IN A CANADIAN CANOE
IN A CANADIAN
CANOE
THE NINE MUSES MINUS ONE
_AND OTHER STORIES_
BY
BARRY PAIN
[Illustration]
London and New York
HARPER AND BROTHERS
45, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1898
TO
A. N. L.
PREFACE.
My thanks are due to the Editor of “The Granta” for permission to
reprint “In a Canadian Canoe,” “The Nine Muses Minus One,” and “The
Celestial Grocery.” They have been carefully revised, and considerable
additions have been made. The rest of the volume has not appeared
before, so far as I know.
Although this book appears in a “Library of Wit and Humour,” I have not
tried to make it _all_ witty and humorous: I wanted there to be some
background. I am not sure that I have not made it _all_ background.
B. P.
CLEMENT’S INN,
_July 1891_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
IN A CANADIAN CANOE--
I. On Art and Sardines,--but more especially Sardines 1
II. On Exaltation: together with an Anecdote from the
“Entertainments” of Kapnides 8
III. On Self-Deception: together with the Dream of the
Dean’s Preparations 15
IV. On Reflection: to which is added the Story of the Tin
Heart 22
V. A Storm on the Backs; and a Story of Three 29
VI. On Loafing: together with a Second Anecdote from the
“Entertainments” of Kapnides 37
VII. On Causes: with an Excursus on Luck 44
VIII. On Solitude: with a Third Anecdote from the
“Entertainments” of Kapnides 51
IX. On Associations: together with a Last Anecdote from the
“Entertainments” of Kapnides 58
THE NINE MUSES MINUS ONE--
I. Clio’s Story: Charles Marius 66
II. Euterpe’s Story: The Girl and the Minstrel 75
III. Terpsichore’s Story: The Under-Study 83
IV. Melpomene’s Story: The Cursed Pig 90
V. Polymnia’s Story: An Hour of Death 97
VI. Calliope’s Story: The Last Straw 105
VII. Thalia’s Story: The Camel who never got started 113
VIII. Urania’s Story: Number One hundred and Three 121
THE CELESTIAL GROCERY: A FANTASIA 129
“BILL” 150
THE GIRL AND THE BEETLE: A STORY OF HERE AND HEREAFTER 164
IN A CANADIAN CANOE.
I.
ON ART AND SARDINES--BUT MORE ESPECIALLY SARDINES.
There is no pleasanter, sweeter, healthier spot than the Backs of the
Colleges.
Get into your canoe at Silver Street. Put into that canoe:--
(1) The cushions of three other boats.
(2) Two pipes, in order that one may be always cool, and tobacco.
(3) One dozen boxes of matches, in order that one box may be always
handy.
(4) The spiritual part of your nature, which will not take up much
room, but is useful to talk to.
But do not take another man with you. I may frankly say, my reader,
that you are absolutely the only man I know who has the keen
appreciativeness, the capacity for quiet meditation, the dreaminess,
the listlessness, the abominable laziness, that a Canadian canoe
requires.
The man who would attempt to get pace on in a Canadian canoe probably
would analyse the want of harmony in the death-song which a swan never
sings--or worse than that.
The man who would try to make a Canadian canoe go where he wanted would
be angry, because the inspiration of a poet does not always disappoint
the expectations of a commonplace nature. You must go where the boat
wants to go; and that depends upon wind and current, and on the number
of other boats that run into you, and the way they do it, and the
language of their occupants.
* * * * *
What a beautiful thing it is to lie at full length on the cushions, and
see the sky through the trees--only the angels see the trees through
the sky. My boat has taken me round to the back of Queen’s, and stopped
just short of that little bridge. It is all old and familiar. The fowls
coo as they cooed yesterday. The same two men in the same tub have the
same little joke with one another in getting under the low bridge.
Farther up, there is precisely the same number of flies on the same
dead and putrescent animal. My boat went up to look at it, but could
not stay. The recoil sent it back here; and here, apparently, it means
to stop. You may take my word for it that a Canadian canoe knows a
thing or two.
I wish I could paint the song of the birds and set the beauty of
the trees to music. But there is a prejudice against it. Music is
masculine, Art is feminine, and Poetry is their child. The baby Poetry
will play with any one; but its parents observe the division of sexes.
That is why Nature is so decent and pleasant. I would treat her to
some poetry if I did but know the names of things. For instance, I
have no idea what that bird is, and asparagus is the only tree which I
recognise at sight.
I suppose you know that Art and Music are separated now. They sometimes
meet, but they never speak. In the vacation I met them both one night
by the edge of the sea; but they did not notice me. Art was busy in
catching the effect of the moonlight and the lights on the pier. She
did it well, and made it more beautiful than the reality seemed. Music
listened to the wash of the waves, the thin sound of the little pebbles
drawn back into the sea, and the constant noise of a low wind. He
sat at a big organ, which was hidden from my sight by dark curtains
of cloud; and as he played the music of all things came out into a
song which was better than all things: for Art and Music are not only
imitative, but creative. At present they are allowed to create only
shadows, by the rules of the game. But I have been told that the
old quarrel between them--I have no conception what the quarrel was
about--will be made up one day, and they will love one another again.
Their younger child, who will then be born, will take unto himself the
strength and beauty of Art and Music and Poetry. He will be different
from all three, and his name is not fixed yet.
Oh, confound the boat! I wish I’d tied it up. It’s just taken the
painter between its teeth, and whipped sharp round and bolted. Woa, my
lass, steady! It’s a little fresh, you see, not having been out before
this week. I _beg_ your pardon, sir--_entirely_ my fault.
I don’t think he need have been so offensively rude about it. It’s not
as if I’d upset him.
A fish jumped.
I know not the names of fishes, but it was not salmon steak or filleted
soles, of that I’m sure. My boat goes waggling its silly old bows as if
it knew but would not tell me. Can it have been a sardine?
No; the sardine is a foreign fish. It comes from Sardinia, where the
Great Napoleon was exiled, as likely as not. It cannot swim in fresh
water, but is brought to us in tins, which are packed in crates on
trucks. It comes _en huiles_, in fact. Hence the inscription.
I cannot help thinking of the sad story of those two historical
sardines--a buck-sardine and a doe-sardine--that lived on opposite
sides of an island, which happened to be in the Ægean Sea.
They loved one another dearly; but they never, never told their love.
He had no self-confidence, and she had too much self-respect. They met
but once before their last day. It was at a place of worship in the
neighbourhood of the Goodwin Sands. She caught his eye, and the umpire
gave it out, and he had to go out. “Am I a hymn?” he said, just a
little bitterly, “that I should be given out?” He was not a hymn, but
he was a he, and had a tender heart.
All day long he sat on a stone, tail uppermost, and felt his position
acutely. “Ah, if she only knew!” he sighed to himself.
And she was the life and soul of a select party in the roaring
Adriatic. She quipped, and quirked; she became so brilliant that the
surface of the sea grew phosphorescent. And no one guessed that beneath
that calm exterior the worm was gnawing at the heart of the poor
doe-sardine. No one would have been so foolish. For is it not well
known that when a worm and a fish meet it’s mostly the fish that does
the gnawing? Still, the doe-sardine did feel a trifle weary. Why might
she not tell her love? Why must she suffer?
“Il faut souffrir pour être belle,” as the gong said when the butler
hit it.
About this time a young man, who was dancing attendance on Queen
Cleopatra, happened to be passing on a P.N.O. steamer. This was
in the republican era, when Duilius introduced the P.N.O. line.
The Carthaginian merchants, with a keen eye for business, always
used P.T.O. steamers, which were insured far beyond their value by
unsuspecting offices in the less tutored parts of Spain. These wild
tribes did not know what P.T.O. signified, but the steamers did; so did
the crews of low Teutonic slaves, who were thus saved all the worry and
expense of burial.
But let us return to our sardines. The young man on the P.N.O. steamer
was reading a novel of Ouida’s; and, misliking the book, he flung it
into the ocean. The attendants of the doe-sardine brought it to their
mistress, and she read it with avidity, and after that she became very
elegant, and very French.
She sat in the rose-tinted boudoir, with a sad smile on her gills,
dreaming of her love. “Ah!” she murmured faintly, “Si vous saviez.”
She could not sleep! No sooner had she closed her eyes than she was
haunted by an awful vision of a man soldering up tins of fish. The
doctors prescribed narcotics. When she had taken the morphia of the
doctors she had no more fear of the dream. But she took too much of it.
She took all there was of it. Then the doctors prescribed coral, and
she took any amount of coral. She would have taken in a reef; but the
auctioneer was away for his Easter holidays, and consequently there
were no sales. So she took in washing instead. Then, and not till then,
she knew that she must die.
A fishing-net was passing, and a conductor stood on the step. “’Ere
yer are, lyedy!” he called out. “Hall the way--one penny! Benk, Benk,
Gritty Benk!” He used to say this so quickly that he was called the
lightning conductor. She entered the net, and as she did so she saw the
buck-sardine seated there. She staggered, and nearly fell!
“Moind the step, lyedy,” cried the conductor.
And so they were brought to the gritty bank of the Mediterranean, and
received temporary accommodation without sureties or publicity--on
note-of-hand simply. As they came in with the tide, they were naturally
paid into the current account.
They were preserved in the same tin, and served on the same piece of
buttered toast.
As the man consumed the bodies of the buck-sardine and the doe-sardine,
the two spiritualities of the two fishes walked down the empyrean, and
cast two shadows.
When he had gulped down the last mouthful, the two shadows melted into
one.
So they found peace at last; and I do not refer to buttered toast. But
the queerest part of it is that they were both sprats.
* * * * *
It has turned chilly. No one but myself is left on the river, and the
solitary end of the afternoon is good to look at. The thing that you
and I want most is a power of expression. When I say you, I mean the
sympathetic reader who can enter into the true spirit of loafing: the
loafing of the body in the wayward Canadian canoe that does what it
likes, and the loafing of the mind that does not take the nauseous
trouble to think straight. I want the younger child who is to be born
when Art and Music are reconciled again, who will never take aim and
yet never miss the mark, who will be quite careless but quite true.
That child will know all about the sympathy which exists between one
man and one scene in which he finds himself, and may perhaps reveal it
to us.
But I am sorry for poor Art. She is a woman, and, though her beauty
will not leave her, she desires reconciliation and love.
I am taken with a sudden verse or two. Kindly excuse them:--
O Art, that lives not in the studio,
That has no special love for northern light!
Unto no studies from the nude I owe
Sense of my weakness, knowledge of thy might.
And to no stippling from the good antique,
My shame and joy before the joyous Greek.
For I have walked in galleries oftentimes,
And shaded with one hand a longing eye;
And found no touch of love to soften times
As hard as nails, as dead to ecstasy;
And nothing in the gallery was fair,
But the worn face of the commissionaire.
So in despair I wax a trifle coarse,
And eat a hearty steak, and drink my beer;
And twenty thousand million rifle-corps
Of evil spirits enter in and jeer.
“She’s dead and rotten!” cries my angry heart,
And sleeps--and sees the living face of Art.
II.
ON EXALTATION: TOGETHER WITH AN ANECDOTE FROM THE ENTERTAINMENTS OF
KAPNIDES.
On quiet days, when no wind blows, my canoe is particularly restful.
It has perfect sympathy with the weather. It creeps down slowly to
King’s, leans itself against the bank, and thinks. Then, later in the
afternoon, it bears the organ humming in the chapel--a faint, sweet
sound which produces religious exaltation; and it becomes necessary to
wrestle with the canoe, because it desires to fly away and be at rest.
It is owing to this rhythmic alternation of laziness and spirituality
in the boat that I have given it the name which is blazoned on its
bows--_Zeitgeist_.
I have said the boat has sympathy with the weather. It also has
sympathy with me, or I have sympathy with it, which is the same thing.
There was a time when I suffered only from rhythmic alternations of
two kinds of laziness. Now exaltation is beginning to enter in as
well, and I do not know the reason, unless I have caught it from the
boat. Materialistic friends have told me that too much pudding will
cause exaltation. I have not so much as looked upon pudding this
day. An unknown poet comes swiftly past me. I hail him, and ask him
for information. He tells me that he had been that way himself, and
that with him it is generally caused by the scent of gardenias, or
hyacinths, or narcissus.
I am glad he has gone away. I think if he had stayed a moment longer I
should have been a little rude.
Anyway, I have got it. When one suffers from it, memory-vignettes come
up quickly before the mental eye, and the mental eye has a rose-tinted
glass stuck in it.
O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem.
That is a memory-vignette. I am back again at school in a low form, and
I am asked to parse “passi,” and I parse it humorously, and there is
awful silence; and then one sharp click, because the master in nervous
irritation snaps in two the cedar pencil in his hand. I hate him, and
he hates me. For the meaning of the words I care nothing. Now I think
over them again, and I see that Virgil is very intimate with me, and
that he knows the way I feel.
Up comes another quotation, this time from a more modern author:--
The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the still weather:
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.
Yes, and if he had said that the curled moon was like a bitten biscuit
thrown out of window in a high wind, it would not have been much
less true. But there is no poetry in a biscuit, and precious little
sustenance. The gentle fall of a feather is full of poetry:--
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
Edgar Allan Poe quoted those lines in his lecture on The Poetic
Principle, and remarked on their insouciance. Well, he’s dead.
There are no more memory-vignettes. I have no more exaltation left.
For a certain young woman crossed the bridge, and she had a baby with
her, and a young man behind her. And she had the impertinence to call
the baby’s attention to my canoe. Then she spoke winged words to the
infant, and these are the exact winged words she used:--
“Chickey-chickey-chickey, boatey-boatey-boatey, o-o-m! Do you love
auntey?”
And she called to the young man, saying, “’Enry, cummere. ’Ere’s a
boat.”
Then they staggered slowly away, and took my exaltation with them. Just
as I was getting a little better, the wind set in the wrong direction,
and I heard her say some of it over again.
There is magic in the words. They set a man thinking of his past, his
bills, and things which he has done and wishes he had left undone.
All at once it seems as if it were going to rain. The wind turns
colder. The cushions of the canoe change to brickbats. Somebody nearly
runs into me, and I drop my pipe, and remember I never posted that
letter after all. I look at my watch, and, of course, it’s stopped.
Mainspring broken, probably. The way that woman talked was enough to
destroy the works of a steam-engine. And I have a twinge in my side
which I am quite sure is heart disease. I had not hoped for Westminster
Abbey quite so soon. “Deeply lamented. No flowers, by request.”
And all this is due to the fearful words which that woman spoke, or
it may be merely reaction. If one gets too high, or too low, one pays
for it afterwards; and the commonplace praises of _aurea mediocritas_
are properly founded. The quietist never pays, because he incurs no
debts. All the rest pay, and there is no dun like a Natural Law. It may
agree to renew for a short time, on the consideration of that small
glass of brandy, perhaps, or a week’s rest; but one has to pay for the
accommodation, and the debt must be discharged in the end.
Do you remember that quaint old story told by Kapnides in his third
book of Entertainments? Well, Kapnides is not enough read at Oxford or
Cambridge. I doubt if he is read at all. He is a little artificial,
perhaps, but he has his points. It is the story of a Greek boy.
No; it is not the story of the Spartan boy who lied about a fox, and
subsequently died of the lies which were told about himself.
It is the story of an Athenian boy, who in the month of June sat quite
alone in a thin tent by night. And the tent was pitched under the
shadow of the long wall, and the night was hot and stifling.
He sat alone, for dead men are no company. His father and his eldest
brother were in the tent with him; but he was alone. He had not been
afraid to tend them in their sickness, for he had himself recovered
from the pestilence; but it had taken away from him his beauty and his
memory. He had been very beautiful, and his mind had been very full of
fair memories. All were gone now. He kept only the few bare facts which
his dying father had told him, that his mother had died long before;
that they had lived in the country and had been ordered into the city;
that Pericles had made a remarkably fine speech in the preceding year;
and that his only surviving relation was his twin-brother, who had gone
away into Eubœa with the sheep. On these few poor facts, and on the two
dead manly bodies before him, he pondered as he sat. And the night grew
late, and yet he could hear outside the tent people passing busily, and
quarrels, and long horrible cries.
And suddenly the poor Greek boy, with the ghost of an old beauty
haunting his dull eyes and scarred cheeks, looked up, because he was
conscious of the presence of a deity; and there before him sat an old
gentleman in a silk hat, a frock-coat worn shiny under the fore arm,
pepper-and-salt trousers, with a pen stuck at the back of his ear.
“I perceive a divine fragrance,” the boy said. The fragrance was
gin-and-water, but he knew it not. “And about thy neck there is
a circle of brightness.” In this he was correct, because the old
gentleman was wearing an indiarubber dickey covered with luminous
paint, which saves washing and makes it possible to put in a stud in
the dark. “And thy dress is not like unto mine. It cannot be but that
thou art some god. And at the right time art thou come; for my heart
is heavy, and none but a god can comfort me. And due worship have I
ever rendered to the gods, but they love me not, and they have taken
all things from me; and only my twin-brother is left, and he keeps the
sheep in Eubœa. And what name dost thou most willingly hear?”
“Allow me,” said the old gentleman, and produced a card from his
pocket, handing it to the boy. On it was printed:--
THE PROLEPTICAL CASHIER.
(_Agent for Zeus & Co., Specialists in Punishments._)
“The tongue is barbarian,” said the boy, “and thy spoken words
are barbarian, and yet I understand them; and now I know that the
gods are kinder to me, because already I have greater wisdom than
my fathers, and, perhaps, somewhat greater remains. Give to me, O
cashier, the power to stay this pestilence.”
“For a young ’un,” said the cashier, “that’s pretty calm, seeing
that I _made_ that pestilence. I just want to go into your little
account. Your great-grandpapa, my boy, incurred a little debt, and
Zeus & Co. want the thing settled before they dissolve partnership.
They’ve just taken those two lives.” He touched the body of the boy’s
father lightly with his foot. “They’ve taken your beauty and your
memory. How sweet the girls used to be on you, my lad! but you can’t
recollect it, and you won’t experience it again. You _are_ a bad
sight. Now we shall just kill your brother, and give the sheep the
rot, and then the thing will be square. Now then, it’s a hot night,
and you’d better burn these two. I’ll show you how to do it on the
cheap, without paying for it. As long as Zeus & Co. are paid I don’t
care about the rest.”
The boy sat dazed, and did not speak.
“There’s a rich man built a first-class pyre twenty yards from your
tent. They’ve gone to fetch his dead daughter to burn on it. We’ll
collar it before they get back. I’ll take the old man, because he’s
the lightest. You carry your brother. He was a hoplite, wasn’t he,
one of them gentlemen that do parasangs? Oh, I know all about it.”
Still the boy did not speak. They took up the two bodies, passed out
of the tent, and laid their burden on the pyre.
“You look as if something had hurt you,” said the old gentleman. “I
like these shavings miles better than newspaper.” He pulled a box
of matches from his pocket, and set light to the pyre. It flared up
brightly.
Then the boy touched him on the shoulder, and pointed first in the
direction of Eubœa, and then at himself. A word came into him from a
future civilisation.
“Swop?” he said gently.
“All right,” grumbled the cashier. “I don’t mind. It gives a lot
of trouble--altering the books. But I don’t mind, I’m sure. It’s a
thirsty night.”
For a moment the boy stood motionless; then, with a little cry, leapt
into the flames. And his life went to join his beauty and his memory
in a land of which we know too little.
* * * * *
It’s begun to rain. I think I’ll be off. I do hate anachronisms.
III.
ON SELF-DECEPTION: TOGETHER WITH THE DREAM OF THE DEAN’S PREPARATIONS.
This morning, because the air was fresh, and the sun was bright, and
I had eaten too much breakfast, it seemed to be an excellent thing to
cut all lectures and to loaf in the Backs. Few boats are there in the
morning, and I have found, when my canoe takes me out, that the fewer
the boats the less the unpleasantness. I can run into a bridge, but
a bridge cannot run into me; and a bridge always takes my apologies
in a nice spirit. The afternoon loafers on the river are not yet
sufficiently educated to understand that a Canadian canoe must go its
own way, and that any attempt to control it is a baseness.
The other afternoon my canoe got a little humorous. It saw a man on in
front of us working hard in one of those vessels that went a thousand
miles down the Jordan--or something to that effect. I knew what my
canoe would do. It broke into a canter, caught the absolute stranger
in the back of the neck, and knocked him into the water. You would
have expected the absolute stranger to have come up, breathing the
Englishman’s Shortest Prayer. He did not. He apologised for having been
in my way, said that it was entirely his own fault, and hoped that he
had not inconvenienced me. I shrugged my shoulders and forgave him,
with considerable hauteur.
But my boat got Remorse badly. It did not want to live any more, and
tried to knock its brains out against Clare Bridge. I soothed it, and
tied it up. Canadian canoes are such sensitive things.
This sort of incident cannot happen when one cuts lectures to go on the
river in the morning. And one does more work. You take your Plato’s
“Phædo,” and you really enjoy it. If there’s any word you don’t know,
you leave it; if there’s any sentence you can’t understand, you don’t
worry about it; and if there’s any word you _can_ understand, it goes
home to you more. That’s the right spirit. That’s the way the ancient
Greeks took their language. What did they know about dictionaries and
grammars and cribs? And then, after a couple of minutes, one pitches
the “Phædo” into the bows of the boat, and a great Peace falls on one’s
soul.
My Better Self does not agree with me on these points; but I had words
with my Better Self this morning, and since then we have not been
on speaking terms. I find it impossible to convince my Better Self
of great truths; I could deceive my Better Self, which is a common
practice, but I will not do it. I have seen men do it; and I have been
very, very sorry for them. I have known a man, who had previously been
honest, commence to keep an average of the amount of work he did _per
diem_. The way he faked that average would have brought a blush to the
cheek of the chartered libertine, and made the chartered accountant
moan for humanity. The first week gave a daily average of 2 hours
20·5 minutes. In the second week we were asked to believe that he
had done rather more than ten hours a day. That man drives a cab now:
self-deception never pays. Another man, who was quite a friend of
mine, liked pork chops. He pretended that he didn’t, and made himself
believe that he didn’t. Why? Simply and solely because he once wrote a
poem--and published it--which began:
Darling, thy hot kiss lingers on my lips.
Before he wrote that poem, he used to feed almost entirely on pork
chops. After it was published, he pretended that a little ripe
fruit was all he needed. What’s become of him? What do you suppose?
Trichinosis, of course. It’s much better to be perfectly honest. The
worst case of all was last May. A man made himself believe that he
loved Bradelby’s sister, and he never got any better. He just pined
away and married her. Perhaps you don’t realise what that means, but
you never met Bradelby’s sister.
I met her. She sat down at the piano, and stroked it as if it were a
lap-dog. She was quite tender in her movements, and she sang:
Once in the deeeeer dead dyes beyond recall.
Shortly afterwards she said that she wanted to live a useful life. That
sort of thing stamps a woman.
* * * * *
I suppose I must have been going to sleep when I thought that last
sentence. For I suddenly found myself in the centre of Epping Forest,
and before me was a college dean in full academicals. He was a leathery
old dean to look at, and yet he had some nervousness of manner. Of
course he was not a real dean, but only a dream dean. The real deans--I
cannot say it too emphatically--are _not_ leathery, and are _not_
nervous.
When he saw me, he began to rub his hands gently and to smile, until I
thought my heart would break.
“This is a little unusual,” he said; “a little irregular, is it not?
Have you permission, may I ask, from the University authorities, to
drive a Canadian canoe tandem through Epping Forest?”
“No, sir,” I said politely; “but I was not aware that permission was
required.”
“Epps’s Forest,” he retorted inanely, “contains absolutely no fatty
matter. Applicants are therefore assured, if they cannot borrow here,
it would be futile to apply elsewhere. Personal visit invited.”
“But, sir,” I urged, “this is a personal----”
“Stop!” he interrupted me, tapping the palm of one hand with the
forefinger of the other. “That’s not the point, and you know it’s not
the point. I have come here to practise my part--Titania--in _Midsummer
Night’s Dream_, with real fairies. I do not do it because I like it. I
do it because I wish to entertain and interest some young ladies who
will be staying with me during the June festivities. You interrupt my
preparations, you frighten the fairies, you annoy me exceedingly, and
your attendance in college chapel is not what it should be. You’ve been
smoking, and you smell. Where no allotment is made the deposit will be
returned in full.”
I could not quite make it out, because the dean did not seem as if he
would make up into a good Titania. But that was the only thing that
surprised me. I promised to sit quite still, and not to frighten the
fairies, and entreated him to go on with the rehearsal.
“Very well,” he said, seating himself on a camp-stool. “You will not
see the fairies; but you will hear them. We are now commencing Act II.,
Scene iii. I give them their cue:--
Sing me now asleep;
Then to your offices, and let me rest.
Now, then they sing--
You spotted snakes with double tongue.
You know it?”
I knew it very well; but what the fairies really sang was this:--
FIRST FAIRY.
You potted slates, disguised as tongue,
Cornèd oxen be not seen;
Such things never put him wrong,
Never hurt the college dean.
CHORUS.
Fill him up with mayonnaise,
Made in several different ways;
(Salmon, chicken mayonnaise; also lobster mayonnaise);
Never fear,
’Twill keep him queer,
Shocking queer for several days;
He _can’t_ work on mayonnaise.
SECOND FAIRY.
Curried rabbits, come not nigh;
Hence, tomato-tinners, hence!
He can eat what you or I
Wouldn’t for a hundred pence.
(_Chorus as before._)
“There,” exclaimed the dean, turning to me, “that goes pretty well, I
think. Shakespeare would be pleased. I shall play _Midsummer Night’s
Dream_ on the first night of the visit of my lady friends. On the
second night I am going to sing them some songs. On the third night I
shall give a conjuring entertainment.” He suddenly stopped, and burst
into tears. “And on the fourth night,” he sobbed, “their funeral will
take place, and they are so young and fair!”
“Couldn’t you fix their funeral for the first night?” I asked. “They’d
suffer less so.”
“No,” said the dean firmly, “they must be amused first--amused and
interested and entertained. And I must amuse them, and I never amused
any one in my life before. I can’t take them to the races, because
there are undergraduates about. I can’t take them to dances for similar
reasons. I’m going to do it all myself.” He burst out sobbing again.
“And I know it will kill them. The fairies won’t play out of Epping
Cocoa, so I shall have to undertake every character in the piece. Now I
must go back, and practise my songs. I am _so_ anxious to be amusing.
It quite weighs on my mind. You don’t know anything that would do
for the conjuring entertainment, do you? Card-tricks, you know, or
think-of-any-number-you-like, or something of that sort?”
As he said these words he got into my boat, which started down a river
that flowed into a drawing-room. We got out. Then the boat changed into
a piano, and the dean sat down to it, and began to play the symphony.
“It’s one of those simple, touching songs, and it’s called ‘Papa.’”
Then he sang:
Take my head on your shoulders, papa,
Let’s have it back when you’ve done;
I only unscrewed it in jest, papa--
Only unscrewed it in fun.
And it’s pleasant to lie and to think, papa,
You can give it me back all right;
My head, though it’s screwed, is loose, papa,
And you, when you’re screwed, are tight.
“You can’t possibly sing that to the ladies,” I said.
“No,” he answered; “I’ve kept the words a little too long, and the
weather’s been hot. I’ll try another--a fervent and passionate one.”
“No, you won’t,” I said firmly, and jumped into the piano, which
changed into the canoe again, and started away down the river.
“That’s the wrong ’bus!” the dean shrieked after me. He shrieked so
loudly that he woke me. At least, he half woke me. I was so full of the
idea that I was in the wrong ’bus that I got out. The canoe was in the
middle of the river at the time. You will find an excellent edition of
Plato’s “Phædo,” a copy of last week’s _Review_, and my nicest pipe at
the bottom of the river in King’s. At any rate, you may go and dive for
them if you like.
IV.
ON REFLECTION; TO WHICH IS ADDED THE STORY OF THE TIN HEART.
I like to watch those trees reflected in the water. They are so
suggestive, by reason of their being reflected wrong way up. All
objective, outside facts are as trees, and the mind of man is as a
river, and he consequently reflects everything in an inverted way.
That is the reason why, if I try to guess a coin and say heads, it is
always tails. That is the reason why, if I go to get a spoon out of my
plate-basket in the dark, I always take out thirteen successive forks
before I find one. It explains nearly everything. Probably the correct
way to dine is really to begin with the fruit and end with the oysters.
Itinerant musicians should begin by making a collection and leave out
the other part. Anything that _can_ be done backwards is better done
backwards. When I leave for a moment the presence of royalty I am
always required to walk backwards. That shows that royalty, together
with Her Privy Council, which is the collected wisdom of the nation,
thinks that it is best to walk backwards. And so it is. It is not only
happier and holier, but it is also more piquant. You can never tell
until you’ve kicked it whether you have backed into a policeman or a
lamp-post. New possibilities are open to you. Anything may happen, and
generally does. So, too, in skating. A good skater told me that the
only enjoyable method of progression is the outside edge backwards.
“It makes you feel like a bird,” he said; “and I don’t believe you can
get that sensation of flight any other way.” He simply seemed to float
on the ice. You see, he was a good skater. At last he galumphed into a
snow-heap, flew just like a bird for a few yards, then came down hard
and hurt a lady. Look at these railway collisions, too. We all know
what an awful thing a railway collision is: and how does it always
happen? It happens from two trains wanting to go to the same spot and
arriving there simultaneously. If both trains had respectively reversed
their directions, no collision could have happened. A train should
never be allowed to go anywhere, but only to _back_ to the place whence
it came. But, as I should like these pages to be of solid, material use
to any young men who are really trying to lead the philosophical life,
and are quite earnest in their desire to avoid the Scylla of action
without falling into the Charybdis of thought, I will put my facts and
deductions clearly and briefly. The facts are two:--
(1) That a tree is reflected in the water wrong way up.
(2) That the reflection of such a reflection would be right way up.
From No. 2 we deduce that the best literary method is to crib some
other man’s ideas or reflections; and this is what I always do when I
write an article.
From No. 1 we deduce that as all reflection is the reverse of the thing
reflected, it is best to act altogether without reflection; and this is
what the editor always does when he prints my articles; and what you
yourselves do when you pay two-and-sixpence for this volume in spite
of it.
In the meanwhile, my dear old sympathetic canoe has been going slowly
backwards on its own account, and must be stopped.
* * * * *
It was only the other night that I took my canoe out in the moonlight,
when the river is solitary and quiet. I shall not take it by night any
more, because it is too sympathetic. A man came and leaned over one of
the bridges and watched the reflection of the spangled skies in the
ripple. He sighed, and said, “Pree lil starsh!” Then he swore hard at
them. Then he sighed again, and his cap tumbled off into the water.
“Ish all over now,” he said solemnly, and walked wearily away. My boat
simply shuddered. I could feel it shudder.
After that it got absurdly sentimental. Now I hate and I despise
sentiment. I suppose it was the effect of the moonlight. It made some
verses. At least I suppose the boat made them. I found them in my
blazer pocket afterwards, and I’m sure I recognised the handwriting. So
I will give them in full. (You will do nothing of the kind.--ED.)
I’m not going to discuss the merit of those verses. There may be
something in them which the world will one day learn to cherish, or
there may not be; but I deprecate the weakness and sentimentality
which cause verse. We want to be strong, really strong. We want more
of the spirit of that Gallic chieftain who wanted a tin heart made
for himself. The story is well enough known, and you will find it in
Livy: it is in one of the lost books; but I give it for the benefit
of readers who are not classical. I do not scorn such readers. I can
remember the time when I had not the finished scholarship, the critical
insight, the almost insolent familiarity with the more recondite parts
of history, which--with all modesty be it spoken--I know that I now
possess.
I have forgotten some of the names, all the dates, and a few of the
facts. But these are not the essentials. Such things are but the dry
bones of history. We want the flesh and blood and sinews--the words,
the large, beautiful, vague words that smudge over a difficulty until
you can’t see it.
To understand why the Gallic Chieftain wanted a tin heart, we must
first of all appreciate the man’s character.
When the Gallic tribe, to which he belonged, formed one of their sudden
plans (_Gallorum subita sunt consilia_), he was always in the front of
the battle; but when he was at home he used to smoke his pipe in the
back yard, because his wife and her mother would not allow it in the
house. He had plenty of fighting courage, but no domestic courage. And
there were other points in which he saw that he was weak. Sometimes,
for instance, he found some aged veteran in the streets, in a state
of destitution, with a card on his breast to say that he had lost his
wife in a colliery explosion, selling _sulfura_, or playing on the
_tuba telescopica_, an instrument resembling the trombone, but more
deleterious. Whenever this happened, he would buy the matches, or give
the man money. It was weak of him, but he couldn’t help it.
The tribe to which he belonged was transcendental, heterodox,
habitually untruthful, and characterised by a belief that the
affections resided in the heart. So, when this poor chieftain found
that he was getting too good and kind (ah, how many of us have felt
like that!--I often have), he concluded that something must be wrong
with his heart, and went to a medicine man or _fakir_. And he said: “O
fakir, would you fake me up a tin heart? For the heart which I have is
too unpleasantly soft, and I want a metal one.” The fakir agreed to
make the change for twelve ducats. But just at this time an accident
happened to the budget of this tribe, and a tax of ten ducats per pound
was put on _plumbum album_--no, my boy, not white lead: it means tin.
So it was quite clear to the fakir that he could not afford to give the
man a tin heart, and yet he had signed the document. Besides, he wanted
those twelve ducats.
So he gave the man chloroform, removed his heart, and then proceeded to
do his best with a cheap substitute. But the cheap substitute refused
to be faked, and the fakir was still hard at work trying to make
something which should do quite as well as a tin heart and last longer,
when he noticed signs of reviving consciousness in the chieftain.
He had no more chloroform to give him, and no time to lose. So he
hurriedly sewed up the incision, and left the man with no heart at all,
neither of flesh, nor of tin, nor of cheap substitute.
Then the chieftain started off home, and he looked very cheerful
indeed. He tripped up two blind men, and threw their _sulfura_ down
a grating. Then he went into a public-house, and spent his week’s
_stipendium_. Finally, he reeled home, kicked his wife, smoked two
cigars in the drawing-room, broke his mother-in-law’s head, forgot to
wipe his boots, said he wanted some tea, and went to sleep with his
feet on the crimson plush mantelpiece.
Now, next day another Gaul was going down the street when he saw two
goats being harnessed to a milk-cart. It at once occurred to him
that it would be as well to throw off the Roman yoke. So another
insurrection was started, and the Gallic chieftain who had no heart was
put in the forefront of the battle.
Just as the trumpets sounded for a charge, this Gallic chieftain
remembered that he had left his handkerchief in the tent, and went
to look for it in a hurry, and got himself disliked. But as the rest
of the tribe were mostly killed in the charge, he did not mind that
much. The survivors said: “Our noble chief has begun to be a coward.”
But he was not afraid of his wife, and used bad language in her
presence during mealtimes. One of the survivors went so far as to run
a lance through the place where the chieftain’s heart ought to have
been. The chieftain smiled, and said sarcastically that he was not an
umbrella-stand.
Death is connected with the stoppage of the heart’s action;
consequently this chieftain never died, and it is argued that during
the Syro-Phœnician attempt to----
* * * * *
Here there is a hiatus in the manuscript. A scribe has added a note in
the margin _pallido atramento_, “The chieftain is still alive. I have
seen him. I have written his name at the foot of the manuscript.” I
have looked there, and simply found the words “_Venditus iterum_.”
But the other day I bought a cigar which was all case and no inwards.
The tobacconist who sold it me said it was a Regalia Gallica; and he
looked as if he had been in this world a long time, and had seen the
wickedness of it. I simply mention this as a coincidence. There may be
nothing in it, like the cigar. But it is a curious case, if nothing
else--also like the cigar.
V.
A STORM ON THE BACKS; AND A STORY OF THREE.
I have often considered it as one of my misfortunes that I simply do
not know what fear is. As a boy I was so brave and bright that every
one loved me; in my manhood my courage appals me. I feel that one day
it will carry me too far.
As I climbed hand-over-hand up the side of the _Zeitgeist_ at the
Silver Street Docks, an old, old sailor stepped up to me. “Young
stranger,” he said, “you will not attempt to make King’s Bridge on such
a day as this? It would be madness. The boldest of us dare not.”
“Avaunt!” I cried; “where honour calls I follow. England expects. _Per
ardua ad astra._”
He turned away to hide his emotion. I gave him my hand, which he wrung
and knocked twice. There was no answer.
With one wild, exultant leap the vessel burst from its moorings,
churning the iron-bound waves to sheer desperation, foaming at the
mouth, and sobbing piteously. Through the driving rain, the blinding
fog, the dazzling lightning, the impenetrable mist, and the other
atmospheric phenomena which Mr. Clark Russell had lent for the
occasion, loomed a hideous dark object. I consulted the chart, the
compass, the telescope, the ship’s biscuits, everything I could lay my
hands on; but it was too late. Nearer and nearer it loomed. I could see
that it was Silver Street Bridge, _and that it was coming my way_. Oh,
the horror of it!
I shrieked to it to save itself and go away. But my voice was drowned
in the fury of the elements. It loomed nearer--it never stopped looming
once--and I knew that I should be unable to avoid it, that I should
destroy it.
Bump! From the top of the bridge there came the voice of a small boy,
asking if I was insured. He seemed hysterical, and fear had probably
sapped his reason. I was swept on by the fury of the elements. No, I’ve
just had that--swept on by the elemental fury--well, that’s much the
same.
At any rate, I was swept on. The wind whistled in the rigging, until
it got sick of being conventional. Then it went and whistled in the
taffrail. At last it got so nastily original that it sang “Since first
I saw your Face” in the binnacle. A hasty glance backward showed me
that Silver Street Bridge was yet standing. My resolution was also
unshaken.
The fierce old Berserker spirit fired my blood. Chanting aloud the
grand old Latin hymn of the Crusaders--
A, ab, absque, coram, de,
Palam, clam, cum, ex and e--
I dashed forward. My speed may be guessed from the fact that by this
time I was under Queen’s Bridge. Before me, or close behind me, or at
any rate on one side or the other, lowered in thick banks of cloud an
angry sun, red as the blood of an orange that the thunder had pealed!
The waves were mountain high.
The light of the unbroken Viking was in my eyes. I could not see them,
but I knew that it must be so. The waves were mounting higher now.
Suddenly the wind shifted. It became semicircular, with a pendulum
action. It swung my boat round to the left, then swung it round to the
right. It kept on doing this. A horrible thought flashed across me that
I should never make King’s Bridge at this rate. I said “Excelsior” to
the boat to encourage it, but it only went on wagging. I smote it on
the bows with the flat of my paddle, and that had no effect. Lastly, I
raised myself about four inches, and sat down again with the energy and
directness of the wild Norsemen. The jerk started it on again. We went
so fast that a sparrow seemed to be literally flying past me. I believe
that was what it actually _was_ doing. By this time the waves were
quite extraordinary.
We were now but a few yards from home. There was another change in the
weather. The sun was like a crystal chalice brimming with crimson wine,
borne by an unseen Ganymede to his lord across the sapphire pavement
of cloud. (Poetry is cheap to-day.) Had his white feet slipped on the
wondrous far-off way? For of a sudden the crimson flood suffused the
sapphire floor, and the gasp of the dying wind was as of one who cried,
“Come away in my ’and, sir, and it was cracked before, and you didn’t
ought to have left it there, and I never touched it, and ’ow was I
to know yer didn’t want it broke?” Then the wind sank. My boat was
motionless. I was becalmed within sight of my goal.
So I waited in the middle of the river. The storm was passed, and the
waves were perfectly calm and collected, like a bad halfpenny in an
offertory bag. There was not a breath of wind, and consequently the
first two matches which I lit were blown out at once. The third match
did what was expected of it, and then I attempted to blow _it_ out.
Finding this impossible, I threw it in the water. It floated on the
top, and burnt with a clear steady flame for ten consecutive minutes.
While I was watching it I let my pipe out, and had to strike a fourth
match. The head came off it, and nestled lovingly in the palm of my
hand. Then it walked away, and burned two holes in my blazer. How such
little incidents as this make one wish that the nature of things was
otherwise!
I may own that I never did make King’s Bridge that afternoon. My canoe
did not seem to care about going there of its own accord, and I did
not like to paddle it there because I hate unnecessary fuss; so I just
stopped where I was and read a little.
What was I reading?
Well, I had his book, you know, after his death. Some of it interests
me; but this is chiefly because I knew the man. He wrote it as a
remedy, and he died as a remedy; but I have a notion that he is not
quite cured yet. I take the book here to read sometimes. You may see a
page or two of it. I am not pretending that it has any literary value
But try to think you knew the man who wrote it.
* * * * *
She shivered a little as she sat there in her nightdress. In the small
hours of the morning in early summer it is always cold. She would have
been much warmer in bed; she really ought to have been in bed; but the
bed had not been slept in. It stood there in one corner of the room,
looking white and restful. It seemed to be calling her, “Come to me;
sleep and forget it--sleep and forget it.” On the little table at the
foot of the bed was the pile of books and newspapers that had slowly
accumulated. She had always been interested in the world and in the
things others did and thought.
A little impulse that came to her from nowhere made her pick up the
newspaper that lay on the top of the pile. It would do to fill her mind
and to keep her thoughts steady until the morning came. Her eyes ached,
and the candles flickered on the dressing-table. Her brain seemed to
her as a pool into which some thoughtless child that did what he liked
had flung a stone, starting circle after circle, circles that grew and
grew, spreading to the farther edge, and sobbing away into nothing
because they could go no farther. Yet she read, and knew nothing of
what she read, till one sentence seemed to shine brighter than the rest.
“The body had probably been in the water for several days.”
She stood up quickly, with a little gasp, and let the newspaper fall to
the ground. For her brain, burning with torture and want of sleep, had
suddenly flashed out a merciless, truthful, coloured illustration to
that sentence. She steadied herself in a moment. Then she held up her
hands and looked at them. “Will they turn like that?” she was asking
herself. She shivered, and the muscles of her face contracted a little.