamb held this vein too. “The French are a free and -debonair, accostable people, both men and women.... Whereas the old -rule was that there could be no true friendship without comessation of -a bushel of salt, one may have enough there before he eat a spoonful -with them. I like that Friendship which by soft gentle passes steals -upon the affection and grows mellow with time by reciprocal offices and -trials of love.” And here is an example of pictorial quality which I -must not leave out. In the stress of Civil War<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> he writes to a friend -in Amsterdam, “While you adorn your churches, we destroy them here. -Among others, poor Paul’s looks like a great skeleton, so pitifully -handled that you may tell her ribs through her skin. Her body looks -like the hulk of some huge Portugal Carake that having crossed the line -twelve times and made three voyages to the East Indies, lies rotting -upon the Strand.... You know that once a stable was made a temple, but -now a temple is become a stable.”</p> - -<p>Lamb, we all know, had a love of tags and proverbs, and could string -them with anyone. Not more surely than Howell could, who has a long -letter of advice to a friend, upon marriage, consisting entirely of -them. As thus:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Sir, although I am none of those that love to have an oar in -everyone’s boat, or such a busybody as deserves to be hit in the -teeth, yet you and I having eaten a peck of salt together, and -having a hint that you are upon a business that will make or mar -you, for a man’s best fortune or his worst’s a wife, I would wish -you to look before you leap, and make more than two words to a -bargain.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>He keeps it up with immense zest for two full sheets, and ends all with -“yours to the altar.” If Lamb knew that, he would never have forgotten -it—and I believe he never did.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CROCUS AND PRIMROSE</h2> - -<p>This year, it deserves to be recorded, the first crocus and the first -primrose flowered together on January 18th. I know not when this -article will appear; it may well be that Spring will have set in -with its usual severity, in other words, that in mid-March we may be -snowbound, and in mid-winter, as is now customary, before my record -can be read. That is as may be, but my duty is clear. For the moment, -and until we have become used to the new procession of Seasons, a -first crocus and first primrose on the 18th of January constitute an -event in South Wilts, if they do not in the rest of England. And lest -any caviller should arise, as assuredly he will, and tell me that my -primrose was the last, not the first, I may as well nip him in the -bud of his endeavour by declaring that leaf and flower are alike new -growth. It is true that many primulas have a second flowering—my -<i>japonicas</i> always do. But I do not observe that they make new leaf -twice a year. Here, the primrose, which is comparatively rare even -in the woods, and unknown in the hedges, disappears altogether, like -the cowslip, until new growth begins. The cowslip is our only native -primula.</p> - -<p>Such things—I don’t mean the early flowering, but the flowering of -such things at all—are events in the garden, red-letter days in its -year. The flowers themselves, to some one of them, to some another, -are vocal; for there is a real language of flowers, very different -from that made out of them by the love-sick. It has no syntax, and -is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> incommunicable by speech. Heard melodies are sweet, but those -unheard ...! So with flower-language. The first wild crocus talks to -me immediately of Greece, where on the top of rugged Chelmos I saw it -in perfection burning its way into the snow. I had climbed up there -to see Homer’s Στυγὁς ὑδατος ἁιπἁ ῥἑεθρα, a sight, I am -bound to say, not at all remarkable. Charon could have hopped over -it. It was the crocuses that I remarked: the orange, called, I think, -<i>bulbo-codium</i>, and a white striped with brown, which I have always -known as the Scotch crocus, but which in botany is named <i>biflorus</i>. -It is no use my saying that that is the way to grow them. It is -Nature’s way, but cannot be ours, unless they will seed themselves, as -some will. So far as I know, those two will not. They will increase -otherwise; but by seeding flowers alone will you get the happy -accidents which make a natural wild garden. They tell me, by the by, -that you can hardly now obtain that most beautiful of all crocus, the -blue <i>Imperati</i>, an autumn flower. I don’t know whether I am singularly -favoured—I hope not; but at any rate, I can obtain, within reason, -as much <i>Imperati</i>—not as I want, for that could never be, but as -is good for me. I put some few dozen into a rock-garden which I then -had, some fifteen years ago, and it has increased a hundredfold. So -have some other species of crocus. <i>Imperati</i> grows very large and, -unfortunately, very lax. Heavy rain in September will beat it down to a -purple jelly. But when fair weather lasts out that loveliest month of -the year crocus <i>Imperati</i> is a theme for poets. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p> - -<p>As for the nurseryman’s crocus, colour is its real point; and it should -be grown in masses for that alone; in masses where it can get the sun, -and the bees can get <i>it</i>. Unfortunately it has many enemies. In London -it lures the sparrows into Bacchic orgies; obscenely they tear it petal -from petal. In the country field-mice seek it in the bud and eat the -embryo flower. I have tried everything, Stockholm tar and sand mixed in -layers in the barrow; read lead and paraffin; strawberry netting, soot -and such like. I owe my best remedy to the discovery I have made that, -much as mice like crocuses, they like toasted cheese yet more. One or -two traps with that for a bait will save vast numbers of crocuses, -for it is a mistake to suppose that many mice are involved. A pack of -field-mice is a terrible thought, but only a nightmare happily. One -mouse, with the whole night before him, will ruin a border.</p> - -<p>The primrose is vocal of my childhood and the Kentish woodlands. -There they used to grow marvellously, though now I daresay that Lord -Beaconsfield and his League have made an end of them. Wherever the axe -had been there were they, in sheets, in a galaxy, even to the scent -of milk in the spicy air. I remember now, whenever I see my first -primrose of the year, the almost fainting rapture with which we used -to see, smell, taste, and handle them again—on some still warm April -day—after the waiting through the long winter. For winters really were -long, and wintry, then—or I think so. One used to wake in the morning -and find the water-bottle frozen solid, the sponge like a brick. One -used to learn to skate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> (for which now we go to Switzerland and catch -influenza in a super-heated hotel), make snowmen, blow on one’s fingers -to fasten one’s shirt-collar. But I have lived in the West of England -this twenty years, and can only remember one snowy Christmas. Ah, and -how many warm Aprils? Perhaps as many.</p> - -<p>But the primrose is not common here. You will find it over the hills -in the greensand, and again just over the Dorset border, in Cranborne -Chace: not in this valley. I make it grow, importing it, because I -can’t do without it; and so do the villagers, for the same reason. But -they like it coloured, and have a rooted belief that if you plant a -primrose upside down it will come up with red flowers. I tell them that -it is Cruelty to Primroses. They point me out red-flowering roots which -have been obtained in this way; and I end the inconsequent argument by -saying, Well, anyhow, I don’t want it—village logic.</p> - -<p>As I said just now, wild gardening, by which I mean the garden use of -wild flowers, is to be confessed a failure unless you can induce the -flowers to seed themselves. Once you can do that, you may talk about -your wild garden. Once I saw a corner of a man’s garden, where there -was a waterfall, and <i>ramondia</i> growing as it does in the Pyrenees. -That was a memorable sight. I have had my own moderate successes of -the sort. Anemone <i>blanda</i> has become as common as groundsel; but -<i>apennina</i> refuses to seed. The Widow iris, <i>tuberosa</i>, which started -in life in a dry ditch under Vesuvius, and came to South Wilts in a -sponge bag, is another weed. I left a garden with more of that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> growing -in it than anybody can want. Fritillary is not a native, but seeds -freely in my water meadow; colchicum, another alien, increases like -coltsfoot. Both the cyclamens, the Neapolitan and the Greek, have large -families, which can never be too large—and so on. Such are some of my -little triumphs, of which I dare not boast lest I be rebuked as once I -was by a high lady in garden society. It was not kind of her, though -no doubt she did it for my good. It was a time when I was growing -cushion irises, with enormous pains and exiguous results. However, one -fine Spring I did induce <i>Iris iberica</i> to utter its extraordinary -flowers—six of it, to be exact. Of that feat, meeting her at a party, -I vaunted to the high lady. I can still see the glimmering of her -eyelids, hear her dry voice commenting, “<i>I</i> had four hundred.” It -may have been good for me, but was it good for her? If I had known -then, as I knew afterwards, that she had flowered her four hundred at -Aix-les-Bains, I think I might have rebuked her—so far as high ladies -can be rebuked—by telling her that she could have had four thousand on -such terms. But I knew nothing of it. There she had me.</p> - -<p>I would not now give twopence for <i>Iris iberica</i> unless it would -increase in my plot. I have come to make that the staple of good -gardening, and would set no bounds to feats of the kind. Certainly, -I am not with the purists who say—or said—that it is inartistic to -grow foreign things in wild spaces. The Reverend William Mason, in -the eighteenth century, who turned Capability Brown into poetry, was -plainly of that opinion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> It may be inartistic, but it is very jolly. I -am experimenting just now with some of the plants and shrubs from Tibet -which poor Farrer gave us before he died. I find that most of them -grow like Jack’s beanstalk, but care very little about flowering. I -have a briar-rose, a grey-leafed, bushy, spiky thing rather like <i>Rosa -Willmottia</i>, which gives me canes tree-high, but so far no flowers. -Farrer’s behymned <i>Viburnun fragrans</i> grows apace: its fragrance -has yet to be tested. He said that it was like heliotrope, and I -hope that it may prove so. Then I have a Spiraea from Tibet, which -came to me from Wisley in a thumb-pot, marked “Rosa-species,” but is -unmitigated Spiraea. You may practically see the thing grow if, like -it, you have nothing else to do. It is now as big as a bamboo-clump, -and impervious to frost. So far as it is concerned, this might be the -valley of Avilion. Once only has the vast affair considered flowering. -Two years ago buds showed themselves at the end of August and, with a -leisureliness for which the stock had not prepared me, were ready to -expand by the middle of October. They then looked as much like bunches -of bananas as anything else, and if all had gone well, would no doubt -have been the talk of the county. But, as you might suppose, by the -time they were ready,</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Swift summer into the autumn flowed,</div> -<div>And frost in the mist of the morning rode;”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>and the Spiraea, deeply offended, did nothing at all except slowly rot, -and, to pursue <i>The Sensitive Plant</i>, </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Fill the place with a monstrous undergrowth,”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>as was only to be expected. Since that check to its ardour, it has -devoted itself to root-action and the results; and all I can do is to -admire its rapidly maturing timber, and consider whether it or the -house should be removed.</p> - -<p>Lucky accidents, or happy experiments, will acclimatise difficult -things sometimes. I don’t know how often or in how many places I -had tried to make the Alpine gentian, <i>verna</i>, feel at home, when I -happened to meet a soldier somewhere who lived in Ireland. He told me -of his own efforts with it in artfully prepared moraines and joy-heaps -of the kind. It lived, and it flowered, as it has lived and flowered, -and also died, here—but it did not spread. It existed, not throve. -Then, perhaps by inspiration, he put some of it into a gravel path, and -left it there. Or perhaps it drifted there by itself, as such things -will—I don’t remember how it was. There, at any rate, it increased and -multiplied and replenished the earth, growing indeed as you may see -it in Swiss pastures in early Spring, deep blue stars afloat in the -streaming waters—one of earth’s loveliest sights. Ah, what an “event” -for a gardener to nail that miracle every year as it comes round. I -would wait for that as I do for the cuckoo. But first I must wait for a -gravel path.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> - -<h2>DAFFODILS</h2> - -<p>I don’t suppose that any flower in England, except the rose, has been -more bepraised, as somebodys aid, by poets who were not gardeners, and -gardeners who were not poets; and it is certainly difficult in dealing -with it to leave Wordsworth out. I shan’t be able to do it, because -I shall want him, but I shall do my best to reach the end of this -article without quoting from <i>A Winter’s Tale</i>. It is satisfactory, -at least, to be certified, as I am from Parkinson, that all of our -poets, from Shakespeare to Mr. Masefield, have been exercised about -the same plant. Parkinson says that we had two English daffodils, one -which he calls Peerless Primrose, and another which can be identified -as the double daffodil, and which, he says, Gerard found in an old -woman’s cottage garden—just where we find it now. Neither Parkinson -nor, I suspect, any of the poets had a notion that, strictly speaking, -the daffodil was the Asphodel; but how it came about that the word -changed its designation I am not able to say. Branching asphodel grows -wild in Ireland—not, I believe, in England—and classical poetry is, -of course, full of it, though it puts the stiff and stately thing to -strange uses. Poets who, as it was freely declared, reclined upon beds -of asphodel and moly had not found out the best sites in the Elysian -Fields. No flower, however, more eloquently reports the South. I never -see mine, whose seed I collected on the Acropolis at Athens, but I -remember the Pont du Gard,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> and the sharp smell of the box-bushes, or -Greece, where it clouds the slopes of Hymettus with pink, and burns -brown against the sky as you labour up the winding path to Acrocorinth. -It will do in England, and do well, if you can secure it sun and drouth.</p> - -<p>Our own name for the wild daffodil is Lent Lily, a beautiful and -sufficient one, and, to judge by the poets again, the plant has been -well distributed. Shakespeare saw it in Warwickshire, and Herrick in -Devon; Clare in Northamptonshire, and Wordsworth in the Lakes. Mr. -Housman knows it in Salop, and Mr. Masefield in Worcestershire. I -know that it is in Sussex and Cornwall, and on the edges of the New -Forest. It may be in North Wilts, almost certainly is in the upper -Thames Valley; but it is not here, to the best of my belief. I imagine -that it does not care for chalk, for though I make it do, it does not -thrive, that is, spread itself. Rather, it degenerates, as it used in -Kent, where I lived as a boy, and in two or three years turned itself -into the old “greenery-yallery” mophead which, whatever Parkinson may -say, is not a true variety at all but a bad kind of recidivist. Now, -my expert friend, Mr. George Engleheart, who lives across the hills, -but on loam, grows daffodils which are a wonder of the realm; but the -point is that his discards, which he throws into ditches or stuffs into -holes to take their chance, never degenerate into doubles. His ground -is a soapy yellow loam, on which you can grow any mortal thing; and a -visit to his daffodil fields, as it were just now, is an experience -which I have had and promise myself again. All the same,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> honesty -moves me to say—<i>miror magis!</i> He, of course, is a scientist who has -grown grey in the pursuit, and I am a sciolist. The beautiful things -whose minute differences of hue and measurement are of such moment to -him; the nicety of the changes which you can ring upon perianth and -calyx—such modulations do not, in my judgment, give the thrill or -sudden glory which flowers growing freely and in masses give me: such -a thrill as you get from Poet’s Narcissus in a Swiss pasture, or such -as Wordsworth’s sister, and then Wordsworth, had from the wind-caught -drift of daffodils in Gowbarrow Park; or such as I had in an orchard in -North Cornwall, where, as it seemed, under a canopy of snow and rose -some god at a picnic had spilled curds and whey all over the sward. The -flowers were so thick together as to be distinguishable only as colour: -they streamed in long rivers of yellow and white down the hill. My -description is less poetical than literal. The things looked eatable, -they were so rich.</p> - -<p>If you can get such a thrill on your own ground it is by the grace -of God. Mr. Engleheart does not grow bulbs for the thrills of the -unscientific, though no doubt he has some of his own. But there is -one glory of the unskilled and another of the skilled—indeed, the -latter has two, for as well as the pure delight of having “pulled -off” a delicate bit of cross-breeding, there is added the hope of -gain. Your new daffodil should be a gold-mine, and rightly so, because -it may represent the work, the thought, and the anxieties of seven -years or even more. I heard of a grower<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> once who, at the season of -distribution, had his bulbs out upon his studio table, where they were -being sorted, priced and bestowed. In one heap he had certain triumphs -of science which were worth, I was told, £90 the bulb. From that point -of bliss you could run down through the pounds to the shillings and -bring up finally upon the articles which went out at ten shillings a -hundred, or even less. There then they lay out, “so many and so many -and such glee.” And then, O then—“a whirl blast,” as Wordsworth says, -“from behind the hill” swept in at the open door, lifted all the sheets -of paper and their freight together, and scattered the priced bulbs -higgledy-piggledy on the floor. There was tragic work! Bang went all -your ninety pounders; for a bulb in the hand may be worth a thousand on -the floor.</p> - -<p>One of those unaccountable facts in entomology which are always -cropping up in gardening has much exercised my learned friend. Although -he has never imported a bulb, nevertheless into his bulb-farm there has -imported itself the daffodil parasite—out of the blue, or the black. -He showed it me one day, a winged beast somewhere in appearance between -a wasp and a hoverfly. I saw bars upon its body, and short wings which -looked as if they were made of talc. This creature has a <i>lues</i> for -laying its eggs in the daffodil bulb, and to do so pierces it through -and through. Last of all the bulb dies also. There seems to be no -remedy but pursuit, capture and death. Just so have the figs at Tarring -called up the <i>beccafico</i> from Italy. Can these things be, without our -special wonder? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> - -<p>To grow and bring to flower every daffodil you put in the ground is -not what I call gardening. Reasonable treatment will ensure it, for -the flower is in the bulb before you plant it. As well might you buy -from the florist things in full bud, plunge them into your plots, and -call <i>that</i> gardening. Yet it is the gardening of the London parks, -and of certain grandees, who ought to know better. If you are graced -by nature or art to make daffodils feel themselves at home, you are -in the good way. Wisley is so graced; not, I think, Kew. At Wisley -they have acclimatised those two charming narcissi, <i>bulbocodium</i> and -<i>cyclamineus</i>, which really carpet the ground. When I was last there -they were all over the paths, in the ditches, and in the grass. I -daresay they required drastic treatment, for Wisley, after all, was -made for man, and not for daffodils. Yet if Wisley were my garden, I -know that I should be so flattered by the confidence of those pretty -Iberians that I should let them do exactly as they pleased. If a plant -chose to make itself a weed, I would as readily allow it as I would -a weed which chose to make itself a plant—within reason. I add that -qualification, that tyrant’s plea, because I have just remembered what -occurred when I was once rash enough to introduce <i>Mulgedium alpinum</i> -from Switzerland. There is no shaking off that insatiable succubus. I -was reconciled to giving up a garden on its account, and full of hope -that I should never see it again. But I brought with me a peony and -some phloxes, and <i>Mulgedium</i> was coiled about their vitals like a -tapeworm. It is with me to this hour. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p> - -<p>The prettiest thing that a narcissus ever did was done to an old lady -I used to know who lived in a cottage in Sussex. Somebody had given -her half-a-dozen Jonquil bulbs, which she planted and left alone. They -took kindly to her and her cottage garden, and seeded all over it. When -I came to know her, the little patch of ground, the dividing ditch, -the bank beyond it, and some of the arable beyond that were golden -with jonquils; and on days of sun-warmed wind you could smell them -from afar. As, with trifling exceptions, it is the sweetest and most -carrying scent in the garden, that is not surprising. Hawthorn is such -another. Somewhere in Hakluyt’s <i>Voyages</i> is an account of the return -of an embassy from the Court of Boris Godounov. The sailors knew that -they were near Sussex before they could see the white cliffs by the -smell of the may wafted over sea. What a welcome home!</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p> - -<h2>WINDFLOWERS</h2> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Anemones, which droop their eyes</div> -<div>Earthward before they dare arise</div> -<div>To flush the border....”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>says the poet, and says truly, for I believe there is no exception to -his general statement. The point is really one in the argument between -the gardeners and the botanists, as to whether you are to reckon -hepaticas as anemones. I shall come to that presently, and here will -only point out that hepaticas do <i>not</i> droop their eyes, or hang their -heads, as I prefer to say. Let that be remembered when the scientist -tries, as he is so fond of doing, to browbeat the mild Arcadian. Except -for that remark I don’t call to mind that the poets have sung about the -windflowers. None of them has likened his young woman to a windflower. -Meleager, indeed, when he is paying a compliment to his Zenophile, -pointedly leaves it out.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Now bloom white violets, now the daffodils</div> -<div>That love the rain, now lilies of the hills,”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>he begins; and what lilies those could have been, unless they were -lilies of the valley (which sounds absurd), I don’t know. But how could -he talk about spring flowers in his country and leave anemones out? It -is true, he was a Syrian; but politics don’t interest anemones. No one -is to tell me that Asia Minor is without <i>Anemone fulgens</i>. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> - -<p>Fulgens is the typical Greek anemone, anyhow, as Coronaria always -seems to me specifically Italian. It is a wonder of the woodlands—as -of those between Olympia and Megalopolis, or of the yet denser brakes -about Tatoi, where the late Constantine used to retire and meditate -statecraft. Blanda, the starry purple flower of eighteen points, is -commoner in the open. Nothing more beautiful than the flush of these -things under the light green veil of the early year can be imagined. -The gardener in England who can compass anything like it is in a good -way. Luckily it is easy, for these are kindly plants, seed freely, -flower in their first year, and are not so affected by climate as to -change their habits to suit our calendar. Do not grow them in woods -if you want them early. Our woods, <i>in quella parte del giovinetto -anno</i>, are both cold and wet. Put them in the open, in light soil -sloping to the south, and you will have as many as you want. One thing -I have noticed about them is that in England fulgens is constant to -its colour, whereas in Greece there are albinos, pure white and very -beautiful, with black stamens. The pairing of those with the staple has -produced a pink fulgens of great attractions. I have imported it, but -it has not spread, and the seed of it comes up scarlet. Blanda has no -sports, and is so proliferous that if it is much grown in soils that -suit it very probably it will become a naturalised British subject. -Here it is a weed.</p> - -<p>Our own pair of windflowers are not nearly so easy to deal with as -those two Aegean tourists. Nemorosa will only grow happily in woods, -and even there does not readily transplant. Pulsatilla<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> is subject to -winter rot, as anything which lies out at nights in a fur coat must -expect to be; and it reacts immediately and adversely to a rich soil. -Now nemorosa grows in the fields in Germany, even in water meadows; -pulsatilla in Switzerland will stand any amount of snow. But the snow -in Switzerland is as dry as salt, and no flower objects to a flood when -it is beginning to grow. The enemy in England is wet at the slack time. -The best way to treat pulsatilla is to grow it on a steep slope, for -that is how it grows itself.</p> - -<p>Talking of nemorosa, there is a harebell blue variety of it which I -have seen, but never had, and of course the yellow ranunculoides, to be -met with in Switzerland, though it is not a widespread plant. I found a -broad patch of it under some trees on the edge of Lake Lugano: a clear -buttercup yellow, not a dirty white. I don’t call it an exciting plant, -all the same, and am perfectly happy without it, and to know it the -only truly yellow anemone that exists.</p> - -<p>No offence, I hope, to the great sulphur anemone of the Alps, a noble -windflower indeed. I know few things more exhilarating than to round -a bluff and find a host of it in stately dance. And I know few things -less so than to try to dig it up. I have devoted some hours to the -pursuit, notably after a night spent at Simplon Dorf. I rose early and -toiled till breakfast. I had an inefficient trowel, bought in Florence, -and an alpenstock, and with them excavated some two feet of Simplon. At -that depth the root of the sulphur anemone was of the thickness of a -reasonable rattlesnake, and ran like the <i>coda</i> of a sonata, strongly, -and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> apparently for ever. Something had to give, and it was the -anemone. I coiled up what I had, brought it back with me in a knapsack, -and made a home for it among my poor rocks. Nothing to speak of -happened for two years, except that it let me know that it lived. Then -came a Spring and a miracle. The sulphur anemone burgeoned: that is the -only word for what it did. Since then it has never failed, though more -than once the rocks have been rent asunder. In what goes on underground -this anemone is a tree.</p> - -<p>I do not forget—am not likely to forget—Coronaria, which in its (I -must own) somewhat sophisticated form of <i>Anemone de Caen</i> is the glory -of my blood and state in the little hanging garden I now possess. I -own, it seems, the exact spot it likes. It is thoroughly at home, and -proves it by flowering practically all the year round. In the dog-days, -I don’t say. But who cares what happens in August? Except for that -waste month—the only one in the almanac with nothing distinctive to -report—I believe I have hardly failed of a handful of coronaria. Since -Christmas I have not failed of a bowlful, and at this time of writing -it is out in a horde. Wonderful things they are: nine inches high, four -inches across, with a palette ranging from white through the pinks to -red and crimson, through the lilacs to violet and the purple of night. -There are few better garden flowers. Untidy? Yes, they need care. Too -free with their seed? They cannot be for me. I am open to the flattery -of a flower’s confidence as (still) to that of a woman’s. Another thing -to its credit is its attraction for bees, with the range of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> tint and -tinge which that involves. Your whites will be flushed with auroral -rose, or clouded with violet; you will have flecks and splashes of -sudden colour, the basal ring of white, whence comes its cognomen, -annulata, sometimes invaded. Even the black centre with its stamens is -not constant: I have one with a pale green base and stamens of yellow. -With these fine things fulgens goes usefully and happily. Coronaria -has no such vermilion. A bank of the two together, growing in the sun, -can be seen half a mile away, and won’t look like scarlet geranium if -there is a judicious admixture. To qualify that dreadful sophistication -called “St. Brigid” I shall serve myself of W. S. Gilbert’s useful -locution. “Nobody,” he said, “thinks more highly of So-and-so than I -do; and <i>I</i> think he’s a little beast.”</p> - -<p>Apennina, I think, wants a mountain. I should like to try it in some -favoured ghyll in Cumberland, and some day I will. I have it on a -lawn, and have had it for many years. There is no less, but no more, -than there ever was. It does not seed. The two colours, china-blue and -white, are delicious in partnership, though the blue is not so good as -that of blanda, and the white not quite so white as nemorosa’s.</p> - -<p>And what am I to say of hepaticas, and how <i>écraser</i> the botanists? Who -am I to deny them with my reason—entirely satisfactory to myself—that -the <i>feeling</i> of the two flowers is distinct and separable? What does -an anemone imply? A spring woodland on a mountain slope. What an -hepatica? A wet cleft in a rock, sodden last year’s leaves, ragged -moss, pockmarked crust of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> snow—and out of them a pale star raying -gold from blue. The anemone is gregarious, the hepatica solitary; the -anemone is a spring flower, the hepatica a winter flower. And lastly, -as a gardener, I say, the anemone can be moved, and is often much the -better of it; the hepatica should not be, and is always the worse. If -you plant an hepatica root and leave it alone for fifty years, you will -have something worth waiting for—a ring of it as big as a cartwheel. I -have not done it—but it has been done for me.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p> - -<h2>TULIPS</h2> - -<p>One day short of St. Valentine’s (when Nature still takes the liberties -which men used to allow themselves) I am able to announce tulips in -bud in the open border, which is as much of a record as my crocuses -were on the 18th of January. I don’t speak of a sheltered or fruitful -valley by any means. What they may be doing with flowers at Wilton and -Wilsford has no more relation to me than their goings-on at Torquay or -Grange-over-Sands. Up this way, for reasons which it would be tedious -to report, the spring comes slowly—as a rule. This year is like no -other that I can remember, as no doubt the reckoning will be.</p> - -<p>I know what tulip it is. There is only one which would be so heedlessly -daring. It is that noble wild Tuscan flower which the people of the -Mugello and thereabouts call <i>Occhio del Sole</i>, which has a sage -green leaf, a long flower-stalk of maroon, and atop of that a great -chalice of geranium red with yellow base and a black blotch in the -midst. Looking into the depths from above there is the appearance of -a lurid eye. But its real name is <i>Praecox</i>, and Parkinson says that -it flowers in January. I don’t believe him. I have had it for years, -and never saw it before mid-March. Parkinson is vague about tulips, -classing them mostly by colour and inordinate names of his own. You -may have the Crimson Prince, or Bracklar; or the Brancion Prince; or -a Duke, “that is more or less faire deep red, with greater or lesser -yellow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> edges, and a great yellow bottome.” Then there is a Testament -Brancion, or a Brancion Duke; and lastly The King’s Flower, “that is, a -crimson or bloud red, streamed with a gold yellow”—which ought to look -indifferent well at Buckingham Palace. <i>Praecox</i> used to grow freely in -the hill country above Fiesole, always on cultivated ground; and I have -found lots of it in the <i>poderi</i> of Settignano, not so much as of the -ordinary blood red, a smaller and meaner flower altogether; but enough -to make a walk under the olives in very early Spring an enchantment. -Ages ago Mrs. Ross sent me a hamper of them, which has lasted me ever -since; for this tulip increases freely, and is invaluable as the first -of its family.</p> - -<p>The next to appear will be the little Persian <i>violacea</i>, with its -crinkled wavy leaves flatlings, and the pointed bud, which gives a -rose-coloured flower when open, slightly retroflexed, enough so, at -least, to make it plain that the familiar ornament of Persian and -Rhodian tiles was adapted from it. I always thought its name was -<i>persica</i>; but Weathers, I see, makes that a bronze flower, and names -<i>violacea</i> as the earliest of all the Persians, which mine certainly -is. So that, as they say, is that. I find it happiest among rocks, as -all bulbs, except lilies, are if they can get there. How else secure -the baking in summer which is so necessary? A pretty thing it is, -in short, charming to discover for yourself in a corner of a man’s -rock-garden, all the more so as you will make your discovery at a -season when you least expect tulips; but there is nothing of a “sudden -glory” to be had from it. Nobody could be knocked off his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> æsthetic -perch by a Persian tulip, still less off his moral perch. I have known -that done by one of the Caucasian tulips—it led to swift and stealthy -work with a penknife at Kew. But that was a long time ago, and the -delinquent can never do it again, for a final reason.</p> - -<p>The loveliest tulip in the world—I speak only of natural flowers, -not of nurserymen’s monsters—is, in my opinion, the little <i>Bandiera -di Toscana</i>, the sword-leaved, sanguine-edged thing with the narrow -bud of red and white, which opens in the sun to be a milky star. It -is the loveliest, alike in colour and in habit, but one of the most -fastidious. Short of lifting it, which the true gardener disdains -to do, there is no certainty that it will spring up again when the -time comes round. Your best chance is on rocks, I daresay; and I -have succeeded with it in a border under a south wall with a pent of -thatch over. It does not like frost, and abominates rain at the wrong -time of year. It clings, in fact, to its Mediterranean habits, which -some things contentedly lose—Iris <i>stylosa</i>, for instance, which -flowers here better in November than it does in April. I have my -<i>clusianas</i>—for that is their proper name—now in a terraced border, -full south, under clumps of mossy saxifrage, and they do as well as -can be expected. They return with the swallows, and open wide to the -sun; but I am not going to pretend that they ramp. If I could afford -it I would put them in a place where they could take their chance of -the spade; for there is this to be said of all the Florentine tulips -that, although they are not designedly lifted, they grow in a country -where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> every square yard of ground is cultivated, and consequently are -turned over by the plough of the spade every year—no doubt to their -vast benefit. But you must not mind how many of them you slice, or bury -upside down, or leave above ground at that work—and I <i>do</i> mind.</p> - -<p>The truly marvellous <i>Greigi</i> is just showing itself: no increase -there, I am sorry to say. Weathers says that it “reproduces itself -freely.” Not here, O Apollo. I cannot make any Caucasian tulips have -families; they are resolute Malthusians; nevertheless, I shall have -my few bubbles of scarlet as before, and before they have done with -me they will be as large as claret-glasses, on short stems, which are -the best kind of claret-glasses. I could do with a hundred of them, -but I don’t know what to give them that I have not given. They grow on -limestone at home, and I give them limestone. They are never disturbed -in the Caucasus, and I never disturb them. It is my distance from the -equator that beats me. So I must be content with my three or four—only -I shan’t boast of them to ladies from Aix-les-Bains. A tulip, by the -way, which I covet, but have not so far been able to obtain, is called, -I <i>think</i>, <i>saxatilis</i>. It has rather a sprawly growth, but several -flowers on the stalk, and is sweetly scented. In colour it is faint and -indeterminate; flushes of mauve, white and yellow. Several nurserymen -offer me bulbs by that name, some have induced me to buy them; but -it has never been the right thing. I may be wrong, or they may be: I -must ask an expert. It may be priceless, in which case I shan’t have -it. I bought some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> Peruvian <i>pseudo-crocus</i> once, of a marvellous blue -indeed—not a gentian, but a kingfisher blue—at seven and sixpence -per bulb, and the mice, mistaking it for a real crocus, ate them all. -“These are my crosses, Mr. Wesley.” But, if we are talking about money, -Mrs. Ross <i>gave</i> me a tulip once which was worth, so she told me, -twenty pounds. Certainly it was very handsome, a tall Darwin of bronze -feathered with gold: called <i>Buonarroti</i>. It was prolific, and in no -short time filled the border in which it grew. If its sons had been -worthy of their sire there might have been hundreds of pounds’ worth -of them, all growing naked in the open air. But I observed that they -grew paler year by year; and when I returned to the garden after a -five years’ absence I could not believe that I had ever planted such a -bilious tulip. My grand old <i>Occhi del Sole</i>, on the other hand, were -as vivid as ever.</p> - -<p>I have never possessed the so-called native English tulip, whose -botanical name is <i>silvestris</i>; but I have seen it. I know where it -grows, and blows, and could take you to the place—only I shall not. -My father found it by chance, and brought a flower of it home in high -feather. He found it, truly enough, in a wood, so its name describes -its habits. Now, I inquire, is it an indigenous plant? It is what I -doubt. If it is, it must have existed from all time; the Iberians must -have grown it on their lenches, or found it lower down, in the jungle. -Yet it is unknown to the poets; and the word “tulip,” remark, is a -Turkish word disguised. Parkinson knows nothing of <i>Tulipa silvestris</i>. -Far more probably it came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> from the South, in the maw of some straying -bird—perhaps a hoopoo, or the hold of an adventuring ship. That was -how we became possessed of the wild peony which is, or was, to be -found on an island in the Severn Sea. Who is to say how that happened? -Perhaps Spanish sailors had a peony growing in the after-cabin to Our -Lady of Seven Dolours, and were shipwrecked with her and it on the -strand of Lundy. How did two ilexes come to be growing out of the -Guinigi tower at Lucca? How did a fig-tree find itself in the middle -arch of the bridge at Cordova? There are more ways of accounting for -a wild tulip in Kent than by imagining that God Almighty bade it grow -there.</p> - -<p>I have left myself no room in which to treat of nurserymen’s tulips, -and the less the pity in that they can talk of them so eloquently -themselves. There is a Dutch grower who simply wallows in adjectives -about them every year. He photographs his children, smiling like -anything, up to the neck in tulips; he poses with his arms full of them -before his wife, like an Angel of the Annunciation. As for his words, -they come bubbling from him as they used from Mr. Swinburne when he -saw a baby. It is true that, like the talk about them, they get taller -every year. They are less flowers than portents, and the only thing to -do with them is to treat them as so much colour, turning your garden -for the time being into a Regent Street shop-window. Brown wallflower -and <i>La Rêve</i> look well, so do yellow wallflower and <i>Othello</i>. Last -year I tried <i>Clara Butt</i> and <i>Cheiranthus allionii</i>, and had a show -like Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> Granville Barker’s <i>Twelfth Night</i>. Rose pink and orange is -not everybody’s mixture.</p> - -<p>The finest unrehearsed effect I ever had with cottage tulips was when -we had a heavy fall of snow one 30th of April, and I went out and saw -the great red heads swimming in the flood like strong men. They were up -to the neck, and seemed to enjoy it. But they died of the effort; for -at night it froze.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> - -<h2>SUMMER</h2> - -<p>If, like me, you are more interested in seeing things happen than in -seeing them when they have happened, you will not be such an advocate -of Summer as of other, any other, seasons. For Summer is the one time -of year when practically nothing happens outdoors. From about the -middle of May—I speak of the south parts—to the middle of September -Nature sits with her hands in her lap and a pleasantly tired face. -There, my children, she says, I have done my job. I hope you like it. -Most of us, I own, do like it very much, and signify the same in the -usual manner by vigorous ball-exercise and liquid refreshment, much -of it of an explosive and delusive kind. When the Summer is over, -somewhere round about Michaelmas day, Nature rolls up her sleeves and -begins again. Properly speaking, there are only two seasons—Spring and -Summer. The people therefore who, like me, prefer the Spring to the -Summer, have more time in which to exhibit or dissemble their love—and -a good deal of it, I confess, uncommonly beastly in the matter of -weather.</p> - -<p>The people who like everything are the people to envy. Children, for -example, love the Winter just as much as the Summer. They whistle as -they jump their feet, or flack their arms across their bodies; and -whistling is one of the sure signs of contented youth. I remember -that we used to think it rare sport to find the sponge a solid globe -of ice, or to be able to get off cleaning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> our teeth on the ground -that the tooth water was frozen in the bottle. I don’t believe I ever -had cold feet in bed, and am sure that if I did I had something much -more exciting to think about. There might be skating to-morrow, or we -could finish the snow-man, or go tobogganning with the tea-tray; or -it was Christmas; or we were going to the pantomime. All seasons were -alike to us; each had its delights. That of Summer, undoubtedly, was -going to the seaside. We always had a month of that, and then a month -in some country place or other which my father did not know. That was -done for his sake, because the seaside bored him so much that even -his children noticed it. It was nothing to us, of course, as we lived -in the country, and did not, as he did, poor man, spend most days of -the year in London; but equally of course we weren’t <i>bored</i>. I never -heard of a child being bored, and can imagine few things more tragic in -a small way. No: it was always interesting to live in someone else’s -house, learn something of their ways, chance upon a family photograph, -or a discarded toy, or a dog’s grave in the shrubbery; or to read their -books and guess what bits they had liked—any little things like that. -And, of course, it was comfortable to know that one’s father wasn’t -always smothering a gape, or trying to escape from nigger-minstrels. As -for the sea—a very different thing from the seaside—I don’t believe -he ever looked at it. I am certain that I never saw him on the sands. -The sands are no place for you unless you had rather be barefoot than -not. Now, it is a fact that I never saw my father’s feet. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> - -<p>At the same time, I don’t know where else one could be in August, -except at the seaside. Really, there is very little to say for the -country in that month. The trees are as near black as makes no matter, -the hills are dust-colour, the rivers are running dry. True, the -harvest is going on; but the harvest is not what it used to be. You -had, indeed, “a field full of folk” (in old Langland’s words) in -former days. All hands were at it, and the women following the men, -building the hiles, as we call them; and the children beside them, -twisting up the straw ties as fast as they could twist. And then the -bread and cheese and cider—or it might be home-brewed beer—in the -shade! But bless me—last year I saw the harvesting of a hundred acre -field—our fields run very big down here; and the whole thing was being -done by one man on a machine! The Solitary Reaper, forsooth! The man -was reaper, tyer and binder all in one; you never saw so desolate a -spectacle. So the harvest is not what it was. It may have attractions -for the farmer, but for nobody else that I can think of. Go north -for your Summer and you may do better. August is wet, generally, in -Scotland, but when you are in Scotland you won’t mind rain, or had -better not. You can catch trout in the rain in Scotland, and with a -fly too: that is the extraordinary part of it. And the Scottish summer -twilights are things to remember. They are overdone in Norway, where -they go on all night; where the sun may go behind the hill for five -minutes and begin the day before you have thought of going to bed. You -can’t keep that up—but it is exciting enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> at first. The great -charm of the Norwegian Summer to me is that it includes what we call -Spring. The other season in that country is Winter, which begins in -September and ends with May. Then, immediately, Summer begins: the -grass grows and is ready for the scythe, the cherries flower and get -ripe and are eaten—all at once. You get those amazing contrasts there -which you only have in mountainous countries; which I remember most -vividly crossing the Cevennes from Le Puy to Alais. On the watershed I -was picking daffodils, only just ready to be picked; in the valley of -the Ardeche they were making hay, and roses were dusty in the hedges. -I slid from March into June—in twenty minutes. You will not be so -piqued in England; yet if your taste lies in the way of strawberries -for instance, you can do pretty work even in England. You can begin in -Cornwall, or Scilly, and have your first dish in early May, or late -April, with clotted cream, of course. Then you can eat your way through -the western shires to Hampshire, and make yourself very ill somewhere -about Fareham, in June. When you are able to stand the journey, you can -go on to the Fens and find them ready for you in early July. In August -you will find them at their best in Cumberland, and in October, weather -permitting, you will have them on your table in Scotland. After that, -if you are alive, and really care for strawberries, you must leave this -kingdom, and perhaps go to California. I don’t know.</p> - -<p>The Summer will give you better berries than the strawberry, in my -opinion. It will give you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> the <i>wild</i> strawberry, which, if you can -find somebody to pick them for you, and then eat them with sugar and -white wine, is a dish for Olympians, ambrosial food. Then there is the -bilberry, which wants cream and a great deal of tooth-brush afterwards, -and the blaeberry, which grows in Cumberland above the 2,000 foot mark, -just where the Stagshorn moss begins; and the wild raspberry which here -is found on the tops of the hills, and in Scotland at the bottoms. -I declare the wild raspberry to be one of the most delicious fruits -God Almighty ever made. In Norway you will have the cranberry and the -saeter-berry; but in Norway you will want nothing so long as there are -cherries. I know Kent very well—but its cherries are not so good as -those of Norway.</p> - -<p>I had no intention, when I began, to talk about eating all the time. It -is a bad sign when one begins that, though as a matter of fact we do -think a great deal of our food in the country—because we are hungry, -and it is so awfully good; and (as I daresay the Londoner thinks) -because we have nothing else to think about. That is a mistake, and -the Summer is the time to correct it, by spending it in the country -and trying to understand us. Let me be bold enough to suggest to the -Londoner who takes the prime of Summer to learn the ways of the country -in it, that he would prove a more teachable disciple if he did not -bring his own ways with him. He is rather apt to do that. He expects, -for example, his golf, and always has his toys with him for the -purpose. Well, he should not. Golf is a suburban game, handy for the -townsman in his off hours. Country people don’t play golf.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> They have -too much to do. The charabanc is another town-institution, to be used -like a stagecoach. Nothing of the country can be learned by streaming -over moor and mountain in one of them. The Oreads hide from them; Pan -and old Sylvanus treat them as natural process, scourges to be endured, -like snowstorms or foot-and-mouth disease. The country is veiled from -charabancs, partly in dust, partly in disgust. For we don’t understand -hunting in gangs. The herd-instinct which such things involve and imply -is not a country instinct. We are self-sufficient here, still, in spite -of all invitation, individuals.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE LINGERING OF THE LIGHT</h2> - -<p>With the West wind blowing down the valley, wet and warm from the -Atlantic, men go home leisurely from their work in the fields, happy -in the last of the light, and enjoying, though they never say so, the -delicate melancholy of the hour. It is a gift you make no account of -when the East wind brings it you, for that Scythian scourge withers -what it touches, and under its whip the light itself seems like a husk -about the day. Old people tell us that it brings the blight, whatever -they mean by that. It brought locusts into Egypt once, and brings -influenza into England. Perhaps they put the two together. It brings -sick thinking too, a cold which has the property of drying up the -springs of the blood. There’s no escape from it. The air seems thinner -that comes from the East; brickwork will not keep it out, nor glazed -windows. One fancies in the black mood of it that the “channering worm” -at his work in the churchyard must feel it, and dive deeper into the -mould.</p> - -<p>But now one can enjoy the sweet grave evening and turn the mind -hopefully to the prime of the year that is coming. The blackbird -whistles for it in the leafless elm; a belated white hen on the -hillside, very much at her ease, is still heeling up the turf and -inspecting the result. A cottage wife, having her fire alight and -kettle on the boil, stands for a moment at her open door. To mate the -gentle influence of the evening she has made herself trim in clean -white blouse and blue skirt, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> looks what she was intended to be, a -pretty young woman with a pride in herself. A friend, going home, stops -her perambulator for a minute to exchange sentiments about the nights -“drawing out.” Almost as she speaks this one draws in—for at this time -of year twilight is a thing of moments. It will be dark before she is -home. No matter: the wind is warm and balmy; she can take her ease, and -her baby be none the worse. This is the weather that opens the human -buds as well as the snowdrops, and gems the gardens with aconites, and -the hearths with sprawling children. We do not heed Dr. Inge down here.</p> - -<p>Here’s the end of January, and the winter, by our calendar, over in -three weeks’ time. Since that calendar was written up we have invented -a new winter. It is more difficult to get through April with safety, at -least to garden buds, than any January we have known for forty years; -but as far as we are concerned ourselves we can stand anything in -April, with May to follow; whereas January can still intimidate, and -a cold spell then will cause twice the sickness of the Spring-winter. -January is to April as Till to Tweed:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Till said to Tweed,</div> -<div>’Though ye rin wi’ speed,</div> -<div>An’ I rin slaw,</div> -<div>Where ye drown ae mon</div> -<div>I drown twa.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>If you look at the graves in a country churchyard, of the two outside -generations, that is, of old people and young children, nearly all -will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> have found their “bane” in December and January.</p> - -<p>With us in the West, the thing which kills the plants in our gardens -also kills the villagers, very old or very young: excessive wet, -namely, followed by hard frost or murderous wind. The other day we had -a day of warm drenches, drifting sheets of rain, a whole day of them, -the wind in the West. About midnight, the weathercock chopped round to -meet a whirl-blast from the East: the sky cleared, and it froze like -mad. I went round my borders in the morning, quaking at the heart. The -garden was like a battle-field. Nothing can cope with that. The babies -get pneumonia, the veterans bronchitis, the sexton is busy; every -day you hear the passing bell. Yet whether it is because we observe -punctually the Laws of Being, or (as the Dean will have it) in spite -of it, the facts are that the supply of babies never fails, and that -we live to a great age. The oldest gardener I know—I shouldn’t wonder -if he were the oldest gardener in the world—lives in this village. -Eighty-nine.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“I know a girl—she’s eighty-five”—</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>That was Lord Houghton’s way of beginning a poem on Mrs. Grote. My -gardener beats her by four years. To and fro, four times a day, he -walks his half-mile—to work and back. I saw him the other day half-way -up a cherry-tree, sawing off a dead branch. Mrs. Grote again:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“She lived to the age of a hundred and ten,</div> -<div>And died of a fall from a cherry-tree then.”</div> -</div></div></div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> -<p>To look at his sapless limbs, you might think he could saw off one of -them and take no hurt. But not at all. Life is high in him still. His -eye is bright, his step is brisk. We have many octagenarians, but I -believe he is the patriarch of our village. Mr. Frederic Harrison, in -Bath, beats him by a year.</p> - -<p>We are stoics, without knowing what that means down here. Whatever our -years tell us we make no account of them, or of ailments, or physical -discomfort; and as for Death, the Antick, however close he stand to -us—the Grizzly One, we call him—we take no notice of him, so long -as we can move about. The end is not long in coming when a man must -keep the house, or his bed. Then, so sure as fate, he will stiffen at -the joints and come out no more to enjoy the lingering of the light. -The chalk, which he has been inhaling and absorbing all his life, will -harden in him, and, he will tell you, “time’s up.” Want of imagination, -that fine indifference to fate, perhaps—but I don’t know. I have never -been able to deny imagination to our country folk. The faculty takes -various forms, and is not to be refused to a man because it finds a -harsh vent and issues contorted. I prefer to put it that tradition, -which is our religion, has put obedience to the Laws of Life above -everything else. One of those laws says, Work. And work we do, until -we drop. There is a noble creature lying now, I fear, under a stroke -which will prevent her doing another hand’s turn of work. Her children -are all about her bed; I saw one of them this morning before she went -there. She confessed, with tears, the anguish it would be to see her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> -mother lying idle. Sixty-three, she was, and had never been a day -without work in her children’s recollection. She had never been in -bed after six in the morning, never stayed at home or abed except, of -course, for child-bed. She had had eight children, brought up six of -them to marry and prosper in the world. And now she lies stricken, -and they, those prosperous young women, all about her bed. How well -Shakespeare knew that world:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,</div> -<div>Nor the stormy winter’s rages;</div> -<div>Thou thy earthly course hast run,</div> -<div>Home hast gone, and ta’en thy wages.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Nothing for tears, or knocking of the breast. The words ring as -solemnly as the bell. I cannot conceive of earthly thing more beautiful -than such faithful, patient, diligent, ordered lives, rounded off by -such mute and uncomplaining death-bed scenes. The fact that so they -have been lived, so rounded off, for two thousand years makes them -sacred, for me. How often has the good soul whose end I am awaiting now -stood at her cottage door to mark the lingering of the light? May her -passing be as gentle as this day’s has been! </p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/logo2.jpg" alt="Logo" /></div> - -<p class="center">The Westminster Press<br />411a Harrow Road<br />London<br />W.9</p> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pgx" /> -<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST ESSAYS OF MAURICE HEWLETT***</p> -<p>******* This file should be named 65757-h.htm or 65757-h.zip *******</p> -<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> -<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/5/7/5/65757">http://www.gutenberg.org/6/5/7/5/65757</a></p> -<p> -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed.</p> - -<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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