A necessary digression--Introduced by story containing moral--One of the
charms of this book--The Journal that did not command success--Its boast:
"Instruction combined with Amusement"--Problem: say what should be
considered instructive and what amusing--A popular game--Expert opinion
on English law--Another of the charms of this book--A hackneyed tune--Yet
a third charm of this book--The sort of wood it was where the maiden
lived--Description of the Black Forest.
A story is told of a Scotchman who, loving a lassie, desired her for his
wife. But he possessed the prudence of his race. He had noticed in his
circle many an otherwise promising union result in disappointment and
dismay, purely in consequence of the false estimate formed by bride or
bridegroom concerning the imagined perfectability of the other. He
determined that in his own case no collapsed ideal should be possible.
Therefore, it was that his proposal took the following form:
"I'm but a puir lad, Jennie; I hae nae siller to offer ye, and nae land."
"Ah, but ye hae yoursel', Davie!"
"An' I'm wishfu' it wa' onything else, lassie. I'm nae but a puir ill-
seasoned loon, Jennie."
"Na, na; there's mony a lad mair ill-looking than yoursel', Davie."
"I hae na seen him, lass, and I'm just a-thinkin' I shouldna' care to."
"Better a plain man, Davie, that ye can depend a' than ane that would be
a speirin' at the lassies, a-bringin' trouble into the hame wi' his
flouting ways."
"Dinna ye reckon on that, Jennie; it's nae the bonniest Bubbly Jock that
mak's the most feathers to fly in the kailyard. I was ever a lad to run
after the petticoats, as is weel kent; an' it's a weary handfu' I'll be
to ye, I'm thinkin'."
"Ah, but ye hae a kind heart, Davie! an' ye love me weel. I'm sure
on't."
"I like ye weel enoo', Jennie, though I canna say how long the feeling
may bide wi' me; an' I'm kind enoo' when I hae my ain way, an' naethin'
happens to put me oot. But I hae the deevil's ain temper, as my mither
call tell ye, an' like my puir fayther, I'm a-thinkin', I'll grow nae
better as I grow mair auld."
"Ay, but ye're sair hard upon yersel', Davie. Ye're an honest lad. I
ken ye better than ye ken yersel', an' ye'll mak a guid hame for me."
"Maybe, Jennie! But I hae my doots. It's a sair thing for wife an'
bairns when the guid man canna keep awa' frae the glass; an' when the
scent of the whusky comes to me it's just as though I hae'd the throat o'
a Loch Tay salmon; it just gaes doon an' doon, an' there's nae filling o'
me."
"Ay, but ye're a guid man when ye're sober, Davie."
"Maybe I'll be that, Jennie, if I'm nae disturbed."
"An' ye'll bide wi' me, Davie, an' work for me?"
"I see nae reason why I shouldna bide wi' yet Jennie; but dinna ye clack
aboot work to me, for I just canna bear the thoct o't."
"Anyhow, ye'll do your best, Davie? As the minister says, nae man can do
mair than that."
"An' it's a puir best that mine'll be, Jennie, and I'm nae sae sure ye'll
hae ower muckle even o' that. We're a' weak, sinfu' creatures, Jennie,
an' ye'd hae some deefficulty to find a man weaker or mair sinfu' than
mysel'."
"Weel, weel, ye hae a truthfu' tongue, Davie. Mony a lad will mak fine
promises to a puir lassie, only to break 'em an' her heart wi' 'em. Ye
speak me fair, Davie, and I'm thinkin' I'll just tak ye, an' see what
comes o't."
Concerning what did come of it, the story is silent, but one feels that
under no circumstances had the lady any right to complain of her bargain.
Whether she ever did or did not--for women do not invariably order their
tongues according to logic, nor men either for the matter of that--Davie,
himself, must have had the satisfaction of reflecting that all reproaches
were undeserved.
I wish to be equally frank with the reader of this book. I wish here
conscientiously to let forth its shortcomings. I wish no one to read
this book under a misapprehension.
There will be no useful information in this book.
Anyone who should think that with the aid of this book he would be able
to make a tour through Germany and the Black Forest would probably lose
himself before he got to the Nore. That, at all events, would be the
best thing that could happen to him. The farther away from home he got,
the greater only would be his difficulties.
I do not regard the conveyance of useful information as my _forte_. This
belief was not inborn with me; it has been driven home upon me by
experience.
In my early journalistic days, I served upon a paper, the forerunner of
many very popular periodicals of the present day. Our boast was that we
combined instruction with amusement; as to what should be regarded as
affording amusement and what instruction, the reader judged for himself.
We gave advice to people about to marry--long, earnest advice that would,
had they followed it, have made our circle of readers the envy of the
whole married world. We told our subscribers how to make fortunes by
keeping rabbits, giving facts and figures. The thing that must have
surprised them was that we ourselves did not give up journalism and start
rabbit-farming. Often and often have I proved conclusively from
authoritative sources how a man starting a rabbit farm with twelve
selected rabbits and a little judgment must, at the end of three years,
be in receipt of an income of two thousand a year, rising rapidly; he
simply could not help himself. He might not want the money. He might
not know what to do with it when he had it. But there it was for him. I
have never met a rabbit farmer myself worth two thousand a year, though I
have known many start with the twelve necessary, assorted rabbits.
Something has always gone wrong somewhere; maybe the continued atmosphere
of a rabbit farm saps the judgment.
We told our readers how many bald-headed men there were in Iceland, and
for all we knew our figures may have been correct; how many red herrings
placed tail to mouth it would take to reach from London to Rome, which
must have been useful to anyone desirous of laying down a line of red
herrings from London to Rome, enabling him to order in the right quantity
at the beginning; how many words the average woman spoke in a day; and
other such like items of information calculated to make them wise and
great beyond the readers of other journals.
We told them how to cure fits in cats. Personally I do not believe, and
I did not believe then, that you can cure fits in cats. If I had a cat
subject to fits I should advertise it for sale, or even give it away. But
our duty was to supply information when asked for. Some fool wrote,
clamouring to know; and I spent the best part of a morning seeking
knowledge on the subject. I found what I wanted at length at the end of
an old cookery book. What it was doing there I have never been able to
understand. It had nothing to do with the proper subject of the book
whatever; there was no suggestion that you could make anything savoury
out of a cat, even when you had cured it of its fits. The authoress had
just thrown in this paragraph out of pure generosity. I can only say
that I wish she had left it out; it was the cause of a deal of angry
correspondence and of the loss of four subscribers to the paper, if not
more. The man said the result of following our advice had been two
pounds worth of damage to his kitchen crockery, to say nothing of a
broken window and probable blood poisoning to himself; added to which the
cat's fits were worse than before. And yet it was a simple enough
recipe. You held the cat between your legs, gently, so as not to hurt
it, and with a pair of scissors made a sharp, clean cut in its tail. You
did not cut off any part of the tail; you were to be careful not to do
that; you only made an incision.
As we explained to the man, the garden or the coal cellar would have been
the proper place for the operation; no one but an idiot would have
attempted to perform it in a kitchen, and without help.
We gave them hints on etiquette. We told them how to address peers and
bishops; also how to eat soup. We instructed shy young men how to
acquire easy grace in drawing-rooms. We taught dancing to both sexes by
the aid of diagrams. We solved their religious doubts for them, and
supplied them with a code of morals that would have done credit to a
stained-glass window.
The paper was not a financial success, it was some years before its
time, and the consequence was that our staff was limited. My own
department, I remember, included "Advice to Mothers"--I wrote that with
the assistance of my landlady, who, having divorced one husband and
buried four children, was, I considered, a reliable authority on all
domestic matters; "Hints on Furnishing and Household Decorations--with
Designs"; a column of "Literary Counsel to Beginners"--I sincerely hope
my guidance was of better service to them than it has ever proved to
myself; and our weekly article, "Straight Talks to Young Men," signed
"Uncle Henry." A kindly, genial old fellow was "Uncle Henry," with
wide and varied experience, and a sympathetic attitude towards the
rising generation. He had been through trouble himself in his far back
youth, and knew most things. Even to this day I read of "Uncle Henry's"
advice, and, though I say it who should not, it still seems to me good,
sound advice. I often think that had I followed "Uncle Henry's" counsel
closer I would have been wiser, made fewer mistakes, felt better
satisfied with myself than is now the case.
A quiet, weary little woman, who lived in a bed-sitting room off the
Tottenham Court Road, and who had a husband in a lunatic asylum, did our
"Cooking Column," "Hints on Education"--we were full of hints,--and a
page and a half of "Fashionable Intelligence," written in the pertly
personal style which even yet has not altogether disappeared, so I am
informed, from modern journalism: "I must tell you about the _divine_
frock I wore at 'Glorious Goodwood' last week. Prince C.--but there, I
really must not repeat all the things the silly fellow says; he is _too_
foolish--and the _dear_ Countess, I fancy, was just the _weeish_ bit
jealous"--and so on.
Poor little woman! I see her now in the shabby grey alpaca, with the
inkstains on it. Perhaps a day at "Glorious Goodwood," or anywhere else
in the fresh air, might have put some colour into her cheeks.
Our proprietor--one of the most unashamedly ignorant men I ever met--I
remember his gravely informing a correspondent once that Ben Jonson had
written _Rabelais_ to pay for his mother's funeral, and only laughing
good-naturedly when his mistakes were pointed out to him--wrote with the
aid of a cheap encyclopedia the pages devoted to "General Information,"
and did them on the whole remarkably well; while our office boy, with an
excellent pair of scissors for his assistant, was responsible for our
supply of "Wit and Humour."
It was hard work, and the pay was poor; what sustained us was the
consciousness that we were instructing and improving our fellow men and
women. Of all games in the world, the one most universally and eternally
popular is the game of school. You collect six children, and put them on
a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the book and cane. We play
it when babies, we play it when boys and girls, we play it when men and
women, we play it as, lean and slippered, we totter towards the grave. It
never palls upon, it never wearies us. Only one thing mars it: the
tendency of one and all of the other six children to clamour for their
turn with the book and the cane. The reason, I am sure, that journalism
is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each
journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The
Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature,
are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and
improves them.
But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to
be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters. Let
us now return.
Somebody, signing himself "Balloonist," had written to ask concerning the
manufacture of hydrogen gas. It is an easy thing to manufacture--at
least, so I gathered after reading up the subject at the British Museum;
yet I did warn "Balloonist," whoever he might be, to take all necessary
precaution against accident. What more could I have done? Ten days
afterwards a florid-faced lady called at the office, leading by the hand
what, she explained, was her son, aged twelve. The boy's face was
unimpressive to a degree positively remarkable. His mother pushed him
forward and took off his hat, and then I perceived the reason for this.
He had no eyebrows whatever, and of his hair nothing remained but a
scrubby dust, giving to his head the appearance of a hard-boiled egg,
skinned and sprinkled with black pepper.
"That was a handsome lad this time last week, with naturally curly hair,"
remarked the lady. She spoke with a rising inflection, suggestive of the
beginning of things.
"What has happened to him?" asked our chief.
"This is what's happened to him," retorted the lady. She drew from her
muff a copy of our last week's issue, with my article on hydrogen gas
scored in pencil, and flung it before his eyes. Our chief took it and
read it through.
"He was 'Balloonist'?" queried the chief.
"He was 'Balloonist,'" admitted the lady, "the poor innocent child, and
now look at him!"
"Maybe it'll grow again," suggested our chief.
"Maybe it will," retorted the lady, her key continuing to rise, "and
maybe it won't. What I want to know is what you are going to do for
him."
Our chief suggested a hair wash. I thought at first she was going to fly
at him; but for the moment she confined herself to words. It appears she
was not thinking of a hair wash, but of compensation. She also made
observations on the general character of our paper, its utility, its
claim to public support, the sense and wisdom of its contributors.
"I really don't see that it is our fault," urged the chief--he was a mild-
mannered man; "he asked for information, and he got it."
"Don't you try to be funny about it," said the lady (he had not meant to
be funny, I am sure; levity was not his failing) "or you'll get something
that _you_ haven't asked for. Why, for two pins," said the lady, with a
suddenness that sent us both flying like scuttled chickens behind our
respective chairs, "I'd come round and make your head like it!" I take
it, she meant like the boy's. She also added observations upon our
chief's personal appearance, that were distinctly in bad taste. She was
not a nice woman by any means.
Myself, I am of opinion that had she brought the action she threatened,
she would have had no case; but our chief was a man who had had
experience of the law, and his principle was always to avoid it. I have
heard him say:
"If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should
refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I
should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the
other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by
means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket
and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply."
He squared the matter with the florid-faced lady for a five-pound note,
which must have represented a month's profits on the paper; and she
departed, taking her damaged offspring with her. After she was gone, our
chief spoke kindly to me. He said:
"Don't think I am blaming you in the least; it is not your fault, it is
Fate. Keep to moral advice and criticism--there you are distinctly good;
but don't try your hand any more on 'Useful Information.' As I have
said, it is not your fault. Your information is correct enough--there is
nothing to be said against that; it simply is that you are not lucky with
it."
I would that I had followed his advice always; I would have saved myself
and other people much disaster. I see no reason why it should be, but so
it is. If I instruct a man as to the best route between London and Rome,
he loses his luggage in Switzerland, or is nearly shipwrecked off Dover.
If I counsel him in the purchase of a camera, he gets run in by the
German police for photographing fortresses. I once took a deal of
trouble to explain to a man how to marry his deceased wife's sister at
Stockholm. I found out for him the time the boat left Hull and the best
hotels to stop at. There was not a single mistake from beginning to end
in the information with which I supplied him; no hitch occurred anywhere;
yet now he never speaks to me.
Therefore it is that I have come to restrain my passion for the giving of
information; therefore it is that nothing in the nature of practical
instruction will be found, if I can help it, within these pages.
There will be no description of towns, no historical reminiscences, no
architecture, no morals.
I once asked an intelligent foreigner what he thought of London.
He said: "It is a very big town."
I said: "What struck you most about it?"
He replied: "The people."
I said: "Compared with other towns--Paris, Rome, Berlin,--what did you
think of it?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "It is bigger," he said; "what more can one
say?"
One anthill is very much like another. So many avenues, wide or narrow,
where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion; these bustling by,
important; these halting to pow-wow with one another. These struggling
with big burdens; those but basking in the sun. So many granaries stored
with food; so many cells where the little things sleep, and eat, and
love; the corner where lie their little white bones. This hive is
larger, the next smaller. This nest lies on the sand, and another under
the stones. This was built but yesterday, while that was fashioned ages
ago, some say even before the swallows came; who knows?
Nor will there be found herein folk-lore or story.
Every valley where lie homesteads has its song. I will tell you the
plot; you can turn it into verse and set it to music of your own.
There lived a lass, and there came a lad, who loved and rode away.
It is a monotonous song, written in many languages; for the young man
seems to have been a mighty traveller. Here in sentimental Germany they
remember him well. So also the dwellers of the Blue Alsatian Mountains
remember his coming among them; while, if my memory serves me truly, he
likewise visited the Banks of Allan Water. A veritable Wandering Jew is
he; for still the foolish girls listen, so they say, to the dying away of
his hoof-beats.
In this land of many ruins, that long while ago were voice-filled homes,
linger many legends; and here again, giving you the essentials, I leave
you to cook the dish for yourself. Take a human heart or two, assorted;
a bundle of human passions--there are not many of them, half a dozen at
the most; season with a mixture of good and evil; flavour the whole with
the sauce of death, and serve up where and when you will. "The Saint's
Cell," "The Haunted Keep," "The Dungeon Grave," "The Lover's Leap"--call
it what you will, the stew's the same.
Lastly, in this book there will be no scenery. This is not laziness on
my part; it is self-control. Nothing is easier to write than scenery;
nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read. When Gibbon had to trust
to travellers' tales for a description of the Hellespont, and the Rhine
was chiefly familiar to English students through the medium of _Caesar's
Commentaries_, it behoved every globe-trotter, for whatever distance, to
describe to the best of his ability the things that he had seen. Dr.
Johnson, familiar with little else than the view down Fleet Street, could
read the description of a Yorkshire moor with pleasure and with profit.
To a cockney who had never seen higher ground than the Hog's Back in
Surrey, an account of Snowdon must have appeared exciting. But we, or
rather the steam-engine and the camera for us, have changed all that. The
man who plays tennis every year at the foot of the Matterhorn, and
billiards on the summit of the Rigi, does not thank you for an elaborate
and painstaking description of the Grampian Hills. To the average man,
who has seen a dozen oil paintings, a hundred photographs, a thousand
pictures in the illustrated journals, and a couple of panoramas of
Niagara, the word-painting of a waterfall is tedious.
An American friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, who loved poetry well
enough for its own sake, told me that he had obtained a more correct and
more satisfying idea of the Lake district from an eighteenpenny book of
photographic views than from all the works of Coleridge, Southey, and
Wordsworth put together. I also remember his saying concerning this
subject of scenery in literature, that he would thank an author as much
for writing an eloquent description of what he had just had for dinner.
But this was in reference to another argument; namely, the proper
province of each art. My friend maintained that just as canvas and
colour were the wrong mediums for story telling, so word-painting was, at
its best, but a clumsy method of conveying impressions that could much
better be received through the eye.
As regards the question, there also lingers in my memory very distinctly
a hot school afternoon. The class was for English literature, and the
proceedings commenced with the reading of a certain lengthy, but
otherwise unobjectionable, poem. The author's name, I am ashamed to say,
I have forgotten, together with the title of the poem. The reading
finished, we closed our books, and the Professor, a kindly, white-haired
old gentleman, suggested our giving in our own words an account of what
we had just read.
"Tell me," said the Professor, encouragingly, "what it is all about."
"Please, sir," said the first boy--he spoke with bowed head and evident
reluctance, as though the subject were one which, left to himself, he
would never have mentioned,--"it is about a maiden."
"Yes," agreed the Professor; "but I want you to tell me in your own
words. We do not speak of a maiden, you know; we say a girl. Yes, it is
about a girl. Go on."
"A girl," repeated the top boy, the substitution apparently increasing
his embarrassment, "who lived in a wood."
"What sort of a wood?" asked the Professor.
The first boy examined his inkpot carefully, and then looked at the
ceiling.
"Come," urged the Professor, growing impatient, "you have been reading
about this wood for the last ten minutes. Surely you can tell me
something concerning it."
"The gnarly trees, their twisted branches"--recommenced the top boy.
"No, no," interrupted the Professor; "I do not want you to repeat the
poem. I want you to tell me in your own words what sort of a wood it was
where the girl lived."
The Professor tapped his foot impatiently; the top boy made a dash for
it.
"Please, sir, it was the usual sort of a wood."
"Tell him what sort of a wood," said he, pointing to the second lad.
The second boy said it was a "green wood." This annoyed the Professor
still more; he called the second boy a blockhead, though really I cannot
see why, and passed on to the third, who, for the last minute, had been
sitting apparently on hot plates, with his right arm waving up and down
like a distracted semaphore signal. He would have had to say it the next
second, whether the Professor had asked him or not; he was red in the
face, holding his knowledge in.
"A dark and gloomy wood," shouted the third boy, with much relief to his
feelings.
"A dark and gloomy wood," repeated the Professor, with evident approval.
"And why was it dark and gloomy?"
The third boy was still equal to the occasion.
"Because the sun could not get inside it."
The Professor felt he had discovered the poet of the class.
"Because the sun could not get into it, or, better, because the sunbeams
could not penetrate. And why could not the sunbeams penetrate there?"
"Please, sir, because the leaves were too thick."
"Very well," said the Professor. "The girl lived in a dark and gloomy
wood, through the leafy canopy of which the sunbeams were unable to
pierce. Now, what grew in this wood?" He pointed to the fourth boy.
"Please, sir, trees, sir."
"And what else?"
"Toadstools, sir." This after a pause.
The Professor was not quite sure about the toadstools, but on referring
to the text he found that the boy was right; toadstools had been
mentioned.
"Quite right," admitted the Professor, "toadstools grew there. And what
else? What do you find underneath trees in a wood?"
"Please, sir, earth, sir."
"No; no; what grows in a wood besides trees?"
"Oh, please, sir, bushes, sir."
"Bushes; very good. Now we are getting on. In this wood there were
trees and bushes. And what else?"
He pointed to a small boy near the bottom, who having decided that the
wood was too far off to be of any annoyance to him, individually, was
occupying his leisure playing noughts and crosses against himself. Vexed
and bewildered, but feeling it necessary to add something to the
inventory, he hazarded blackberries. This was a mistake; the poet had
not mentioned blackberries.
"Of course, Klobstock would think of something to eat," commented the
Professor, who prided himself on his ready wit. This raised a laugh
against Klobstock, and pleased the Professor.
"You," continued he, pointing to a boy in the middle; "what else was
there in this wood besides trees and bushes?"
"Please, sir, there was a torrent there."
"Quite right; and what did the torrent do?"
"Please, sir, it gurgled."
"No; no. Streams gurgle, torrents--?"
"Roar, sir."
"It roared. And what made it roar?"
This was a poser. One boy--he was not our prize intellect, I
admit--suggested the girl. To help us the Professor put his question in
another form:
"When did it roar?"
Our third boy, again coming to the rescue, explained that it roared when
it fell down among the rocks. I think some of us had a vague idea that
it must have been a cowardly torrent to make such a noise about a little
thing like this; a pluckier torrent, we felt, would have got up and gone
on, saying nothing about it. A torrent that roared every time it fell
upon a rock we deemed a poor spirited torrent; but the Professor seemed
quite content with it.
"And what lived in this wood beside the girl?" was the next question.
"Please, sir, birds, sir."
"Yes, birds lived in this wood. What else?"
Birds seemed to have exhausted our ideas.
"Come," said the Professor, "what are those animals with tails, that run
up trees?"
We thought for a while, then one of us suggested cats.
This was an error; the poet had said nothing about cats; squirrels was
what the Professor was trying to get.
I do not recall much more about this wood in detail. I only recollect
that the sky was introduced into it. In places where there occurred an
opening among the trees you could by looking up see the sky above you;
very often there were clouds in this sky, and occasionally, if I remember
rightly, the girl got wet.
I have dwelt upon this incident, because it seems to me suggestive of the
whole question of scenery in literature. I could not at the time, I
cannot now, understand why the top boy's summary was not sufficient. With
all due deference to the poet, whoever he may have been, one cannot but
acknowledge that his wood was, and could not be otherwise than, "the
usual sort of a wood."
I could describe the Black Forest to you at great length. I could
translate to you Hebel, the poet of the Black Forest. I could write
pages concerning its rocky gorges and its smiling valleys, its pine-clad
slopes, its rock-crowned summits, its foaming rivulets (where the tidy
German has not condemned them to flow respectably through wooden troughs
or drainpipes), its white villages, its lonely farmsteads.
But I am haunted by the suspicion you might skip all this. Were you
sufficiently conscientious--or weak-minded enough--not to do so, I
should, all said and done, succeed in conveying to you only an impression
much better summed up in the simple words of the unpretentious guide
book:
"A picturesque, mountainous district, bounded on the south and the west
by the plain of the Rhine, towards which its spurs descend precipitately.
Its geological formation consists chiefly of variegated sandstone and
granite; its lower heights being covered with extensive pine forests. It
is well watered with numerous streams, while its populous valleys are
fertile and well cultivated. The inns are good; but the local wines
should be partaken of by the stranger with discretion."