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Title: Old lamps for new
Author: Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Old lamps for new" ***
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OLD LAMPS FOR NEW
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: _The Head of a Young Girl, by Jan Vermeer of Delft, from
the Picture at the Mauritshuis at the Hague._]
OLD LAMPS FOR NEW
BY
E. V. LUCAS
AUTHOR OF “OVER BEMERTON’S”
“MR. INGLESIDE,” ETC.
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1911
COPYRIGHT, 1911,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE SCHOOL FOR SYMPATHY 1
ON THE TRACK OF VERMEER 7
THE FOOL’S PARADISE 45
CONSOLERS OF GENIUS 50
AN AMERICAN HERO 60
MR. HASTINGS 66
THOUGHTS ON TAN 73
ON LEAVING ONE’S BEAT 77
THE DEER PARK 82
THE RARITIES 87
THE OWL 94
THE UNUSUAL MORNING 100
THE EMBARRASSED ELIMINATORS 105
A FRIEND OF THE TOWN 115
GYPSY 120
A SALE 125
A GEORGIAN TOWN 141
MUS PENFOLD--AND BILLY 147
THEOLOGIANS AT THE MITRE 158
THE WINDMILL 178
A GLIMPSE OF CIVILIZATION 183
HER ROYAL ’TUMNAL TINTINESS 188
FIVE CHARACTERS--
I. THE KIND RED LIONESS 195
II. A DARLING OF THE GODS 198
III. THE NUT 201
IV. THE MASTER OF THE NEW SUBURB 202
V. THE SECOND FIDDLE 207
WITHOUT SOULS--
I. THE BUILDERS 212
II. BUSH’S GRIEVANCE 216
III. A LONDON LANDMARK 218
THE INTERVIEWER’S BAG--
I. THE AUTOGRAPHER 221
II. THE EQUALIZER 223
III. A HARDY ANNUAL 224
IV. ANOTHER OF OUR CONQUERORS 226
V. A CASE FOR LOYOLA 230
THE LETTER N--A TRAGEDY IN HIGH LIFE 233
THE NEW CHAUFFEUR 240
THE FIR-TREE: REVISED VERSION 243
THE LIFE SPHERICAL 250
FOUR FABLES--
I. THE STOPPED CLOCK 254
II. TRUTH AND ANOTHER 255
III. THE EXEMPLAR 255
IV. THE GOOD MAN AND CUPID 256
OLD LAMPS FOR NEW
The School for Sympathy
I had heard a great deal about Miss Beam’s school, but not till last
week did the chance come to visit it.
The cabman drew up at a gate in an old wall, about a mile out of the
town. I noticed as I was waiting for him to give me change that the
Cathedral spire was visible down the road. I rang the bell, the gate
automatically opened, and I found myself in a pleasant garden facing
a square red ample Georgian house, with the thick white window-frames
that to my eyes always suggest warmth and welcome and stability. There
was no one in sight but a girl of about twelve, with her eyes covered
with a bandage, who was being led carefully between the flower-beds by
a little boy of some four years her junior. She stopped, and evidently
asked who it was that had come in, and he seemed to be describing me
to her. Then they passed on, and I entered the door which a smiling
parlour-maid--that pretty sight!--was holding open for me.
Miss Beam was all that I had expected--middle-aged, authoritative,
kindly, and understanding. Her hair was beginning to turn grey, and her
figure had a fulness likely to be comforting to a homesick child.
We talked idly for a little while, and then I asked her some questions
as to her scholastic methods, which I had heard were simple.
“Well,” she said, “we don’t as a matter of fact do much teaching here.
The children that come to me--small girls and smaller boys--have very
few formal lessons: no more than is needful to get application into
them, and those only of the simplest--spelling, adding, subtracting,
multiplying, writing. The rest is done by reading to them and by
illustrated discourses, during which they have to sit still and keep
their hands quiet. Practically there are no other lessons at all.”
“But I have heard so much,” I said, “about the originality of your
system.”
Miss Beam smiled. “Ah, yes,” she said. “I am coming to that.
The real aim of this school is not so much to instil thought as
thoughtfulness--humanity, citizenship. That is the ideal I have always
had, and happily there are parents good enough to trust me to try and
put it into execution. Look out of the window a minute, will you?”
I went to the window, which commanded a large garden and playground at
the back.
“What do you see?” Miss Beam asked.
“I see some very beautiful grounds,” I said, “and a lot of jolly
children; but what perplexes me, and pains me too, is to notice that
they are not all as healthy and active as I should wish. As I came in
I saw one poor little thing being led about owing to some trouble with
her eyes, and now I can see two more in the same plight; while there is
a girl with a crutch just under the window watching the others at play.
She seems to be a hopeless cripple.”
Miss Beam laughed. “Oh, no,” she said; “she’s not lame, really; this
is only her lame day. Nor are those others blind; it is only their
blind day.” I must have looked very much astonished, for she laughed
again. “There you have an essential part of our system in a nutshell.
In order to get a real appreciation and understanding of misfortune
into these young minds we make them participants in misfortune too. In
the course of the term every child has one blind day, one lame day, one
deaf day, one maimed day, one dumb day. During the blind day their eyes
are bandaged absolutely, and it is a point of honour not to peep. The
bandage is put on overnight; they wake blind. This means that they need
assistance in everything, and other children are told off to help them
and lead them about. It is educative to both of them--the blind and the
helpers.
“There is no privation about it,” Miss Beam continued. “Every one is
very kind and it is really something of a joke, although, of course,
before the day is over the reality of the affliction must be apparent
even to the least thoughtful. The blind day is, of course, really the
worst,” she went on, “but some of the children tell me that the dumb
day is the most dreaded. There, of course, the child must exercise
will-power only, for the mouth is not bandaged.... But come down into
the garden and see for yourself how the children like it.”
Miss Beam led me to one of the bandaged girls, a little merry thing,
whose eyes under the folds were, I felt sure, as black as ash-buds.
“Here’s a gentleman come to talk to you,” said Miss Beam, and left us.
“Don’t you ever peep?” I asked, by way of an opening.
“Oh, no,” she exclaimed; “that would be cheating. But I’d no idea it
was so awful to be blind. You can’t see a thing. One feels one is going
to be hit by something every moment. Sitting down’s such a relief.”
“Are your guides kind to you?” I asked.
“Pretty good. Not so careful as I shall be when it’s my turn. Those
that have been blind already are the best. It’s perfectly ghastly not
to see. I wish you’d try!”
“Shall I lead you anywhere?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said; “let’s go for a little walk. Only you must tell
me about things. I shall be so glad when to-day’s over. The other bad
days can’t be half as bad as this. Having a leg tied up and hopping
about on a crutch is almost fun, I guess. Having an arm tied up is a
little more troublesome, because you have to get your food cut up for
you, and so on; but it doesn’t really matter. And as for being deaf for
a day, I shan’t mind that--at least, not much. But being blind is so
frightening. My head aches all the time, just from dodging things that
probably aren’t there. Where are we now?”
“In the playground,” I said, “going towards the house. Miss Beam is
walking up and down the terrace with a tall girl.”
“What has the girl got on?” my companion asked.
“A blue serge skirt and pink blouse.”
“I think it’s Millie,” she said. “What colour hair?”
“Very light,” I said.
“Yes, that’s Millie. She’s the head girl. She’s awfully decent.”
“There’s an old man tying up roses,” I said.
“Yes, that’s Peter. He’s the gardener. He’s hundreds of years old!”
“And here comes a dark girl in red, on crutches.”
“Yes,” she said; “that’s Beryl.”
And so we walked on, and in steering this little thing about I
discovered that I was ten times more thoughtful already than I had any
notion of, and also that the necessity of describing the surroundings
to another makes them more interesting.
When Miss Beam came to release me, I was quite sorry to go, and said so.
“Ah!” she replied; “then there is something in my system after all!”
I walked back to the town murmuring (inaccurately as ever) the lines:--
Can I see another’s woe
And not share their sorrow too?
O no, never can it be,
Never, never, can it be.
On the Track of Vermeer
Not long ago the papers contained a little paragraph stating that Herr
Bredius, the curator of the Mauritshuis Gallery at the Hague, had just
returned from a journey of exploration in Russia, bringing back with
him over a hundred valuable pictures of the Dutch School which he had
discovered there, in country and city mansions and even in farmhouses;
for the Russian collectors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
as is well known, greatly esteemed and desired (as who must not?) Dutch
art. That was all that the paragraph said, and since that was all we
may feel quite sure that among those hundred and more pictures there
was nothing from the divinely gifted hand of Jan Vermeer of Delft;
because the discovery of a new picture by Jan Vermeer of Delft is
something not merely for mention in a paragraph but among the special
news--something with which to agitate the cables of the world.
Can you conceive of a more delightful existence than that of Herr
Bredius--to be when at home the conservator of such masterpieces as
hang in the Mauritshuis on the banks of the Vyver, in the beautiful
and bland Dutch capital (some of which are his own property, and only
lent to the gallery), and when in mind to travel, to leave the Hague
with a roving commission to hunt and acquire new treasures? I can’t.
And that is why, when I am asked who I would choose to be were I not
myself, I do not say the King, or Mr. Pierpont Morgan, but Herr Bredius
of the Mauritshuis.
And yet if I had Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s wealth, I would.... But let us
consider first the life and works of Jan Vermeer of Delft.
Jan Vermeer, or Van der Meer, was born in Delft and baptized there
on 31 October, 1632. His father was Reymer Janszoon Vermeer, and
his mother Dingnums Balthasars. In 1653 he married, also in Delft,
Catherina Bolnes or Bolenes. How many children they had I do not
know, but eight survived him. It is generally believed that Karel
Fabritius, himself a pupil of Rembrandt and a painter of extraordinary
distinction, was Vermeer’s instructor; but the period of tuition must
have been very short, for Fabritius became a member of the Delft
Guild in 1652, before which he might not teach, and he was dead in
1654, killed by a powder explosion. A poem on the death of this great
painter by a Delft writer has a stanza to the effect that from the
ashes of that Phœnix rises Vermeer. There is very little of the work of
Fabritius to be seen; but his exquisite “Siskin,” a small picture of
the little musical shy bird, painted with the breadth that is commonly
kept for auguster subjects, hangs next Vermeer’s “Head of a Young Girl”
(my frontispiece) at the Hague, and would alone prove Fabritius to have
possessed not only strength but sweetness.
Dr. Hofstede de Groot, the author of a magnificent monograph on
Vermeer and Fabritius, published in 1907 and 1908, conjectures Vermeer
to have had an Italian master as well as a Dutch, and it is easy to
believe. I had, indeed, with none of Dr. de Groot’s knowledge, come
to a similar conclusion; and in the huddle of pictures in one of the
rooms of the Academy at Vienna I even found a copy of an Italian
picture--a Correggio, I think--which Vermeer’s hand might easily have
made, so luminous and liquid is it. That he visited Italy is more than
unlikely--practically impossible; but to gain that something Italianate
which his works occasionally discover there was no necessity for him
to have done so, for Italian painters settled in Holland in some
numbers. The “Diana and her Nymphs” at the Hague, and the “Christ in
the House of Martha and Mary” (which I have seen only in reproduction)
in Scotland, have each Italian characteristics; but I must add that in
Vermeer’s authorship of these pictures Dr. de Groot does not absolutely
believe.
The facts about Vermeer are singularly few, considering the high
opinion in which he was held by contemporaries. Almost the only
intimate thing told of him is the story of his unpaid bread bill, as
recounted by De Monconys, the French traveller. De Monconys visited
him in 1663 and wanted to buy a picture, but none could be found in
the artist’s house. Vermeer’s baker consented, however, to sell one
which was hanging on his wall and for which he had allowed 300 florins.
After Vermeer’s death, it is told, the baker’s debt of 3176 florins
was liquidated by two pictures. Since Vermeer’s wife is known to have
had rich relations and to have come into money from time to time, we
may guess this gigantic account to have been the result rather of bad
management than of poverty; for of all the painters of the world none
less suggests necessity than Jan Vermeer of Delft: on the contrary, his
work carries with it the idea of aristocracy and prosperity, certainly
a fastidiousness rarely associated with the father of a large family’s
struggle for existence in the seventeenth century. Moreover, we are
told that his prices, even when he was alive, were higher than those of
any painter save Gerard Dou, and such a guild as that of Delft would
not be likely to elect a starving man as its chief four several times.
No, if Vermeer owed money to his baker it was because he was
easy-going, placid, above such trifles, as other artists have been
before and since: indeed, occasionally still are, I am told. You can
see that Vermeer was placid: the fact shines in every picture. He was
placid, and he liked others to be placid too. His wife was placid,
his daughters (if, as I conjecture, certain of his models were his
daughters) were placid, his sitters were placid. His one undisputed
landscape shows that he wanted nature to be placid; his one street
scene has the dove brooding upon it.
Yet when we put in one balance the debt for bread and in the other the
very slender output of this famous artist, to whom a collector could
come even from distant France with a heavy purse, we are face to face
with a difficulty; because even placid men when they become chiefs of
guilds do not much care for continual reminders that they owe money,
and in such a small town as Delft Vermeer and his baker would have had
some difficulty in not often meeting. Moreover what of the butcher? And
the vintner? The inference therefore--especially when it is remembered
that the baker occasionally agreed to be paid in kind and hang we know
not which of the masterpieces on his wall--the inference therefore is
that Vermeer painted, was forced by necessity to paint, many pictures
in excess of the very small number at the present moment identifiable.
Of this, more later; but I want to bring out the point here, since it
is of the highest importance and might indeed completely alter the life
of Mr. Pierpont Morgan.
We may believe Vermeer to have been a home-keeping man from several
circumstances. One is that he was not only born in Delft (in 1632), but
he married in Delft (in 1653) and died in Delft (in 1675); another that
the years in which he was a chief of the Delft Guild, and therefore
a resident there, were 1662, 1663, 1670 and 1671; another that his
only famous landscape and his only known street scene are both Delft
subjects; and another that of his thirty odd known figure pictures,
thirty-one are lighted from the left precisely in the same way, which
leads one to suppose that most of them were painted in the same studio.
When I add that Vermeer died in December, 1675, at the early age of 43,
and that his executor was Antony van Leeuwenhoek, the inventor of the
microscope (and probably his model for several pictures), I have said
all that is known for certain of his career.
To me it is not to Andrea del Sarto that the title of the “Perfect
Painter” belongs, but to Jan Vermeer of Delft. Andrea with all his
weakness was in a way greater than that: he had, one can see, finer
thoughts, sweeter imaginings, a richer nature than a perfect painter
needs; the phrase perfect painter limits him to the use of his brush,
and one thinks of him (and not wholly because Browning was a man of
genius) always as a human being too. But of Vermeer we know nothing
save that he was a materialistic Dutchman who applied paint to canvas
with a dexterity and charm that have never been equalled: in short,
with perfection. His pictures tell us that he was not imaginative
and not unhappy; they do not suggest any particular richness of
personality; there is nothing in them or in his life to inspire a
poet as Andrea and Lippo Lippi inspired Browning and Romney Tennyson.
Vermeer was not like that. But when it comes to perfection in the
use of paint, when it comes to the perfect painter--why, here he is.
His contemporary Rembrandt of the Rhine is a giant beside him; but
ruggedness was part of his strength. His contemporary, Frans Hals of
Haarlem, could dip his brush in red and transform the pigment into
pulsating blood with one flirt of his wrist, and yet think of his
splendid carelessnesses elsewhere. His contemporary, Jan Steen of
Leyden, had a way of kindling with a touch an eye so that it danced
with vivacity and dances still, after all these years; but what a
sloven he could be in his backgrounds! His contemporary Peter de Hooch
could flood canvas with the light of the sun, but how weakly drawn
are some of his figures! And so one might go on with the other great
painters--the Italians and the Spanish and the English and the French;
naming one after another, all with more to them as personalities than
Vermeer, all doing work of greater import; and all, even Michael Angelo
and Leonardo, even Correggio, even Raphael, even Andrea, even Chardin,
falling beneath Vermeer in the mere technical mastery of the brush and
the palette--no one having with such accuracy and happiness adjusted
the means to the desired end. He aimed low, but at his best--in, say,
six pictures--he stands as near perfection as is possible.
It is this joyful mastery that fascinates me and made it so natural,
when in the autumn of 1907 I was casting about for a motive for a
holiday, to say, “Let us pursue this painter, let us see in twenty-one
days all the Vermeers that we can.”
The farthest European city containing a Vermeer of which I then knew
being Vienna (I afterwards found that Budapest has a putative example),
we went there first; and there was a certain propriety in doing so, for
in the Vienna picture the artist is supposed to have painted himself,
and to begin with a concept of him was interesting and proper. The
“Maler,” as it is there called, is at Count Czernin’s, a comfortable
mansion at Number 9 Landes-gericht strasse, open to visitors only on
Mondays and Thursdays. There are four rooms of pictures, and nothing
in them matters very much save the Vermeer. An elderly butler is on
duty; he shows you the best place to stand in, brings a chair, and
murmurs such facts about the marvellous work as appeal most to his
imagination--not so much that it is a miracle of painting as that it
was acquired for a mere song, and that Americans constantly walk into
this room with blank cheques in their hands and entreat the Count to
fill them up at his pleasure. But no, the Count is too proud of his
possession. Well, I admire him for it. The picture may not have such
radiance as the “Pearl Necklace” at Berlin, or such charm as the “Woman
Reading a Letter” at the Ryks, or such sheer beauty as the Mauritshuis
“Girl’s Head,” but it is brilliant and satisfying. It does not give me
such pleasure as certain others, to be named later, but it is in some
ways perhaps finer. Vermeer is seated at his easel with his back to
the world--a largish man with long hair under a black velvet cap, and
the careful costume of a man who can pay for his bread. Nor does the
studio suggest poverty. The artist is at work on the head of a demure
damsel whom he has posed near the window, with the light falling upon
her, of course from the left. The little mousy thing has a wreath of
leaves in her hair and a large book held to her breast; in her right
hand is a long musical instrument. On the wall is the most fascinating
of the many maps that the artist painted--with twenty little views
of Dutch towns in the border. Vermeer was the first to see the
decorative possibilities that lie in cartography; and he was also, one
conjectures, a geographer by inclination.
The beautiful blue Danube had so little water in it just then that the
voyage to Budapest would have taken almost twice as long as it should,
and there was not time. To make the journey by train, just for one
day, was an unbearable thought at that moment; although I now regret
that we did not go. The Budapest Vermeer is a portrait, a Dutch Vrouw,
standing, looking full at the world, without any accessories whatever.
Not having seen it, I can express no opinion as to its authorship, but
Dr. de Groot is doubtful, although he reproduces the picture in his
book among the practical certainties. So also does M. Vanzype, the most
recent of our painter’s critics, whose monograph, “Vermeer de Delft,”
in the “Collection des Grands Artistes des Pays-Bas,” was published in
1908. M. Vanzype goes farther, for he also includes the portrait of
a young man in the Brussels gallery for which the curator, M. A. J.
Wauters, has made out so eloquent a case, but which Herr Bredius and
Dr. de Groot both repudiate. For myself, all I can say of it is that
one does not jump to the denial of it as one did to the putative
example in our National Gallery, just completed by the addition of
its lost half. The Budapest Vermeer is in reproduction a beautiful
picture--a youngish Dutch woman with the inevitable placidity, but
not so open and easy-going as the personalities whom the artist chose
for his own pictures: she has folded hands and large white cape and
cuffs. M. Vanzype admits that this portrait and that of the young man
at Brussels lend colour to the theory of Thoré and M. Arsène Alexandre
that Vermeer studied for a while immediately under Rembrandt; but he
goes on to show that this was practically an impossibility.
Turning reluctantly away from Budapest, we went next to Dresden, which
has two Vermeers and a light and restful hotel, the Bellevue, very
agreeable to repose in after our caravanserai at Vienna. The Bellevue
is on the bank of the river and close to the Picture Gallery, into
which one could therefore drop again and again at off hours. The famous
Raphael is of course Dresden’s lodestar, and next come the Correggios,
and there is a triptych by Jan Van Eyck and a man in armour by Van
Dyck; but it is Vermeer of whom we are talking, and the range of
Vermeer cannot be understood at all unless one sees him in the capital
of Saxony. For it is here that his “Young Courtesan” (chastely softened
by the modest Baedeker into “The Young Connoisseur”) is found. It is a
large picture, for him, nearly five feet by four, and it represents a
buxom, wanton girl, of a ripe beauty, dressed in a lace cap and hood
and a bright yellow bodice, considering the value of the _douceur_
which a roystering Dutchman is offering her. Behind is an old woman
curious as to the result, and beside her is another roysterer, whose
face might easily be that unseen one of the artist in the Czernin
picture, and who is wearing a similar cap and slashed sleeves. The
party stands on a balcony, over the railing of which has been flung
one of the heavy tapestries on which our painter loved to spend his
genius. The picture is remarkable as being a new thing in Vermeer’s
career, and indeed a new thing in Dutch art; and it also shows that had
Vermeer liked he might have done more with drama, for the faces of the
two women are expressive and true; although such was his incorrigible
fastidiousness, his preference for the distinguished and radiant to
the exclusion of all else, that he cannot make them either ugly or
objectionable. The procuress is a Vermeer among procuresses, the
courtesan a Vermeer among courtesans. The fascination of the canvas,
though totally different from that of any other of his works, is equal
in its way to any: it has a large easy power, as well as being a
beautiful and daring adventure in colour.
The other Dresden picture is also a little off Vermeer’s usual path.
The subject is familiar: the Dutch woman reading a letter by a table,
on which is the customary cloth and a dish of apples; the light comes
through the same window and falls on the same white wall; but the
tone of the work is distinct, sombre green prevailing. It would be
thrilling to own this picture, but I do not rank it for allurement or
satisfaction with several of the others. It comes with me not even
fifth or sixth. Vermeer’s best indeed is so wonderful--the “View of
Delft,” the “Girl’s Head” at the Mauritshuis, the “Milkmaid” and “Woman
Reading a Letter” at the Ryks, the “Pearl Necklace” at Berlin, the
“Street in Delft” at the Six Gallery, and the “Young Courtesan” at
Dresden--that anything below that standard--such is the fastidiousness
which this man’s fastidiousness engenders--quickly disappoints;
although the student working up to the best and reaching the best last
would be continually enraptured.
Next Berlin. After the “Girl’s Head” at the Mauritshuis, which among
the figures comes always first with me, and the “View of Delft,” it is,
I think, the Berlin “Necklace” that is Vermeer’s most charming work.
I consider the white wall in this painting beautiful beyond the power
of words to express. It is so wonderful that if one were to cut out a
few square inches of this wall alone and frame it one would have a joy
for ever. Franz Hals’ planes of black have never been equalled, but
Vermeer’s planes of white seem to me quite as unapproachable. The whole
picture has radiance and light and delicacy: painters gasp before it.
It has more too: it is steeped in a kind of white magic as the “View
of Delft” is steeped in the very radiance of the evening sun. Berlin
is to me a rude and materialistic city with officials who have made
inattention a fine art, and food that sends one to the “Continental
Bradshaw” for trains to Paris; but this picture is leaven enough. It
lifts Berlin above serious criticism. I hope that when we have fought
Germany in the inevitable war of which the papers are so consistently
full, it will be part of the indemnity.
The other Vermeer in the superb gallery over which Dr. Bode presides
with such dangerous enthusiasm (dangerous, I mean, to other nations),
is not so remarkable; but it is burnt into my memory. That white Delft
jug I shall never forget. The woman drinking, with her face seen
through the glass as Terburg would have done it (one likes to see
painters excelling now and again at each other’s mannerisms); the rich
figure of the Dutch gentleman watching her; the room with its chequered
floor: all these I can visualize with an effort; but the white Delft
jug requires no effort: the retina never loses it. Vermeer, true ever
to his native town and home, painted this jug several times. Not so
often as Metsu, but with a greater touch. You find it notably again in
the King’s example at Windsor Castle.
Berlin has also a private Vermeer which I did not see--Mr. James
Simon’s “Mistress and Servant.” Judging by the photogravure, this must
be magnificent; and it is peculiar in respect of being almost the only
picture in which the painter has a plain table-cloth in place of the
usual heavily-patterned tapestry. The lady in ermine and pearls is
evidently ordering dinner; the placid, pleasant maid has a hint of
Maes. The whole effect seems to be rich and warm. Two other pictures
I also ought to have seen before leaving Germany--one at Brunswick
and one at Frankfort. In the Brunswick painting a coquettish girl
takes a glass of wine from a courteous Dutch gentleman at the table,
while a sulky Dutch gentleman glooms in the background. On the table
is another of the white Delft jugs. The Frankfort picture is “The
Geographer at the Window,” dated 1668, which in the reproduction
strikes one as a most beautiful and dignified work, wholly satisfying.
The geographer--probably Antony van Leeuwenhoek--leans at his lighted
table over a chart, with his compasses in his hand. All the painter’s
favourite accessories are here--the heavy tapestry on the table, the
window with its small panes, the streaming light of day, the white
wall, the chair with its brass-headed nails. And the kind thoughtful
face of the geographer makes the whole thing human and humane. Vermeer,
I fancy, was never more harmonious than here. I shall certainly go to
Frankfort soon to translate this impression into fact.
At Amsterdam we went first to the grave and noiseless mansion of the
Six family at Number 511 Heerengracht, one of the most beautiful and
reserved of the canals of this city. A ring at the bell brought a rosy
and spotless maid to the door, and she left us for a little while in a
lobby from which Vermeer might have chosen his pictures’ blue tiles,
until a butler led us upstairs to the little gallery. I am writing
of 1907, before the negotiations for the purchase by the State of
Vermeer’s “Milkmaid” were completed, and we therefore saw it in its
natural home, where it had been for two hundred and more years. But
now, at a cost of 500,000 florins at twelve to the pound (or at nearly
£155 a square inch) it has passed to the Ryks. The price sounds beyond
reason; but it is not. Granted that a kind and portly Dutchwoman at
work in her kitchen is a subject for a painter, here it is done with
such mastery, sympathy, and beauty as not only to hold one spellbound
but to be beyond appraisement. No sum is too much for the possession
of this unique work--unique not only in Vermeer’s career (so far as we
know), but in all painting. What the artist would have asked for it we
do not know. At the sale of his works in 1696 it brought 175 florins.
Vermeer here is at his most vigorous and powerful. His other works
are notable above everything for charm: such a picture as the “Pearl
Necklace” at Berlin represents the ecstasy of perfection in paint; but
here we find strength too. I never saw a woman more firmly set upon
canvas: I never saw a bodice that was so surely filled with a broad and
beating bosom. Only a very great man could so paint that quiet capable
face. Some large pictures are very little, and some small pictures are
large. This “Milkmaid” by Vermeer is only eighteen inches by fifteen,
but it is to all intents and purposes a full length: on no life-size
canvas could a more real and living woman be painted. When you are at
Amsterdam you cannot give this picture too much attention; be sure to
notice also the painting of the hood and the drawing of the still life,
especially the jug and the bowl. It was this picture, one feels, that
shone before the dear Chardin, all his life, as a star.
The other Six Vermeer is that Delft façade which artists adore. The
charm of it is not to be communicated by words, or at any rate by words
of mine. It is as though Peter de Hooch had known sorrow, and, emerging
triumphant and serene, had begun to paint again. And yet that is, of
course, not all; for De Hooch, with all his radiant tenderness, had not
this man’s native aristocracy of mind, nor could any suffering have
given it to him. Like the “View of Delft,” like the “Young Courtesan,”
this picture stands alone not only in Vermeer’s record, but in the art
of all time. Many grow the flower now--there is a modern Dutch painter,
Breitner, whose whole career is an attempt to reproduce the spirit
of this façade--but the originator still stands alone and apart, as
indeed, by God’s sense of justice, originators are usually permitted
to. The sale of twenty-one of Vermeer’s pictures at Amsterdam in 1696
included the “Street in Delft” which the Six family own, and also a
view of houses, a smaller work, which fetched forty-eight florins.
(That is one of the Vermeers which have disappeared, Mr. Pierpont
Morgan, sir.)
The Vermeers at the Ryks were, in 1907, two in number (now made three
by the “Milkmaid”); and of these one I do not like, however much I am
astounded by its dexterity, and one I could never tire of. The picture
that I do not like, “The Love Letter,” shows, with the “New Testament
Allegory” at the Hague, the painter in his most dashing mood of
virtuosity. Neither has charm, but both have a masterful dexterity that
not only leaves one bewildered but kills all the other _genre_ painters
in the vicinity. Both were painted, I conjecture, to order, to please
some foolish purchaser who frequented the studio. But the other Ryks
picture--“The Woman Reading a Letter”--here is the essential Vermeer
again in all his delicacy and quietude. It was the first of his best
pictures that I ever saw, and I fell under his spell instantly. What I
have said of the “Milkmaid” applies also to the “Reader”; she becomes
after a while a full length. The picture is only twenty inches by
sixteen, but the woman also takes her place in the memory as life-size.
It is one of the simplest of all the pictures: comparable with the
“Pearl Necklace,” but a little simpler still. The woman’s face has been
injured, but it does not matter; you don’t notice it after a moment;
her intent expression remains; her gentle contours are unharmed. The
jacket she wears is the most beautiful blue in Holland; the map is
a yellowish brown; the wall is white. The woman, whose condition is
obviously interesting, is, I like to think, the Vrouw Vermeer, possibly
the mother of the young girls in the pictures at the Hague, Vienna and
Brussels.
The Hague is the most comfortable city that I know in which to see
pictures. It is so light and open, the Oude Doelen is so pleasant
a hotel, and the pictures to see are so few--just a handful of old
masterpieces at the Mauritshuis and just a handful of the romantics
at the Mesdag Museum. That is all; no formal galleries, no headaches.
Above all there are here the two most beautiful Vermeers that are
known--the “Young Girl”--and the “View of Delft.” Writing in another
place some years ago I ventured to call the Mauritshuis picture of a
girl’s head one of the most beautiful things in Holland. I retract
that statement now, and instead say quite calmly that it is _the_
most beautiful thing in Holland. And to me it is in many ways not
only the most beautiful thing in Holland, but the most satisfying and
exquisite product of brush and colour that I have anywhere seen. The
painting of the lower lip is as much a miracle to me as the flower of
the cow-parsley or the wing of a Small Heath. I said that the “Pearl
Necklace” was steeped in white magic. There is magic here too. You are
in the presence of the unaccountable. Paint--a recognized medium--has
exceeded its power. The line of the right cheek is surely the sweetest
line ever traced. I don’t expect you to come a stranger to this face
and feel what I feel; but I ask you to look at it quietly and steadily
for a little while, in its uncoloured photographic presentment, until
it smiles back at you again--as surely it will. Yes, even in the
photogravure reproduction that stands as frontispiece to this book lurk
the ghosts of these smiles.
Who was this child, one wonders. One of the painter’s, I think. One
of the eight, whom it amused him to dress in this Oriental garb that
he might play with the cool harmonies of yellow, green and blue, and
the youthful Dutch complexion. If this is so, it is one of his latest
pictures, for all his many children were under age when he died. It is
probable that the child in the Duke of Arenberg’s picture at Brussels,
in the same costume, was a sister. There is certainly a family likeness
between the two, and if, as one may reasonably suppose, Vermeer’s wife
was his model for certain of the other pictures, we may easily believe
that both were her daughters, for they have her candid forehead, her
placidity.
Think of what has been happening in the world during the years since
this sweet face was set upon canvas--the evolutions and tragedies,
the lives lived and ended, the whole passionate fretted progress of
the nations! “Monna Lisa” has smiled a century and more longer, and
she has been looked upon every day for centuries: this child, not a
whit less wonderful as a conquest of man over pigment, smiled unseen;
for when she was bought at a Hague auction a few years ago by Herr
Des Tombes for two florins thirty cents she was covered with grime.
Think of it--two florins thirty cents--and if she found her way to
Christie’s to-day I don’t suppose that £50,000 would buy her. I know
that I personally would willingly live in a garret if she were on its
wall. But leaving aside the human interest of the picture, did you ever
see, even in a reproduction, such ease as there is in this painting,
such concealment of effort? It was no small thing at that day for a
Dutchman to lay his colours like this, so broadly and lucidly. It is as
though the paints evoked life rather than counterfeited it; as though
the child was waiting there behind the canvas to emerge at the touch of
the brushwand.
And the “View of Delft”--what is one to say of that? Here again
perfection is the only word. And more than perfection, for perfection
is cold. This picture is warm. Its serenity is absolute; its charm is
complete. You stand before it satisfied--except for that heightened
emotion, that choking feeling and smarting eyes, which perfection
compels. The picture is still the last word in the painting of a town.
Not all the efforts of artists since have improved upon it; not one
has done anything so beautiful. It is indeed because he painted these
two pictures that I have for Jan Vermeer of Delft such a feeling of
gratitude and enthusiasm. Wonderful as are many of his other pictures
that I have described, they would not alone have subjected me to so
much travelling in continental trains by day and night. But to see this
head of a young girl and this view of Delft I would go anywhere.
To the “New Testament Allegory” I have referred above: it does not give
me pleasure except in its tapestry curtain. That detail is, I suppose,
among the wonders of painting. The other Mauritshuis Vermeer is the
“Diana and Her Nymphs”--that gentle Italianate group of fair women,
the painting of which Andrea himself might have overlooked. It is at
once Vermeer and not Vermeer. It is very rich, very satisfying; but I
for one should feel no sense of bereavement if another name were put
to it. As a matter of fact Nicholas Maes was long held to have been
its author. A fifth Vermeer the Mauritshuis chanced to possess when
I was there, for Herr Bredius had recently discovered in a Brussels
collection a very curious example from the magic hand--a tiny picture
of a girl with a flute, in a Chinese hat (or something very like it),
with an elaborate background: not a very attractive work, but Vermeer
through and through, and so modern and innovating that were it hung in
a Paris or London exhibition to-day it would look out of place only by
reason of its power. The picture is seven and a half inches by six and
three quarters, and now belongs to Mr. Pierpont Morgan.
After Delft, where we roamed awhile to reconstruct Vermeer’s
environment, but where, I regret to say, little is known of him,
Brussels. For Vermeer there, one must, as in Vienna, visit the home
of a nobleman--the Duke of Arenberg--and here again one falls into
the hands of a discreet and hospitable butler. The d’Arenberg mansion
is in the Rue de la Régence, just under the crest of the fashionable
hill. It is open to the picture lover, like that of Count Czernin,
only on certain days. The gallery is small and chiefly Dutch, with a
few good pictures in it. The Vermeer is isolated on an easel--the most
unmistakable perhaps of all, although so cruelly treated by time, for
it is a mass of cracks. Yet through these wounds the beautiful living
light of a young girl’s face shines--not the girl we have seen at the
Hague, but one very like her--her sister, as I conjecture--dressed in
the same Eastern trappings, a girl with a strangely blank forehead and
eyes widely divided, akin to the type of Madonna dear to Andrea del
Sarto. The same girl I think sat for the “Player of the Clavichord” in
our National Gallery, to which we soon come. She is a little sad, and a
little strange, this child, and only a master could have created her.
At Brussels also is one of Vermeer’s “Geographers,” in the collection
of the Vicomte du Bus de Gisegnies; but this I did not then know. And
in the Picture Gallery is the conjectural portrait of the young man of
which I have written above.
After Brussels, Paris--a good exchange. Paris has one Vermeer in
a private collection--Alphonse de Rothschild’s--an astronomer,
which I have not seen, and one in the Louvre--the beautiful
“Dentellière”--before which I have stood scores of times. This too
is very small, only a few inches square, but the serene busy head is
painted as largely as if it were in a fresco. The lighting is from the
right instead of the left--a very rare experiment with Vermeer.
It is greatly to be regretted that our National Vermeers are not
better, because to many readers of this essay they must necessarily be
the only pictures from his hand that they can study at all times; and
my ecstasies will appear to be foolish. The lady standing at a spinet
is a marvel of technique; the paint is applied with all Vermeer’s
charm of touch; the room is filled with the light of day; there are
marvellous details, such as the brass-headed nails of the chair, and
the little spot of colour on the head is fascinating; moreover there
is an agreeably ingenious scheme of blue, beginning with the gay sky
of the landscape on the wall, passing through the delicate tippet of
the lady and ending on a soberer note with the covering of the chair.
But it is not a picture of which I am fond; it is a _tour de force_;
and I think I positively hate the ugly Cupid on the wall, which would
be a blot on any man’s work, most of all on Vermeer’s. One feels
that he must have painted this to please the husband of the sitter,
who insisted on his pictures being immortalized. Vermeer, left to
himself, would have painted a map. The other--the seated girl at the
piano--lacks the painter’s highest radiance. It is the same girl that
we saw in the Brussels picture.
Of the other London Vermeers two (only two!) belong to Mr. Otto Beit.
One of these is a tiny “Lady seated at a Spinet,” not in the first
rank of fascination, but a little masterpiece nevertheless, and the
other, “A Lady Writing a Letter,” notable for the strong and beautiful
painting of the lady’s face, foreshortened as she bends over her
task. Beside her stands her blue-aproned maid, waiting to take the
missive to the door. The table has its usual tapestry and the wall its
picture, this time an old master. But the head of the lady is what
one remembers--with her white cap and her pearl drops and her happy
prosperous countenance.
Mr. Beit’s Vermeers are in Belgrave Square: there is another in Hyde
Park Gardens, the property of Mrs. Joseph: “The Soldier and the
Laughing Girl” it is called. The girl sits at the table with a bright
and merry face; the soldier, who has borrowed his red from Peter de
Hooch, is in the shade; on the wall is a splendid rugged map of Holland
and West Friesland. The picture is paintier than is usual with Vermeer,
but very powerful and rich. Mrs. Joseph (I am told) has been forced
by the importunities of collectors and dealers to have recourse to a
printed refusal to sell this work!
The Vermeer belonging to the King hangs in the private apartments at
Windsor, but when I saw it, it was, by the courtesy of His Majesty’s
Surveyor of Works of Art, carried into a less sacred room of that vast
and imposing fortress for us to look upon. The Court was absent, and
workmen were here and there, but one could have told that this was the
abode of a monarch, even had one been blindfolded. There was a hush! On
a walk of some miles (as it seemed) through dusky passages in which now
and then one saw dimly one’s face in a slip of a mirror at the corners,
we passed other creatures who had some of the outward semblance of
human beings; but we were not deceived. They were marked also by a
discretion, an authority, beyond ordinary mortality; not the rose, of
course, but so near it that one flushed. To have this new experience,
for I had never entered a royal castle before, and be on a visit to a
Vermeer, was a double privilege. The Vermeer is very charming, but not
one of the first rank; and its coating of varnish does not improve it.
But it is from the perfect hand none the less, and there is the white
Delft jug in it for the eye to return to, like a haven, after every
voyage over the canvas.
England also has Vermeer’s “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,”
which, when it was exhibited in Bond Street some few years ago, divided
the experts, but is now, although not confidently, given to our painter
by Dr. de Groot. This picture, which I have not seen, has in the
reproduction much of the large easy confidence of the “Diana and her
Nymphs” at the Hague. It hangs now in Skelmorlie Castle, and some day
I hope to blow a blast outside those Scottish walls and succeed in
getting the drawbridge lowered that I may look upon it.
There are nine examples in America to-day (1911). Of these Dr. de Groot
reproduces only six, for the other three have come to light since he
published. The six which he gives are--Mr. B. Altman’s “Woman Asleep”
(from the Rodolph Kann Collection), Mr. James G. Johnson’s “Lady with
the Mandoline,” Mrs. Jack Gardner’s “Three Musicians,” Mr. H. C.
Frick’s “Singing Lesson,” Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s “Lady with Flute,” and
“The Woman with the Water Jug,” in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Of these I have seen only Mr. Morgan’s, described above. The three new
ones are Mr. Morgan’s “Lady Writing,” Mrs. Huntington’s “Lady with
Lute,” and Mr. Widener’s “Lady Weighing Pearls” (or gold), which was
exhibited in London early in 1911, and which brings Dr. de Groot’s list
to thirty-seven. This new Vermeer is not absolutely his best; it is not
so great and simple and strong as “The Milkmaid,” at the Ryks; it is
not so radiant as “The Pearl Necklace,” at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum
in Berlin; it is not so exquisite and miraculous a counterfeit of
life as the “Girl’s Head,” at the Mauritshuis; nor so enchanting and
epoch-making as the “View of Delft,” in the same gallery. Those I take
to be the artist’s four finest pictures. But it is well in his first
dozen, and it is vastly better than either of those in the National
Gallery.
The new picture represents a woman: one of those placid domestic
creatures to whom Vermeer’s brush lent a radiance only a gleam of
which many a Madonna of the Southern masters would have envied. How
little can they have thought, these Delft housewives and maidens,
that they were destined for such an immortality! She stands beside
a table, as most of Vermeer’s women do, and she has a jacket of
dark-blue velvet trimmed with fur, and a white handkerchief over her
head. The tablecloth also is blue; the curtain is orange. Standing
there, she poises in her right hand a pair of goldsmith’s scales.
On the table is a profusion of pearls (painted with less miraculous
dexterity than usual), and a tapestry rug has been tossed there too.
Behind her placid, comely head, on the wall (where Vermeer usually
places a map), a picture of the Last Judgment hangs, which may or may
not be identifiable. (I should doubt if Vermeer introduced it with
any ironical intention; that was not his way.) This picture is on a
light grey wall. The light comes, of course, from the left, and never
did this master of light paint it--or educe it--more wonderfully.
It triumphs through the window and curtain exactly as in “The Pearl
Necklace,” past the same black mirror. The woman’s face, however, has
the greatest lustre; from it is diffused a lambency of such beauty that
one might almost say that the rest of the picture matters nothing; such
a soft and lovely glow were enough. The work is not signed, except with
the signature of immanent personality.
Since the discovery of this picture--No. 36--yet another has
been found--a large group of children representing Diana and her
nymphs--which Mr. Paterson of Old Bond Street--the discoverer of
“Christ in the House of Martha and Mary”--has in his possession. Mr.
Paterson is a true Vermeer enthusiast, and not one of those with whom
the wish is the father to the thought. His new Vermeer is obviously
an early work and is on a larger scale than any of the others: it
has weaknesses of drawing and in more than one respect suggests an
experimental stage; but one cannot doubt its authorship, and everywhere
it is interesting, and here and there exquisite, especially in the
figure of the child in the left-hand corner. With this picture the list
of practically unquestionable Vermeers reaches thirty-eight.
There remain the one or two on the border-line of authenticity at which
I have glanced, and also a signed landscape in the possession of Mr.
Newton Robinson. This, if genuine (as I do not doubt), is Vermeer’s
only woodland scene, with the exception of those on the walls of other
of his pictures, such as that in the National Gallery, for example.
It is a soft brown landscape, as little like Vermeer as possible in
the mass. But in the detail--particularly in one detail--the signature
is corroborated. In the foreground is a little arbour with some young
people in it holding a musical party. The most prominent figure is a
girl crowned with flowers: and this girl is sheer Vermeer in attitude,
in charm, and in technique. The work is, I should guess, juvenile
and experimental, but it has many attractions and is of the deepest
interest as the thirty-ninth _opus_ on the side of certainty.
Vermeer’s practically unquestionable output thus totals thirty-nine
pictures. Think of the smallness of the harvest. Thirty-nine! That is
to say, hardly more for Vermeer’s whole career than the Boningtons to
be seen in a single London collection--that at Hertford House--where
there are thirty-five of his works. And Bonington died at the age of
twenty-seven. How many pictures by Bonington exist I know not, but
hundreds, I suppose, in all. And Vermeer has only thirty-nine to his
name, and lived nearly twice as long, and had eight children to support.
The question that confronts us, the question to which all these
remarks of mine have been leading, then, is, _Where are the others?_
Because there must have been others; indeed we know of a few, as I will
presently show; but there must have been many others, since Vermeer
began to paint when he was young, and painted till the end, and had
a working period of, say, twenty-four years--between 1652, when he
was twenty, and 1676, when he died. At the modest rate of only four
pictures a year this would give him a total of ninety-six pictures, or
nearly sixty more than we know of. But putting his output at a lower
rate--say at two pictures a year--that would leave us with several
still to discover. Of the existence at one time of two if not more of
these we have absolute knowledge, gained from the catalogue of the
Vermeer sale in Amsterdam in 1696, which I copy from M. Vanzype’s
pages, together with the prices that they made and his commentary:--
“1. A young girl weighing gold in a little casket. 155 florins.
“2. A milkwoman. 175 fls.
“3. The portrait of the painter, in a room. 45 fls.
“4. A young woman playing the guitar. 70 fls.
“5. A nobleman in his room. 95 fls.
“6. A young woman at the harpsichord, and a young gentleman listening.
30 fls.
“7. A young woman taking a letter from a servant. 70 fls.
“8. A drunken servant, sleeping at a table. 62 fls.
“9. A gay company in a room. 73 fls.
“10. A man and a young woman making music. 81 fls.
“11. A soldier with a young girl who is laughing. 44 fls.
“12. A young lace-maker. 28 fls.
“13. View of Delft. 200 fls.
“14. House at Delft. 72 fls.
“15. View of several houses. 48 fls.
“16. Young woman writing. 63 fls.
“17. Young woman adorning herself. 30 fls.
“18. Young woman at the harpsichord. 42 fls.
“19. A portrait in ancient costume. 36 fls.
“20. and 21. Two pendants. 34 fls.”
On the above catalogue M. Vanzype comments as follows:--
“The greater number of these pictures seem to have been recovered.
“The _Milkwoman_ [No. 2] is, in all probability, the one hanging for so
long in the Six collection.
“The _Young woman playing the guitar_ [No. 4] is actually the picture
belonging to Mr. Johnson, in Philadelphia. It has been in the Cremer
collection at Brussels and in the H. Bischoffsheim collection in London.
“The _Young woman at a harpsichord with a gentleman listening_ [No. 6]
is no doubt the much-admired picture at Windsor Castle, where it is
one of the treasures and is called _The Music Lesson_. It was sold at
Amsterdam at the Roos sale, in 1820, for 340 florins.
“The _Young woman taking a letter from a servant_ [No. 7] is at the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, under the title _The Letter_. It was bought
by the State, through the intervention of the Rembrandt Society and of
M. Van Lennep, from M. Messcher Van Vollenhoven for 45,000 florins.
“The _Drunken servant sleeping at a table_ [No. 8] is, in all
probability, the picture which until just lately belonged to the
Kahn collection in Paris, and of the authenticity of which there is
no doubt. [This was bought by Mr. Altman in 1910.] Bürger possessed
another picture, a servant sleeping in a kitchen, and he believed
that this was the work sold in 1696. In his picture the figure is not
leaning on the table. It is now in the Widener collection and in it the
characteristic qualities of Vermeer are not to be found.
“_A man and a young woman making music_ [No. 10] is probably the
_Singing Lesson_ of the Frick collection at Pittsburg.
“_A soldier with a young girl who is laughing_ [No. 11] is Mrs.
Joseph’s picture in London.
“_The young lace-maker_ [No. 12] is the little _chef-d’œuvre_ in the
Louvre sold for 84 francs at the Muilman sale in 1813; 501 in 1817 at
the Lapeyrière sale; 265 fls. at the Nagel sale in 1851, and in 1870
bought by M. Blockhuyzen, of Rotterdam, for 1270 frs.
“The _View of Delft_ [No. 13], if it has no replica, is the picture in
the Museum at the Hague, for which 2900 fls. was paid at the Stinstra
sale in 1822.
“The _House at Delft_ [No. 14] is the _Ruelle_ of the Six collection.
“The _Young woman writing_ [No. 16] is without doubt the picture in the
Beit collection in London. This was in the Héris sale at Brussels in
1857.
“The _Young woman adorning herself_ [No. 17] is _The Pearl Necklace_ in
the Berlin Museum.
“The _Young woman at the harpsichord_ [No. 18] is either the picture in
the National Gallery or that in the Beit collection, or perhaps that in
the Salting collection [now also at the National Gallery].
“It is believed that the portrait in ancient costume [No. 19] is the
portrait of the young girl in the Museum at the Hague [my frontispiece].
“[Nos. 20 and 21.] Finally, since at the Hendrik Borgh sale in 1720
one _Astrologer_ and its pendant were sold for 160 fls.; and since two
_Astrologers_ and a pendant were sold at the Neyman sale in 1797 for
270 and 132 fls., it may be deduced that the pendants of the 1696 sale
are either the two _Geographers_ which belong at the present day to
the Museum at Frankfort and to M. Du Bus de Gisegnies at Brussels; or
one only of these and M. Alphonse de Rothschild’s _Astronomer_.”
To these remarks of M. Vanzype may be added that No. 1 is the picture
recently exhibited in London and now in Mr. Widener’s collection, and
No. 3 is probably the Czernin picture. No. 9 might be the Brunswick
painting. This leaves us only with two of the Amsterdam sale pictures
to discover--No. 5, _A nobleman in his room_, and No. 15, _View of
several houses_. But, of course, certain others which M. Vanzype and I
think we have traced may be wholly different. M. Vanzype furthermore
remarks: “Other pictures have at certain times been heard of and have
since disappeared, notably the ‘_Dévideuse_’ discussed in 1865 by
Bürger and an English connoisseur, which was then in England, but of
which no trace has since been found.”
Among the thirty-nine that are known, although there are many interiors
such as the painter loved, there is, remember, only one woodland
scene, only one pure landscape, only one religious subject, only one
real portrait, only one street scene, only one kitchen scene, only one
purely classical subject, only one family scene. The isolation of these
examples fills one with a kind of fury. No painter, and especially no
painter with such an interest in the difficulties of his art, such
a painter’s painter, so to speak, as Vermeer, and moreover a man
with eight children and a clamorous baker--no painter paints only one
landscape, especially when the result is so commandingly successful
as the “View of Delft.” Where are the others? (M. Vanzype has found a
replica, but it is not generally accepted.) No painter is satisfied
with one attempt at a beautiful façade. Where are the others? (We know
there was one other.) No painter paints only one classical subject.
Where are the others? (Mr. Paterson’s example is only half-classical:
classical with a domestic flavour: a family scene in masquerade, to
be exact.) No painter paints only one religious subject. Where are
the others? No painter paints only one portrait pure and simple as
distinguished from portrait and _genre_. M. Vanzype, it is true, claims
to have found another; but that would make only two. How indeed would
he be allowed to paint no others, when he was Vermeer of Delft and
lived in an age of Dutch prosperity and Dutch interest in art? Where
are the others? Do you see how one feels--how maddening it is that
these bare forty are all, when one knows that there must have been many
more?
Vermeer may, of course, have himself destroyed some, as Claude Monet
recently destroyed a number of his. But I do not think so; he could
not have afforded to, and he was not that kind. No: they still exist
somewhere. And the question where are they brings us back to the
wealth of Mr. Pierpont Morgan, for which I was wishing at the beginning
of this essay. With it I would furnish expeditions not to discover
the Poles north and south, because I care nothing for them; not to
conquer the air, because I love too much to feel my feet on this green
earth; not to break banks or to finance companies; not to kill the
gentle giraffe for America’s museums; but simply to hunt among the
byways of Northern Europe in the hope of coming upon another work
by that exquisite Delft hand. That is how I would spend my money;
and incidentally what charming adventures one would have, and what
subsidiary treasure one would gather! That would be an expedition worth
making, even if the prime object of the search always eluded us.
The Fool’s Paradise
There is an old picture-shop in the West-Central district of London,
notable for the grime of its canvases, in the window of which there
is to be seen at this moment--unless a confiding purchaser has just
borne it off--a girl’s head and bust by some very indifferent Dutch
hand, under which is printed on the frame the startling and courageous
legend, “The Coral Necklace. By Jan Vermeer, of Delft.”
Of course the ascription is inaccurate. Were it accurate and the
picture worthy of it, this little shop would be the Mecca of the
first art experts of Europe and America, and the dealer would be in
the way to affluence; nor does the picture’s present owner probably
believe in it. But what of some previous possessor who did believe in
it--some simple soul who was genuinely convinced that upon his wall
hung a portrait by this rarest and most exquisite and radiant of Dutch
masters? Do you not envy him his easy credence, his want of fastidious
taste? I do.
A little while ago there was a lawsuit--indeed a series of
lawsuits--all turning upon the collection of porcelain left by a
wealthy Regent Street merchant, whose hobby was the acquisition of
china. As a man in the prime of life he had been a good judge; but
as he grew older and his brain weakened his sense of discrimination
left him, and it was discovered that his later purchases, so far from
being the priceless examples of Dresden and other ware which they were
thought to be, were all-but worthless. This naturally was a grief and
disappointment to the heirs who were to benefit from the sale; but for
us to be sorry for him is as foolish a waste of sympathy as I know.
For though there he sat, that old amateur of ceramics, surrounded by
the mediocre, yet in that he believed it to be the choicest he was
enviable. That belief is the heart of the case, since it is not what
things really are, but what one thinks things to be, that is the
important matter.
Truth has a slightly different expression for every one. To this aged
connoisseur with his decaying faculties her expression was falseness
itself, could he have scrutinised it with intelligence, but to his dim
eyes it looked like the finest candour, and therefore it was the finest
candour. He sunned himself in it, and passing his hands lovingly over
the spurious shepherdesses was happy. The point is that he could not
have been happier had the porcelain been truly of the rarest and most
wonderful.
I hope it will never be my fortune to visit a picture collector whose
walls are hung entirely with obvious copies which he believes to be
original, and flagrant daubs which he thinks masterpieces--a collector
in short who relies only on the posthumous activity of artists; yet
if it is, I hope I shall know how to control myself when he displays
his treasures. But of one thing I am certain: that no matter how I may
suffer from the concealment of my true feelings as an art lover, I
shall experience a genuine affection for my host, and a genuine delight
in his transparent, credible nature. Surely the people who live in
fool’s paradises are the salt of the earth. The man who says of a fine
thing, “A fine thing and my own,” I can admire, but not necessarily
with warmth; the man (he is very common) who says of a fine thing,
“A poor thing, but my own,” I have very little use for; but the man
who says of a poor thing, “A fine thing and my own,” him I admire
cordially, and could almost embrace.
But about this Vermeer. I cannot get it out of my head, for Vermeer
is a painter of whom, as you know, I have made some study, and the
thought of any one really sitting down excitedly with this grotesquely
misattributed picture in his room, reading the lying label without a
qualm, even with pride, scanning the commonplace paint with no twinge
of dubiety--it is this thought which beats me. The man who confidently
had the legend printed on the frame must indeed have been a simpleton
beyond appraisement--the very briniest salt of the soil. For consider:
the copyists, the forgers, may do credible things with Corot, even
with Raphael. Every day they are writing David Cox’s signature on old
water-colours; false ascriptions are the life-blood of too many firms.
That is true. But Vermeer--there is only one Vermeer! and yet some man
could know enough about Vermeer to wish to have something by him on his
wall (modest wish--there are not, as I have been saying, forty known
Vermeer canvases in the world), and then be satisfied with this! If
ever I longed to meet a freak it is he--not only to examine his bumps,
but to abase myself before him. For there is a true philosopher, a
really wise man, if you like.
Meanwhile I wish some dramatist with an eye to quaint character,
if there be such a one left, would set upon the stage for us a
paradisiacal fool such as this--a simple kind of enthusiast without a
shred of critical faculty or a drop of guile, whom we might see amiably
fondling his geese and deeming them swans. That would give me, for one,
great pleasure. Lamb, in his Captain Jackson, approached and skirted
the type, but Vermeer’s “Coral Necklace” would not have attracted that
engaging creature. If Anatole France were a dramatist and would return
to the gentle, smiling mood in which he thought out and built up his
Sylvestre Bonnard, he might give us this collector. I can think of no
one else; and even he would probably be a little too much inclined to
whip something on his back, such a castigator and ridiculer as he is.
Consolers of Genius
I have just added another famous dog to my list. It was a good list
before, but it is now richer. It included Matthew Arnold’s Geist and
Max and Kaiser, George Meredith’s Islet, Cowper’s Beau, Newton’s
Diamond, Mrs. Browning’s Flush, Mr. Lehmann’s Rufus, all Dr. John
Brown’s many friends, Scott’s deerhounds, Mortimer Collins’s St.
Bernards, Pope’s spaniel. I remember only these as I write, but of
course there are many others. And to this company enters now “Pomero.”
Landor’s “Pomero” came to him late in life--in the early ’forties--by
which time the old man--he was then nearing seventy but had twenty
fairly stormy years left--had settled again in England, his wife and
family and most of his sympathies being far away in Italy. At Bath
he then lived, making occasional visits to Gore House, and varying
the composition of exquisite prose and tender felicitous verse with
quarrels and tempests and tempests and reconciliations and tempests
and lawsuits. Such then was the possessor of “Pomero”--or, as he would
probably have called himself, the proud possession of “Pomero”--of
whom such glimpses as I have had come to me in scraps of letters quoted
by Forster in his Life of this noble, troubled, impossible, glorious
creature.
Here is one, written by Landor at Warwick, when away from home, or what
stood for home at that period--1844. Pomero had only just arrived from
Fiesole; and it is worth remarking that had Landor lived to-day no such
fortune would ever have been his, for never would he have survived such
explosions of rage as the modern six months’ quarantine for imported
dogs would have brought on him. (Think of him expressing his views to
the custom-house officer at Dover!) “Daily,” he wrote, “do I think
of Bath and Pomero. I fancy him lying on the narrow window-sill, and
watching the good people go to church. He has not yet made up his mind
between the Anglican and Roman Catholic; but I hope he will continue in
the faith of his forefathers, if it will make him happier.”
Pomero, I should say, was a Pomeranian; but let me quote Sir Sidney
Colvin’s charming sentences upon both man and dog. “With ‘Pomero’
Landor would prattle in English and Italian as affectionately as a
mother with a child. Pomero was his darling, the wisest and most
beautiful of his race; Pomero had the brightest eyes and the most
wonderful yaller tail ever seen. Sometimes it was Landor’s humour to
quote Pomero in speech and writing as a kind of sagacious elder brother
whose opinion had to be consulted on all subjects before he would
deliver his own. This creature accompanied his master wherever he went,
barking ‘not fiercely but familiarly’ at friend and stranger, and when
they came in would either station himself upon his master’s head to
watch the people passing in the street, or else lie curled up in his
basket until Landor, in talk with some visitor, began to laugh, and
his laugh to grow and grow, when Pomero would spring up and leap upon
and fume about him, barking and screaming for sympathy until the whole
street resounded. The two together, master and dog, were for years to
be encountered daily on their walks about Bath and its vicinity, and
there are many who perfectly well remember them; the majestic old man,
looking not a whit the less impressive for his rusty and dusty brown
suit, his bulging boots, his rumpled linen, or his battered hat; and
his noisy, soft-haired, quick-glancing, inseparable companion.”
Landseer, one feels, should have painted them: Dignity and Fidelity,
Unreason and Understanding, Lion and Pomeranian. Since he did not,
we must go to Forster’s extracts from the letters to fill in the
picture. Another passage, also in 1844: “Pomero was on my knee when
your letter came. He is now looking out of the window; a sad male
gossip, as I often tell him. I dare not take him with me to London.
He would most certainly be stolen, and I would rather lose Ipsley or
Llanthony. The people of the house love him like a child, and declare
he is as sensible as a Christian. He not only is as sensible, but much
more Christian than some of those who have lately brought strife and
contention into the Church.”
Again: “Pomero is sitting in a state of contemplation, with his nose
before the fire. He twinkles his ears and his feathery tail at your
salutation. He now licks his lips and turns round, which means ‘Return
mine.’ The easterly wind has an evident effect upon his nerves. Last
evening I took him to hear Luisina de Sodre play and sing. She is my
friend the Countess de Molande’s granddaughter and daughter of De
Sodre, Minister of Brazil to the Pope a few years ago. Pomero was
deeply affected, and lay close to the pedal on her gown, singing in a
great variety of tones, not always in time. It is unfortunate that he
always will take a part where there is music, for he sings even worse
than I do.”
So far the letters have been to Forster. Here is a passage from one
to Landor’s sisters, also in 1844: “Let me congratulate you on the
accident that deprives you of your carriage-horses. Next to servants,
horses are the greatest trouble in life. Dogs are blessings, true
blessings. Pomero, who sends his love, is the comfort of my solitude
and the delight of my life. He is quite a public character here
in Bath. Everybody knows him and salutes him. He barks aloud at
all familiarly, not fiercely. He takes equal liberties with his
fellow-creatures, if indeed dogs are more his fellow-creatures than I
am. I think it was St. Francis de Sales who called birds and quadrupeds
his sisters and brothers. Few saints have been so good-tempered, and
not many so wise.”
For twelve years Pomero lived to make his master (his servant) happy
or less unhappy, and then he died. That is the tragic thing--the brief
life of these loyal devotees. It is not right, not fair, that so much
love and energy should so quickly pass away. Many sensitive persons
refuse for this reason to keep dogs at all. That, I think, is going too
far, but I can understand it. Life at its longest for a human being
is so brief and so fraught with disappointment and disillusion that,
at least, one feels, the span of the most faithful and satisfying
friends that man knows might have been made commensurate.... Pomero,
as I have said, was Landor’s for twelve years, and then he died.
Writing to Forster on the 10th of March, 1856, the old man--he was
eighty-one--tells the news: “Pomero, dear Pomero, died this evening at
about four o’clock. I have been able to think of nothing else....”
A few days later he wrote again: “Everybody in this house grieves for
Pomero. The cat lies day and night upon his grave, and I will not
disturb the kind creature, though I want to plant some violets upon it,
and to have his epitaph placed around his little urn:--
O urna! nunquam sis tuo eruta hortulo:
Cor intus est fidele, nam cor est canis.
Vale, hortule! aeternumque, Pomero! vale.
Sed, si datur, nostri memor.”
Eighty-one though he was, Landor had still nine years before him--years
of trouble, and fury, and exile. Not till 1864 did he meet Pomero again.
Pomero had been Landor’s confidant and delight for five years
when, in 1849, there came to one of the most illustrious of his
contemporaries--and a critic of the world not less impatient than
himself, but how different!--a similar companion. It was not, it is
true, a Pomeranian, but a dog none the less.
The news was thus broken by one of the most remarkable women of all
time to, as it happens, the same friend who had been first told of the
arrival of Pomero. “O Lord!” she writes, wilfully, characteristically
as ever, “O Lord! I forgot to tell you I have got a little dog, and
Mr. C. has accepted it with an amiability! To be sure, when he comes
down gloomy in the morning, or comes in wearied from his walk, the
infatuated little beast dances round him on his hind legs as I ought to
do and can’t; and he feels flattered and surprised by such unwonted
capers to his honour and glory.” So wrote Jane Welsh Carlyle to John
Forster, on the 11th of December, 1849.
Sixteen years later the writer of that letter died suddenly in her
carriage in Hyde Park, and thus ended a life of heroic vivacity. Her
husband, deprived for ever of the power of sustained work, difficult
enough when he had her service and intelligence within call, spent a
few months in his early bereavement in collecting and arranging and
annotating her marvellous correspondence; and one does not envy him
his feelings as he did it. Coming to the note to Forster which I have
quoted, he thus introduced it: “Poor little Nero, the dog, must have
come this winter, or ‘Fall’ (1849)? Railway guard (from Dilberoglue,
Manchester) brought him in one evening late. A little Cuban (Maltese?
and otherwise mongrel) shock, mostly white--a most affectionate, lively
little dog, otherwise of small merit, and little or no training.
Much innocent sport there arose out of him; much quizzical ingenuous
preparation of me for admitting of him: ‘My dear, it’s borne in upon
my mind that I’m to have a dog,’ etc., etc., and with such a look and
style! We had many walks together, he and I, for the next ten years; a
great deal of small traffic, poor little animal, so loyal, so loving,
so naïve and true with what of dim intellect he had! Once, perhaps
in his third year here, he came pattering upstairs to my garret;
scratched duly, was let in, and brought me (literally) the ‘gift of a
horse’ (which I had talked of needing)! Brought me, to wit, a letter
hung to his neck, inclosing on a saddler’s card the picture of a
horse, and adjoined to it a cheque for £50--full half of some poor
legacy which had fallen to her! Can I ever forget such a thing? I was
not slave enough to take the money; and got a horse next year, on the
common terms--but all Potosi, and the diggings new and old, had not in
them, as I now feel, so rich a gift!”
These three volumes of Mrs. Carlyle’s indomitably gay correspondence,
laughing at her crosses, making light of her disappointments,
extracting whatever of merriment or sunshine was possible, and never
with any trace of self-commendation or consciousness of heroism: and
a woman too who must have known that, given a fair chance, which
she never had, she would have shone in her own way with hardly less
brilliancy than her bear; who must have known she was worth petting,
and considering, and adoring rightly--these three volumes of brilliant
good-humour against odds, with the dour, intolerant, solitary widower
re-living the irrecoverable past as he read them over and edited them,
counting his lost opportunities on every page, are surely as tragic
a work as literature knows. But Nero is pawing at the desk. The note
continues: “Poor Nero’s last good days were with us at Aberdour, in
1859. Twice or thrice I flung him into the sea there, which he didn’t
at all like; and in consequence of which he even ceased to follow me
at bathing time, the very strongest measure he could take--or pretend
to take. For two or three mornings accordingly I had seen nothing of
Nero, but the third or fourth morning, on striking out to swim a few
yards, I heard gradually a kind of swashing behind me; looking back, it
was Nero out on voluntary humble partnership--ready to swim with me to
Edinburgh, or to the world’s end, if I liked.”
Pomero, as I said, lived for twelve years with his whirlwind adorer.
Nero had a shorter life with that strange Scotch couple only by a few
months. This is the end of Carlyle’s note: “Fife had done his mistress,
and still more him, a great deal of good. But, alas, in Cook’s grounds
here, within a month or two a butcher’s cart (in her very sight) ran
over him neck and lungs: all winter he wheezed and suffered; ‘Feb. 1st,
1860,’ he died (prussic acid, and the doctor obliged at last!). I could
not have believed my grief then and since would have been the twentieth
part of what it was--nay, that the want of him would have been to me
other than a riddance. Our last midnight walk together (for he insisted
on trying to come), Jan. 31st, is still painful to my thought. ‘Little
dim, white speck, of Life, of Love, Fidelity, and Feeling, girdled
by the Darkness as of Night Eternal!’ Her tears were passionate and
bitter, but repressed themselves, as was fit, I think, the first day.
Top of the garden, by her direction, Nero was put under ground. A
small stone tablet with date she also got, which, broken by careless
servants, is still there--a little protected now.”
It is there still, but few visitors to that gloomy Chelsea house, where
two geniuses, a man and woman, failed sufficiently to subdue and blend
their individualities for so many years, ever walk down the garden to
see it. Underneath are the remains of one who could neither read nor
write nor frame systems, but who lived the only successful life of the
three.
An American Hero
Who was William Allen Richardson? I once asked. Since the publication
of the volume of essays in which the problem was so tiresomely
propounded many letters have reached me, each with its own solution.
All are different; and their differences show how important it was
that a warrior for truth should come forward and fling the question
in the world’s face. For the growth of legend and myth that has been
endangering the fame of this noble deviser of an orange-hearted rose
was becoming too rampant. Let me, therefore, who asked the question,
now answer it; for I know. By dint of careful pruning I have removed
the apocryphal, and the truth remains. William Allen Richardson was--
But you must permit me first to narrate some of the experiences of an
essayist who has the temerity to indulge in interrogation marks.
The first letter I received--almost immediately after the publication
of the book--gave so lucid an account of William Allen Richardson that
I began to think I had made too much of the mystery. “Do you really
want to know about William Allen Richardson?” it began; and then this
story was told: “William Allen Richardson and his wife loved roses, and
the ambition of their lives was to raise an orange-coloured rose. At
last they succeeded, and they called the treasure ‘William and Ellen
Richardson,’ a rather cumbersome title, but meaning much to these two.
Alas, the printer would have none of this sentiment--hence ‘William
Allen Richardson.’”
I cannot say that this narrative satisfied me; but there was nothing in
it to make one violently sceptical. Why should not William and Ellen
have lived this idyllic rose-growing life? Why should not their names
have been thus intertwined for ever, even if a little ungallantly? I
had seen barges on the Thames called “William and Ellen,” I was sure;
why not roses? I therefore went about saying that I now knew the whole
history of William Allen Richardson, and the story was not doubted.
But then arrived an anonymous post card with the Paddington postmark:
“I am of no importance and my brother is of no importance, but William
Allen Richardson was the brother of my brother’s handy man. (At least
he said so.)” What of William and Ellen after that? For the time,
at any rate, the narrative of their fragrant union passed from my
repertory.
That post card will give you an idea of the lightness with which
this matter can be approached. I do not mean that the communication
in itself is frivolous, for, though easy in tone, it yet states the
case briefly and clearly; the lightness that I complain of is in the
attitude of the writer’s brother towards this tremendous problem. Here
he was, with his brother’s handy man claiming to be the own brother of
the great William Allen Richardson, and yet doing no more (apparently)
than treating it as a myth--never investigating--never, in short,
really caring. Now if I had a brother whose handy man was---- But this
is boasting, self-approval; and complacent people conscious of their
own rectitude rarely get at the truth.
Other correspondents followed, all strangers to me, and each with a
pet theory. One had it that William Allen Richardson had been gardener
to a rose-loving duke. Another, that he was a Scotchman who had gone
to France, to manage the Ducher nursery. Another, that he was the
American editor of a horticultural journal. Then came another more
circumstantial story, from a lady in Yorkshire. “I was taught by a
dear old country vicar (himself an enthusiastic rose-grower and close
friend of Dean Hole) that W. A. Richardson was one of the Quaker firm
of Richardson, who had a place near Newry in the north of Ireland.”
This so chimed in with my own Quakerish suspicions, as expressed in
the original essay, that I was inclined to think we might really be
at home at last; but meanwhile an American missive was on its way from
Louisville, Kentucky, and when it arrived I saw at once that here was
Veritas naked and unashamed.
A certain statesman who had taken much interest in the matter will
be amused to read the Louisville communication. “I have often,” he
wrote to me, “wondered, and occasionally asked, who W. A. R. was, and
have been at times impatient that people should be content to live
on without knowing. Now I would almost rather not know, having been
disappointed for so long.” He went on to say that he suspected W. A. R.
to be an American. Well, he was right. Sagacious and far-seeing as
ever, he now has another opportunity of pointing to a fulfilled
conjecture; for there is no doubt (since I have had corroboration from
another transatlantic source) that the following letter is gospel.
The writer, Mr. W. R. Belknap, roundly states himself to be William
Allen Richardson’s nephew. He continues: “William Allen Richardson
was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 20, 1819. When he
was but two years old, his father moved to Lexington, Kentucky,
where he resided until his death, in October, 1892. William Allen
Richardson married Miss Mary Short, daughter of Charles Wilkins
Short, the botanist, who pursued his favourite studies of botany and
horticulture at his country place, Hayfield, some five miles south-west
of Louisville. With this congenial companionship, Mr. W. A. Richardson
established himself in an adjoining place, Ivywood, and became much
interested in the cultivation and propagation of roses. He imported a
good many, and in this way became acquainted by correspondence with
Madame Ducher (or she may have been called Veuve Ducher), at Lyons,
France, who was especially interested in a rose which he sent her of a
pale yellow colour, and she wrote Mr. Richardson that she had a sport
from this rose in her own garden, which, if successful in propagation,
she would name for him; hence the name which has interested you as
applying to the beautiful copperish-yellow rose.... Mr. Richardson
lived until 1892 in his country home near here, and would have enjoyed,
if he might have foreseen, the interest which his namesake has
aroused....”
And now we know. The secret is out, and the rose will smell no less
sweet for it, nor climb less carelessly, nor refresh the eye less
graciously. But I adjure America to be more proud of this feather in
her cap. I do not suggest that William Allen Richardson should have
a monument, for he has one in every right garden more beautiful than
marble and very likely more enduring than bronze; but his name should
be so deeply cut upon the roll of honour that no one need ever have to
ask my question again.
But what a blow to that foolish romantic anecdote about Ellen!
Mr. Hastings
Had it not been for the trenchant pen of his cousin, Anthony Ashley
Cooper, the first Lord Shaftesbury, we should know nothing of Mr.
Hastings; but as it happens, a portrait of Mr. Hastings being painted,
the Earl was amused to pit his pen against the brush of the artist and
append the result to the picture. So that Mr. Hastings used to hang on
the wall at Wimborne St. Giles’s, near Cranbourn, in Dorset (one of the
Shaftesbury seats), doubly limned. Where he is to-day I know not; but
the Earl’s words remain and are accessible. I take them in the form
which follows from the “Connoisseur” for Thursday, 14 August, 1755, and
I may in passing say that in turning over the leaves of this leisurely
little breakfast-table companion it was not a little disquieting to
think what good papers they had in London one hundred and fifty-six
years ago, before the days of amalgamation.
As to the portrait of Mr. Hastings, I have seen an engraving of it in
one of Hutchins’s Dorsetshire books, and it is a crude enough thing--a
little odd old man, with a pointed beard, sharp eyes, and a long staff
in his right hand--not so much a patriarch’s staff as a surveyor’s
pole. Nothing in it to suggest that he loved spaniels, for example, or
knew the best thing to do with a disused pulpit. Yet he did.
Now for the shrewd and cryptic statesman who first made the admirable
remark (since given to others) that “Wise men are of but one religion,”
adding to the lady who inquired what that was, “Wise men never
tell.” He begins thus: “In the year 1638 lived Mr. Hastings; by his
quality son, brother, and uncle to the Earls of Huntingdon. He was
... low, very strong, and very active; of a reddish flaxen hair.
His clothes always green cloth, and never all worth (when new) five
pounds. His house was perfectly of the old fashion, in the midst of
a large Park well stocked with deer; and near the house rabbits to
serve his kitchen; many fish-ponds; great store of wood and timber; a
bowling-green in it, long but narrow, full of high ridges, it being
never levell’d since it was plough’d. They used round sand bowls;
and it had a banqueting house like a stand, built in a tree.”--The
mansion no longer stands in its entirety. It was pulled down, with the
exception of two wings, at the beginning of the last century. One of
these wings, however, contains the kitchen, and gives ample evidence of
the hospitality which, as we shall see, was practised there.
Mr. Hastings “kept all manner of sport hounds, that ran buck, fox,
hare, otter, and badger. And hawks, long and short winged. He had
all sorts of nets for fish. He had a walk in the New Forest, and the
manor of Christ Church. This last supplied him with red deer, sea and
river fish. And indeed all his neighbours’ grounds and royalties were
free to him, who bestowed all his time on these sports, but what he
borrowed to caress his neighbours’ wives and daughters; there being not
a woman in all his walks, of the degree of a yeoman’s wife or under,
and under the age of forty, but it was extremely her fault if he was
not intimately acquainted with her. This made him very popular; always
speaking kindly to the husband, father, or brother, who was, to boot,
very welcome to his house whenever he came.” (“Popular” is a good word,
so good, in this connexion, that one has to pause a little to savour
it.) Thinking of him thus occupied, if ever, you would say, an old,
whimsical bachelor was portrayed, he is portrayed here. But you would
be wrong, for Mr. Hastings was married. It was his wife who brought him
Woodlands, and she did not die till 1638, when he was eighty-seven.
They had, moreover, a son. Lord Shaftesbury, who was something of a
cynic, suppressed this detail. It amused him to eliminate Mrs. Hastings.
His lordship goes on to describe the free-and-easy (and, on the face
of it, wifeless) character of Mr. Hastings’ house. “A house not so
neatly kept as to shame him or his dirty shoes: the great hall strow’d
with marrow bones, full of hawks’ perches, hounds, spaniels, and
terriers; the upper side of the hall hung with foxskins of this and the
last year’s killing; here and there a polecat intermixt; game-keepers’
and hunters’ poles in great abundance. The parlour was a large room
as properly furnished. On a great hearth paved with brick lay some
terriers, and the choicest hounds and spaniels. Seldom but two of the
great chairs had litters of young cats in them, which were not to be
disturbed, he having always three or four attending him at dinner, and
a little white stick of fourteen inches lying by his trencher, that he
might defend such meat as he had no mind to part with to them.” (One
does not feel much room for a Mrs. Hastings here. She kept her own
quarters, I imagine.)
I should like to see a picture of old Mr. Hastings at his meals--with
all his animals about him and his hand holding his little white stick.
Steinlen, who designed that fine poster for Nestlé’s milk--the cats
clamouring for the little girl’s breakfast--could draw the animals; but
for the little old gentleman, with his red hair and green clothes and
great age, you would want a Dendy Sadler or Stacy Marks.
The description of the house continues: “The windows (which were very
large) served for places to lay his arrows, cross-bows, stone-bows,
and other such like accoutrements. The corners of the room full of the
best-chose hunting and hawking poles. An oyster table at the lower end,
which was of constant use twice a day all the year round, for he never
failed to eat oysters, before dinner and supper, through all seasons;
the neighbouring town of Poole supply’d him with them. The upper part
of the room had two small tables and a desk, on the one side of which
was a Church Bible, and on the other the Book of Martyrs. On the
tables were hawks’ hoods, bells, and such like; two or three old green
hats, with their crowns thrust in so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs,
which were of a pheasant kind of poultry, he took much care of and
fed himself. Tables, dice, cards, and boxes were not wanting. In the
hole of the desk were store of tobacco-pipes that had been used.”--Mr.
Hastings must have been one of the earliest of the smokers, since he
was born as far back as 1551.
“On one side of this end of the room was the door of a closet wherein
stood the strong beer and the wine, which never came thence but in
single glasses, that being the rule of the house exactly observ’d.
For he never exceeded in drink or permitted it.” In another account
of Mr. Hastings his iron rule with regard to liquor was suggested
to have caused much unhappiness to his guests. And I must admit that
there seems to be something wrong in a house where you may not see
the bottle, much less handle it. But, on the other hand, it is such
unexpected whims and unreasonableness that are the life-blood of these
old originals. Any dull creature can be reasonable.
Now comes a priceless touch: “On the other side was the door into an
old chapel, not used for devotion. The pulpit, as the safest place, was
never wanting of a cold chine of beef, venison pasty, gammon of bacon,
or great apple pye, with thick crust, extremely baked.” “Never wanting”
is splendid. One longs to know more of the service of this house--of
the cook who fell in so complacently with such a master’s needs and
ways. “Never wanting!”
Like Bishop Corbet’s fairies, Mr. Hastings was of the old profession.
“His table cost him not much, though it was good to eat at. His sports
supplied all but beef and mutton, except Fridays, when he had the best
salt fish (as well as other fish) he could get; and was the day his
neighbours of best quality most visited him. He never wanted a London
pudding, and always sung it in with ‘My part lies therein-a.’” “He
always sung it in.” Here lies an old custom indeed, dead, I suppose, as
Mr. Hastings himself and all his spaniels and kittens. Who sings in a
pudding to-day? And, indeed, what pudding is worth singing in? Not the
rice which I had yesterday, at any rate.
And so we come to the end: “He was well-natured but soon angry....
He lived to be a hundred; never lost his eyesight, but always wrote
and read without spectacles; and got on horseback without help. Until
past four score he rode to the death of a stag as well as any.” He was
buried in Horton church in 1650 at the age of ninety and nine, and
England will never know anything like him again. Gone are such spacious
days and ways; gone such idiosyncrasy and humour. Only, I imagine,
on the bowling-greens are Mr. Hastings’ characteristics to be still
observed; for our old devotees of that leisurely contest, that most
pacific warfare, cannot in their attitudes, gestures and expressions
differ much from the Squire of Woodlands. Just so did he, three hundred
years ago, contort and twist his frame, as he watched his bowl’s
career and bent every nerve and fibre to influence it to swerve at the
last dying moment on the jack between his two rivals. These elemental
anxieties do not change.
Thoughts on Tan
In my search for the curious, which I hope that nothing will ever
satiate, I came recently upon this advertisement at the end of a not
too respectable comic paper:--
HANDSOME MEN are slightly sun-burnt. “Sunbronze” gives this tint.
Harmless. Detection impossible. Makes men really handsome. Society
Lady writes:--“Sunbronze is wonderful, charming, and genuine.” 1s.
1½d., etc.
When I read it first I laughed. Then I cut it out. Then I began not to
laugh; and I am not sure now that one ought not to weep....
We were considering earlier in this volume a certain kind of fool’s
paradise--the paradise which surrounds the collector-fool who genuinely
believes his geese to be swans. That amiable simpleton deceived no one;
he was merely soothingly and caressingly self-deceived to the top of
his bent through a heaven-sent want of true taste. Compared with him
the man who deliberately rubs a mixture on his face in order to induce
his friends to believe that he has been much in the sun when he has
not is complex indeed--for he is deceiving every one else without for
an instant deceiving himself at all. For that is my reading of that
advertisement. I do not accept its face value; I do not believe that
it is bought by men in order to render themselves more attractive to
the fair. My reading is that it is bought by men (and perhaps by women
too: you observe the testimony of the Society Lady?) in order that it
may lend colour to their assertion that they have been fashionably or
expensively holiday-making when they have not.
But why pretend? you say. Ah! you are perhaps well-to-do. Nothing keeps
you at home; or even if it did, it would not cause you shame. But can
you not believe that there are others?...
We feel that we are greater than we know
--as Wordsworth says. That is an exalted mood. A commoner experience
would perhaps be expressed thus:--
We hope you’ll think us greater than we are.
That aspiration, at any rate, is at the bottom of the success of such a
lotion as this; and it is prevalent.
A full inquiry into this foible of poor human nature would need a
volume; nor could I carry it out. Something of the minute scientific
method of Professor Sully would be needed, with a considerable infusion
of Thackeray added, and a leaven of pity, too.
Pity indeed. For though sheer brazen impudence and a determined
lady-killing may resort to this strange bottle, this phial of mockery,
yet I seem to see it being smuggled into simpler homes too. The poor
clerk, for example, who is forced by sheer poverty to spend his week
or fortnight in his London home, and by sheer shame to spend it almost
_perdu_; reading the paper in bed, smoking his pipe in his back yard,
helping with the children, playing pool at night over his glass in the
public-house at the corner--how would he feel when he returned to work
at the end of the period and had to confess that he had been nowhere?
That is the point to consider, for few of us are great, and he is very
small indeed. Amid triumphant stories of Margate and Southend, Yarmouth
and Southsea, Brighton and even Guernsey, where would he be if he told
the truth? Nowhere. And what fun is it not to be anywhere? Don’t you
see? And so do you blame him if he spends 1s. 1½d., and anoints his
countenance with a little of this delusive fluid on the morning of his
return, and, strong in its testimony, talks vaguely but sufficiently of
Herne Bay? Do you blame him? You must be a devil of a fellow if you do.
In a way he is entirely justified, for there is no doubt that he is
gaining self-respect by losing it: that is to say, he would feel almost
too paltry if he had to confess to the real squalid economy of his
fortnight. And it is not good to feel too paltry.
But the wish to be thought more fashionable than one is, is not
confined to the respectable poor--the poor, that is, who are forced
to make something of a show: surely the least enviable class of all;
the poor, in other words, who have to forego all the privileges of
being poor. There is another class--Major Pendennis was at the head
of it--who must intrigue a little too, if they are not to be too
miserable. I remember a little man who had a room in Jermyn Street
and lived in his Club; it was his habit to disappear for a fortnight
or so every 11th of August, and reappear very brown and very vocal of
the moors. His colour was genuine--no 1s. 1½d. bottle, but the Lord of
Light himself had conferred it; yet not by beams that fell in Yorkshire
or Scotland, but on Brighton’s pier. How, then, did his narrative
of triumph in the butts carry conviction? What was his particular
“Sunbronze”? He wore in the ribbon of his hat a little row of grouse
feathers.
And that possibly is what one has to remember--that “Sunbronze” takes
many forms--more than I know, or you know, or ever shall know, however
extensive our knowledge may be at this moment. For we all “Sunbronze”
a little; at least if not quite all, nearly all. We nearly all hope
you’ll think us greater than we are.
On Leaving One’s Beat
When I am going for a long railway journey I always buy a number of
papers associated with walks of life as far as possible removed from
my own. Then the time passes easily. The ordinary papers one reads
too quickly; the exorbitant require attention--they open the door to
new worlds. I do not mean to suggest that one could go so far as to
find entertainment in the Financial Supplement to the “Times”--that
is too much; but the organs of dog-fancying, yachting, cricket,
prize-fighting, the police, estate agents, licensed victuallers--these
are sufficiently unusual and concentrated to be entertaining if
they are really studied. Their exclusiveness, their importance,
I particularly like: the suggestion they throw out that in this
world all is vanity save their own affairs (as indeed it is). Such
self-centredness is very exhilarating.
But the best fun of all is to be found in the stage and variety-hall
papers. Not only are they the most amusing, but also the most human,
for the sock and buskin have a way of forcing the heart to the
sleeve. Limelight does more than all the sun of the tropics to bring
emotion to the surface without shame; and it thus comes about that
the periodicals of the players are full of refreshment to the cabined
and reserved. Reading one of them the other day, I found in the
advertisement columns (which should never be neglected) the following
rich feast of opportunity, on which I have been ruminating ever since:--
“THE ANGEL OF HIS DREAMS.”
Wanted, to rehearse April 19th, Summer Tour, Autumn if suitable,
Dashing Leading Lady; must have power, pathos, intensity, and
be capable of strong character work. Emotional Juvenile Lady,
with pathos and intensity (look 17 in first Act; state if sing).
Handsome wardrobe essential in both cases. Clever Emotional
Child Actress, over 14, look 9; own speciality. Tall, Robust,
Aristocratic Heavy Man; Aris. Old Man (Small Double and S.M.).
Young Char. Juv. Man (Small Double); Bright Low Comedian (short).
References, lowest summer terms, and photos essential.
--There is an advertisement if you like! Did you ever hear of so many
strange wants? I certainly never did; nor ever did I hear of so many
vacancies that I could not myself do anything towards filling. For,
as a rule, one feels one could make some kind of a show in most
capacities--one could maintain for a little while the illusion of
being a gentleman’s butler, or even a gardener, a sleeping partner,
an addresser of envelopes, a smart traveller, an election agent, a
sub-editor, or any of the things that are so frequently advertised for,
supposing one to have applied for the post and have been engaged. But
how begin to be a “Young Char. Juv. Man (Small Double)”? That leaves me
utterly at sea. And “S.M.,” what is that?
It was while pondering upon these matters that I realized what an
excellent thing it would be for many of us whose imagination is weak,
and whose sympathetic understanding is therefore apt to break down, if
we could now and then completely change our beat. Many a hidebound,
intolerant, self-satisfied Puritan do I know who, forced into such a
touring company as this, compelled by sheer adversity to assume the
habit of a “Small Double and S.M.,” or a “Bright Low Comedian,” would
come out of the ordeal far sweeter and fitter to play his part in
the human drama, however he may have disappointed the promoters of
“The Angel of His Dreams.” We remain--it is largely the fault of the
shortness of life and the need of pence--too much in our own grooves.
We are too ignorant of what we can really do.
That advertisement came from an organ of the legitimate Stage.
Obviously. In a less classic and more intimate music-hall paper, which
I bought at the same time, I found the charming announcement of the
birth of a son to a North of England Valentine Vox. After stating the
event--“The wife of ‘Baddow’ (ventriloquist) of a son”--it went on
thus:--“Both doing well. Baddow takes this opportunity of thanking the
managers and agents who so kindly transferred, altered, and rearranged
dates, so that I played places near and was able to stay in Liverpool
for this event.” There is something very engaging in the _naïveté_,
pride and pleasure of that statement. It contains so much of the
warm-heartedness of the variety-stage, where money and sympathy equally
come easily and go easily. Baddow’s suppression of his Christian
name, or even initial, I like: his satisfaction in having reached a
position where both are negligible, together with the suspicion that
he is aware that the advertisement would be of less value if the star
style were tampered with. I like also his complacency as a parent of
some importance. And then there is in it too the new evidence of the
kindliness of those in power, all working together to keep the properly
anxious ventriloquist near at home; and finally the really adorable
transition, indicating real emotion, from the somewhat stilted if
imposing third person to the familiar first.
The good, affectionate Baddow! I hope mother and son are still doing
well, and that the son will grow up to be a comfort to his parents, and
as a ventriloquist not unworthy of his father (though never surpassing
him), and a delight to audiences.
The Deer-Park
After too many years I found myself last week once again in the first
deer-park I ever saw; and the change was only in me. The same beautiful
creatures were there, of the dappled variety, feeding in little groups,
standing motionless as a stranger approached, and moving across the
open or amid the trees of the avenue with the silent, timid curiousness
of their kind. The sun was golden through cracks in the heavy clouds,
and the deer’s soft dapplings shone in its light, while when they moved
in any number they twinkled, glittered, almost smouldered.
Now and then an old stag, with antlers so broad and branching that
they seemed not his at all, but a borrowed head-dress assumed almost
as if for a charade, would pass with dignity and extreme deliberation
from one group to another; now and then a fawn would trot up to its
mother on legs of such slender delicacy that their serviceableness for
anything but the most exquisite decoration seemed impossible; and twice
there were royal battles between young stags, whose horns met in a
terrifying clash and clatter like spears on shields.
These contests were interesting not only for the attack and
counter-attack, but for the conduct of the older stags, two of which at
once approached very slowly, but full of purpose, to act as referees,
and, if necessary, to interfere. It was precisely the same in each
engagement, although they were half a mile apart. The second was the
more exciting, for once or twice the referee had to break in, and
once with a furious rush one of the fighters charged his opponent
clean into the river, down a steep bank, and then jumped in after
him and continued the battle. All this we saw as we sat under one of
the lime-trees in the beautiful avenue, and I remembered, as I sat
there, that just such sounds as these--the rattling of antlers in
concussion--we had been accustomed to hear years and years ago when we
were children and lodged in a cottage by the park gates. Certainly I
had not heard it since, but gradually it grew more and more familiar,
rising to the surface of consciousness after this so long submersion.
What the life of a park deer is I have no notion, nor was there anyone
to ask; but since that is thirty-five years ago at the least, it is
improbable that any of these lovely creatures, so rare and dainty and
fragile as to be almost unreal, are the same that used to thrill us at
that distant day; yet I repeat there was no visible change whatever,
save in me. Everything else was the same--the footpaths; the lime
avenue; the oak deer-fence, still often in need of repair; the large
house, once so awe-inspiring and now so ugly; the church by the Scotch
firs; the red sand of the road; the curious house with the bas-relief
of a hog on a plate of Sussex iron near the church--but most of all the
deer, just as fairylike, just as thrilling, as ever, and moving exactly
in their old mysterious ways. I was glad I had seen so few deer since,
and none dappled. I will not see these again for some time, just to
keep that emotion of surprise and delight green and sweet.
Considering how many deer-parks England has--though far from enough--it
is remarkable that the sight of deer should be such an epoch in the
life of the ordinary person. Yet the very word deer-park gives me
a quickening of the pulse, and, I hope, always will. I came away
wondering what Jamrach or Cross would want for a pair; but I have lost
the wish for them. They should be kept more extraordinary than that.
They must remain an event. I am even sorry for villagers who live near
deer-parks; while having so much, they miss so much.
The other creature from romance that I group with the deer as making a
red-letter day for a child, and indeed for some of us who are older,
is the peacock. Now and then, but how rarely, there would be an
excursion to some great mansion. The passage from room to room amid
gilt furniture and ancestral portraits was an excitement, no doubt;
but the most memorable sight of all was the blue breast of the peacock
on the terrace-wall, caught through one of the diamond panes. Until I
moved to London and contracted the Kew Gardens Sunday habit, I suppose
that I had not seen ten peacocks in my life, and now again I see them
ordinarily not once a year; but a little while ago I visited a poet
who lives in an old house in the very heart of the country, and there
I found many peacocks. They walked proudly and affectedly about the
garden, they sat on the walls and on the roofs of the out-buildings,
they screamed at each other and spread their tails. The complete skin
of one that had died burned blue in the hall.
I expressed the usual commonplace as to their destructiveness of
flowers.
“To me,” said the poet, “they _are_ flowers. One cannot have both, so I
have peacocks.”
From this, my first and latest deer-park, which has but a handful of
cottages near it, we walked to the market town, a mile and a half away,
and there I sought in vain for the little toy and sweet shop where all
those years ago my first bow and arrow was bought. I know just where
it stood, but new and imposing premises occupy its place. The bow was
given me by one of those bachelor visitors who have it in their power
at extraordinarily small cost to glorify the existence of small boys
and emparadise the world. It is among the deeper tragedies that one can
never receive one’s first bow and arrow again.
The Rarities
I have been staying in the remote country with an aristocrat, by
which, of course, I mean not a man with two motor-cars, or a man
with illustrious quarterings, but one through whose garden runs a
trout-stream. I used to think that the possession of a cedar alone
conferred aristocracy, and I still think that in some measure it does;
but a stream with trout in it...! Moreover, this friend of mine has a
cedar too.
It is odd how late in life one does some of the most desirable things.
Here am I, who, ever since I can remember, have been longing to be idle
with a book in a chair beside running water; yet not till last week
did I find the conditions perfect. The sun was hot, yet not too hot;
the book did not matter, yet was not despicable, and once a peacock
butterfly settled upon the open page, and this justified in an instant
the existence of author, publisher, paper-maker, printer, binder, and
book-seller; the air was filled not only with the pretty whispering
burble of the current, but also with the plashing of a fountain in
its marble basin and the steady descent of water through a sluice;
sweet scents came and went with the gentle breeze, and one had but to
lift the eyes to see phloxes and dahlias in all their rich glory. And
once--but that is too wonderful an experience to be mentioned without
more ceremony.
Just as one man’s meat is another man’s poison, so is one man’s
commonplace another’s phenomenon. To an Englishman, for example, in
Dieppe it is nothing to read that a swallow-tailed butterfly has been
seen in England, because on the cliffs between Dieppe and Le Puy
swallow-tails are as prevalent as garden-whites with us. But what a
thrill for the English schoolboy with his net to see one in his native
meadows! Again, it is nothing to a gamekeeper to watch a family of
foxes at play in the early morning; but it would be an unforgettable
spectacle to a town dweller. And I daresay that there are readers
of these lines in Norfolk who are as accustomed to the sight of
kingfishers as I who live far from water am to that of rooks; but to me
kingfishers have appeared so seldom that they are like angels’ visits
and mark the years. I remember one on the Rother, near Midhurst, in
1884; another near Abingdon in 1889; another at Burford Bridge in 1890;
and a fourth in the valley between Rievaulx and Helmsley in 1894. That
is my total--four kingfishers in quite a long and not indolent life,
which includes at least two separate weeks on the Avon devoted to the
search for this bird--not the frequented Avon either, but the Avon’s
quieter parts such as one finds near the Combertons and about Harington
Weir.
At least that was my total until last week. But now I must add a fifth,
for as I was sitting by this little stream, thinking of nothing,
quietly ruminative and happily receptive, suddenly a jewel darted
through the air, and, burning bright against the sombre depths of a
yew, disappeared again. Almost before I had realized its presence my
fifth kingfisher was gone; but the day was made perfect by the flash.
And had I sat on I might have had even greater luck, for a fortnight
ago, while my friend was standing motionless on his bridge, an otter
climbed out of the water close by and strolled along the bank,
bright-eyed and inquisitive. Luck is the only word; and, as I once
wrote elsewhere, it is a kind of luck which goes entirely by favour of
the gods. I have it not. The only otter I ever saw was at the Zoo; and
incidentally I might add that the otter is the only animal in the Zoo
for which (with the exception of the mice) one does not feel sorry. He
seems so content; and has so much of his “native pewter” (so to speak)
to revel in; and is so continuously and rapturously alive, making the
best of both worlds--water and land. Whenever I look at him--and he is
three or four strong just now--I again realize that one of the most
satisfactory memories I can indulge is that on the single occasion on
which I joined an otter hunt nothing was killed.
It was seventeen years ago. The pack had come all the way to Sussex
from Wales, accompanied by an indefatigable owner, who illustrated,
curiously, pathetically, almost tragically, the hold that the chase can
exert upon an English gentleman. For he was a ruin: he was paralyzed
below the waist, and had the use only of one arm; but strapped securely
on a tried and faithful pony, he was able to direct and follow the
hunt. It was a strange sight: the old placid pony tugging at the lush
grass, while its crippled rider, in the grip of the passion of pursuit,
yelled like a demon. Hour after hour this stricken centaur patrolled
the banks and urged on his hounds with shouts and cries pouring from
his twisted lips. Not an otter-haunted stream in England but knew him!
I often think of him and wonder.
Dipping the other day in that most agreeable of recent autobiographies,
_The Reminiscences of Albert Pell_, I opened once again at his story
of Sir John Lawes’ otters, and, re-reading it, I felt more than
ever relieved that that one otter-hunt of my youth ended without
bloodshed. “An otter,” wrote Mr. Pell, who knew most things about
English woodlands and streams, “is a delightfully amusing pet, and
extremely inquisitive. When indoor he pries into every room, upstairs
and downstairs, but has, as a famous sportswoman says, a bad habit of
getting up early in the morning, having a bath, if there is one in
the room handy, then going up a chimney and returning to get into bed
with his mistress. My friend Sir John Lawes, as great a man in sport
as in science, had a pair of these animals at Rothamsted. They retired
by day to a small pool in the park. It was his custom at one time to
drive some miles to the railway-station at St. Albans, taking the train
there for London. On his return he never failed to bring back a basket
of fresh fish for the otters. As the carriage entered the park on the
way back to the Hall the creatures, unmoved by any other traffic,
recognized the paces of their master’s horses, and coming out of their
retreat in haste across the grass, ran ahead of the carriage, jumping
up like dogs at the horses’ noses till they reached the Hall, when,
the basket being emptied before them, they hurried back with their
present. Sir John took them up with him to his forest in Scotland,
where the pair enjoyed the forest as much as he did, taking themselves
off in the evening on fishing excursions in wild Highland waters,
to return without fail before daylight. A wretch of a gillie killed
the female, whereupon the disconsolate mate became irregular in his
habits, staying out at first for one night, then for two or three,
then a week, and finally never came back at all; probably lured away
by the enchantments of some wild jade with whom he set up poaching and
housekeeping.”
Is not that a charming story? I think the picture of the two creatures
frisking ahead of the horses (like porpoises around the prow of a
vessel) one of the most joyous it would be possible to conceive.
The sight of otters and kingfishers, alert and glancing, in their
native haunts confers distinction; but there is a far more remarkable
uniquity even than that; and I recently possessed it. What do you say
to a Sunday morning walk in Sussex and coming upon the dead body of a
badger lying just in the mouth of its burrow? On the strength of such
an adventure I claim to be for the moment a creature enormously apart
and loftily pinnacled. That we had badgers within half a mile, we knew.
Mus Penfold often sees traces of them, although never has a living one
met his sight; and last year, I regret to say, a party of stupid men
with eight dogs were allowed by the farmer to dig out two of the young
badgers and kill them. I did not watch them at their vile work, but I
saw their _débris_ afterwards, and counted the bottles.
How this badger died we shall never know; but there he lay, just like a
comfortable sleeping bear: in fact curiously like that little Malayan
“Gypsy” whom I found at the Zoo and whom you will find elsewhere in
this book. His head, black and yellow, was between his long-clawed paws
quite naturally. But he was dead enough, and his skin is now in the
house as a bloodless trophy and a proof that England is not yet wholly
tamed.
The Owl
To return to the kingfisher and the epoch in one’s life made by the
rare appearance of that glancing jewel, although this house is in
owlish country, and we hear owls from dusk to dawn, yet the sight
of one is hardly less rare and memorable. The effect is, of course,
totally different. A kingfisher entrances, thrills; one sees it and
glows. But the owl cuts deeper; one feels that one is in the presence
of a thing not necessarily of evil but of mystery and darkness. That
is to say, an owl at night. In broad day there can be nothing sinister
about him, as I happen to know as well as any one.
On this matter I have a true story to tell, which, however, I shall
quarrel with no one for disbelieving. One Sunday morning in the early
summer a few years ago I was walking in a little pine-wood on a Kentish
common. Suddenly, at half-past eleven, I was conscious that I was not
alone, and lifting my eyes I saw on a bush close by a young owl. He was
looking directly at me with such a stare in his deep orange orbs as
only an owl can compass--steady, incurious, implacable. I stopped and
stared at him, and thought first of the strangeness of the encounter
and then of a humorous poem by an American publisher (Why don’t English
publishers write humorous poems?) which I had learnt at school,
beginning “Who stuffed that white owl?” This owl, it is true, was not
white, but a beautiful arrangement in soft browns; yet he remained
as motionless as that other, save that every now and then a shutter,
timed to about three seconds exposure, covered his ’wildered lenses and
retired again into the machinery of his head.
Seeing how young he was, and thinking it better that he should be
looked after than left to the attentions of the Sunday afternoon
villagers (who can be very deadly), I determined to take him home.
I therefore opened a handkerchief, advanced slowly upon him, and
spreading it over him carried him tenderly away. He made no resistance
whatever. I was the first human being he had seen and might as easily
have been friend as foe.
So far the story makes no great call on credulity. But the remarkable
part is to come. I gave the owl to the boys at a neighbouring cottage,
who had kept one before and understood feeding and so on, and it
was arranged that when he was a little older he should be released.
Very well. The next Sunday came and on that morning these boys also
abstained from church and walked through this little pine-wood on the
common, and at exactly the same time, and in what I take to be exactly
the same place, they also found a young owl and captured it. (“You see
this wet, you see this dry.”) That’s a very odd circumstance, isn’t it,
and worthy of a place in any collection of coincidences?
Now, if I did not believe truth to be the only really interesting thing
in the world, I should go on to state that when on the third Sunday I
went to the little pine-wood again I found a third owl; but that is
not so. Since then, indeed, except of course at the Zoo--where they
have all kinds, although no longer any of those fascinating little
creatures from some distant land who live in holes in the ground--I had
never seen another owl near enough to observe it with any minuteness
until the other evening in Sussex. Then, while it was still half light,
a large barn-owl emerged from a clump of trees beside the road and
flew before us and over us, as we drove along, for two hundred yards,
finally disappearing among some ricks. It made no sound whatever; fish
swimming in a clear stream are not less audible. Its light underpart
gleamed softly like a lamp in a fog, and, like that, seemed almost to
diffuse radiance.
This silence is very wonderful and soothing. I would prescribe the
spectacle of the flight of owls at twilight for any disordered mind.
But he would be a bold physician who recommended for any weak nerves
the angry, screaming owls that sweep round this house in the middle of
the night, especially when the weather is rough. Then they are ominous
indeed.
Our owls live in the belfry, and though I have stood again and again in
the gloaming, watching, I have seen them only once. On that occasion
there had been some disagreement in the fields, for two of them came
back in full flight together, one pursuing and one pursued, uttering
terrible cries. I saw them black against the sky for a moment,
disordered and beating, and then they disappeared into the masonry as
silently and effectually as water into sand. No wonder, I thought, as I
stumbled away among the graves, that some rustic minds think them not
birds at all, but disembodied spirits.
The difference between these witches of the night returning from their
quarrel and that soft glimmering ghost that had flown down the road
was wide enough; but how much wider the gulf between those predatory
termagants and the poor lost soul in the Kentish pine-wood. Even in
his mild countenance, however, one could easily discern the makings of
a bogey. To wake up in the small hours and find oneself beneath the
scrutiny of such eyes in such a countenance would be enough for many of
us.
What owls really are like, we shall, I suppose, never know: whether
they are wise as legend would have them, or merely look so; whether
they are truly sinister or only weird and carnivorous. These things
we shall probably never know, but there is a lady in Hampshire who
recently came nearer the secret than any one else has done. Her letter
describing her experience was printed in the “Evening Standard” in
the summer of 1910. The immediate neighbourhood of her house, she
explained, was once a favourite hunting-ground of owls, but latterly
they had steadily decreased, until to hear one had become something
of a rarity. This she much regretted. When, therefore, one night she
was awakened by an owl’s cry she sprang up and ran to the window in
pleasure, and while there it amused her to answer it, mimicry of owls
being a hobby of hers. But this time she mimicked better than she knew,
for instantly out of the blackness came a crowd of owls to her window,
angry and threatening and uttering strange sounds. She had, it seems,
stumbled on something in the owl tongue of very serious import. Isn’t
that interesting? She may have called out some deadly insult. She
may have hit on a rally, a summons to arms. Whatever it was, it made
her for the moment almost one of this mysterious, uncanny, nocturnal
race. Her cry, in short, opened the door on a new world, vastly more
enthralling in interest and strange possibilities than aviation or any
of our modern inventions can make this. But it instantly shut again.
The Unusual Morning
One is liable day by day to a great many different kinds of surprises;
but few persons can have known two in the same morning quite so unusual
and diverse....
I was sitting in my room, writing, when a new and mysterious sound
caught the ear. It came apparently from the heart of the wall, near the
chimney, and was such a sound as in the dead of night would lay an icy
hand on the heart. Since it was broad day I had courage and stood by
the fireplace waiting. It grew louder and louder, nearer and nearer,
and at last culminated in a scurry and clatter in the fireplace itself,
from which there emerged a robust, testy, and exceedingly embarrassed
starling. After looking round in dismay, he blundered across the room
and settled on the highest row of books, where, secure in his altitude,
he stared at me and collected his wits. I, too, collected mine and
realized that my destiny was, as ever, prosaic. For I thought instantly
of an American poet on the one hand, and on the other an English lady,
a friend of mine, both of whom under similar conditions achieved
romance. For when a bird visited Edgar Allan Poe in his study it was
a raven, dark not alone with the sable hue of night but with mystery
and fate, and when my friend awoke not long since in her room in a
beautiful Wiltshire manor-house, what did she see brooding musically
on the frame of an Old Master that hung on the opposite wall but a
dove--emblem of peace and sweetness and everything that is fortunate?
How different my luck! A starling.... Of all the fowls of the air,
would one not close one’s house to a starling first and foremost? Yet
the only visitor from that so near yet so strange world of birds that
ever came to me was this, the least poetical, least attractive.
That was the first surprise. For the understanding of the second,
which occurred only an hour later, I must explain that this house
is on a road which, almost immediately the gate is passed, ceases
gradually to be a road at all, first declining to a cart-track, and
then dwindling to nothing but a footpath or bridle-path up a South Down
of extreme steepness. This means that when, as sometimes happens, a
motor-car rushes past, we smile in our beards and await with stoicism
and amusement the groanings and shrieks of agony that indicate that a
mistake has been made and that a reluctant vehicle is being turned by
an angry chauffeur in a space far too narrow for it. On the morning
of which I write a car rushed by in the usual way, but as it did
not at once return I assumed that the party were not uninstructed,
but had come here by intent for a picnic, as has once or twice
happened--lobsters’ claws and other alien and sophisticated _débris_
having been found on the turf; and so thinking I forgot them. An hour
later, hearing the engine throb in the accustomed manner, I knew that
the picnic was over, and again forgot them.
A moment after, however, I was called out into the garden by a series
of shouts and whistles, to discover that the car had come to a stop for
the very sufficient reason that it was on fire. A motor-car at any time
is still--to me--a strange object, but to find one in full blaze close
to the gate is really a shock. You must have seen it to appreciate it.
There it stood, enveloped in flames, while leaning against the wall,
with his head cooling at the bricks, was its dejected owner. “What a
calamity! What a calamity!” was all that he could say, as he surveyed
first the burning wheels, and then his blackened hands, and then me.
“There’s nothing to be done, nothing,” he added.
But I did not wait; at least it was worth the effort of saving, and
we brought water in every variety of vessel and hurled it over the
conflagration. Here we were wrong, for by watering flaming petrol one
simply increases the area of the fire. Having learnt this, we bent
all our strength to getting the car a little farther along the road,
away from the seat of danger, then hurling the water over it once more.
This done, it was soon extinguished, and the owner and driver had an
opportunity to explain.
“Such a thing has never happened to me before,” he said. “All these
years and no accident. I had just filled the tank, you see, and started
her. She backfired. Perhaps I spilt a little. In a moment she was in
flames. I did my best. Nothing of the kind has ever happened to me
before.”
Meanwhile he had been joined by his friends, two cool and collected
ladies, who, all unconscious of the catastrophe, had been engaged in
the least incendiary of pastimes--photographing the church--and they
added their persuasions to our invitation to him to come in and consume
restoratives.
Misfortune handled him curiously. No, he said, he would not drink,
would not eat, did not want to wash, hated the idea of resting. And
all the while, as he was thus affirming and surveying his blistered
hands, he was approaching nearer to the table in the garden on which
refreshments had been placed. Vowing he would never sit, he sat;
declining the decanter with increased vehemence, he tilted it into
his glass; abjuring cake, he conveyed a piece to his mouth. He then
refused to drink any more, and was actually reaching out for the
decanter as he spoke. Finally, he said that he had not the least desire
to smoke, and took a cigarette. This was the last of his apostasies,
for to the blackness of his hands he adhered. And all the while, at
intervals, he was assuring us that, long as he had driven a car, he had
never previously had an accident in his life. Never! “I had just filled
the tank, you see, and started her. She backfired. Perhaps I spilt a
little. In a moment she was in flames. I did my best.... Nothing of the
kind ever happened to me before....”
That is the story. They were soon gone; the car, a scorched ruin, was
pushed into a neighbouring shed to await the repairers; and nothing
remained of the incident save a black place in the road and a waste
patch where grass had been. Life resumed its routine.
But why, when he came to give me his card, should I discover that he
now lived in a house in which, as a child, some of my happiest hours
were spent? No need for that added touch of coincidence. Why? He might
as easily have inhabited every other house in the world. Here you have
the prodigality of chance.
The Embarrassed Eliminators
We were talking about Lamb.
Some one suddenly asked: “Supposing that by some incredible chance all
the Essays except one were to be demolished, which one would you keep?”
This kind of question is always interesting, no matter to what author’s
work or to what picture gallery it is applied. But for the best
resulting literary talk it must be applied to Shakespeare, Dickens or
Elia.
“Why, of course,” at once said H., whose pleasant habit it is to rush
in with a final opinion on everything at a moment’s notice, with no
shame whatever in changing it immediately afterwards, “there’s no doubt
about it at all--Mrs. Battle. Absolutely impossible to give up Mrs.
Battle. Or, wait a minute, I’d forgotten Bo-Bo,--‘The Dissertation on
Roast Pig,’ you know. Either Mrs. Battle or that.”
The man who had propounded the question laughed. “I saw that second
string coming,” he said. “That’s what every one wants: one _or_
another. But the whole point of the thing is that one essay and one
only is to remain: everything else goes by the board. Now? Let’s leave
H. to wrestle it out with himself. What do _you_ say, James?”
“It’s too difficult,” said James. “I was going to say ‘The Old Actors’
until I remembered several others. But I’m not sure that that is not
my choice. It stands alone in literature: it is Lamb inimitable.
His literary descendants have done their best and worst with most
of his methods, but here, where knowledge of the world, knowledge
of the stage, love of mankind, gusto, humour, style and imaginative
understanding unite, the mimics, the assiduous apes, are left behind.
Miles. Yes, I vote for ‘The Old Actors.’”
“But, my dear James,” said L., “think a moment. Remember James Elia
in ‘My Relations’; remember Cousin Bridget in ‘Mackery End.’ You
are prepared deliberately to have these forever blotted out of your
consciousness? Because, as I understand it, that is what the question
means: utter elimination.”
James groaned. “It’s too serious,” he said. “It’s not to be thought of
really. It reminds me of terrible nights at school when I lay awake
trying to understand eternity--complete negation--until I turned giddy
with the immensity of dark nothingness.”
Our host laughed. “You were very positive just now,” he said. “But
have you forgotten a wistful little trifle called ‘Old China?’”
“Or, more on your own lines,” said W., who hates actors and acting,
“the ‘South-Sea House’ or the ‘Old Benchers’? I will grant you the
perfection--there is no other word--of the full-lengths of Dicky Suett
and Bannister and Bensley’s Malvolio. There is nothing like it--you
are quite right. Not even Hazlitt comes near it. One can see oneself
with a great effort doing something passably Hazlittian in dramatic
criticism, if one were put to it; but Lamb, Lamb reconstructs life
and dignifies and enriches it as he does so. That essay in my opinion
is the justification of footlights, grease-paint and all the tawdry
business. And yet,”--W.’s face glowed with his eloquence, as it always
does sooner or later every evening--“and yet if I were restricted to
one Elia essay--dreadful thought!--it would not be ‘The Old Actors’
that I should choose, but--I can’t help it--‘Captain Jackson.’ I know
there are far more beautiful things in Elia; deeper, sweeter, rarer.
But the Captain and I are such old friends that it comes to this, I
couldn’t now do without him.”
“Of course,” cried H. “I had forgotten. You remind me of something I
simply must keep--the Elliston.” He snatched the “Essays” from our
host’s hands and read the following passage, while we all laughed--a
double laughter--overtly with him, and covertly at him, for if there
is one man living who might be the hero to-day of a similar story,
it is H. himself, who has a capriciousness, an impulsiveness, a
forgetfulness, and a grandiosity that are Ellistonian or nothing.
“‘Those who knew Elliston,’” he read, “‘will know the manner in which
he pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am about to
record. One proud day to me he took his roast mutton with us in the
Temple, to which I had superadded a haddock. After a rather plentiful
partaking of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the humbler sorts
of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility of the fare,
observing that for my own part I never ate but of one dish at dinner.
“I too never eat but one thing at dinner,”--was his reply--then after
a pause--“reckoning fish as nothing.” The manner was all. It was as if
by one peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all the
savoury esculents which the pleasant and nutritious-food-giving Ocean
pours forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. This was greatness,
tempered with considerate tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but
welcoming entertainer.’”
“Well,” said our host, reclaiming the book, “my vote if I had one would
be for ‘Mackery End in Hertfordshire’; and I make the declaration
quite calmly, knowing that we are all safe to retain what we will.
James will of course disagree with the choice; but then you see I am a
sentimentalist, and when Lamb writes about his sister and his childhood
I am lost. And ‘Mackery End’ delights me in two ways, for it not only
has the wonderful picture of Bridget Elia in it, but we see Lamb also
on one of his rapturous walks in his own county. I never see a field of
wheat without recalling his phrase of Hertfordshire as ‘that fine corn
country.’”
“All very well,” said James, “but if you talk like this how are you
going to let ‘Dream Children’ go?”
“Ah, yes,” sighed our host, “‘Dream Children’--of course! How could I
let that go? No, it’s too difficult.”
“What about this?” said the grave incisive voice of K., who had not yet
spoken, and he began to read:--
“In proportion as the years both lessen, and shorten, I set more count
upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon
the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away ‘like a
weaver’s shuttle.’ Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the
unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the
tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the
inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the
face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the
sweet security of streets.’
“Who is going to foreswear that passage?” K. asked sternly, fixing his
eyes on us as if we were one and all guilty of damnable heresy.
We all sighed.
K. searched the book again, and again began to read:--
“‘In sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a
Fool--as naturally as if I were of kith and kin to him. When a child,
with child-like apprehensions, that dived not below the surface of the
matter, I read those Parables--not guessing at the involved wisdom--I
had more yearnings towards that simple architect, that built his house
upon the sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbor: I
grudged at the hard censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept
his talent; and--prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident,
and, to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminine wariness of their
competitors--I felt a kindliness, that almost amounted to a _tendre_,
for those five thoughtless virgins.’
“Who is going to turn his back for ever on that passage? No,” K.
went on, “it won’t do. It is not possible to name one essay and one
only. But I have an amendment to propose. Instead of being permitted
to retain only one essay, why should we not be allowed a series of
passages equal in length to the longest essay--say ‘The Old Actors’?
Then we should not be quite so hopeless. That, for example, would
enable one to keep the page on Bensley’s Malvolio, the description of
Bridget Elia, a portion of the ‘Mrs. Battle,’ Ralph Bigod, a portion
of ‘Captain Jackson,’ the passages I have read, and--what I personally
should insist upon including, earlier almost than anything--the
Fallacies on rising with the Lark and retiring with the Lamb.”
“Well,” said the suggester of the original problem, “it’s a compromise
and therefore no fun. But you may play with it if you like. The
sweepingness of the first question was of course its merit. James is
the only one of you with the courage really to make a choice.”
“Oh, no,” said our host. “I chose one and one only instantly--‘Old
China.’”
“Nonsense!” said James; “you chose ‘Mackery End.’”
“There you are,” said K. “That shows.”
“Well, I refuse to be deprived of ‘Old China’ anyway,” said our host,
“even if I named ‘Mackery End.’ How could one live without ‘Old China’?
Our discussion reminds me,” he added, “of a very pretty poem--a kind of
poem that is no longer written. It is by an American who came nearer
Lamb in humour and ‘the tact of humanity’ than perhaps any writer--the
Autocrat. Let me read it to you.”
He reached for a volume and read as follows:--
Oh for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I’d rather laugh, a bright-haired boy,
Than reign, a gray-beard king.
Off with the spoils of wrinkled age!
Away with Learning’s crown!
Tear out Life’s Wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!
One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood’s fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!
* * * * *
My listening angel heard the prayer,
And, calmly smiling, said,
“If I but touch thy silvered hair
Thy hasty wish hath sped.
“But is there nothing in thy track,
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?”
“Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I’ll take--my--precious--wife!”
The angel took a sapphire pen
And wrote in rainbow dew,
_The man would be a boy again_,
_And be a husband too!_
“And is there nothing yet unsaid,
Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years.”
“Why, yes;” for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;
“I could not bear to leave them all--
I’ll take--my--girl--and--boys.”
The smiling angel dropped his pen,--
“Why, this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!”
* * * * *
And so I laughed,--my laughter woke
The household with its noise,--
And wrote my dream, when morning broke,
To please the grey-haired boys.
--“We,” said our host, as he closed the book and laid it aside, “are
like that: we would eliminate most of Elia and have our Elia too.”
“Yes,” said W. “Exactly. We want them all and we value them the more
as we grow older and they grow truer and better. For that is Lamb’s
way. He sat down--often in his employers’ time--to amuse the readers
of a new magazine and earn a few of those extra guineas which made it
possible to write ‘Old China,’ and behold he was shedding radiance
on almost every fact of life, no matter how spiritually recondite or
remote from his own practical experience. No one can rise from Elia
without being deepened and enriched; and no one having read Elia can
ever say either off-hand or after a year’s thought which one essay he
would retain to the loss of all the others.”
B. hitherto had been a silent listener. Here he spoke, and, as so
often, said the final thing. “Yes,” he said, “it is vain (but good
sport) to take any one of the essays and argue that it is the best.
Just as the best thing in a garden is not any particular flower but the
scent of all the flowers that are there, so the best of Lamb is not any
single essay but the fragrance of them all. It is for this that those
gentle paths have been trodden by so much good company.
“Yes,” he added meditatively. “‘The scent of Elia’s garden’! That is
the best essay, if you like, and ‘Charles (and Mary) Lamb’ its title.”
A Friend of the Town
Londoners know much, but not all. A few secrets are still to be
learned only in the provinces, and one of them is the true value of
the bookstall man. In London a bookstall man is a machine; you throw
pennies at him and in return he throws papers at you. Now and then he
asks you to buy something that you don’t want or recommends the new
sevenpenny; but for the most part he treats you as a stranger, if not
as a foe, and expects for himself treatment no better.
But in the country....
Make your home in a small country town and see how long you can manage
without becoming friendly with the bookstall man. For in the country
he is a power. There is no longer any casual flinging of pennies;
there is the weather to discuss, and a remark to drop on the headlines
in the contents bill. “Another all-night sitting,” you say, from the
security given by eight good hours in bed: “ah well, if people like to
be Members of Parliament, let them!” Then you both laugh. Or, “What’s
this?--another new Peer? Well, it will be your turn soon,” you say,
and then you both laugh again. But there is something more important
than persiflage and gossip--there is the new novel to choose from the
circulating library. For in the country the bookstall man is also
the librarian and adviser; he not only sells papers but he controls
the reading of the neighbourhood. His advice is sound. His instinct
dictates wisely. “Jacobs’s latest,” he says, “is splendid. I read it on
Sunday.” Not, of course, that he has any need to read a story to know
that it is splendid; that would be too mechanical. He knows because
he possesses the sixth sense with which successful handlers of books
are gifted. “What’s new?” he replies, “well, here’s something good.
Take that. You can’t go wrong.” Or, when in a dissuading mood (and
nowadays librarians have to dissuade as much as recommend, poor doomed
varmints), “That one? Oh! I don’t think she would like that. That’s a
little bit--well, it’s strong, that’s what it is. I don’t recommend
that. But here’s a charming story by the author of “Milk and Water....”
And so forth.
What some simple country people would do without their bookstall man
I can’t imagine. Take Peter, for instance. Peter was the friend of
three old ladies who lived in a southern seaport--a sleepy forgotten
town with quiet, narrow, Georgian streets and vast stretches of mud
in its harbour which the evening sun turned to gold. These three old
ladies--sisters and unmarried--lived together in a tiny red brick house
where their several personalities dovetailed perfectly, different as
they were. One was the practical managing sister, one was the humorous
commentator, and one was the kindly dreamer. All were generous and
philanthropic; indeed their benefactions of thought and deed were
the principal business of their placid lives, while the principal
recreation was reading. And herein lay the value of Peter, the
bookstall man, for it was through his library that all their books came
to them. He too divined the character of the books that he circulated
by the mere process of touch; and he was rarely wrong. He knew to a
grain exactly what was to be found in every book he recommended or did
not recommend to these old ladies. In so far as his recommendations
went, Peter was always right; and probably his dissuasions were rightly
based too, although that of course we shall never know, since his
advice was duly taken.
But it is no light matter, is it, to pick out suitable stories for
three old-fashioned old ladies with very decided views as to what is
fitting and nice, and what not, when the books (and here is the real
difficulty) were to be read aloud? For this meant of course that the
three personalities had to be taken into consideration. Each book
had to please, or at any rate not offend, an old lady who was of a
practical managing turn, and an old lady who was herself a bit of a
quiz (as all good novelists must be), and an old lady who had Utopian
dreams.
Peter, you see, must have been rather remarkable. “No,” he would
say, “I don’t think Miss Dorcas would like that ... the gambling
passages.... I’d recommend this if it weren’t for Miss Kate. But she’d
never like the divorce proceedings....” And so on.
Reading aloud was to these old ladies a kind of ritual. They looked
forward to it all day, and then as each chapter was finished they
discussed it and approved or disapproved. When it comes to analyzing
the pleasures of life, the privilege of approving and disapproving in
conversation must be ranked very high, and reading aloud makes it so
very harmless an amusement, since no tale-bearing is involved. This
they did, and not only during the reading but at meals too, and often
they would come down to breakfast after a rather wakeful night with new
theories as to the conduct of hero or heroine. Happy Peter, to set so
much gentle machinery in motion!
Of course, he was not able always to satisfy their programme. Sometimes
for weeks and weeks together no new books (not only fiction, of course:
memoirs and travels they were very fond of) would be published; but
when he really struck gold how happy they all were. I remember that
I found them once--it was thirteen years ago--in a state of joyful
excitement over one of Peter’s most inspired suggestions--Miss Jewett’s
“Country of the Pointed Firs.” Never could three old ladies of simple
tastes and warm hearts have been more delighted with a printed page. I
wished Peter could have seen them.
Is he still acting as friend to that little town, I wonder. He was so
capable that probably he has been promoted to a wider sphere. For that
is what happens to these friends of the small town: they are raised to
positions of more importance and better salaries, and the chances are
that the old personal intimacy goes altogether. They may, for example,
be elevated to the place of manager at, say, London Bridge. Then is all
their kindliness and thoughtfulness over: they become machines: very
targets for pennies and half-pennies all day long, with no time for the
humaner intercourse.
Well, the price of getting on has always been heavy; but here it is
paid not only by the friend but by the small town too. It is hard when
nice old ladies are also penalized.
Gypsy
It is a shocking thing, after ringing the bell to inquire after a
friend, to be told that she is dead.
That recently happened to me. I rang the bell and waited on the step.
The door was at last opened by a man in livery, or at any rate uniform,
who knew me. I made to enter, remarking “How is Delia?” “Delia?” he
said. “Delia is dead.”
Here was a blow! I had been thinking of Delia all the way to Regent’s
Park, seeing again in anticipation her sad and yearning eyes, her
pathetic, dumb face, her auburn locks, feeling her confiding hand in
mine.
“Dead!” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, “pneumonia. But Annie’s here if you’d like to see
her. And Jerry too.”
“Of course,” I said, and followed him to their abode; stopping in the
kitchen on the way for some grapes and milk.
Delia was an ourang-outang; Annie is a chimpanzee. Delia was a red
woman--“Sweet Auburn, loveliest sample of the Plain!” one murmured
as one looked at her; Annie is a brunette. Annie sits all day in her
little basement home, with Jerry, and now and then receives privileged
visitors, such as His Majesty, whose hat--just as if it were mine--she
seized and hurled to the other end of the room, and the young Princes
and Princesses, and Fellows of the Society and their friends. Annie is
“that mischievous,” but Jerry is thoughtful and low-pulsed. Annie will
snatch whatever you have that pleases her and rush to the ceiling with
it; Jerry sits quite still and looks at you with bright eyes filled
with ten thousand sorrows.
Annie has some of Delia’s charm; but oh, how much more had Delia! Annie
also spreads her arms for an embrace and is curious about clothes; but
Delia--no, there will never be another Delia.
It was while wandering at random regretting Delia that I came upon
Gypsy.
Now, Gypsy also is not Delia; but Gypsy’s companionableness and
merriment and candour go far to soften the loss. A Zoo with both
Delia and Gypsy in it would be almost too fortunate--shall I put it
like that? I found her in the Small Cats’ House, that abode of bright
eyes and stealthy quicknesses, and, surely, she is out of place. For
her fellow-creatures in the surrounding cages are subtle and swift,
predatory and untrustworthy, while she is the most transparently
harmless, blundering, foolish, faithful thing you could conceive,
without a movement that is not clumsy or a thought that is not obvious.
She was eating chocolate when I found her, seated firmly on the floor
and picking the silver paper off with her teeth as skilfully as a
child. Having finished the chocolate and satisfied herself (no rapid
business) that there was no more, she turned to another visitor for
entertainment and seized his walking-stick. Whether she recognized
a compatriot--for it was a Malacca cane, and she is a Malayan bear
from the same district--or whether all walking-sticks present equal
attractions, I do not know; but she fondled this one with the utmost
tenderness, shouldered it, hugged it, nursed it, bit it, and did her
best to poke out her insignificant but very capable eyes with it.
Then she rose to her full but trumpery height and flung her arms round
my leg.
Then she turned to her indulgent keeper--whose happiness at being
entrusted with a straightforward baby-bear after the monotony of
complex Small Cats is delightful to watch--and they set to at a
sparring-match with tremendous spirit. Gypsy is not an in-fighter (like
Welsh) nor an offensive assaulter (like Johnson); her method is to
deliver two or three open-handed blows (which are not allowed in the
Ring) and then to escape punishment, at any rate on the face or chest,
by rolling herself into a ball and squirming and revolving on the
ground. This exposes her unguarded rotundities to attack, it is true,
but blows there she seems to enjoy, although affecting to avoid; and
then rising to her feet she again advances to the fray and repeats the
performance. She is very gentle, and in some mysterious way softens her
claws when she hits.
The contest over, Gypsy turned to my “Pall-Mall Gazette” and proceeded
very deliberately and scrupulously to demolish it. Whether a paper
written by gentlemen for gentlemen has ever before been made a Malayan
baby-bear’s plaything, I do not know; but it is a very satisfying one,
and kept her busy and happy for ten minutes. And all the while as she
walked up and down the floor among the visitors, tearing the pages into
shreds, the Small Cats in their cages were following her with intense
and glittering gaze, while the largest of them--a young puma--flung
himself once or twice in her direction like a lovely grey missile, to
be brought up sharp against his bars.
To any one in need of a new pet I can recommend a Malayan baby-bear.
Gypsy stands about forty-two inches, and is entirely covered with
short, strong, yet soft hair, nearer black than brown. Her neck is a
rich tawny yellow. Her mouth is full of teeth which do not bite, and
her paws have long and very hard horn-like nails which do not scratch.
She is more like a magnified mole than anything in the world; absurdly
so, in fact. Her obedience is instant. “Back to your cage, Gypsy,” says
her keeper, and she returns to it; “Shut your door, Gypsy,” says her
keeper, and she shuts it. She then climbs to a lofty perch and smiles
the smile of the virtuous and uncomplaining--a lesson to the restless
ocelot and unquiet lynx.
There are always a few babies at the Zoo for those that think to ask
for them. After I had seen Gypsy I saw a lion of tender years and
he allowed me to ruffle his head and tickle his cheeks; but no such
liberties are possible with the infant jaguar, which was born in
January, 1911, and is anything but the harmless pat of butter that it
looks. And then I held between my finger and thumb a six-weeks’ old
alligator while he squirmed and raged and did everything he could to
close his fret-saw jaws over me.
But none of these privileges of course made up for Delia’s death, and
nothing can.
A Sale
The sale of the late Sir John Day’s pictures was particularly
interesting to me, since it happens that I have the satisfaction of
sharing that good judge’s predilections. His gods are for the most
part mine. I, too, would choose for my walls (if I had any) Corots and
Daubignys, Marises and Mauves, Millets and Bosbooms, Rousseaus and De
Wints. I, too, prefer the wistful crepuscule to the vivid noon. Hence
I entered Christie’s at a quarter to one on 13 May, 1909, and took
the place that a boy messenger was keeping for me, with feelings of
peculiar excitement and enthusiasm.
The seated company at a big sale at Christie’s is as unchanging as an
ordinary congregation. A few strangers may be there, looking in for
the first time, but the rest, the regular attendants, the pew-owners,
so to speak, know each other, and are known to the auctioneer, so that
the bids of those who engage in the contest are, as at most sales where
dealers congregate, often imperceptible to others, although to him
clear as speech.
We opened modestly. Lot 1 was a seascape by De Bock, and the first bid
was five guineas. It little thought, that bid, what a huge total would
be built upon it. The De Bock reached 160 guineas, and then made room
for a Bosboom. Bosboom is a modern Dutch painter, now dead (you may see
his palette in the Museum at the Hague), whose ecclesiastical interiors
have a grave and sombre beauty that I suppose has never been equalled.
Among collectors he is becoming more and more desired.
After the Bosbooms we came to the Corots, of which there were a round
dozen, and a little anticipatory flutter was perceptible in the room.
There are better Corots in the world than Sir John Day possessed; but
this procession of twelve of the tender, serene canvases from the
Ville d’Avray studio was very wonderful, and one lost the bidding in
the quietude of the paint. Among them were three early works, when the
artist liked a more rarefied air than later in life. And these one has
to know in order to realize fully not only how superb Corot was, but
how bewilderingly blind were the connoisseurs of that day to let him
languish as they did. Of course it is easy to recognize his greatness
now, when the very name Corot carries magic with it; it is difficult to
put one’s self back into those times when it meant nothing, and to see
the pictures with eyes unassisted by tradition; and yet I find it hard
to believe that if one of these early works had come to me suddenly
out of a clear sky, I should have failed to be arrested by it.
Well, there we sat, packed together like excursionists, while the giant
picture-dealers of Europe fought for these pacific landscapes--these
sweet lark songs among the light clouds of the grey day, to quote
Corot’s own description of his ideal--until the dozen had reached a
total of nearly £12,000.
To Corot succeeded his friend Charles Daubigny, whose vast and luminous
“Harvest Moon” produced the instant bid of 1000 guineas, to which,
after a long interval of silence, it fell. His “Bords de l’Oise,” a
great wet landscape, with Daubigny’s stern, sincere beauty drenching
it, brought 1800 guineas. Others followed, and then five rich scenes by
Diaz, also a citizen of the white village of Barbizon, whose home you
may see to-day, with a tablet on the gate, almost opposite the rambling
house of Jean François Millet. The first of these Diazes was an evening
picture with cattle coming down to drink beneath a stormy sky; not
unlike the superb moorland scene from the same brush which Mr. Salting
left to the National Gallery. It began at fifty guineas and reached
850. (By the way, the starting of safe pictures at fifty and a hundred
guineas would be a pleasant task for a reduced gentleman of the Captain
Jackson type, who, able no longer to collect, wished still to sun
himself in the illusion of prosperity and connoisseurship. To make in a
loud voice a bid of 100 or 500 guineas, whether one has such a sum in
the bank or not, must do something for the spirit. It cannot leave one
quite where one was.)
After Diaz, Jules Dupré, another great and sincere painter of
landscape, a direct disciple of Constable (who was a founder of the
Barbizon school) and the friend of Corot, Rousseau, and their friends.
It was Dupré who said beautifully of Corot that he might--it was within
the bounds of possibility--be replaced as a painter, but never as a
man. There were five Duprés, upon the first of which a sanguine friend
of mine, unconscious of the growing value of this master, had placed
the sum of £100, for which I was to try and get it for him. It was too
little, I had suggested; but no, Dupré was not much considered, he
fondly replied. His face fell when I told him how the first bid had
been 200 guineas and the last 520.
It is one of the charms of Christie’s that you never can tell. Pictures
fetch every day unexpected prices, both high and low. Good pictures
slip through, taking the room unawares, and bad pictures occasionally
reach absurd figures, for various reasons. This Dupré, however, was
fine. I once bought at Christie’s for two guineas two water-colour
drawings attributed to Clarkson Stanfield, and, behold, on stripping
them to be framed again, one was revealed, by a minute history on its
back, to be a David Cox worth many times what I gave for it. Let no
one despair of a bargain, even when all the dealers from the Continent
and all the dollars from America are present. The dealers’ idea, it
must be remembered, is to sell again, and they buy accordingly. Many
a good picture does not appeal to the commercial eye. At this sale,
for instance, five examples of the, to me, impressive art of Georges
Michel, the rich and sombre painter of windmills, a French Crome,
brought together only a little more than 100 guineas, while on the
second or water-colour day, there were many lots that went far too
cheaply. In a sale where competition is concentrated upon the great
works, the humble collector has often a chance.
After the Duprés came the Harpignies’, in which Sir John Day was
peculiarly rich. This grand old man, who is still (1911) hale, at the
age of 92, has been painting all his life in oil and water-colour, and
has never put forth a meretricious or hurried thing. He is the link
between Barbizon and the present day. Less charming, perhaps, than
the greatest men of that school, he is more of a realist, and trees
and foliage have no closer or more inspired student. His great lack,
I suppose, is tenderness; everything else he has. It is good to know
that in this fine, sure hand the blood still flows; that this artist,
who has loved the world of beauty so long, is still able to enjoy it;
and that he can watch himself becoming an Old Master, and the quarry of
the collector, while he is still living.
The old age of artists was a theme on which Hazlitt wrote one of his
best essays, and just now, were he to be still among us, he would find
new subjects for study--for not only is there Harpignies at ninety-two
in France, but Sir John Tenniel at ninety-two in London; while it is
only a year or so since William Callow died at ninety-six, and W. P.
Frith at ninety-one. An artist--particularly an open-air artist,
like Harpignies and Callow--has, one would say, every opportunity of
attaining to a great age. Given a strong constitution and the absence
of such harassments as, for example, bowed prematurely the head of
Haydon, there is little to put a strain upon his faculties or physique.
By the conditions of his art he cannot work at night. He is a daylight
man: he lives upon light and air; he is in direct _rapport_ with the
sun; he watches the skies (and how few of us do that!); his eye,
searching for beauty and knowing beauty when it sees it, is constantly
being rewarded in the best way--and that must make for the content that
in its turn must make for longevity. When the painter’s temperament
has both placidity and simplicity, it must be the happiest of all.
Harpignies’ prices at Sir John Day’s sale were far in advance of
anything he had previously made at Christies’. The largest picture
produced 1800 guineas, and the eleven 6270 guineas. A week later,
however, the old man’s English record rose to 2000 guineas at the
Cuthbertson sale.
So far all the important work had been French, but now (the
arrangement was alphabetical) came in an illustrious Dutchman, another
Nestor--Joseph Israels, still happily active at the age of 87. Mr.
Preyer, of Amsterdam, who hitherto had been silent, began now to be
busy. For the most important picture, “Bonheur Maternel,” 1080 guineas
were paid, and for five others 2470 guineas--among them “The Fisher,”
which fell to Mr. Drücker and added yet another to a collection of
Israels’ which has overflowed both into our National Gallery and into
the City Museum at Amsterdam.
After the “Shepherdess” of Charles Jacque, who painted sheep more
brilliantly than any hand ever before, had been sold for 1680 guineas,
we entered upon a longer Dutch interlude, filled by the three Marises,
Mauve, and Mesdag; and once again the room fluttered, for the name of
Maris grows more powerful every year. There is, indeed, perhaps no
recent prolific painter so certain of a great financial future as
the late James Maris. On every sale his prices rise, both for oil and
water-colour. His brother Matthew I do not set against him in rivalry,
because Matthew stands apart. He is an exotic, the most fastidiously
select painter of our day, beyond Whistler even. Matthew Maris is
alone: a reserved, half-mystical exile, who has always painted as
little rather than as much as possible, and has never taken his brush
in hand but to produce a masterpiece unique and haunting. To him we
come soon.
James Maris was as abundant as Matthew has been restrained; and this
makes the huge figures that his work now commands, and will, I believe,
increasingly command, the more interesting. Sir John Day had fifteen
of his oils and thirteen of his water-colours, all of which he bought
during the artist’s life (only recently ended) through dealers at
modest enough sums, averaging for the oils something about £80, and
for the water-colours £40. At the sale the oils averaged £1000 and the
water-colours £400. The highest sum paid for a single oil was 1600
guineas for a view of Dordrecht. That was large, but the following
week, at the Cuthbertson sale, a James Maris brought 4000 guineas.
These prices may sound absurd, but they are not. An artist now and then
becomes the fashion and excites competition beyond his deserts; but
not so James Maris. James Maris was a great painter of skies, a great
painter of river-side towns, a great painter of his native land. He saw
things largely and painted them largely (now and then a little in the
manner of the most beautiful landscape in the world--Vermeer’s “View
of Delft”), and these facts are now known. His future, I fancy, is as
secure as that of Constable and Crome. It gave me immense pleasure to
see the brave, candid painter so popular.
And then Matthew Maris, and the first thrill of the sale. James’s rich
and buoyant canvases, one by one on the easel, and the competition of
the bidders, had set pulses agreeably beating; but we had not broken
into applause. The first applause--no small thing at Christie’s, where
impassivity is cultivated not only as a gentlemanly English habit but
also from motives of commercial self-protection--the first applause was
won by Lot 77.
What was Lot 77? The quietest little red and brown picture you ever
saw, 8½ by 11½ inches; “a town [in the words of the catalogue] on the
farther bank of a river; standing well above the red roofs of the
houses are seen four windmills; a bridge crosses the river on the
right; a barge and raft lying against the bank; a peasant woman in the
foreground.” Such is “The Four Mills” of Matthew Maris, that strange,
exclusive genius, most remarkable of the three Maris brothers. Matthew
was born in 1835, and is therefore now an old man. He lives in lodgings
in London, far from Holland and its mills and canals and sweeping sky:
solitary and sad, with a few marvellous classics to his name, and on
the walls of his sitting-room some dreadful oleographs which he will
not ask the landlady to remove for fear of hurting her feelings. Here
he lives, painting a little every day,--but they are pictures for no
one to see,--and writing (I am told) some of the best letters of our
time. The old age of artists! Hazlitt truly knew what to write about.
Matthew Maris has lived in England ever since he left Paris after the
war. He even carried a rifle in that struggle, but it is characteristic
of his gentle nature that he refused to load it. When he gave up
painting for the public I know not. But the latest work that I
know--that exquisite picture entitled “Butterflies”--a little blue
girl lying in the grass, which seems to make much of both Whistler and
Albert Moore insincere and even unnecessary, is dated 1874. It was
exhibited in London again in 1909, with sixteen other of his works,
including the adorable “Enfant Couchée” and one of the low-toned
Montmartre souvenirs.
Such is the painter of Lot 77, which left his easel in 1871 and was
then sold with difficulty for 100 francs, or four English sovereigns,
or twenty American dollars, to M. Goupil, of Paris, who, it is
recorded, threw in a little friendly lecture on the folly of painting
“such unsaleable stuff.” Well, here it was now, Lot 77, “The Four
Mills,” thirty-eight years older, and beautiful beyond description,
with an appeal to the deeper nature of the connoisseur such as I cannot
put into words. “Why,” I asked an artist, as we stood before it on the
day before the sale, “why is it so good?” “Partly,” he said, “because
he never wanted to show how cleverly he could paint. Everything has
its true value. It is so simple and so sincere.” But this, of course,
is not all. There is also the curious and exquisite alchemy of the
painter’s mind; and how much of the painter is in this particular
masterpiece may be gathered from the circumstance that (as I happen
to know) it does not represent any real Dutch town at all but was an
invention of his own. The Four Mills exist only on this canvas and in
Matthew Maris’s strange and beautiful brain.
Lot 77. We have seen what the dealer gave the artist for it--100
francs. It then passed to Lord Powerscourt, and it was from his
collection that Sir John Day bought it for £120. It was now, therefore,
being sold for the third time.
“Lot 77. What shall I say for a start, gentlemen?”
“A thousand guineas? Thank you. A thousand guineas for this picture.”
“Eleven hundred.”
“Twelve.”
“Thirteen.”
“Fourteen.”
“Fifteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen fifty.”
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen fifty.”
“Nineteen.” (The red roofs are getting redder, the brown mills browner!
The peace of it all!)
“Two thousand guineas.”
“And one hundred.”
“Two hundred.”
“Three hundred.”
“Four hundred.”
“Five hundred.”
“Six hundred.”
“Seven hundred.”
“Eight hundred.”
“Nine hundred.” (How quiet and beautiful, and above all price, all
struggle, all commercialism, the picture is!)
“Three thousand guineas.”
“And one hundred.”
“Two hundred and fifty.” (Strange reading for old Matthew Maris in his
London lodgings to-morrow morning!)
“Three hundred.”
A pause.
“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”
A longer pause.
“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”
And the hammer falls and the room vibrates with the tapping of sticks
and clapping of hands; and “The Four Mills” disappears, bound for
the house of a dealer, who was to sell it, in time, to an English
connoisseur, whom, upon my soul, I envy. He is the right kind of
connoisseur, too; no Peer he, or National Gallery Trustee enamoured of
American dollars, but a simple gentleman who has already given pictures
to the nation and intends (I am told) to give more--perhaps this very
Dutch masterpiece.
Lot 78. “Feeding Chickens.” This also is by Matthew Maris, and was
painted in 1872. “A Girl in buff dress and blue cap, is feeding
chickens with some grain which she holds in the fold of her white
apron; foliage background.” Such is the Christie description, and
it serves to recall the little enchanted scene to mind; but it says
nothing of the mysterious romantic feeling of it, or the richness and
delicacy and sweetness of it, or even of the fascinating mediæval city
in the distance.
For this Sir John Day gave £300, and at the sale it began at a thousand
guineas and reached three, falling also to a Scotch purse--and it is
now, I hear, in Canada. Two hundred and sixty-four thousand six hundred
saxpences never went bang to better purpose. This second picture, by
the way, was painted from the same model that lends such charm to “The
Girl at the Well,” feeding pigeons, in the McCulloch collection.
Six William Marises[1] follow, and then we come to another
Dutch painter whose work is every year more and more desired of
collectors--Anton Mauve, the pastoral poet of Holland, who did for
its cows and sheep and blue-coated peasants what Israels has done for
its fisher-folk and James Maris for its skies. The place that Mauve’s
sincere and modest art has won in the eyes of the best connoisseurs
is a refreshing proof that honesty in painting is ultimately the best
policy, although the honest artist may have every opportunity of
starving before the tide turns his way.
[1] William Maris also is coming to his own. On June 30, 1911,
one of his pastoral scenes brought £3200, at Christie’s.
Sir John Day had eight Mauves in oil and seven in water-colour.
The first oil, “Troupeau de Moutons sous Bois,” he bought in 1888,
immediately after the artist’s death. It was a picture of which Mauve
was very fond; Sir John Day gave £150 for it. At the sale it began
at 500 guineas, and after fierce competition it was secured by Mr.
Reinhart, of Chicago, for 2700 guineas. Pictures with sheep in them,
it has been said, always find buyers; but when the sheep are painted
as these are, not with the _brio_ of Jacque, but so quietly and
lovingly...!
Mauve, like all the greatest painters, took what he found around him
and made it beautiful. He was one of the artists of whom the Creator
must be most proud, in whom He must take most delight, for his whole
life was given up to the demonstration of how beautiful everything
is--and never with the faintest whisper of the words, “and how skilful
am I!” Never. Anton Mauve stands with the greatest in his sincerity,
his genius, and his self-effacement. American collectors have always
appreciated him, while his village of Laren, in Holland, has long been
a settlement of American painters.
Our first thrill was with the Matthew Maris; the next was with J. F.
Millet’s “Goose Maiden”--one of the most lovely pieces of colour that
can ever have leaned against Christie’s historic post. The merest
trifle in size--12¼ by 9½ inches--an old master--a jewel of paint--from
the moment it was born. Millet was no less a great colourist than a
great draughtsman and a great lover of the earth, and here, in this
tiny canvas, all his virtues meet. Sir John Day paid heavily for it in
his time, but its new owner paid more heavily still. The bidding began
at 500 guineas and mounted by hundreds to 5000.
After the Millet the most beautiful picture was a little landscape by
Rousseau, the painter who left his studio at Barbizon to the villagers
as a chapel. “River Scene: with a man fishing from a punt” was the
description; but that omitted the wonder of the work--the evening light
and stillness. It literally hushed the room. This picture is now in the
National Gallery, for all to see. A week later (observe what it is to
have the Christie habit) I saw another Rousseau with a richer but not
more beautiful afternoon light in it, and some trees painted as only
Rousseau could paint them, which brought 4600 guineas. (If forests
can think, if villages have thoughts, what must be the reflection of
Fontainebleau and Barbizon when they receive the news of these Christie
contests!)
And so the day finished, some £75,000 having changed hands in three
hours--a large sum for a little paint. A little paint, do I say? That
is true; but a new world, too--a world of wistful beauty. And that, of
course, cannot be appraised: it is dear at a five-pound note, if you do
not want it--if your taste is unlike Sir John Day’s; it is cheap at all
you have, if you desire it sufficiently.
A Georgian Town
This little town may be said to consist of three things--a long,
narrow, and not very straight High Street, an almost equally long and
equally diverging street parallel with it, and the quay. Both the High
Street and its parallel neighbour might as easily have been straight
as not; but it is very much to their advantage to curve a little, for
not only are curves more beautiful, but they remind one of the street’s
human origin, since before there can be a High Street there must be a
path, and every one knows that no one can walk straight for more than
a very few paces. Blindfold a man and tell him to walk across a field,
and he will unconsciously bear to the left, I believe; and he will
oscillate too.
Between the High Street and its neighbour there could not well be a
greater difference; for the High Street is all bustle and business, and
its neighbour is all quietude and residential repose. But they have
this in common, that both are Georgian and red. The High Street, it
is true, has thrown out a few plate-glass shop-fronts in keeping with
twentieth-century enterprise, and a few new facades are there too;
but the character of the street is still Georgian none the less. Its
residential neighbour has made no concessions; it is eighteenth century
still. Old shipowners and merchants--yes, and maybe old smugglers
too--who lived there when George III was King would yet be quite at
home were they to revisit it under George V. Hence I like this street
the better. I like its window-frames, flush with the wall, such as
builders may no longer give us; I like its square dormer windows, its
fanlights over the door, its steps, its knockers, its blinds; its
town-hall, with a flight of steps on each side, which, after describing
an elegant curve, meet at the imposing door on the first floor; and,
more than anything, I like its almshouses, which are five hundred years
old.--So much for the little street, where Miss Greenaway might have
made studies.
No need for me to say that the houses no longer harbour the class of
resident for which they were intended; you know that as well as I do.
Successful business men have ceased to live in the hearts of towns.
Either because they genuinely want more room and air, or because a
visible token of success is a pleasant thing to have, they now build
houses on the outskirts, and the humbler folk inhabit the old houses
at a reduced rent. The town has scores of these villas dotted about
just outside its walls. From a balloon the centuries could be divided
accurately--sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth in the centre; then
a fringe of early nineteenth, then an outer fringe of later nineteenth;
and then the latest addition of all, the twentieth-century villas,
spick-and-span, and surrounded with greenery. Meanwhile, behind the
Kate Greenaway shutters in the town’s core the managers and clerks and
shop-assistants and their families are happy--and long may they be so!
As for the High Street, I can tell you about that very quickly. The
best house in it, a superb red Georgian mansion, is now the office of
the Gas Company. That gives you the High Street, does it not? There
are two book and paper shops, and both supply “Punch” only to order.
That gives you the class of town, does it not? There are assembly-rooms
where an occasional entertainment is given, and an electric theatre has
just been opened. (The assembly-rooms, by the way, have a name pretty
enough for a heroine in a novel by Mr. Hardy--Amity Hall.) At night,
however, in spite of the absence of organized harmony, the High Street
is full of melody from upper windows and tap-rooms, or from the white
building at the foot, close to the Custom House--famous in history for
a smugglers’ raid which led to the recapture of a tremendous haul of
run-goods--where the town band practises. The little town is rich in
small inns, as maritime towns always are; and it has also two large
ones, with spacious yards, relics of the brave days when gentlemen
posted, and billiard-tables whose cloth is yellow and whose cushions
have some of the inflexibility of a sea-wall.
Such is the High Street of my little town, which, while always a scene
of animation, rises to its greatest social height on Saturday nights,
when the country people come in to market, and the town-people market
too, and the youths walk up the middle four and five abreast, and the
girls walk down the middle four and five abreast, and jokes are made,
and hearts, I doubt not, are lost, and the little tap-rooms get fuller
and fuller.
And now the third thing and the best--the quay. A little Georgian
town with a quay cannot go far wrong. In its electric theatres the
cinematoscope may buzz and dazzle; sixpenny-halfpenny bazaars may be
opened; its beautiful old mansions may house gas clerks; the latest
novelties may effloresce in its shop-windows; but the quay will keep it
sweet. Ships and mariners will arrest the meddling hand of Time. For
there is something about the sea that will ever refuse to come into
line. Wherever wind-tanned men with level eyes live all day in blue
jerseys, there the lover of ancient peace may safely abide. And the
quay of my little town and the boats in her great, spreading harbour
are populous with such men. They arrest progress. Even the arrival of
petrol and the spectacle of a fishing-boat gaining the open sea in
the teeth of a headwind at a rate of ten knots an hour has not injured
them. The sea remains the sea in spite of petrol: still the capricious,
dangerous mistress, never the same for two minutes together, never
quite to be trusted, and so jealous that in no other direction may the
eyes of her subjects rove.
Two little tugs trot in and out of the harbour all day long, often
enough dragging in some three-master that they have found in the bay;
and at the moment that I write a big German barque with a green hull
lies at one wharf; a Dutch tjalck at another; and a variety of coasters
thrust their masts and spars and cordage against the evening sky and
make it more wonderful still. And in one of the shipwrights’ yards
a huge schooner into whose way a man-of-war casually loafed in the
Channel a month ago is being fitted with a new bowsprit and prow; and
since the bowsprit that the man-of-war left her resembles a birchbroom,
there is no doubt that she needs them.
I had a little talk with one of the blue jerseys about smuggling. He,
like myself, thought of the past with some regret. “I’ve no quarrel
with a little smuggling,” he said, in his caressing, rich Southern
voice. “No harm in smuggling, I says. I don’t say but what I’ve done
some in my time. I don’t say that I should have any objection to
running over to Guernsey any day and bringing back a ton of tubs. But
the difficulty is, what to do with them? And you would look so blue if
you were caught.” “True,” I said; “but surely there are safe landings
all about there?” waving my hand towards the southern borders of this
vast and mysterious harbour, so rich in creeks and sandy shores. “Yes,”
he said, “yes. But that’s not it. You couldn’t do it alone: that’s the
real trouble. And in smuggling it doesn’t do to trust any one. No,” he
said, “not even your own brother. Not in smuggling.”
Mus Penfold--and Billy
Every man, however unobservant or incapable of correlating experiences,
must learn something in the course of his life. Some little thing.
Circumstances will force it into his intelligence. And a truth that has
just been forced into mine is this--that it is a foolish thing to lend
your sheep-dog to a shepherd, for the simple reason that the shepherd
will at once insidiously and surely make it his own. You may reclaim it
in the evening, fondle it, call it “Good old Bob, then!” receive its
half-hearted caresses, and feed it; but it will be yours no longer.
That is to say, its soul will be yours no longer, however you may
cherish the husk. The cause is twofold--first, that the sheep-dog is a
noble animal, who prefers work to sloth and a master to an owner; and,
secondly, that shepherds are clever men, hiding under a simple exterior
much shrewdness and quite a little guile.
At any rate the shepherd to whom recently I made the mistake of lending
my sheep-dog is a clever man, hiding under a simple exterior much
shrewdness and quite a little guile; and the moment for which he is
living I know perfectly well is the moment when I shall say to him (as
surely I shall), “Well, shepherd, you’d better call Bob yours after
this and keep him altogether.” He knows as well as I do that I shall
say that, although Bob has a pedigree like a duke and the shepherd is
accustomed to very plebeian assistants.
Just for fun I intend to postpone that announcement as long as I can,
because the shepherd and I understand each other and we shall both
subterraneously enjoy the suspense. He knows that he is a bit of a
schemer, and he knows that I know it; I know that I am a bit of an
ass, and I know that he knows it. As to bearing him any grudge for his
act of subtle alienation--that is absurd. I like him too much, and
I recognize too that he is fulfilling Nature’s wish, Nature having
devised Bob to round up sheep, and every minute that he spends in
idleness walking at my heels being a defiance to her.
This shepherd is the true breed. His father was a shepherd on the same
farm; his grandfather was a shepherd on the same farm. His name is
drawn from his calling: not exactly Penfold, but akin. He is sixty-six,
and he has been out in all weathers on the South Downs ever since he
was a child, and he has never had a cold in his life. His crook is
never out of his hand. When it rains he carries also a faded green
umbrella and an ancient military cloak lined with red. He still wears
a smock. He has never been to London, but knows Brighton railway
station. He cannot read or write.
The older I grow the more respect I have for the wise people who cannot
read or write. The shepherd cannot read or write, yet conversation with
him is as natural as if he knew all the jargons. I never find myself
(who have both read and written more than is good for any one) hunting
for words within his vocabulary. He has a sly, glancing humour that
would make the fortune of an author, and observing eyes that would make
the fortune of two. He misses nothing; and, having nothing to confuse
and congest his mind, he has forgotten nothing.
He describes well; but his adjectives are very few: “tidy” and
“middling” for ordinary praise, “out-an’-out” for eulogy. His Bible at
home is “out-an’-out old”; his watch “out-an’-out big.” Where you and
I say we will consider it, he says “insider.” He is that rare thing in
a Southern county, an independent labourer. The vicar met him not long
since, remarking that he had not seen him lately. “No, I beänt much
pestered by parsons,” he replied. I can think of no more disconcerting
reply to a kindly question; but it was not cruelly meant. It merely
comes to this, that his attitude to the world is defensive.
He regrets many things that are no more, not the least being the days
when wheatears were still eaten and the shepherds had in August an easy
way of adding to their very scanty wages by trapping these little plump
birds and selling them to the Brighton poulterers. But that is all done
with, and the only opportunity of earning a little extra money that he
now has is by stopping earths for the hunt just before the meet; which
to me seems to be not quite playing the game.
He looks back, too, to the smuggling days with a certain wistfulness;
not that he did any himself, but he could not help knowing what was
going on, and he remembers more than one exciting arrest; while his
grandmother, over at Lullington, near Alfriston, was always well in
with the smugglers, and once went so far as to conceal some tubs under
her skeps, which the Revenue officer never thought of searching,
partly, no doubt, for fear of the bees. But the shepherd has the same
tale as the fisherman in the Georgian town--the same tale, although
the fisherman represents the sea-smugglers and the shepherd the
land-smugglers. The end of smuggling, they both say, was not so much
the vigilance of the coastguard as the prevalence of the informer.
Small village life in Sussex and along the coast in the early years of
Victoria seems to have been ruined by the presence of informers. A good
field for a novelist here! For the most part those writers who have
dealt with smuggling, from G. P. R. James to Mr. Meade Falkner, have
confined themselves to its perils and triumphs; but the tale-bearer
is perhaps better material--psychologically at any rate. Anyway, it
was the tale-bearer who prevailed, and bit by bit the old, alluring,
dangerous game was dropped. “The man who lived in the cottage next to
you,” says the shepherd, “was a rare smuggler. He did more work at
night than ever he did by day, though he had to show up in the fields
just to keep them from being too suspicious.”
Although the shepherd has never been to London, he has done some
travelling; but that, too, is a thing of the past. Once he used to take
his lambs to the great Sussex “ship fairs” to be sold--to Lindfield and
the “Bat and Ball” at Chiddingly, and so forth. But now that ancient
custom also has gone, so far as he is concerned, for the new farmer
prefers to offer them by auction at the nearest town; and the boy can
drive them there. “A foolish boy,” the shepherd finds him, “always
thinking of something else instead of the ship. Book-learning, I
suppose.”
Mus Penfold, although mostly smiling and detached, has his anxieties
too--and during the lambing season this year (1911) he has been bowed
with care. For the weather’s hand was against him the whole time. I
saw him continually throughout this trying period and for the first
time realized not only how sound a man he is, but how many qualities
the good shepherd needs. For he must be good doctor, good midwife and
good nurse, apart from flock management altogether; and he must be
prepared for little sleep, and the exercise of boundless patience and
resignation. The lambs were born just across the road; and I was on
that side almost as much as this.
“Well, shepherd, how many now?” “’Bout sixty, I reckon.” “How many
twins?” “Eight couple o’ twins. There’s two you could put in your
waistcoat-pocket. I’ll show you.” And I followed him through the
straw of the shed, now divided into little hurdled cubicles, like a
dormitory, with a mother and child in each, to the barn, where he
picked up by the fore-legs two of the forlornest little objects you
ever saw. “Reckon they’ll die,” he said. “I’ve been feeding them, but I
reckon they’ll die. They’re out-an’-out miserable.”
Owing to the cold winds far too many did die; but there was “a big six
hundred,” as the shepherd said, by the time all were in this green
world. When a lamb died Mus Penfold removed its skin and placed it
on the back of another for whom a foster-mother was needed. Then he
put the living one thus clad into the pen with the bereaved mother,
who, smelling its skin and finding it true, adopted the changeling
without a murmur. The skin is fitted on rather ingeniously, with the
living lamb’s legs through holes left for them and the neck tied with
string; but it would take in no one with any intelligence. Either sheep
are very incurious or the maternal instinct makes them careless, for
the deception almost always succeeds. On the other hand, the maternal
instinct can fail utterly; and there were usually one or two sheep
whose heads had to be tied close to the hurdle to prevent them butting
their lambs away.
This lambing season, by the way, was the only time when I ever saw the
shepherd using his crook. As I have said, he carries it with him all
the year--in fact, it is as inseparably his as the emblem of a Saint;
but he never ordinarily uses it except as a staff or a gentle chastener
of his dogs. But lately it was busy. I found him dragging newborn lambs
over the straw with it, from the yard to the maternity ward, while he
carried another by its fore-legs. The act looks, if not exactly cruel,
at any rate thoughtless; but this is not so, for the shepherd is a
tender man.
I never see a crowd of sheep without wanting a picture of them and
thinking of pictures of others, although one can see cattle and horses
and dogs and have no such pictorial wish or association. Why is this?
Is it because sheep are so essentially pictorial--because, in the
artist’s phrase, they always “compose”? I suppose so. However they
stand or lie they make a harmony. That is why one so seldom sees a
picture of sheep that is wholly bad; and similarly it is why every
photograph of sheep is also a picture. An artist who sets out to depict
sheep and makes an outrage must be crude indeed. No artist understood
sheep better than Blake, although his type was, perhaps, a little too
Eastern. But he made sheep lie about and occur exactly as sheep do. He
did not force them into a picture, as Charles Jacque was a little too
much inclined to do, nor pose them like Sidney Cooper. But then I have
never seen sheep in real life like Sidney Cooper’s. My own favourite
painters of sheep are Edward Calvert, Mauve, and J. F. Millet; but I
possess a tiny drawing by Robert Hills, one of the founders of the Old
Water-colour Society, which has as much feeling as any. I saw Millet’s
most beautiful sheep-picture quite recently--his “Bergère gardant ses
Moutons” under a full moon, and it is wonderful. I saw also three or
four Jacques in the same collection--the new Chauchard Collection, just
opened at the Louvre--and he again seemed to me a shade too brilliant
for his subject. Millet came to his sheep as a part of life--the
homely, melancholy, busy life that he knew--and painted them exactly
in their relation to it; Jacque came to them rather as a heaven-sent
subject for his brush. Millet, of course, poetised them, as he was
bound to do, but never to their detriment: they remained sheep, just as
his peasants, though poetised, remained peasants. Mauve saw sheep also
as a part of the universe, but rather as a part of Nature than of life.
Nor had Mauve Millet’s wistful depths. But there is a flock of sheep by
Mauve, passing over the Laren dunes, that reaches, perhaps, the highest
mark of true and beautiful animal-painting. Among the Old Masters I
recall with most pleasure the sheep of the Bassano family, father and
sons. In the gallery at Vienna they have a room to themselves, and a
more attractive collection of warm stables and mangers I never saw. It
is when I think of such pictures as these that my brain swoons at the
idea of what the post-impressionists would make of a scene of sheep.
There were none at the Grafton Galleries recently. May there never be
any!
One pleasant development of sheep-nature that the lambing season brings
about is accessibility. Usually there is no intercourse possible
between man and sheep, except by the hard medium of a crook. Why sheep
are so mistrustful I have never understood; for no one would hurt them,
not even boys on Sunday afternoons. They know too that to man’s care
they owe all their food and comfort, and yet the sight of a strange man
or a child equally fills them with panic. How different a little early
training can make sheep the adorable Billy proves. For Billy is as much
a part of the human family as any child or grandfather ever was.
Billy is a pet lamb in the Midlands--in a river valley far from these
austere hills. He is thick and sturdy, with a black face. He fears no
one and nothing. His favourite resting-place is the very middle of a
frequented path. When tired of repose he saunters about looking for
mischief. If the gate is open he strolls into the street and pursues
and butts the children. No lamb can ever have so entertained and
exhilarated so many grown-up people. The children run and shout, Billy
lowers his head and leaps and dances, the people rush to the doors
to enjoy the fun. When there are no children he chases the hens or
explores the back-gardens. Billy is fed with milk in an old oil can and
at this formidable vessel he plunges several times a day, as though he
had never eaten before, although he has been picking up trifles since
dawn; and even when filled he rarely allows a stranger to pass without
groping at his knees in an effort to derive sustenance from them.
I have never seen any other animal with more character than this three
months old lamb. He is alive with it, as we say. His countenance is
jaunty; his movements are elvish. He is in short an imp, as unlike, on
the one hand, the timid foolish sheep of which our flocks are composed
as, on the other, the sentimental pet lamb of Wordsworth’s poem.
Looking at him one realizes what a waste of good spirits the ordinary
method of sheep-rearing and sheep-tending leads to. If all lambs could
be brought up by hand, one thinks, how merrie would England be!
But I have not put this possibility before Mus Penfold. He would
smell something very treasonable. A humourist he may be, but he is no
Radical.
Theologians at the Mitre
I remember hearing an ingenious journalist remark that if ever he were
appointed editor of a literary paper he would now and then devote a
whole number to reviews of one book only, each review to be the work
of a critic of eminence who was unaware that his verdict was not (as
is usual) the only one that would be printed. “Thus,” he added, “I
should make an interesting number of my paper, while the differences
of opinion in the reviews would healthily illustrate the vanity of
criticism.”
After having just read, with much entertainment, in an old book, the
record of the travels in England of an intelligent German in the year
1782, I am inclined to think that, were I the editor of a general
paper, I should adapt my friend’s idea, and now and then induce several
foreigners to visit my city or country and record their impressions in
parallel columns; just to show the reader how we strike contemporaries
and strangers. But here, of course, the differences of opinion
would rather tend to complete the picture than to bring criticism
into disrepute. The result would be like those myriad reflections
of oneself that are obtained from the triple mirrors in hatters’
shops--all true, all different, and some exceedingly unfamiliar and
surprising.
If one of my observers were a man as shrewd and philosophic as Charles
Moritz, the 1782 traveller, the excellence of one column at any rate of
that number would be assured, for Moritz had both eyes and a brain.
A pastor in his native land, he sailed for England alone in May, 1782,
bent upon seeing London and, for some unexplained reason, the Peak of
Derbyshire. He knew the language perfectly, from books; and he brought
to his adventure an open and tolerant mind, courage, determination
and humour. As it turned out, he found himself in need of all these
qualities. Indeed, no good traveller can be without any of them. He
wrote in German: my copy of his work was translated “by a Lady.”
Let us disembark at Dartford on 2 June, 1782, with Mr. Moritz, and
proceed with him to London in a postchaise, by way of Greenwich. I
have read of postchaises before, but never found them so vividly or
informingly described as by this German pastor. It is worth while to
pause a moment before going farther and ask ourselves what we know
of postchaises in England in 1782. It will make Mr. Moritz the more
interesting. Speaking for myself, I certainly did not know that three
persons might (by Act of Parliament) ride for the same cost as one, and
that the charge was fixed at a shilling a mile. Had you realized that?
I had always thought of the postchaise as a luxury for the rich only,
but this brings it within reach of much humbler purses. And now for
the German: “These carriages are very neat and lightly built, so that
you hardly perceive their motion, as they roll along these firm smooth
roads; they have windows in front, and on both sides. The horses are
generally good, and the postilions particularly smart and active, and
always ride on a full trot. The one we had wore his hair cut short, a
round hat, and a brown jacket, of tolerable fine cloth, with a nosegay
in his bosom. Now and then, when he drove very hard, he looked round,
and with a smile seemed to solicit our approbation.” This is quite a
picture, is it not? Dickens could have made the postboy look round no
less brightly and triumphantly, but he would have given him jokes. This
is Dickens without language: Dickens on the cinematoscope.
The road to London is very prettily etched in. “A thousand charming
spots, and beautiful landscapes, on which my eye would long have dwelt
with rapture, were now rapidly passed with the speed of an arrow. Our
road appeared to be undulatory, and our journey, like the journey of
life, seemed to be a pretty regular alternation of uphill and down, and
here and there it was diversified with copses and woods; the majestic
Thames every now and then, like a little forest of masts, rising to our
view, and anon losing itself among the delightful towns and villages.
The amazing large signs which, at the entrance of villages, hang in
the middle of the street, being fastened to large beams, which are
extended across the street from one house to another opposite it,
particularly struck me; these sign-posts have the appearance of gates,
or of gateways, for which I first took them, but the whole apparatus,
unnecessarily large as it seems to be, is intended for nothing more
than to tell the inquisitive traveller that there is an inn. At length,
stunned as it were by this constant rapid succession of interesting
objects to engage our attention, we arrived at Greenwich nearly in a
state of stupefaction.”
It is very much as a few years ago men wrote of their first motor-car
ride, or as Mr. Grahame White’s passengers write now.
In London Mr. Moritz lodged with a tailor’s widow somewhere near the
Adelphi. The family consisted “of the mistress of the house, her maid,
and her two sons, Jacky and Jerry; singular abbreviations for John and
Jeremiah. The eldest, Jacky, about twelve years old, is a very lively
boy, and often entertains me in the most pleasing manner, by relating
to me his different employments at school and afterwards desiring
me, in my turn, to relate to him all manner of things about Germany.
He repeats his _amo_, _amas_, _amavi_, in the same singing tone as
our common-school boys. As I happened once, when he was by, to hum a
lively tune, he stared at me with surprise, and then reminded me it
was Sunday; and so, that I might not forfeit his good opinion by any
appearance of levity, I gave him to understand that, in the hurry of my
journey, I had forgotten the day.... When the maid is displeased with
me, I hear her sometimes at the door call me ‘the German’; otherwise in
the family I go by the name of ‘the Gentleman.’.” Quite an Addisonian
touch.
The tailor’s widow was a woman out of the common, for a favourite
author of hers was Milton, and she told her lodger that her “late
husband first fell in love with her on this very account: because she
read Milton with such proper emphasis.” This endeared her to her lodger
too, for a pocket Milton was his inseparable companion during his
travels. But I fear that when he proceeds to deduce from the widow a
general love of the great authors among even the common English people,
he goes too far. He made indeed the mistake that he might make to-day,
when cheap reprints of classics are far more numerous than they were
then: the mistake of supposing that people read what they possess.
Classics are still largely furniture and decoration. For the most part,
I fear, the owners of the hundred best books are reading something from
the circulating library.
The widow and her servant looked after him well, giving him bread and
butter cut as thin as “poppy leaves.” But what he liked even better was
their toast: “another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea,
which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good. You take one
slice after the other and hold it to the fire on a fork till the butter
is melted, so that it penetrates a number of slices at once. This is
called toast.”--That seems to be a very pleasant touch. I wonder into
how many books of travel in England toast has found its way.
His curiosity took him everywhere, sometimes without any introduction,
and sometimes with a letter from the German Minister, Count Lucy. His
first experience of the House of Commons, with no influence at his
back, was amusing and illuminating. “Above there is a small staircase,
by which you go to the gallery, the place allotted for strangers. The
first time I went up this small staircase and had reached the rails, I
saw a very genteel man in black standing there. I accosted him without
any introduction, and asked him whether I might be allowed to go in
the gallery. He told me that I must be introduced by a Member, or
else I could not get admission there. Now, as I had not the honour to
be acquainted with a Member, I was under the mortifying necessity of
retreating, and again going downstairs: as I did, much chagrined. And
now, as I was sullenly marching back, I heard something said about
a bottle of wine, which seemed to be addressed to me. I could not
conceive what it could mean, till I got home, when my obliging landlady
told me, I should have given the well-dressed man half a crown, or a
couple of shillings, for a bottle of wine.
“Happy,” he says, “in this information, I went again the next day;
when the same man who before had sent me away, after I had given him
only two shillings, very politely opened the door for me, and himself
recommended me to a good seat in the gallery.”
Manners in Parliament seem to have improved a little. Mr. Moritz
says: “The Members of the House of Commons have nothing particular in
their dress; they even come into the house in their great-coats, and
with boots and spurs. It is not at all uncommon to see a Member lying
stretched out on one of the benches while others are debating. Some
crack nuts, others eat oranges, or whatever else is in season. There
is no end to their going in or out; and as often as any one wishes to
go out, he places himself before the Speaker, and makes him his bow,
as if, like a school-boy, he asked his tutor’s permission. Those who
speak, seem to deliver themselves with but little, perhaps not always
with even a decorous, gravity. All that is necessary is to stand up
in your place, take off your hat, turn to the Speaker (to whom all
the speeches are addressed), to hold your hat and stick in one hand,
and with the other to make any such motions as you fancy necessary to
accompany your speech.”
Mr. Moritz had good fortune, for he heard both Fox and Burke. He
writes: “Charles Fox is a short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy
complexion, and dark; and in general he is badly dressed. There
certainly is something Jewish in his looks. But upon the whole, he is
not an ill-made nor an ill-looking man: and there are many strong marks
of sagacity and fire in his eyes. I have frequently heard the people
here say, that this same Mr. Fox is as cunning as a fox. Burke is a
well-made, tall, upright man, but looks elderly and broken.” Burke was
then only fifty-three, but he had just been excluded from the Cabinet.
A few weeks later, on his return to London, Moritz was again in the
House to hear the debate on the death of the Marquis of Rockingham.
Fox, General Conway, and Burke were the speakers. This is interesting:
“Burke now stood up and made a most elegant, though florid speech, in
praise of the late Marquis of Rockingham. As he did not meet with
sufficient attention, and heard much talking and many murmurs, he
said, with much vehemence, and a sense of injured merit, ‘This is not
treatment for so old a Member of Parliament as I am, and I will be
heard!’ On which there was immediately a most profound silence.”
Living authors seem to have had no interest for Mr. Moritz, and
therefore we get no glimpse of Dr. Johnson; but he saw everything
else. He went to Ranelagh and Vauxhall; to many of the churches, even
preaching in one; to the British Museum and to the theatre, where he
was so much taken with a musical farce called “The Agreeable Surprise”
that he saw it again and wished to translate it into German. Edwin was
the principal comedian. Although the play was good, the audience was
very uncivil.
Here again it is not uninstructive to pause and ask ourselves for our
views on the London theatre-gallery in 1782. It had not occurred to me
that the gods were quite as high-spirited and powerful as Mr. Moritz
describes them. In his seat in the pit Mr. Moritz became at once their
target; but whether it was because he looked foreign, or because he had
the effrontery to be able to afford to sit there, is not explained.
“Often and often, whilst I sat here, did a rotten orange or pieces of
the peel of an orange fly past me, or past some of my neighbours,
and once one of them actually hit my hat: without my daring to look
round, for fear another might then hit me on the face. Besides this
perpetual pelting from the gallery, which renders an English play-house
so uncomfortable, there is no end to their calling out and knocking
with their sticks, till the curtain is drawn up. I saw a miller’s,
or a baker’s boy thus, like a huge booby, leaning over the rails and
knocking again and again on the outside, with all his might, so that he
was seen by everybody, without being in the least ashamed or abashed.
“In the boxes, quite in a corner, sat several servants, who were said
to be placed there to keep the seats for the families they served, till
they should arrive; they seemed to sit remarkably close and still, the
reason of which, I was told, was their apprehension of being pelted;
for if one of them dares to look out of the box, he is immediately
saluted with a shower of orange peel from the gallery.” And here the
London experiences end.
Now for the open road. Having coached to Richmond, Mr. Moritz set out
to reach Oxford on foot, sleeping at whatever village he came to at
nightfall. But he was not very fortunate, either because he fell among
peculiarly rude and inhospitable folk or because his appearance was
so odd as to be irresistible. A traveller on foot in this country, he
says, “seems to be considered as a sort of wild man, or out-of-the-way
being, who is stared at, pitied, suspected and shunned by everybody
that meets him. At least this has hitherto been my case, on the road
from Richmond to Windsor. When I was tired, I sat down in the shade
under the hedges, and read Milton. But this relief was soon rendered
disagreeable to me; for those who rode, or drove, past me, stared at
me with astonishment; and made many significant gestures, as if they
thought my head deranged. So singular must it needs have appeared to
them to see a man sitting along the side of a public road, and reading.
I therefore found myself obliged, when I wished to rest myself and
read, to look out for a retired spot in some by-lane or cross-road.
“Many of the coachmen who drove by called out to me, ever and anon,
and asked if I would not ride on the outside; and when, every now and
then, a farmer on horseback met me, he said, and seemingly with an air
of pity for me, ‘’Tis warm walking, sir!’ and when I passed through a
village, every old woman testified her pity by an exclamation of ‘Good
God!’”
His troubles continued, for an Eton inn refused to admit him at all,
and the servants at the Windsor inn did all they could to make him
uncomfortable. He had his revenge, however. “As I was going away, the
waiter, who had served me with so very ill a grace, placed himself
on the stairs, and said, ‘Pray remember the waiter!’ I gave him three
halfpence: on which he saluted me with the heartiest ‘G--d d----n
you, sir!’ I had ever heard. At the door stood the cross maid, who
also accosted me with ‘Pray remember the chambermaid!’--‘Yes, yes,’
said I, ‘I shall long remember your most ill-mannered behaviour and
shameful incivility’; and so I gave her nothing. I hope she was stung
and nettled by my reproof: however, she strove to stifle her anger by a
contemptuous, loud horse-laugh.”
An adventure with a foot-pad and rebuffs from other landlords followed,
but in the little Berkshire village of Nettlebed, five miles north-west
of Henley, he found repose. Nettlebed remained in his mind as the most
charming spot in England: he liked the inn, he liked the people, and he
liked the church. His description of the inn actually re-creates the
past; indeed, it is not unworthy to stand beside that description of
that inn in “The Old Curiosity Shop” in which the nature of dwarfs and
giants was so illuminatingly discussed, over the landlord’s wonderful
stew.
“‘May I stay here to-night?’ I asked with eagerness.
“‘Why, yes, you may.’--An answer which, however cold and surly, made me
exceedingly happy.
“They showed me into the kitchen, and let me sit down to sup at the
same table with some soldiers and the servants. I now, for the first
time, found myself in one of their kitchens which I had so often read
of in Fielding’s fine novels, and which certainly give one, on the
whole, a very accurate idea of English manners.
“The chimney in this kitchen, where they were roasting and boiling,
seemed to be taken off from the rest of the room and enclosed by a
wooden partition: the rest of the apartment was made use of as a
sitting and eating room. All round on the sides were shelves with
pewter dishes and plates, and the ceiling was well stored with
provisions of various kinds, such as sugar-loaves, black-puddings,
hams, sausages, flitches of bacon, etc.
“While I was eating, a post-chaise drove up; and in a moment both the
folding-doors were thrown open, and the whole house set in motion, in
order to receive, with all due respect, these guests, who, no doubt,
were supposed to be persons of consequence. The gentlemen alighted,
however, only for a moment, and called for nothing but a couple of pots
of beer; and then drove away again. Notwithstanding the people of the
house behaved to them with all possible attention, for they came in a
post-chaise.”
On at last tearing himself from Nettlebed, after three futile efforts,
Mr. Moritz walked to Dorchester, where he hoped to sleep but was not
permitted. Late at night, therefore, he set out for Oxford, and was
joined on the way by another traveller to the same city, a young
clergyman. They reached Oxford just before midnight, and Mr. Moritz
proposed to sleep on a stone. “No, no,” said his companion: and here we
come to the gem of the book.
Hitherto Mr. Moritz has been now and then a little caustic and always
an alert observer, holding himself well in hand; but in the next
two pages a very delightful satirical glint appears. I consider the
midnight theological conversation that follows by no means unworthy
to be remembered along with Hogarth’s picture of a not dissimilar
occasion. Whether it is known at Oxford I have not inquired; but I have
several friends there who would immensely relish it.
“‘No, no,’” said his friend, “‘come along with me to a neighbouring
ale-house, where it is possible they mayn’t be gone to bed and we may
yet find company.’ We went on a few houses further, and then knocked
at a door. It was then nearly twelve. They readily let us in; but how
great was my astonishment when, on being shown into a room on the left,
I saw a great number of clergymen, all with their gowns and bands on,
sitting round a large table, each with his pot of beer before him. My
travelling companion introduced me to them, as a German clergyman, whom
he could not sufficiently praise for my correct pronunciation of the
Latin, my orthodoxy, and my good walking.
“I now saw myself in a moment, as it were, all at once transported
into the midst of a company, all apparently very respectable men, but
all strangers to me. And it appeared to me very extraordinary that I
should, thus at midnight, be in Oxford, in a large company of Oxonian
clergy, without well knowing how I had got there. Meanwhile, however, I
took all the pains in my power to recommend myself to my company, and
in the course of conversation I gave them as good an account as I could
of our German universities, neither denying nor concealing that, now
and then, we had riots and disturbances. ‘O, we are very unruly here
too,’ said one of the clergymen, as he took a hearty draught out of his
pot of beer, and knocked on the table with his hand. The conversation
now became louder, more general, and a little confused; they enquired
after Mr. Bruns, at present professor at Helmstadt, who was known by
many of them.
“Among these gentlemen there was one of the name of Clerk, who seemed
ambitious to pass for a great wit, which he attempted by starting
sundry objections to the Bible. I should have liked him better if he
had confined himself to punning and playing on his own name, by telling
us again and again, that he should still be at least a Clerk, even
though he should never become a clergyman. Upon the whole, however, he
was, in his way, a man of some humour, and an agreeable companion.
“Among other objections to the Scriptures, he stated this one to my
travelling companion, whose name I now learnt was Maud, that it was
said in the Bible that God was a wine-bibber and a drunkard. On this
Mr. Maud fell into a violent passion, and maintained that it was
utterly impossible for any such passage to be found in the Bible.
Another divine, a Mr. Caern, referred us to his absent brother, who
had already been forty years in the Church, and must certainly know
something of such a passage if it were in the Bible, but he would
venture to lay any wager his brother knew nothing of it.
“‘Waiter! fetch a Bible!’ called out Mr. Clerk, and a great family
Bible was immediately brought in, and opened on the table among all the
beer jugs.
“Mr. Clerk turned over a few leaves, and in the book of Judges, 9th
chapter, verse 13, he read, ‘Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God
and man?’
“Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern, who had before been most violent, now sat
as if struck dumb. A silence of some minutes prevailed, when all at
once the spirit of revelation seemed to come on me, and I said,
‘Why, gentlemen, you must be sensible that it is but an allegorical
expression; and,’ I added, ‘how often in the Bible are kings called
Gods!’
“‘Why, yes, to be sure,’ said Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern, ‘it is an
allegorical expression; nothing can be more clear; it is a metaphor,
and therefore it is absurd to understand it in a literal sense.’ And
now they, in their turn, triumphed over poor Clerk, and drank large
draughts to my health. Mr. Clerk, however, had not yet exhausted his
quiver, and so he desired them to explain to him a passage in the
prophecy of Isaiah, where it is said in express terms that God is
a barber. Mr. Maud was so enraged at this, that he called Clerk an
impudent fellow; and Mr. Caern again and yet more earnestly referred
us to his brother, who had been forty years in the Church, and who
therefore, he doubted not, would also consider Mr. Clerk as an impudent
fellow, if he maintained any such abominable notions. [This is sheer
Dickens, isn’t it?]
“Mr. Clerk all this while sat perfectly composed, without either a
smile or a frown; but turning to a passage in Isaiah, chapter xx,
verse 7, he read these words: ‘In the same day the Lord shall shave
with a razor ... the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also
consume the beard.’ If Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern were before stunned and
confounded, they were much more so now; and even Mr. Caern’s brother,
who had been forty years in the Church, seemed to have left them in the
lurch, for he was no longer referred to. I broke silence a second time,
and said, ‘Why, gentlemen, this also is clearly metaphorical, and it is
equally just, strong and beautiful.’ ‘Aye, to be sure it is,’ rejoined
Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern both in a breath; at the same time rapping the
table with their knuckles. I went on, and said, ‘You know it was the
custom for those who were captives to have their heads shorn; the plain
import, then, of this remarkable expression is nothing more than that
God would deliver the rebellious Jews to be prisoners to a foreign
people, who would shave their beards!’ ‘Aye, to be sure it is; anybody
may see it is; why it is as clear as the day!’ ‘So it is,’ rejoined
Mr. Caern, ‘and my brother, who has been forty years in the Church,
explains it just as this gentleman does.’
“We had now gained a second victory over Mr. Clerk; who being perhaps
ashamed either of himself or of us, now remained quiet, and made no
further objections to the Bible. My health, however, was again encored,
and drunk in strong ale; which, as my company seemed to like so much,
I was sorry I could not like. It either intoxicated or stupefied me;
and I do think it overpowers one much sooner than so much wine could.
The conversation now turned on many different subjects. At last, when
morning drew near, Mr. Maud suddenly exclaimed, ‘D----n me, I must read
prayers this morning at All-Souls!’”
The scene of that convivial disputation was the “Mitre”; and if there
are any other equally amusing descriptions of a night in that inn
I should like to read them. It reflects credit, not only upon the
traveller, but also upon the very young lady, his translator, whose
name, according to the editorial preface, was “fragrant with exemplary
piety.”
Mr. Maud, before he departed on his conscientious errand, arranged
to call for Mr. Moritz and show him Oxford; but the strong ale had
been too much for the foreigner and he was not able to see the city
till the day following. He was then taken to Corpus Christi and All
Souls and other colleges. While “going along the street, we met the
English poet laureate, Warton, now rather an elderly man; and yet
he is still the fellow of a college. His greatest pleasure, next to
poetry, is, as Mr. Maud told me, shooting wild ducks.” After Oxford,
Mr. Moritz visited Stratford-on-Avon, which he reached in a coach. And
after Stratford-on-Avon, he saw Birmingham and the Peak of Derbyshire,
and so returned to London and Germany. He had other adventures and
encounters, all described with liveliness; but here I must stop.
The ideal travel book could, I suppose, be written only by the
Wandering Jew, who, never ceasing, as he does, to perambulate this
globe, returning periodically, as one imagines, to every country,
has it in his power in each successive description to note not only
physical but social changes. I don’t know what intervals elapse between
his visits to London, but they must be sufficiently lengthy to permit
of very noticeable alterations, perceptible even to a footsore and
disenchanted Hebrew of incredible age. In default of this ancient
peripatetic, no one could do it better than Halley’s Comet, whose
visits are paid punctually every seventy-four years.
The Windmill
Chance recently made me for a while the tenant of a windmill. Not
to live in, and unhappily not to grind corn in, but to visit as the
mood arose, and see the ships in the harbour from the topmost window,
and look down on the sheep and the green world all around. For this
mill stands high and white--so white, indeed, that when there is a
thunder-cloud behind it, it seems a thing of polished aluminium.
From its windows you can see four other mills, all, like itself, idle,
and one merely a ruin and one with only two sweeps left. But just over
the next range of hills, out of sight, to the north-east, is a windmill
that still merrily goes, and about five miles away to the north-west is
another also active; so that things are not quite so bad hereabouts as
in many parts of the country, where the good breezes blow altogether
in vain. And recently as all the world knows there has been a boom in
whole-meal bread which was to set many a pair of derelict mill-stones
in action again.
Thinking over the losses which England has had forced upon her by
steam and the ingenuity of the engineer, one is disposed to count the
decay of the windmill among the first. Perhaps in the matter of pure
picturesqueness the most serious thing that ever happened to England
was the discovery of galvanized iron roofing; but, after all, there
was never anything but quiet and rich and comfortable beauty about red
roofs, whereas the living windmill is not only beautiful but romantic
too: a willing, man-serving creature, yoked to the elements, a whirling
monster, often a thing of terror. No one can stand very near the
crashing sweeps of a windmill in half a gale without a tightening of
the heart--a feeling comparable to that which comes from watching the
waves break over a wall in a storm. And to be within the mill at such
a time is to know something of sound’s very sources; it is the cave
of noise itself. No doubt there are dens of hammering energy which
are more shattering, but the noise of a windmill is largely natural,
the product of wood striving with the good sou’-wester; it fills the
ears rather than assaults them. The effect, moreover, is by no means
lessened by the absence of the wind itself and the silent nonchalance
of the miller and his man, who move about in the midst of this
appalling racket with the quiet efficiency of vergers.
In my mill, of course, there is no such uproar; nothing but the
occasional shaking of the cross-pieces of the idle sails. Everything
is still, and the pity of it is that everything is in almost perfect
order for the day’s work. The mill one day--some score years ago--was
full of life; the next, and ever after, mute and lifeless, like a
stream frozen in a night or the palace in Tennyson’s ballad of the
“Sleeping Beauty.” There is no decay--merely inanition. One or two of
the apple-wood cogs have been broken from the great wheel; a few floor
planks have been rotted; but that is all. A week’s overhauling would
put everything right. But it will never come, and the cheerful winds
that once were to drive a thousand English mills so happily now bustle
over the Channel in vain.
Not the least attractive thing about my mill is its profound
woodenness. There is not enough iron in it to fill a wheelbarrow. The
walls are wood, the sweeps, the brake, the wheels, the cogs (apple as
I have said: how long were they discovering that apple was best, I
wonder). Those fishing-smacks which from the topmost window we see on
the grey waters do not owe more to the friendly forest.
I know a man who takes the loss of the windmill so much to heart that
he is making a windmill map. He is beginning with Sussex only and
marking with a cross every place--so far as he can now ascertain--where
a windmill once stood. “That will show them what they have lost!” he
says bitterly. “That will teach them to prefer steam!” The crosses
will crowd like lovers’ kisses in some parts, for Sussex was a county
of millers, and all over the Downs now one comes upon shallow pits
from which ancient mills have been dug and dispersed. Imaginative
archæologists find a thousand fantastic explanations of these hollows,
and one even has been claimed for a prehistoric observatory; but all
the time they are merely the foundations of windmills: nothing more
romantic than that, and nothing less romantic.
To me, at any rate, this map will be a melancholy document. How much
more so would it be to that greatest of mill-lovers and mill-painters
and himself a miller and miller’s son, John Constable, could he see it!
The Sussex mill-map alone would cause him to weep tears, for, though
an alien, he knew our mills well, and painted many of them. Even at
Brighton (such is the incorruptible beauty of these structures) he
found mills to paint. One or two, indeed, still remain, but they are
blackened stumps merely--only the ruins of the radiant aerial creatures
of their prime, when the master sat before them with those paints and
brushes whose magic secret it was to preserve and glorify English
weather for all time. You will find some of these sketches in South
Kensington Museum, particularly that masterpiece of wind and joyousness
called “Spring,” which depicts the very mill in which the youthful
artist, when milling was still his destiny, worked; and a favourite of
mine is the “Mill Near Brighton,” seen over the shoulder of a poppied
field, that hangs in the Salting collection at the National Gallery.
Mr. Salting showed it to me soon after he bought it, and I longed for
enough moral courage to snatch it from his hand and run. But one’s
ordinary invertebrate easy rectitude prevailed, and I lost it.
Constable’s grief, I say, would be deep as he scanned this Sussex map
for his lost darlings. How much more so when the Suffolk mill-map was
laid before him! He used to say that a miller has a better chance to
study the sky than any man: that is, on land. Certainly if he had never
been a miller his own skies would not have the living truth that is
theirs.
As to the loss of the miller, that is a matter that does not bear
thinking about. That the elimination of this character, historically
so shrewd and so genial, from the countryside should be borne with
such equanimity proves the carelessness and apathy of England more
almost than the rise of the dust-evolving, road-devouring car. And what
chance has the English ballad poetry of the future with no millers
to celebrate? But perhaps the bread boom will really bring him back.
Devoutly do I hope so, for the only thing more beautiful in a landscape
than a mill that is still is a mill that is active.
A Glimpse of Civilization
The sign of this inn, like that of so many in the fair land of France,
was “Les Quatre Fils d’Aymon”; and who Aymon was, and what his four
sons did, I wonder how many English people know. Aymon was the Duke of
Dordogne, and his sons were Renaud, Guiscard, Alard, and Richard, and
you may read of them in a twelfth-century French romance and in Victor
Hugo’s _Légende des Siècles_. So much I can state, but no more. There
are certain things that one’s memory will not retain, and the story
of Aymon and his four sons is one of them. I have equal difficulty in
remembering for certain whether the pen is mightier than the sword or
the sword mightier than the pen.
But Aymon and his quartette matter nothing. What does matter is that
in a French inn you may be as witty as you can, as intelligent as you
can, but some one there will be more intelligent, more witty. We came
to this inn, which is some three leagues distant from Paris, about
five in the afternoon on a bitter, snowy day. We made the journey in a
motor-car through the bleakest country I ever saw, chiefly over _pavé_,
right from the heart of Paris, and the sign of Aymon and his family
was the first to greet our eyes, strain them as we might. Hence, since
there are few pleasures to compare with that of entering a warm inn
while one is on a cold journey, we were very happy when the door closed
behind us, and the rays of the circular stove in the middle of the room
drew us to it like tentacles.
Where was the _patron_? (We had heard of the _patron_ as a character.)
The _patron_, being also the _chef_, was in the kitchen--a vast, clean
kitchen, with a glowing fire, and myriad copper pots on the walls; but
he very willingly called in a lieutenant, and then brought certain
hot cordials and himself to our table. Consider an English innkeeper
being found at five in the afternoon in a spotless kitchen, himself
in spotless white, and leaving it to discuss the world at large with
two guests of a few minutes! For that is what we did--we discussed
affairs. He had the “Petit Journal” before him, and we went through the
pictures, and he dismissed men and matters with grunts and chuckles.
He knew the world. He had lived and he knew. Napoleon III had once
dined in this very inn, and a copper pipkin was still preserved on the
kitchen wall in which part of the Imperial meal had been cooked; but it
was nothing to our little host. President Fallières lunched there only
a few months ago--in that very chair--but that also was nothing to
him. Life is an individual business; life comes first; and an innkeeper
has as much life to live as any one else, be it Emperor or President.
He is a short man, between fifty and sixty, with close-cropped,
grizzled hair, a grizzled imperial, and a fierce, grizzled moustache
in perpetual danger of being burned by his cigarette. As a young
man he was cook to his officers’ mess, chiefly in Algiers, where he
had a touch of sun, which accounts for a certain excitability and
nervousness. (At a performance of “Biribi” at Antoine’s Theatre he
had to be led out, it was so true and he so overwrought.) He would
certainly have written poetry had his parents been rich. Trouble also
he would as assuredly have plunged into; and indeed his life is not
too smooth as it is, for he is terribly susceptible (those African
sunstrokes!) and Madame had to keep both eyes very wide open before she
ceased to care.
In his youth, before his Army period, he had been a valet in London,
in Half-Moon Street, and though it was only for a few weeks and he
speaks no English, it brings him into touch with English people a
little quicker; and after a glass or two, if he likes you and Madame
is absent, he will tell you of how the only woman he ever really
loved was the English girl that he met in London. But this vein is
not to be encouraged, since it ends in tears. For the most part
he is a mocker--laughing and cynical--appraising everything and
everybody in modern life with a French shrug or a French gesture, never
wholly serious and never wholly thoughtless, living in that busy,
materialistic French way that makes such contented citizens and such an
efficient nation and is yet the despair of every moralist in Tunbridge
Wells.
After a while the door opened, letting in an icy blast and a little
woman in a plaid shawl. Her head was bare, her light brown hair being
pulled back from the forehead in the French way. She had large diamond
earrings, a pair of cold blue eyes capable of much surface mirth, and a
shrewd calculating face. It was Madame. She sat down at once and began
to talk, and talked on, cleverly, commandingly, till we left--cynical
as her husband, but more alert. Her readiness was amazing. She took
every point and added to it points of her own; while with every new
customer that entered for a glass of coffee or cognac or an _apéritif_
she had a sentence or two of greeting and jest, flung across to their
tables--for in this land of France, where people talk little of the
conduct of life, but live it industriously, every man who wants
refreshment may have a seat for his comfort and a table on which to
stand his glass, and may sit there as long as he wishes.
How far (I thought as I sat there, while the landlord and the landlady
and my friend exchanged their badinage) is this removed from the
“Red Lions” and “King’s Heads” and “White Horses” of my native land,
where landlords are plethoric and vinous, and landladies testy and
not too clean, and barmaids vacuous and pert, and bars are crowded by
horse-laughing loafers who know not when to stop! How different! And to
what class of society in England would one have to go (I asked myself)
for a similarly vivid banter and shrewd criticism of life? Certainly
not to licensed victuallers, was the nearest reply I could frame.
Her Royal ’Tumnal Tintiness
She is absurdly small--a homœopathic dose of a dog. Nothing but the
folly of Western fashions prevents her being carried in the sleeve, as
Nature and Art intended her to be. But she is small only in figure: in
all else she is as large as a Newfoundland--in fidelity and courage
and spirit and protectiveness and appetite (proportionately), and
love of ease--while in brain power she is larger. Although not six
months old, she has the gravity of age, she suggests complete mental
maturity. If she were ten she could not open an eye upon a superfluous
caress with more languor or disdain. Her regality is such that one
resorts to all kinds of expedients to win her favour. She has the more
radiant merits of the cat--she eats like a cat, with all its meticulous
cleanliness and precision, she plays with a cotton-reel like a cat,
she has a cat’s flexibility in her toilet. On your knee she sinks into
complacency like a cat. None the less she is a true dog too, with
nearly all the stigmata of her kind--the black muzzle, the deep stoop,
the flat forehead, the plumed tail carried high, the bowed legs, the
minuteness, the nervous fluid. Her hue is that of a beech leaf in
autumn.
When she runs from room to room she beats the floor with her fore-paws
with a gallant little rocking-horse action. When she runs over grass
she makes a russet streak like a hare, with the undulating ripple of
a sea-serpent, and her soft pads reverberate like muffled hoofs. When
she is not running she is asleep. When she sleeps the most comfortable
place in the room is hopelessly engaged until she wakes. However fast
she may be sleeping, she wakes directly her particular friend leaves
the room, her religion being sociability. Left alone she screams.
Put out of the house alone, she circumnavigates it with the speed of
thought, seeking an open door or window. The sunlight through her
tongue is more than rubies.
One difficulty that seems to confront many owners of Pekingese
spaniels is the finding of a suitable name; for it should of course
be Chinese and also easily pronounceable. But to those who have the
honour to possess Professor Giles’s “Chinese Biographical Dictionary”
the situation is without such complications. Turning over its pages I
quickly alighted upon a choice of engaging females whose names might
fitly be conferred upon Her Autumn Leafiness. To mention a few, there
is A-chiao, who, when a child, was shown to the Emperor Wu Ti, also a
child, and he was asked what he thought of her as a possible wife.
“Oh,” said the boy, “if I could get A-chiao I would have a golden house
to keep her in.” There is Chao Fei-yen, who was so graceful and light
that she was called “Flying Swallow.” There is Chao Yün, who died with
these words from the “Diamond Sûtra” on her lips: “Like a dream, like
a vision, like a bubble, like a shadow, like dew, like lightning.”
There is Ch’i Nu, who had two lovers, one of which lived on the right
of the house and the other on the left. Her father bade her tuck up
the sleeve which corresponded to the man whom she preferred, and she
tucked up both, saying that she would like to live with the handsome
one and eat with the rich. (This dog is very like that.) There is Féng
Hou, one of the favourites of the Emperor Yüan Ti, who, when a bear
escaped, did not flee with all the other ladies, but remained to face
the bear, saying: “I was afraid lest some harm should come to Your
Majesty’s person.” There is Hsi Chih, who was never so lovely as when
she knitted her brows; and P’an Fei, the favourite of Hsiao Pao-chüan,
who said of her, “Every step makes a lily grow!” and Pei Ch’i Kung Chu,
who awakened in the breast of her lover such a flame that it set fire
to a temple; and Tao Yün, who when her brother likened a snow-storm to
salt sprinkled in the air, corrected the feebleness of his simile by
comparing it to willow-catkins whirled by the wind; and Ts’ai Luan,
who compiled a rhyming dictionary and ascended to heaven with her
husband, each on a white tiger.--Here, you observe, is a considerable
range--although by no means all--for the selecting mind to consider.
The choice fell upon Féng Hou. That is the name to which, since it is
hers and she is all caprice and individuality, she refuses to answer.
The dog will come when he is called,
The cat will turn away,
--so wrote an old observer. It is true of dogs and cats, but it is
hopelessly amiss of Pekingese. I would amend it thus:--
The dog will come when he is called,
The cat will turn away;
The Pekingese will please itself,
Whatever you may say.
For, to adapt an old proverb, where there’s a Pekingese there’s a will.
I do not think that she is ever likely to be a wonder from the point of
view of the bench. At least one of the dreaded penalizations is hers
already, and she may acquire others; nothing can make her fit to sit
beside her illustrious grandfather, Ch. Chu’erh of Alderbourne, that
Napoleon of Pekingese, that Meredith, that Brummell, all combined; nor
has she the ingratiating pictorial charm of Ch. Broadoak Beetle; but
no one knows what her own children may be like, and meanwhile she is
enough for her owner. She has brought into a house hitherto unconscious
of it the adorable piquancy of Peking.
Having done all that was possible to make Féng Hou our own, no one in
the house having any independent will left, and butcher’s-bills rising
like Grahame White: having done all this, it was something more than a
shock to be favoured with a translation of the rhapsodical pearls of
wisdom dropped from the lips of her Imperial Majesty Tzŭ Hsi, the late
Dowager Empress of Western China, for the guidance of the master of her
kennel. One saw at once how much was still to do if Féng Hou was to be
worthy of her race. I quote this most delightful document, the very
flower of Chinese solicitude and fancy.
PEARLS DROPPED FROM THE LIPS OF HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, TZŬ HSI, DOWAGER
EMPRESS OF THE FLOWERY LAND
Let the Lion Dog be small: let it wear the swelling cape of dignity
around its neck: let it display the billowing standard of pomp
above its back.
Let its face be black: let its fore legs be shaggy: let its
forehead be straight and low, like unto the brow of an Imperial
righteous harmony boxer.
Let its eyes be large and luminous: let its ears be set like the
sails of a war-junk: let its nose be like that of the monkey god of
the Hindus.
Let its fore legs be bent, so that it shall not desire to wander
far, or leave the Imperial precincts.
Let its body be shaped like that of a hunting lion spying for its
prey.
Let its feet be tufted with plentiful hair that its footfall may
be soundless: and for its standard of pomp let it rival the whisk
of the Tibetan’s yak, which is flourished to protect the Imperial
litter from the attacks of flying insects.
Let it be lively that it may afford entertainment by its gambols;
let it be timid that it may not involve itself in danger: let it
be domestic in its habits that it may live in amity with the other
beasts, fishes, or birds that find protection in the Imperial
Palace. And for its colour, let it be that of the lion--a golden
sable, to be carried in the sleeve of a yellow robe, or the colour
of a red bear, or a black or a white bear, or striped like a
dragon, so that there may be dogs appropriate to every costume in
the Imperial wardrobe.
Let it venerate its ancestors and deposit offerings in the canine
cemetery of the Forbidden City on each new moon.
Let it comport itself with dignity; let it learn to bite the
foreign devils instantly.
Let it be dainty in its food that it shall be known for an Imperial
dog by its fastidiousness.
Sharks’ fins and curlews’ livers and the breasts of quails, on
these it may be fed; and for drink give it the tea that is brewed
from the spring buds of the shrub that groweth in the province
of the Hankow, or the milk of the antelopes that pasture in
the Imperial parks. Thus shall it preserve its integrity and
self-respect; and for the day of sickness let it be anointed with
the clarified fat of the leg of a sacred leopard, and give it to
drink a throstle’s egg-shell full of the juice of the custard-apple
in which have been dissolved three pinches of shredded rhinoceros
horn, and apply to it piebald leeches.
So shall it remain; but if it die, remember thou, too, art mortal.
That is a very charming poem, is it not? Queen Victoria drew up no
such rules for Dandie Dinmonts, nor did Charles I, so far as I know,
thus establish the standard of the little creatures with whose ears
he played instead of studying the signs of the times. But it must
necessarily strike some apprehension into the breast of the owner of
a Pekingese. Is one doing rightly by the dog? is a question that it
forces upon one. In the matter of diet alone I find that we have been
all to seek. No house could have been so free from sharks’ fins and
curlews’ livers as this, and if a quail’s breast has chanced to enter,
it was certainly not Féng Hou who ate it. As for drink--but I wonder
if any one can recommend me a good, trustworthy antelope-milker: one
who would not object to help in the garden when it is not milking-time?
Things would be simple then--until Féng Hou was ill. But that does not
bear thinking about.
Apropos of medicine, however, an odd thing happened. Féng Hou at first
was not always good; indeed she was sometimes extremely naughty; and a
little castigating seemed needful. A letter therefore was dispatched
to London, to a provider of quaint necessaries, asking that some
attractive little switch, worthy of such a creature, might be supplied.
It came at once--the most delicate and radiant of rods, with a note
saying that it was something of a curiosity, being pure rhinoceros
horn. So we have one of the ingredients of one of the prescriptions
after all! Physic indeed.
Five Characters
I.--THE KIND RED LIONESS
I will admit that my head ached and I looked tired; but I was not so
depressed as all that. None the less she thought I was, and being a
good soul she did what she could to help me, and since I knew her to be
a good soul doing all that she could to help me, I had to acquiesce.
“Let me bring you something to cheer you up,” she said. “Of course it’s
lonely staying in a country inn all by yourself. I know it must be. But
I’ve got something that’ll make you laugh. I’ll fetch it in.”
I feared the worst as Mrs. Tally hastened away; and I knew the worst
when she returned bearing the Visitors’ Book.
“There,” she said, “I often have a good laugh over that of an evening.
Such funny bits there are in it. Some of the gentlemen we get here are
such wags. Look at this”--and she placed her fat finger on a drawing
of a young man in a straw hat, leaning against the bar while he blew
kisses to an enormous figure behind it.
“That’s me,” she said, pointing to the enormous figure. “I remember
that young gentleman so well. He came with two others, on bicycles, and
they stayed from Saturday to Monday. So bright they were, and so full
of jokes. See what he wrote underneath.”
I read: “Dook Snook, Lord Bob, and the Hon. Billy came and saw and were
conquered--to Tally!”
“Do you see the take off in that last word?” she inquired. “Rather
smart, wasn’t it? But they’re full of fun, all of them. Here’s another
amusing one. I remember that gentleman too. He was always full of his
jokes.”
I looked and read: “I was sent to the Red Lion by my doctor for change
and rest. The waitress got the change, and the hostess the rest.”
“Isn’t that neat?” the Red Lioness inquired.
I said it was. How could I dash this enthusiast’s spirit by telling her
its age?
“This is a bit of poetry,” said my hostess, proceeding to read it:--
“Of all the girls that are so smart,
There’s none like Mrs. Tally,
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
Signed × (BILL BAILEY, his mark).
“He was a jolly young fellow,” she added. “Fancy calling himself Bill
Bailey!” and she pealed merrily. “I wonder what’s become of him; he
hasn’t been here for months,” she added. “Here’s some more poetry:--
“There’s nothing like a Lion that’s Red
For pleasant food and comfy bed.
I mean to come and stay again,
But now must run and catch my train.
ALGERNON MULL,
296, Broad Walk, Ealing.
“Don’t you think it’s wonderful to be able to make up poytry like
that?” Mrs. Tally continued. “I do. I’ve tried, but I never could do
anything worth repeating, and as for writing in a Visitors’ Book!...
Don’t you agree with me?” she asked.
“Certainly,” I said. “It’s a real gift, there’s no doubt about it. A
gift.”
“Yes,” she said, “a gift. That’s what it is. Here’s another funny one.”
I read: “The Ten Thirsty Tiddlers visited the old Red Lion for the
fifteenth time. Everything A1 as usual.”
“But of course,” said Mrs. Tally, “although these are amusing and
make the book such good reading, it’s the serious compliments we like
the best. All comic wouldn’t do at all. Some people, indeed, actually
dislike it. There were two lady artists here not long ago who asked
me to remove the book from the room, as it was so vulgar. Fancy
that--‘remove the book!’ No, it’s the serious things that do us the
most good, of course. Like this, for instance”--and Mrs. Tally pointed
to the following, one after the other:--
Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Flower, of Dunedin, N.Z., spent a week here
very pleasantly in July. The cooking was excellent and everything
was most comfortable. They hope to return on their next visit to
the dear old country.
Comfortable rooms, good attendance, perfect cooking and the best of
landladies. In short, a home from home.
H. A. MARTIN,
St. Swithin’s, Sydenham, S.E.
My daughter, Mrs. Crawley, and myself have spent a very agreeable
week-end here and hope to come again.
J. MURRAY PHIPPS,
Member of the Committee of the Royal Musical Society.
We have received every kindness from Mrs. Tally and her very
efficient staff.
MR. AND MRS. J. ARBUTHNOT GILL,
Wood Dene, Pinner.
“Well,” said Mrs. Tally, “I must go now; but I’ll leave the book with
you. And there’s an earlier volume if you like to see it. It’ll cheer
you wonderfully, and you’ll just die of laughing.”
The honest kindly soul! There are moments when one is more ashamed of
what is called culture than any one can ever be of ignorance.
II.--A DARLING OF THE GODS
I see by the papers, with deep concern, that my friend X has been run
over by a motor-bus and killed, at the age of only thirty-eight. I
wish I could find some one who helped to pick him up, just to see if he
said anything about his end: because----
But I will tell you. His foible was to believe that everything that
happened was for the best--for himself. Not for mankind; he had none of
the great Dr. Pangloss’s satisfaction that everything that is is right,
that this is the best of all possible worlds. None at all. But he was
persuaded that his own fortunes were being vigilantly and tirelessly
watched by tutelary powers--that he was, in short, a pet of Fate.
And in this creed he had grown very ingenious. I remember once hurrying
with him to catch a train, which, he said, he must not lose at any
cost. Well, after seriously injuring ourselves--or at least myself--by
running with our heavy bags, we lost it.
“Never mind,” he said calmly, “I was evidently intended not to catch
it.”
“Then why on earth did you drag me along at that infernal pace?” I
asked.
“Oh, well,” he said, “one has to try; one does not know what the stars’
game is.”
“What do you think it is?” I inquired coldly.
“I expect the train will meet with an accident; if so, we are well out
of it.”
I took the trouble to find out, when we did at last reach the London
station, if that train had come safely in.
“To the minute,” said the porter.
“There,” I said to my friend, “what do you make of that?”
“Oh,” he replied, “I daresay some one with an infectious disease had
been sitting in our compartment and we should have caught it.”
What are you to do with a man who talks like that?
Your ordinary fatalist who thinks that, everything being ordained
and fixed, no effort of his own can matter, is bad enough; but the
fatalist who is also an optimist and secure in the knowledge of his
own prosperity is worse. And yet it was rather fine too. The hardest
rebuffs (as I should call them) left him smiling.
One day he lost a lot of money in an investment.
“That’s very serious,” I said.
“Not so bad as it might have been,” he replied. “It was done to teach
me not to speculate. I am not naturally speculative; I was going
against my genius when I did it. Now I have lost £500. But if I hadn’t
I might have lost £5000 later on.”
I looked at him in amazement. A kind of inverted Christianity was at
work had he only known it. But he prided himself on his paganism.
Well, now he is dead and can find no extenuating circumstances; but I
have no doubt he would have explained the catastrophe perfectly, had it
been anything short of fatal.
“I was getting very cheap,” he would probably have said, “and needed
rest. I could not have got it naturally, being far too busy; so this
accident was sent to keep me in bed for a couple of months and pull me
clean round.”
But it is hard when the protective stars suffer from _trop de zèle_.
III.--THE NUT
He seemed to be an old habitué of the music-hall, for without a
programme he had known all that was coming. And then suddenly he came
to his own; for, “Watch this,” he said to those of us who were near
him, strangers though we were, as a new number went up; “this is good.
I know a chap in this. I’ll tell you when he comes on.” We watched and
waited. It was a furious knock-about sketch, the scene of which was
a grocer’s shop, staffed by comic grocers. Humorist after humorist
came upon the stage, fell over each other, and went through the usual
antics; but there was no news of our friend’s friend, nor was the play
good.
And then at last a young man representing an aristocratic customer
rushed on. “That’s him,” said the man, “that’s old Charley. He’s a nut,
I can tell you.” (A nut is what we used to call a “dog,” with a touch
more of irresponsibility and high-spirited idiocy.)
“Isn’t he a nut?” he asked us all with a radiant sweeping glance of
inquiry. How could we disappoint him? I caught myself nodding in
agreement. A nut, surely. “Oh, he’s a boy, I promise you. I’ve had some
rare times with old Charley,” his friend went on. “You should see him
at Forest Gate on Sundays! I tell you he’s a nut.”
The nut continued to do his best to prove his character. He screwed an
eyeglass in his eye, he dashed the girls under the chin, he fell over
his walking-stick, he flung his tall hat on the ground. His friend was
in ecstasies. “Good old Charley!” he cried again; “isn’t he a nut? By
Jingo, but he’s a nut!”
I left him exulting in his intimacy with Charley, while the youths
round him glowed in the glory of even the temporary acquaintance of a
man who knew intimately a nut on the music-hall stage.
And, after all, that is no small thing.
IV.--THE MASTER OF THE NEW SUBURB
“_The Nook._” Is Mr. Jupp in?
_Mrs. Jupp._ No, lady, I can’t say as he’s in just at the moment,
but I daresay I could find him. He’s very likely at “The Limes,” or
“Bellaggio,” or up at our other garden.
“_The Nook._” I want to see him very particularly. It’s about my
garden. I live at “The Nook,” you know, and I want Mr. Jupp to come to
me regularly.
_Mrs. Jupp._ Yes, lady; but I think you’d better see Jupp yourself.
I’ll go and find him if you’ll take a chair.
“_The Nook._” But I could go perfectly well. Both those houses are on
my way back.
_Mrs. Jupp._ Oh no, lady; you sit down; I’ll fetch him.
[MRS. JUPP _fetches_ JUPP _from “The Green Man.”_]
“_The Nook._” Oh! Mr. Jupp, I want you to come to my garden every
Friday. What do you charge for that?
_Mr. Jupp._ Fridays, mum, I’m engaged at “Bellyvista.”
“_The Nook._” Then Wednesdays.
_Mr. Jupp._ Wednesdays, mum, I go to “The Red Bungalow.”
“_The Nook._” All day?
_Mr. Jupp._ Yes, mum, all day. By rights I ought to be there all the
week, there’s that work to be done.
“_The Nook._” Mondays, then? Are you engaged on Mondays?
_Mr. Jupp._ Yes, mum; on Mondays I belongs to “Sans Souci.”
“_The Nook._” But this is Monday. Why aren’t you there now?
_Mr. Jupp._ I am, mum. This is my tea-time.
“_The Nook._” Couldn’t you give me your tea-times? You shall have
tea--anything you like--in the garden, and if you gave me that hour
every evening all through the week I daresay it would do.
_Mr. Jupp._ What, mum, work all through my tea-time!
“_The Nook._” I should pay you for it, of course. And really you’re
much better without tea. You’ll enjoy your supper all the more, you
know. Wouldn’t he, Mrs. Jupp?
_Mrs. Jupp._ Oh! I never interfere with Jupp’s affairs. Jupp must
answer for himself.
“_The Nook._” Well, then, Mr. Jupp, couldn’t you give me an hour in the
early morning before you start at the other houses?
_Mr. Jupp._ What about my own garden, mum? When am I going to do that?
“_The Nook._” Of course I should pay you well for coming then.
_Mr. Jupp._ What were you thinking of giving, mum?
“_The Nook._” Well, I would give you eightpence an hour--that’s four
shillings a week. Will you come? Are there no other gardeners here?
_Mr. Jupp._ No, mum, no one; and even if there was, he wouldn’t be any
use. He wouldn’t understand the soil. It’s very curious soil about
here.
“_The Nook._” Well, will you come?
_Mr. Jupp._ I’ll let you know, mum. I’ll think about it and let you
know. There’s so many after me I have to be careful, mum. But I’ll let
you know.
“_The Nook._” Can’t you decide now? I’ll give you tenpence an hour.
_Mr. Jupp._ I’ll let you know, mum.
[_Exit “The Nook”; enter “La Hacienda.”_]
“_La Hacienda._” Is Mr. Jupp in?
_Mrs. Jupp._ No, sir. I can’t say he’s in just at the moment, but he’s
not far away.
“_La Hacienda._” Where do you think he is?
_Mrs. Jupp._ Well, he might be at “Sans Souci,” and he might be at
“Bellyvista,” or up at our other garden, perhaps. You see, being the
only gardener about here, he’s so much in request. If you’ll take a
seat I’ll fetch him.
[_She fetches_ JUPP _from “The Green Man.”_]
“_La Hacienda._” Mr. Jupp, I want to arrange with you about my garden.
What day will suit you best?
_Mr. Jupp._ I don’t know, sir, as I’ve got any day.
“_La Hacienda._” You don’t mean to say you’re full up? The whole week?
_Mr. Jupp._ I might be able to squeeze in an hour here and there.
Suppose--I only say suppose, mind--I was to come for an hour every
morning before I started in regular at my day’s work, wherever it
might be--at “The Nook,” or “Bellyvista,” or “Sans Souci,” or “The Red
Bungalow,” or “The Corner House,” or wherever it was? Although, of
course, I ought to be in my own garden then, as the missus here well
knows. What would it be worth your while to give me?
“_La Hacienda._” For an hour every morning early?
_Mr. Jupp._ Yes, sir, time I ought to be giving to my own garden.
“_La Hacienda._” Well, as it’s important, and you seem to be the only
jobbing gardener about here----
_Mr. Jupp._ No, sir, there’s no other, and even if there was, he
wouldn’t be any good. He wouldn’t understand the soil. It’s very
curious soil about here. It’s a matter of a lifetime to learn it.
“_La Hacienda._” Well, I wouldn’t mind as much as a shilling an hour,
at any rate at first. Would that do?
_Mr. Jupp._ Well, I’ll think about it, and let you know, sir. I can’t
decide anything till I’ve seen the gentleman at “The Trossachs.” He has
the first claim on any of my spare time, such as it is; but I’ll let
you know.
[_Exit “La Hacienda”; enter “The Cedars,” on a similar errand._]
V.--THE SECOND FIDDLE
“He is tall and thin; a Jew, of course. They are always Jews. He has a
large hook nose such as I detest and a black moustache. He dresses very
carefully, but it is cheap stuff; still, it looks smart, and women are
so foolish. His hair is not long, for he wishes to be thought a man of
the world as well as a musician. But I must confess he plays well, so
far as technique goes, though he never feels it.
“His eyes are fat, and he has learned to roll them and close them
rapturously, and lift his eyebrows, and now and then he sways his
head and seems to be in a dream of beauty. That’s all trick, and very
likely he practises it before the glass, for he has no music in his
soul really, and he is always scheming. Even while his eyes appear to
be closed in ecstasy he is looking under the lids at the women to see
which is the best worth cultivating.
“I, too, adore women, although I am afraid of them, and I am so lonely
I don’t mind confessing that once I too sat before the looking-glass
and tried to make languishing faces like his; but I suddenly realized
what I was doing and was ready to disfigure myself for shame. Yet they
are so charming, some of the women here, and it would be so delightful
to play on their feelings as he can and make them open their lips just
a little and look away into nothing; above all to make them want me.
“Why one man playing a piece can do that and another man playing the
same piece much better with real feeling cannot is a mystery. And I
would be so nice to them. They would be able to trust me. I would give
them such good advice and take such care of them.
“Instead, the women who come here, many of them, come only to watch
_him_. They make their men bring them here, and often they forget
to eat. Then the men they are with are furious. I have heard them
sometimes at the nearest tables to the orchestra. ‘Why can’t you let
that damned fiddler alone,’ I have heard them say--every one talks the
same in our restaurant--‘and pay a little attention to me?’ And then
the women are cross, and the meal is ruined.
“But when he goes off--as he does after every two or three
selections--to sit with a friend or receive congratulations from the
visitors who call him to their tables, and I have to take his place and
lead the orchestra, then the men’s faces clear again, for they know
that no woman will ever look at me or forget her food when I am playing
a solo, for I am short and fair. It is no use being short and fair. I
can play all that he does, and I love it too, which he does not--but
it is useless. No one looks at me twice. I am short and fair, and
middle-aged too.
“But even when I was younger and better dressed and didn’t care I never
could get women to be interested in me. It is some trick, I suppose.
He takes them all in; but I could tell them some things about him if I
were asked--how mean he is, how vain, how jealous, how fickle.
“He is cruel too. When our poor pianist had pneumonia through playing
for him one night in a cold hall he refused to allow him any money till
he was well enough to play again. Five weeks. Not a penny. And the
second violin, whose place I took, was discharged only because he was
applauded too much in the solos. One who really needed the post too. A
poor man with a large family.
“But women don’t mind about things like that. They don’t ask a man to
be kind and good, especially if he plays well. And I confess that his
playing is wonderful--technically. But no heart at all.
“Notes are continually being brought to him by the waiters. Sometimes
they merely ask for certain things to be played, always waltzes or love
songs, and sometimes they are more personal. And while we are playing a
piece which one of the pretty women has asked for he is looking at her
and making his faces and closing his eyes until she feels like a queen.
Isn’t it strange? They should see him when we rehearse. He doesn’t
smile then. He snaps and snarls.
“‘Ah!’ say I to myself as I watch it all through my spectacles, ‘you
should see his wife waiting outside the restaurant to waylay him on his
way to his cards and get some money. He wanted her once, before she was
tired and plain. Now he only wants new faces and new voices and new
admiration.’ That’s what I am saying behind my spectacles, but no one
knows it. There’s no telepathy, as you call it, in me. I am short and
fair. We who are short and fair are without magnetism. All there is for
us is to be true; but women don’t mind about that. They want magnetism.
“It is difficult for me, being in his employ and being so unimportant,
to help much, but sometimes when I see a really nice girl--and we have
a few here--losing her head I try quite hard. I try to catch her eye
and indicate my real opinion of him grimacing there. Of course, I can
only frown and nod. What else could I do? I couldn’t go down and speak
to her; but I try very hard with my expression.
“Once when he was making love to a new bookkeeper girl I was able
really to act. I told her to be careful. She was a good girl, but oh so
silly, as girls can be with musicians. All musicians, that is, but me
and the fat ’cellist. She replied that what I said might be true but
she liked him all the same. She took people as she found them, she
said, and he was always very nice and kind to her.
“‘If you want a lover,’ I said, ‘let me be your lover. I have no one
to love; he has thousands.’ But she only laughed. ‘There’s some fun in
taking a man from thousands,’ she said. That’s what women are. I don’t
want to win a girl from thousands of men. I just want her or I don’t
want her. But women--at any rate the women who come here--are different.
“Well, she wouldn’t listen, but she was a good girl, and true to me,
for she didn’t tell him what I said, although I couldn’t bring myself
to ask her not to. But she was honourable and didn’t tell him. And so
it went on; he smiling and bowing and playing to the women all day, at
lunch and dinner, and going to tea with them in between, or playing
cards with his little set of friends, and at night the bookkeeper girl
waiting for him. And so it went on for a month, and then he grew tired
and left her, and she lost her place here; and if she has any money now
it is that which I have lent her to get through her trouble with.
“So you see what sort of a man he is. But that he can play I will
admit. He has a wonderful touch, and a beautiful instrument worth a
great deal of money. He could earn a large salary in any orchestra in
the world. But there is no heart in his playing. He does not love music
as one should.”
Without Souls
I.--THE BUILDERS
I
_Mrs. Thrush._ What do you think of that hawthorn?
_Mr. Thrush._ Oh, no, my dear, no; much too isolated, it would attract
attention at once. I can hear the boys on a Sunday afternoon--“Hullo,
there’s a tree that’s bound to have a nest in it.” And then where are
you? You know what boys are on a Sunday afternoon? You remember that
from last year, when we lost the finest clutch of eggs in the county.
_Mrs. Thrush._ Stop, stop, dear, I can’t bear it. Why do you remind me
of it?
_Mr. Thrush._ There, there, compose yourself, my pretty. What other
suggestions have you?
_Mrs. Thrush._ One of the laurels, then, in the shrubbery at the Great
House.
_Mr. Thrush._ Much better. But the trouble there is the cat.
_Mrs. Thrush._ Oh, dear, I wish _you’d_ find a place without me; I
assure you (_blushing_) it’s time.
_Mr. Thrush._ Well, my notion, as I have said all along, is that
there’s nothing to beat the very middle of a big bramble. I don’t mind
whether it’s in the hedge or whether it’s on the common. But it must be
the very middle. It doesn’t matter very much then whether it’s seen or
not, because no one can reach it.
_Mrs. Thrush._ Very well, then, be it so; but do hurry with the
building, there’s a dear.
II
_Mr. Tree-Creeper._ I’ve had the most extraordinary luck. Listen. You
know that farmhouse by the pond. Well, there’s a cow-shed with a door
that won’t shut, and even if it would, it’s got a hole in it, and in
the roof, at the very top, there’s a hollow. It’s the most perfect
place you ever saw, because, even if the farmer twigged us, he couldn’t
get at the nest without pulling off a lot of tiles. Do you see?
_Mrs. Tree-Creeper._ It sounds perfect.
_Mr. Tree-Creeper._ Yes, but it’s no use waiting here. We must collar
it at once. There were a lot of prying birds all about when I was
there, and I noticed a particularly nosey flycatcher watching me all
the time. Come along quick; and you’d better bring a piece of hay with
you to look like business.
III
_Mr. Wren._ Well, darling, what shall it be this year--one of those
boxes at “The Firs,” or the letter-box at “Meadow View,” where the
open-air journalist lives, or shall we build for ourselves like honest
wrens?
_Mrs. Wren._ I leave it to you, dearest. Just as you wish.
_Mr. Wren._ No, I want your help. I’ll just give you the pros and cons.
_Mrs. Wren._ Yes, dear, do; you’re so clear-headed.
_Mr. Wren._ Listen then. If we use the nest-box there’s nothing to
do, no fag of building, but we have to put up with visitors peeping
in every day and pawing the eggs or the kids about. If we use the
letter-box we shall have to line it, and there will be some of the
same human fussiness to endure; but on the other hand, we shall become
famous--we shall get into the papers. Don’t you see the heading,
“Remarkable Nest in Surrey”? And then it will go on, “A pair of wrens
have chosen a strange abode in which to rear their little fluffy
brood----” and so forth.
_Mrs. Wren._ That’s rather delightful, all the same.
_Mr. Wren._ Finally, there is the nest which we build ourselves,
running just the ordinary risks of boys and ornithologists, but
feeling at any rate that we are independent. What do you say?
_Mrs. Wren._ Well, dearest, I think I say the last.
_Mr. Wren._ Good. Spoken like a brave hen. Then let’s look about for a
site at once.
IV
_Mr. Swallow._ I’ve looked at every house with decent eaves in the
whole place until I’m ready to drop.
_Mrs. Swallow._ What do you think about it?
_Mr. Swallow._ Well, it’s a puzzle. There’s the Manor House: I began
with that. There is good holding there, but the pond is a long way off,
and carrying mud so far would be a fearful grind. None the less it’s a
well-built house, and I feel sure we shouldn’t be disturbed.
_Mrs. Swallow._ What about the people?
_Mr. Swallow._ How funny you are about the people always! Never mind.
All I can find out is that there’s the squire and his wife and a
companion.
_Mrs. Swallow._ No children?
_Mr. Swallow._ None.
_Mrs. Swallow._ Then I don’t care for the Manor House. Tell me of
another.
_Mr. Swallow._ This is the merest sentiment; but no matter. The
Vicarage next.
_Mrs. Swallow._ Any children there?
_Mr. Swallow._ No, but it’s much nearer the pond.
_Mrs. Swallow._ And the next?
_Mr. Swallow._ The farmhouse. A beautiful place with a pond at your
very door. Everything you require, and lots of company. Good sheltered
eaves, too.
_Mrs. Swallow._ Any children?
_Mr. Swallow._ Yes, one little girl.
_Mrs. Swallow._ Isn’t there any house with babies?
_Mr. Swallow._ Only one that could possibly be any use to us; but it’s
a miserably poor place. No style.
_Mrs. Swallow._ How many babies?
_Mr. Swallow._ Twins, just born, and others of one and two and three.
_Mrs. Swallow._ We’ll build there.
_Mr. Swallow._ They’ll make a horrible row all night.
_Mrs. Swallow._ We’ll build there.
II.--BUSH’S GRIEVANCE
I am very happy for the most part. I have perfect health and a good
appetite, and They are very good to me here: let me worry them at
meals, and toss me little bits--chiefly bread and toast, I admit, but
nice bread and nice toast; and though He spends far too much time
indoors with books and things, and She doesn’t go for walks, and the
puppy-girl has a dog of her own, and doesn’t want me (nor do I want
her), yet I manage pretty well, for there is a boy who often goes to
the village, through the rabbit fields, and takes me with him, and
there is a big house near by where the servants throw away quite large
bones only half-scraped. Either they are extravagant or they don’t make
that horrid watery stuff, the ruination of good bones, which My People
here will begin their dinner with.
So you see I don’t do badly; and, though now and then I have to be
whacked, still it doesn’t hurt much, and He only half knows how to do
it; while as for Her (when He’s away), She’s just useless.
But my grievance, you say? Oh, yes, I have one grievance, and talking
it over with other dogs, particularly spaniels (like me), I find that
it’s a very common one. My grievance is the game they will play instead
of going for a walk. In winter it’s all right, They walk then; but
in summer They will play this game. I can’t make head or tail of it
myself, but They simply adore it. It is played with four balls--blue
and red and black and yellow--and hoops. First one of Them hits a ball,
and then the other. It goes on for ever. I do all I can to show Them
what I think of it: I lie down just in front of the player; sometimes
I even stop the balls completely; but They don’t take the hint: They
just shout at me or prod me with the mallet.
That’s my grievance. Of course it was pretty bad when They got a dog
for the little puppy-girl, especially as it is not a breed I care for;
but that I can stand. It’s this wretched monopolizing game that I can’t
stand. I hate it.
III.--A LONDON LANDMARK
I am the biggest of the elephants--the one that keeps on nodding its
head. Why I do that I’ll tell you later. The habit began some years
ago. You see, I am getting on. I have been here ever since 1876, and
that’s a long time. I was thinking the other day of all the things that
have happened since I moved to Regent’s Park from Ceylon, and really it
is wonderful. For I hear what’s going on. In between remarks about how
big I am, and how restless I am, and what a wicked little eye I’ve got,
the people say all kinds of things about the events of the day. Last
Sunday I heard all about the Suffragettes, for instance. There wasn’t
much talk about Suffragettes in 1876.
I read what’s going on too. Now and then some one drops a paper or
I borrow the keeper’s. It took me a long time to learn to read,
but I know now. I began with the notices about pickpockets, which
are everywhere in these Gardens. That’s an old thing, isn’t it? We
four-footed creatures, whom you all come to stare at and patronize,
at any rate have no pockets to pick, and therefore are spared one
of your weaknesses. (Except of course the kangaroo.) I mastered the
pickpocket notice first, and then I learned the meaning of the one
about smoking in my house. And so by degrees I knew it all, and it’s
now quite simple. I can read anything. I wish the people who came here
could read as well. It says as plain as can be on my little door-plate
thing, in front of the railings, that I am--that I am a lady--but
how many visitors do you suppose refer to me as “she” or “her”? Not
more than three out of the hundred. I count sometimes, just for fun.
That’s really why I nod: I’m counting. “Isn’t _he_ enormous?” they say.
“Look at _his_ funny little eye?” “Would you like to give _him_ a bun,
dearie?” and so on. And all the time, if only education were properly
managed in this country, they could read my sex. It’s on the board all
right.
I have been here longer than any one except the hippopotamus, which
was born here in 1872. But to be born here is dull. I had six years of
Ceylon first; I am a traveller. Supposing that I got away I should know
what to do; but that old hippo wouldn’t. Homekeeping hippos have ever
homely wits, as the proverb has it.
Do you know that in 1876 Winston was only two years old? Think of it.
He used to be brought to see me when he was a tiny toddle with quite a
small head. I’ve given him many a ride on my back. I often wonder what
is the future of the children who put buns in my trunk and ride on my
back, but this is the only one I can remember who got into office so
young.
It’s an old place, the Zoo. Such queer creatures come and look at
me,--lean, eager naturalists, lovers, uncles with small nephews, funny
men trying to think of jokes about me. I like the Bank Holidays the
best. There’s some pleasure in astonishing simple people; and I like
Sundays the least because the clever ones come then. Schoolmasters
are the worst, because they lecture on me. My keeper hates them too,
because they ask such lots of questions and never give any tips.
There’s a fearful desire to know how heavy I am. What does that
matter? “My word, I wouldn’t like him (_him_, of course) to tread on
my favourite corn!”--I wonder how often I’ve heard that joke. The
English make all their jokes again. They say things, too, about my
trunk--packing it up and so on--till I could die of sheer _ennui_.
The Interviewer’s Bag
I.--THE AUTOGRAPHER
He was sitting forlornly on the shore at Swanage, toying with an open
knife. Fearing that he might be about to do himself a mischief, I
stopped and spoke.
“No,” he said, “I’m not contemplating suicide. Don’t think that. I’m
merely pondering on the illusion that England is the abode of freedom.”
“But isn’t it?” I asked.
He laughed bitterly.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
He jerked his thumb towards the stone globe which is to Swanage what
Thorwaldsen’s Lion is to Lucerne, or the Sphinx to the desert.
“Well?” I said.
“Have you seen the tablets?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“They’ve put up two tablets,” he explained, “with a request that any
one wishing to cut or write his name should do it there rather than on
the globe.”
“Very sensible,” I said.
“Sensible?” he echoed. “Sensible? But what’s the use of cutting your
name on a place set apart for the purpose? There’s no fun in that.
Things are coming to a pretty pass when Town Councils take to sarcasm.
Because that’s what it is,” he continued. “Sarcasm. They don’t want our
names anywhere, and this is their way of saying so. Sarcasm has been
described,” he went on, “as ‘the language of the devil’; and it’s true.”
“But why do you want to cut your name?” I asked.
He opened his eyes to their widest. “Why? What’s the use of going
anywhere if you don’t?” he retorted. “You’ll find my name all over
England--on trees at Burnham Beeches, on windows at Chatsworth, on
stone walls at Kenilworth, on whitewash at Stratford-on-Avon, in the
turf of Chanctonbury. You’ll find it in belfries and on seats. I should
be ashamed of myself if I didn’t inscribe it--and permanently, too. But
this is too much for me. I came here only because I heard about the
stone globe; and then to find those tablets! But I haven’t wasted my
time,” he continued. “I went over to the New Forest the other day, and
to-morrow I’m going to Stonehenge.”
“That’s no good,” I said.
“No good? Why, I’ve bought a new chisel on purpose for it. I’m told the
stone’s very hard.”
“You won’t be able to do it,” I said. “It’s enclosed now, and guarded.”
He buried his face in his hands. “Everything’s against me,” he groaned.
“The country’s going to the dogs.”
II.--THE EQUALIZER
My friend was talking about the difficulty of getting level with life:
with the people who charge too much, and with bad management generally;
the subject having been started by a long wait outside the junction,
which made our train half an hour late.
“How,” my friend had said, “are we ever going to get back the value of
this half-hour? My time is worth two guineas an hour; and I have now
lost a guinea. How am I to be recouped? The railway company takes my
money for a train which they say will do the journey between 11.15 and
12.6, and I make my plans accordingly. It does not get in till 12.36,
and all my plans are thrown out. Is it fair that I am not recompensed?
Of course not. They have robbed me. How am I to get equal with them?”
So he rattled on, and the little cunning eyes opposite us became more
cunning and glittering.
After my friend had left, the little man spoke to me.
“Why didn’t he take something?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Something from the carriage, to help to make up?” he said. “The
window strap for a strop, for instance? It’s not worth a guinea, of
course, but it’s something, and it would annoy the company.”
“But he wasn’t as serious as that,” I said.
“Oh, he’s one of them that talks but doesn’t act. I’ve no patience with
_them_. I always get some, if not all, of my money back.”
“How?” I asked.
“Well, suppose it’s a restaurant, where I have to wait a long time and
then get only poor food. I calculate to what extent I’ve been swindled
and act accordingly. A spoon or two, or possibly a knife, will make it
right. I am scrupulously honest about it.” He drew himself up proudly.
“If it’s a theatre,” he went on, “and I consider my time has been
wasted, I take the opera-glasses home with me. You know those in the
sixpenny boxes; I’ve got opera-glasses at home from nearly every
theatre in London.”
“No!” I said.
“Really,” he replied, “I’m not joking. I never joke. You tell your
friend when you see him next. Perhaps it will make him more reasonable.”
III.--A HARDY ANNUAL
“You look very tired,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, with a sigh. It was at the private view of the
Academy. “But I shall get some rest now. It is all over for a while.”
“What is over?” I asked.
“My work,” he said. “It does not begin again with any seriousness till
next February; but it goes on then till April with terrific vigour.” He
pressed his hand to his brow.
“May I know what it is?” I inquired.
“Of course,” he said. “I name pictures for the Exhibitions. The
catalogues are full of my work. Here, for example, is one of my most
effective titles: ‘Cold flows the Winter river.’ Not bad, is it?”
I murmured something.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” he replied. “You’re thinking that
it is so simple that the artist could have done it himself without my
assistance. But there you’re mistaken. They can’t, not artists. They
can just paint a picture--some of them--and that’s all. You’ve no
idea.... Well, well.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yes,” he continued; “it’s so. Now turn on. Here’s another of mine.
‘It was the Time of Roses.’ That sounds easy, no doubt; but, mark you,
you have not only to know it--to have read Hood--but--and this is the
secret of my success--to remember it at the right moment.” He almost
glittered with pride. “Turn on,” he said. “‘East and West.’ That’s a
subtle thing. Why ‘East and West’? you say. And then you see it’s an
English girl--the West--holding a Japanese fan--the East. But I’m not
often as tricky as that. A line of poetry is always best; or a good
descriptive phrase, such as ‘Rivals,’ ‘Awaiting Spring’s Return,’ ‘The
Forest Perilous,’ ‘When Nature Sleeps,’ ‘The Coming Storm,’ ‘Sunshine
and Shadow,’ ‘Waiting,’ ‘The Farmer’s Daughter,’ ‘A Haunt of Ancient
Peace.’”
He paused and looked at me.
“They all sound fairly automatic,” he went on; “but that’s a blind.
They want doing. You know the saying, ‘Hard writing makes easy
reading’; well, it’s the same with naming titles. You think it’s
nothing; but that’s only because it means real work. I don’t know how
to explain the gift--uncanny, no doubt. Kind friends have called it
genius. But there it is.”
“I hope the financial results are proportionate,” I said.
“Ah,” he replied, “not always. But how could they be? It’s not only the
expense of getting to the studios--taxis, and so forth--but the mental
wear and tear. Still, I manage to live.”
IV.--ANOTHER OF OUR CONQUERORS
I used to think that the office-boy did those things. But no; it seems
that it is an industry, and a very important one.
I made the discovery at a station, where the horrible and irritating
word “Phast-phix” on the picture of a gum bottle held the reluctant eye.
A sleek little man in a frock-coat and a tall hat, who had evidently
breakfasted on cloves, paused beside me.
“You might not think it,” he said, “to look at me; but that word
that you are obviously admiring so naturally--and I may say so
justly--originated with me. I invented it.”
“Why?” I asked. “Surely there are other things to do.”
He seemed pained and perplexed.
“It is my business,” he said. “That’s what I do. I have an office; I am
well known. All the best firms apply to me. For example,” he went on,
“suppose you were to bring out a fluid mutton----”
“Heaven forbid!” I cried.
“Yes, but suppose you were to,” he continued, “and you wanted a name
for it, you would come to me.”
“Why shouldn’t I think of one myself?” I asked.
“You!” he cried. “How could you? It’s a special equipment. Just try and
you’ll see. What would _you_ call it?”
“Well,” I said after a moment’s thought, “I might call it--I might call
it---- Hang it, I wouldn’t do such a thing, anyway.”
“There,” he cried triumphantly, “I knew it. You would be lost. You
would therefore come to me. I should charge you ten guineas, but in
return you would have a name that would make your fortune.”
“What would that be?” I ventured to ask.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, “for certain. ‘Sheep-O,’ perhaps.
But anyway it would be a good name. ‘Flock-vim,’ perhaps. Or even
‘Mut-force.’”
I began to long for my train.
“How do you think of such things?” I inquired. “Tell me your processes.”
He laughed deprecatingly. “I have given the subject an immense deal of
thought,” he said. “For many years now I have done little else; I am
always on the look-out for ideas. They come to me at all kinds of odd
times and in all kinds of odd places. In bed--on a ’bus--in the train.”
“This one?” I asked.
“‘Phast-phix’?” he replied. “Oh, I thought of that instantaneously. You
see, the firm came to my office to say they were putting a new gum or
cement on the market, and they must have a good name for it at once.
I had no time. I buried my head in my hands, for a few seconds (my
regular habit) and suddenly ‘Phast-phix’ flashed into it. They were
enchanted.”
“I notice,” I said, “a tendency among advertisers to transform ‘f’ into
‘ph.’”
“Yes,” he said, “they got it from me. I was the first. It is far more
striking, don’t you think? To spell ‘fast-fix’ correctly wouldn’t be
witty at all.”
I agreed with him.
“Tell me some more of your special inspirations,” I said. “Have you
done anything lately as good as ‘Phast-phix’? But no, how could you?”
“Let me see,” he remarked. “Yes, there is the name for the new pen.
They came to me in a great hurry for that, too. But as it happened
I had that carefully pigeon-holed, for I am always inventing names
against a rainy day. I gave it to them at once--the ‘Ri-teezi.’ You
have no doubt seen it advertised.”
(Haven’t I?)
“That has been an immense success,” he went on. “It’s not a bad pen,
either; but the name! Ah!”
“Anything else out of the way?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I was just going to tell you. I was approached by a
firm with new blacking. All it required was an absolutely knock-out
name. I gave them one, and only yesterday I had a visit from the
Secretary of the Company, who was present at the Board meeting when
my letter was read out. He says that the thrill that ran through the
directors--sober business men, mind you--at that moment was an epoch in
the history of commerce.”
“Indeed,” I remarked; “and what was the name?”
“The name?” he said. “Ah, yes. It was one of my best efforts, I think.
Simple, forcible, instantaneous in its message and unforgettable in
form--‘Shine-O.’”
“Yes,” I said, “that should be hard to beat. I congratulate you.” And
so we parted.
I wonder if there’s really any money in that fluid-mutton idea.
V.--A CASE FOR LOYOLA
We had no introduction save the circumstance that we chanced both to
be taking refreshment at the same time--and, after all, is not that a
bond? He did not begin to talk at once, and very likely would not have
done so had not a little man come hastily in, received his drink, laid
his money on the bar without a word, also without a word consumed it,
and hurried out again.
“You might guess a hundred times before you could say what that man
does,” said my neighbour.
I gave it up at once. He might have been anything requiring no muscle,
and there are so many varieties of such professions. An insurance
agent, but he was too busy and taciturn; a commission agent, but he
was alone; a cheap oculist, but he would not be free at this hour. I
therefore gave it up at once.
“He’s a conjurer,” said the man. “Not on the stage; goes out to parties
and smokers.”
I expressed the necessary amount of surprise and satisfaction.
“Odd what different things men do,” he continued. “There’s all sorts
of trades, isn’t there? I often sit for hours watching men and
wondering what they are. Sometimes you can tell easily. A carpenter,
for instance, often has a rule pocket in his trousers that you can
spot. A lawyer’s clerk has a certain way with him. Horses always leave
their mark on men, and you can tell coachmen even in plain clothes. But
there’s many to baffle you.”
“Yes,” I said, “it needs a Sherlock Holmes.”
“And yet there’s some to puzzle even him,” said my man. “Now what do
you think he’d make of me?”
Upon my word I couldn’t say. He was just the ordinary artisan, with
a little thoughtfulness added. A small, pale man, grizzled and neat,
but the clothes were old. The shininess and bagginess of the knees
suggested much kneeling; nothing else gave me a hint.
“I give that up too,” I said.
“Well,” he replied, “I’ll tell you, because you’re a stranger. I’m a
worm-holer.”
“A worm-holer?”
“Yes, I make worm-holes in furniture to make it seem older and fetch a
better price.”
“Great heavens!” I said; “I have heard of it, of course, but I never
thought to meet a worm-holer face to face. How do you do it?”
“It’s not difficult,” he said, “to make the actual holes. The trick is
to make ’em look real.”
“And what becomes of the furniture?”
“America chiefly,” he said. “They like old English things there, the
older the better. Guaranteed Tudor things will fetch anything ... we
guarantee all ours.”
“And you have no conscience about it?” I asked.
“None,” he said. “Not any more. I had a little once, but there,
the Americans are so happy with their finds it would be a shame to
disappoint them. I look on myself as a benefactor to the nation now. I
often lie awake at nights--I sleep badly--thinking of the collectors in
U.S.A. hugging themselves with joy to think of the treasures I’ve made
for them.”
The Letter N
A TRAGEDY IN HIGH LIFE
_Extract from the copy of Harold Pippett, only reporter for “The
Eastbury Herald,” as handed to the compositor._
I
Inquiries which have been made by one of our representatives yield the
gratifying tidings that Kildin Hall, the superb Tudor residence vacated
a year or so ago by Lord Glossthorpe, is again let. The new tenant,
who will be a valued addition to the neighbourhood, is Mr. Michael
Stirring, a retired banker.
II
_From “The Eastbury Herald,” 2 Sept._
Inquiries which have been made by one of our representatives yield the
gratifying tidings that Kildin Hall, the superb Tudor residence vacated
a year or so ago by Lord Glossthorpe, is again let. The new tenant,
who will be a valued addition to the neighbourhood, is Mr. Michael
Stirring, a retired baker.
III
_Mr. Guy Lander, Estate Agent, to the Editor of “The Eastbury Herald.”_
DEAR TED,--There’s a fearful bloomer in your paper this week, which you
must put right as soon as you can. Mr. Stirring, who has taken Kildin,
is not a baker, but a banker.
Yours, G. L.
IV
_The Editor of “The Eastbury Herald” to Mr. Guy Lander._
MY DEAR GUY,--Of course it’s only a misprint. Pippett wrote “banker”
right enough, and the ass of a compositor dropped out the “n.” I’ll put
it right next week. No sensible person would mind.
Yours, EDWARD HEDGES.
V
_Mrs. Michael Stirring to the Editor of “The Eastbury Herald.”_
SIR,--My attention has been called to a very serious misstatement in
your paper for Saturday last. It is there stated that my husband, Mr.
Michael Stirring, who has taken Kildin Hall, is a retired baker. This
is absolutely false. Mr. Stirring is a retired banker, than which
nothing could be much more different. Mr. Stirring is at this moment
too ill to read the papers, and the slander will therefore be kept
from him a little longer, but what the consequences will be when he
hears of it I tremble to think. Kindly assure me that you will give the
denial as much publicity as the falsehood.
Yours faithfully,
AUGUSTA STIRRING.
VI
_The Editor of “The Eastbury Herald” to Mrs. Michael Stirring._
The Editor of “The Eastbury Herald” presents his compliments to Mrs.
Stirring and begs to express his profound regret that the misprint
of which she complains should have crept into his paper. That it was
a misprint and not an intentional misstatement he has the reporter’s
copy to prove. He will, of course, insert in the next issue of “The
Eastbury Herald” a paragraph correcting the error, but he would point
out to Mrs. Stirring that it was also stated in the paragraph that Mr.
Stirring would be a valued addition to the neighbourhood.
VII
_Mrs. Stirring to the Editor of “The Eastbury Herald.”_
SIR,--Whatever the cause of the slander, whether malice or
misadventure, the fact remains that you have done a very cruel thing.
I enclose a cutting from the London Press, sent me by a friend, which
will show you that the calumny is becoming widely spread. Mr. Stirring
is so weak and dispirited that we fear he may have got some inkling of
it. Your position if he discovers the worst will be terrible.
I am, Yours faithfully,
AUGUSTA STIRRING.
(THE ENCLOSURE)
_From “The Morning Star”_
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
We get the new movement in a nutshell in the report from Eastbury that
Lord Glossthorpe has let his historic house to a retired baker named
Stirring, etc., etc.
VIII
_From “The Eastbury Herald” 9 Sept._
ERRATUM.--In our issue last week an unfortunate misprint made us state
that the new tenant of Kildin Hall was a retired baker. The word was of
course banker.
IX
_Mr. John Bridger, Baker, to the Editor of “The Eastbury Herald.”_
DEAR HEDGES,--I was both pained and surprised to find a man of your
principles and a friend of mine writing of bakers as you did this
week. Why should you “of course” have meant a banker? Why cannot a
retired baker take a fine house if he wants to? I am thoroughly ashamed
of you, and wish to withdraw my advertisement from your paper.
Yours truly, JOHN BRIDGER.
X
_Messrs. Greenery & Bills, Steam Bakery, Dumbridge._
DEAR SIR,--After the offensive slur upon bakers in the current number
of your paper we feel that we have no other course but to withdraw our
advertisement; so please discontinue it from this date.
Yours faithfully,
GREENERY & BILLS.
XI
_Mrs. Stirring to the Editor of “The Eastbury Herald.”_
SIR,--I fear you have not done your best to check the progress of your
slanderous paragraph, since only this morning I received the enclosed.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that through your efforts
the old-world paradise of Kildin, in which we had hoped to end our
days, has been rendered impossible. We could not settle in a new
neighbourhood with such an initial handicap.
Yours truly, AUGUSTA STIRRING.
(THE ENCLOSURE)
_From “The Daily Leader”_
THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY
After lying empty for nearly two years Lord Glossthorpe’s country seat
has been let to a retired baker named Stirring, etc., etc.
XII
_Mrs. Michael Stirring to Mr. Guy Lander._
DEAR SIR,--After the way that the good name and fame of my husband
and myself have been poisoned both in the local and the London Press,
we cannot think further of coming to live at Kildin Hall. Every post
brings from one or other of my friends some paragraph perpetuating the
lie. Kindly therefore consider the negotiations completely at an end. I
am, Yours faithfully,
AUGUSTA STIRRING.
XIII
_The Editor of “The Eastbury Herald” to Mr. John Bridger._
DEAR BRIDGER,--You were too hasty. A man has to do the best he can.
When I wrote “of course,” I meant it as a stroke of irony. In other
words, I was, and am, and ever shall be, on your side. You will be glad
to hear that in consequence of the whole thing I have got notice to
leave, my proprietor being under obligations to Lord Glossthorpe, and
you may therefore restore your patronage to “The Herald” with a clear
conscience.
Yours sincerely, EDWARD HEDGES.
XIV
_The Editor of “The Eastbury Herald” to Mrs. Stirring._
The Editor of “The Eastbury Herald” presents his compliments to Mrs.
Stirring for the last time, and again assures her that the whole
trouble grew from the natural carelessness of an overworked and
underpaid compositor. He regrets sincerely the unhappiness which that
mistake has caused, and looks forward to a day when retired bakers and
retired bankers will be considered as equally valuable additions to a
neighbourhood. In retirement, as in the grave, he likes to think of all
men as equal. With renewed apologies for the foul aspersion which he
cast upon Mr. and Mrs. Stirring, he begs to conclude.
P.S.--Mrs. Stirring will be pleased to hear that not only the writer
but the compositor are under notice to leave.
The New Chauffeur
(_An Impossible Dialogue_)
_Employer._ And now as to wages. What do you want?
_Chauffeur._ Forty pounds a year and all found.
_E._ And what do you expect to do for that?
_C._ To keep the car in good order and drive you out in it.
_E._ Yes. You must excuse me asking so much, but you see I don’t know
you at all. What kind of a temper have you?
_C._ Very good.
_E._ Yes, of course. But I mean what kind of temper have you when you
are told suddenly, late on a wet night, to go to the station?
_C._ Very good.
_E._ Always?
_C._ Certainly.
_E._ Well, I want you to be quite sure. Is your temper so perfect
that if I were to offer you another £5 a year to secure this point
about unexpected runs in bad weather and so forth, it would make no
difference?
_C._ I think it might make a difference.
_E._ And you would stand by the bargain? Never for a moment go back on
it?
_C._ No.
_E._ Then we will say £45. And one other point. There are some
chauffeurs so poor spirited that on an open road with no danger they
will go at only, say, twelve miles an hour. You are not like that, are
you?
_C._ Certainly not.
_E._ You hate going slow?
_C._ Yes.
_E._ Ah, then, that settles it, for a chauffeur who objects to go slow
is no good to me. You see, I often want to go slow: in fact, always
when it is very dusty and we are near cottage gardens.
_C._ Yes; but, of course, if you wished it----
_E._ You said you hated it. Now, an unwilling servant is the last thing
I require.
_C._ But----
_E._ You mean that you could get over your dislike and become willing
to meet my wishes?
_C._ Yes.
_E._ But willingness must be more spontaneous than that. Suppose we
were to fix it up now absolutely, would you continue in that frame? You
would always be willing?
_C._ Always.
_E._ Then shall we say another £5 a year? That makes £50.
_C._ Thank you very much.
_E._ Oh, no, not at all. It’s a commercial transaction. I want what
you are prepared to sell. There is one other point. What kind of an
expression do you wear when you are told by your employer to take out
for a drive certain of his poorer friends who cannot afford more than a
small tip, if any?
_C._ I am perfectly content.
_E._ Perfectly?
_C._ Well, of course, one prefers to drive one’s own employer.
_E._ Ah!--but supposing I wished all your passengers to be of equal
importance and interest to you? There is no pleasure in a drive if the
driver is sullen. Have you ever thought of that?
_C._ Never.
_E._ You see it now?
_C._ Yes, I see it now.
_E._ And if I were to add another £5 it would guarantee the smile?
_C._ Absolutely.
_E._ Very well, then, that makes it £55. We will leave it at that. You
will begin on Monday.
The Fir-tree; Revised Version
(_Too Long after Hans Andersen_)
Once upon a time there grew a fir-tree in a great Newfoundland forest.
It had a delightful life; the rain fell on it and nourished its
roots; the sun shone on it and warmed its heart; now and then came a
great jolly wind to wrestle with it and try its strength. The peasant
children would sit at its foot and play their games and sing their
little songs, and the birds roosted or sheltered in its branches. Often
the squirrels frolicked there.
But the tree, although everything was so happy in its surroundings, was
not satisfied. It longed to be something else. It longed to be, as it
said, important in the world.
“Well,” said the next tree to it, “you will be important; we all shall.
Nothing is so important as the mast of a ship.”
But the tree would not have it. “The mast of a ship!” he said. “Pooh! I
hope to be something better than that.”
Every year the surveyors came and marked a number of the taller
trees, and then wood-cutters arrived and cut them down and lopped off
their branches and dragged them away to the ship-builders. The tree
disdainfully watched them go.
And then one day the surveyor came and made a mark on its bark.
“Ha! ha!” said a neighbour, “now you’re done for.”
But the tree laughed slyly. “I know a trick worth two of that,” he
said, and he induced a squirrel to rub off the mark with its tail, so
that when the wood-cutters came it was not felled after all.
“Oh,” said the swallows when they came back next year, “you here still?”
“Surely,” said the tree conceitedly. “They tried to get me, but I was
too clever for them.”
“But don’t you want to be a mast,” they said, “and hold up the sails of
a beautiful ship, and swim grandly all about the seas of the world, and
lie in strange harbours, and hear strange voices?”
“No,” said the tree, “I don’t. I dislike the sea. It is monotonous. I
want to assist in influencing the world. I want to be important.”
“Don’t be so silly,” said the swallows.
And then the tree had his wish, for one day some more wood-cutters
came; but, instead of picking out the tallest and straightest trees,
as they had been used to, they cut down hundreds just as they came to
them.
“Look out,” said the swallows. “You’ll be cut down now whether you want
it or not.”
“I want it,” said the tree. “I want to begin to influence the world.”
“Very well,” said a wood-cutter, “you shall,” and he gave the trunk a
great blow with his axe, and then another and another, until down it
fell.
“You won’t be a mast,” he added, “never fear. Nothing so useful! You’re
going to make paper, my friend.”
“What is paper?” asked the tree of the swallows as they darted to and
fro over its branches.
“We don’t know,” they said, “but we’ll ask the sparrows.”
The sparrows, who knew, told the tree. “Paper,” they said, “is the
white stuff that men read from. It used to be made from rags; but it’s
made from trees now because it’s cheaper.”
“Then will people read me?” asked the tree.
“Yes,” said the sparrows.
The tree nearly fainted with rapture.
“But only for a few minutes,” added the sparrows. “You’re going to be
newspaper paper, not book paper.”
“All the same,” said the tree, “I might have something worth reading on
me, mightn’t I? Something beautiful or grand.”
“You might,” said the sparrows, “but it isn’t very likely.”
Then the men came to haul the tree away. Poor tree, what a time it had!
It was sawed into logs, and pushed, with thousands of others, into a
pulping machine, and the sap oozed out of it, and it screamed with
agony; and then by a dozen different processes, all extremely painful,
it was made into paper.
Oh, how it wished it was still growing on the hillside with the sun and
the rain, and the children at its foot, and the birds and squirrels in
its branches. “I never thought the world would be like this,” it said.
And the other trees in the paper all around it agreed that the world
was an overrated place.
And the tree went to sleep and dreamed it was a mast, and woke up
crying.
Then it was rolled into a long roll five miles long and put down into
the hold of a ship, and there it lay all forlorn and sea-sick for a
week. A dreadful storm raged overhead--the same wind that had once
tried its strength on the hillside--and as they heard it all the trees
in the paper groaned as they thought of the life of the forest and the
brave days that were gone.
The worst of it was that the roll in which our tree lay was close by
the foot of the mast, which came through the hold just here, and he
found that they were old friends. The mast said he could think of no
life so pleasant as that of a mast. “One has the sun all day,” he said,
“and the stars all night; one carries men and merchandise about the
world; one lies in strange harbours and sees strange and entertaining
sights. One is influencing the world all the time.”
At these words the tree wept again. But he made an effort to be
comforted. “You wouldn’t suggest,” he inquired timidly, “that a mast
was as important, say, as a newspaper?”
The mast laughed till he shook. “Well, I like that,” he said. “Why,
a newspaper--a newspaper only lasts a day, and everything in it is
contradicted and corrected the day after! A mast goes on for years. And
another thing,” he added, “which I forgot: sometimes the captain leans
against it. The captain! Think of that.”
But the tree was too miserable.
In the harbour it was taken out of the ship and flung on the wharf,
and then it was carried to the warehouse, below a newspaper office in
London. What a difference from Newfoundland, where there was air and
light. Here it was dark and stuffy, and the rolls talked to each other
with tears in their voices.
And then one night the roll in which our poor tree found himself was
carried to the printing-rooms and fixed in the press, and down came
the heavy, messy type on it, all black and suffocating, and when the
tree came to itself in the light again it was covered with words.
But, alas! the sparrows were right, for they were not beautiful words
or grand words, but such words as, “Society Divorce Case,” and “Double
Suicide at Margate,” and “Will it be fine to-morrow?” and “Breach
of Promise: Comic Letters,” and “The Progress of the Strike,” and
“Terrible Accident near Paris,” and “Grisly Discovery at Leeds,” and
“Bankruptcy of Peer’s Cousin,” and “Burglary at Potter’s Bar,” and
“More Government Lies”; and there were offers of a thousand pounds
and smaller sums to cottagers for the best bunch of Sweet Williams,
bringing to myriad simple homes in England, where flowers had been
loved for their own sake, the alloy of avarice.
“Oh, dear,” sighed the tree as it realized what it was bearing on its
surface, “how I wish I had gone to sea as I was meant to do!” And he
vowed that if ever he got out of this dreadful life he would never be
headstrong again. But alas!--
Then, cut and folded, it was, with others like it, carried away in the
cold, grey morning to a railway station bookstall, and a man bought it
for a halfpenny and read it all through, and said there was nothing
in it, and threw it under the seat, and later another man found it
and read it, and blew choking tobacco over it, and then wrapped up
some fish in it, and took it home to his family. All that night it lay
scrunched up on the floor of a squalid house, feeling very faint from
the smell of fish, and longing for Newfoundland and the sun and the
rain, and the children and the birds.
And the next morning an untidy woman lit the fire with it. It was an
unimportant fire, and went out directly.
The Life Spherical
It was a beautiful September day, and they floated softly over green
Surrey.
“And this is England!” said the foreigner. “I am indeed glad to be here
at last, and to come in such a way.”
“You could not,” the other replied, “have chosen a more novel or
entertaining means of seeing the country for the first time.”
They leaned over the edge of the basket and looked down. The earth
was spread out like a map: they could see the shape of every meadow,
penetrate every chimney.
“How beautiful,” said the foreigner. “How orderly and precise. No
wonder you conquered the world, you English. How unresting you must
be! But what,” he went on, “is the employment of those men there, on
that great space? Are they practising warfare? See how they walk in
couples, followed by small boys bent beneath some burden. One stops.
The boy gives him a stick. He seems to be addressing himself to the
performance of a delicate rite. See how he waves his hands. He has
struck something. See how they all move on together; what purpose in
their stride! It is the same all over the place--men in pairs, pursuing
or striking, and small bent boys following. Tell me what they are
doing. Are they tacticians?”
“No,” said the other, “they are merely playing golf. That plain is
called a golf links. There are thousands like that in England. It is a
game, a recreation. These men are resting, recreating. You cannot see
it because it is so small, but there is a little white ball which they
hit.”
“The pursuit has no other purpose?” asked the foreigner. “It teaches
nothing? It does not lead to military skill?”
“No.”
“But don’t the boys play too?”
“Oh, no. They only carry.”
The foreigner was silent for a while, and then he pointed again. “See,”
he said, “that field with the white figures. I have noticed so many.
What are they doing? One man runs to a spot and waves his arm; another,
some distance away, waves a club at something. Then he runs and another
runs. They cross. They cross again. Some of the other figures run too.
What does that mean? That surely is practice for warfare?”
“No,” said the other, “that is cricket. Cricket is also a game. There
are tens of thousands of fields like that all over England. They are
merely playing for amusement. The man who waved his arm bowled a ball;
the man who waved his club hit it. You cannot see the ball, but it is
there.”
The stranger was silent again. A little later he drew attention to
another field. “What is that?” he said. “There are men and girls with
clubs all running among each other. Surely that is war. See how they
smite! What Amazons! No wonder England leads the way!”
“No,” said the other, “that is hockey. Another game.”
“And is there a ball there too?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the reply, “a ball.”
“But see the garden of that house,” he remarked; “that is not hockey.
There are only four, but two are women. They also leap about and run
and wave their arms. Is there a ball there?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “there is a ball there. That is lawn tennis.”
“But the white lines,” he said. “Is not that, perhaps, out-door
mathematics? That surely may help to serious things?”
“No,” the other replied, “only another game. There are millions of such
gardens in England with similar lines.”
“Yes,” he said, for they were then over Surbiton, “I see them at this
moment by the hundred.”
They passed on to London. It was at that time of September when
football and cricket overlap, and there was not only a crowded cricket
match at the Oval but an even more crowded football match at Blackheath.
The foreigner caught sight of the Oval first. “Ah,” he said, “you
deceived me. For here is your cricket again, played amid a vast
concourse. How can you call it a game? These crowds would not come
to see a game played, but would play one themselves. It must be more
than you said; it must be a form of tactics that can help to retain
England’s supremacy, and these men are here to learn.”
“No,” said the other, “no. It is just a game. In England we not only
like to play games, but to see them played.”
It was then that the stranger noticed Blackheath. “Ah, now I have you!”
he cried. “Here is another field and another crowd; but this is surely
a battle. See how they dash at each other. And yes, look, one of them
has had his head cut off and the other kicks it. Splendid!”
“No,” said the other, “that is no head, that is a ball. Just a ball. It
is a game, like the others.”
He groaned. “Then I cannot see,” he said at last, “how England won her
victories and became supreme.”
“Ah,” said the other, “at the time that England was winning her
victories and climbing into supremacy, the ball was not her master.”
Four Fables
I.--THE STOPPED CLOCK
Once upon a time there was a discredited politician whose nostrums no
longer took any one in. And being thrown out of office he wandered
about, seeking, like many men before him, for comfort and consolation
among his inferiors. These, however, failing him, he passed on to the
lower animals, and from them to the inanimate, until he came one day to
a clock which, the works having been removed, consisted only of a case,
a face, and two hands.
“Ha,” said the politician, as he stood before it, “at last I have found
something beyond question and argument more useless than myself. For
you, my friend, are done. I, at any rate, still have life and movement.
I can speak and act; I have a function still to perform in the world;
whereas you are a mockery and a sham.”
“Kindly,” the clock replied, “refrain from associating me with
yourself. I decline the comparison. Lifeless I may be, but not useless.
For two separate moments every day I am absolutely right, and for some
minutes approximately right; whereas you, sir, are, have been, and
will be, consistently wrong.”
II.--TRUTH AND ANOTHER
She came towards me rather dubiously, as though not sure of her
reception.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Truth,” she said.
I apologized for not having realized it.
“Never mind,” she said wearily, “hardly anyone knows me. I’m always
having to explain who I am, and lots of people don’t understand then.”
A little later I met her again.
“Well I shan’t make any mistake this time,” I said. “How are you, Miss
Truth?”
“You are misinformed,” she replied coldly; “my name is Libel.”
“But you’re exactly like Truth,” I exclaimed--“exactly!”
“Hush!” she said.
III.--THE EXEMPLAR
Once upon a time there was a little boy who had a fit of naughtiness.
He refused to obey his nurse and was, as she said afterwards, that
obstreperous that her life for about half an hour was a burden. At
last, just as she was in despair, a robin fluttered to the window-sill
of the nursery and perched on it, peeping in.
“There,” said the nurse, “look at that dear little birdie come to see
what all the trouble’s about. He’s never refused to have his face
washed and made clean, I know. I’d be ashamed to cry and scream before
a little pretty innocent like that, that I would.”
Now this robin, as it happened, was a poisonously wicked little bird.
He was greedy and jealous and spiteful. He continually fought other
and weaker birds and took away their food; he pecked sparrows and
tyrannized over tits. He habitually ate too much; and quite early in
life he had assisted his brothers and sisters in putting both their
parents to death.
None the less the spectacle of his pretty red breast and bright eye
shamed and soothed the little boy so that he became quite good again.
IV.--THE GOOD MAN AND CUPID
There was once a good and worthy man, a minister of the gospel and an
altruist of intense activity, who was grievously distressed by the
unhappy marriages in his neighbourhood. He saw young men who ought (as
he thought) to marry Jane and Eliza leading to the altar Violet and
Ermyntrude; and young women fitted to be wise helpmates to John and
Richard setting their caps at Reginald and Hughie; the result being
the usual bickerings and dissatisfactions of the ill-matched.
The matter troubled him so seriously that he joined a toxophilite club
and took lessons in archery until he could hit the gold at five hundred
yards twenty times in succession; and having reached this state of
proficiency he called on Dan Cupid and expressed to that mischievous
and uncovered boy his disapproval of the happy-go-lucky way in which he
pulled his bow-string and directed his arrows, almost without looking.
He then offered himself to shoot in Cupid’s stead.
“There may be something in what you say,” Cupid replied; “at any rate
you seem to be older and graver and possibly wiser than I, and you
certainly wear more clothes. Take the bow and try.”
The good man did so, and the next day or so he was very busy
conscientiously transfixing the hearts of his parishioners. Such was
the accuracy of his aim that he made only one slip, and that was
when, in his endeavours to unite by puncture the cardiac penumbras of
pretty little Lizzie Porter and Mr. Godfrey Bloom, his eye faltered,
and instead Mr. Godfrey Bloom was paired with the exceedingly
unprepossessing Dorothea Atkins, who happened to be standing close by.
The good man did all that was possible to repair the mischief which he
felt his lapse has caused; but it was in vain, and Miss Lizzie Porter
never regained her chance.
“Well,” said Cupid, as he strolled into the good man’s garden a few
years after, “how has your shooting turned out? Perfectly, I suppose.”
“No,” the good man replied with a sigh, “I am afraid not. As a matter
of fact the only happy brace in the whole bag are Godfrey and Dorothea.”
“Quite so,” said the little fellow. “I expected it. I always felt those
archery lessons were a mistake.”
“Then what is to be done?” asked the good man. “What is to be done if
neither taking aim nor shooting at random avails?”
“Nothing,” said Cupid as he fitted an arrow to the string. “Nothing.
One just goes on shooting and hopes for the best.”
The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the
same author
Other Books by E. V. LUCAS
Over Bemerton’s
_A Novel_
After seeing modern problems vividly dissected, and after the
excitement of thrilling adventure stories, it will be positively
restful to drop into the cozy lodgings over Bemerton’s second-hand
bookstore for a drifting, delightful talk with a man of wide
reading, who has travelled in unexpected places, who has an
original way of looking at life, and a happy knack of expressing
what is seen. There are few books which so perfectly suggest
without apparent effort a charmingly natural and real personality.
_Decorated cloth, $1.50_
Mr. Ingleside
The author almost succeeds in making the reader believe that he is
actually mingling with the people of the story and attending their
picnics and parties. Some of them are Dickensian and quaint, some
of them splendid types of to-day, but all of them are touched off
with sympathy and skill and with that gentle humor in which Mr.
Lucas shows the intimate quality, the underlying tender humanity,
of his art.
_Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1.35 net_
Listener’s Lure
_A Kensington Comedy_
A novel, original and pleasing, whose special charm lies in its
happy phrasing of acute observations of life. For the delicacy
with which his personalities reveal themselves through their own
letters, “the book might be favorably compared,” says the Chicago
_Tribune_, “with much of Jane Austen’s character work”--and the
critic proceeds to justify, by quotations, what he admits is high
praise indeed.
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.50_
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York
Anthologies of Varied Charm Collected by E. V. LUCAS
The Gentlest Art
A Choice of Letters by Entertaining Hands
An anthology of letter writing, so human, interesting, and amusing
from first to last, as almost to inspire one to attempt the
restoration of a lost art. “We do not believe that a more likable
book has been published this year.”--_The Evening Post, Chicago._
_Cloth, 16mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_
The Second Post
A Further Collection of Entertaining Letters
A more charming book of letters could hardly be desired than Mr.
Lucas’s “The Gentlest Art”; his new volume has the same delightful
savor of interesting personalities, and is equally likable.
_Cloth, 16mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_
The Ladies’ Pageant
Better than any one else whose name comes to mind, Mr. Lucas
has mastered the difficult art of the compiler. There is more
individuality in “The Gentlest Art,” for instance, than in the
so-called original works of many an author. This happy knack of
assembling the best things in the world on a given subject is given
free play in the present book, the subject of which is the Eternal
Feminine. Here are all the best words of the poets on a theme
which surely offers scope for more variety than any other within
the view of the reader. Like others of Mr. Lucas’s books, this is
attractively bound and decorated.
_Cloth, 16mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_
Some Friends of Mine
A Rally of Men
A companion volume to “The Ladies’ Pageant,” wherein one may meet
“soldier and sailor, tinker and tailor,” and all the kinds of men
whom it takes to make a most interesting world.
_Cloth, 16mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York
Books of Travel by E. V. LUCAS
A Wanderer in London
With sixteen illustrations in color by Mr. Nelson Dawson
and thirty-six reproductions of great pictures
_Cloth, 8vo, $1.75 net; by mail, $1.87_
“Mr. Lucas describes London in a style that is always entertaining,
surprisingly like Andrew Lang’s, full of unexpected suggestions and
points of view, so that one who knows London well will hereafter
look on it with changed eyes, and one who has only a bowing
acquaintance will feel that he has suddenly become intimate.”--_The
Nation._
A Wanderer in Holland
With twenty illustrations in color by Herbert Marshall
besides many reproductions of the masterpieces of Dutch painters
_Cloth, 8vo, $2.00 net; by mail, $2.14_
“It is not very easy to point out the merits which make this volume
immeasurably superior to nine-tenths of the books of travel that
are offered the public from time to time. Perhaps it is to be
traced to the fact that Mr. Lucas is an intellectual loiterer,
rather than a keen-eyed reporter, eager to catch a train for the
next stopping-place. It is also to be found partially in the fact
that the author is so much in love with the artistic life of
Holland.”--_Globe-Democrat_, St. Louis.
“It is hard to imagine a pleasanter book of its
kind.”--_Courier-Journal_, Louisville.
A Wanderer in Paris
With sixteen illustrations in color by Walter Dexter
and thirty-two reproductions of works of art in half-tone
_Cloth, crown 8vo, $1.75 net; by mail, $1.87_
In some respects it is a glorified Baedeker, a guide for the traveller
interested in French history, in pictures, and in the distinctive
qualities of the French people. There is charm in its vivid painting
of the vivacity and gayety of Paris streets, fine analysis in the
penetration that sees often a suggestion of anxiety under the animation
of face and gesture. He has a happy faculty of creating a desire to see
the scenes he describes and a knack of expressing exactly the shade of
pleasure the cultivated traveller has felt and perhaps been unable to
put into words.
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York
Volumes of Essays by E. V. LUCAS
Character and Comedy
“Of all the readers of Charles Lamb who have striven to emulate
him, Mr. Lucas comes nearest to being worthy of him. Perhaps it
is because it is natural to him to look upon life and letters and
all things with something of Lamb’s gentleness, sweetness, and
humor.”--_The Tribune._
_Cloth, 16mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_
One Day and Another
“The informality, intimacy, unaffected humor, of these
unpretentious papers make them delightful reading.”--_The Outlook._
_Cloth, 16mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
Anne’s Terrible Good Nature
A book of stories delightfully lighted up with such a whimsical
strain of humor as children enjoy.
_Cloth, 12mo, colored illustrations, $1.75_
The Slowcoach
Mr. Lucas has a unique way of looking at life, of seeing the humor
of everyday things, which exactly suits the butterfly fancy of a
bright child.
_Decorated cloth, illustrated. Just ready_
Another Book of Verse for Children
Verses of the seasons, of “little fowls of the air,” and of “the
country road”; ballads of sailormen and of battle; songs of the
hearthrug, and of the joy of being alive and a child, selected
by Mr. Lucas and illustrated in black and white and with colored
plates by Mr. F. D. Bedford. The wording of the title is an
allusion to the very successful “Book of Verse for Children” issued
ten years ago. _The Athenæum_ describes Mr. Lucas as “the ideal
editor for such a book as this.”
_Cloth, 8vo, colored illustrations, $1.50 net_
Three Hundred Games and Pastimes
OR, WHAT SHALL WE DO NOW? A book of suggestions for the employment
of young hands and minds, directions for playing many children’s
games, etc.
_Decorated cloth, x + 392 pages, $2.00 net_
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Chapter headings were followed by a varying number of small, decorative
leaves. Those leaves are not indicated in the Plain Text version of
this eBook, and are shown in different ways in the HTML and ereader
versions.
Page 1: Redundant title of book has been removed by Transcriber.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Old lamps for new" ***
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