person is checked at the very climax of a tale because of some paltry
exaggeration that he or she has made in the heat of the moment. Husbands
and wives are always at such tricks, for it very often happens that a
genial, expansive, imaginative person is united to one who is somewhat
cold, literal-minded, devoid of fancy. A lady, finishing a tale and
warming to the task, will cry: ‘No sooner had I opened the door than
about fifteen people rushed out--.’ ‘No, my dear, you exaggerate,’ her
husband will interrupt, ‘there were only three people there; I counted
them.’ And if they are among friends, he will probably turn round and
add: ‘Mary will exaggerate, you know; it’s quite a habit of hers.’ The
tale then comes to a lame finish, and is indeed quite spoilt. We have
been led, as it were, to expect fifteen people; the whole progress of
the narrative demanded them; and then at the very moment that we are
gratified by their appearance on the scene, four-fifths of them are
whisked away and we have to be content with a paltry three merely to
satisfy some busybody’s illtimed demand for accuracy. Accuracy, exact
statements, hard facts, are very well; they have their uses in the
world; but a man must not allow his passion for them to carry him to
dangerous lengths, or he will not only give himself a creeping style but
will try to spoil every tale that comes his way; such a one will soon be
unfit for decent society and will have to take to writing to the
newspapers--a vile end. Such literal-minded fellows, without
imagination, without any sense of art, are the ruin of good talk; let
them do the world’s work in laboratories and counting-houses, but when
they are abroad let them keep quiet, or some of us will put them into
monstrously exaggerated, scandalous tales, which will be doubly
vexatious to them.
I say that these sticklers for the little facts have no sense of art.
They appear to think that we distort their trumpery figures or enlarge a
statement here and there, for no purpose whatever, but from sheer
carelessness, lack of memory, or a mischievous love of lying. They are
wrong and it is easy to see why. Such quibblers do not understand the
working of the imagination; they have yet to learn that good talk is a
form of art, and that exaggeration is one of art’s great devices, a
worthy part of its process of selection and emphasis, by which any
number of petty details are brought into unity and made to serve great
purposes. When we are surrounded by good listeners and in the heat of
narration, that swift creative power, the imagination, ransacking heaven
and earth for its own ends, takes the reins, and we find ourselves
changing the mere facts so that they will produce, at second-hand, the
very feelings we experienced at first-hand. Because we are only in talk
and make use of the device, clumsily maybe, it is called exaggeration
and sneered at by some few, and sometimes even gives rise to charges of
open lying; yet this very practice of making the outward show conform to
the inward and real truth consumes fully one half the time and energy of
every artist, or we are mightily deceived. We have Walter Pater on our
side, for did he not write very wisely, in the Essay on Style, of the
‘writer’s transcript of his sense of fact,’ and what is this practice
that pedants condemn but an attempt to reproduce ‘the sense of fact’?
Nor can it be urged that Pater was prejudiced, for he was the very
prince of your scraping, paring, meticulous fellows, and would have
scaled greater heights had he had a few pulls at the Falstaffian brew.
Why this ‘sense of fact’ should be approved as fine art in writing, and
yet solemnly condemned as a wanton meddling with the truth in
conversation, is a mystery. If a child catches sight of a very tall man,
about seven foot or so, and rushes home screaming that he has met a
giant at least four yards high, he will probably be spanked for letting
his idle fancies make such a commotion; yet he will be justified by all
the canons of good art and talk, for while seven feet sounds to be
nothing out of the way, only a few inches above the ordinary run of men,
a man actually seven foot tall does look four yards high, and it is only
some such figure that will reproduce something like the original
experience to persons who were not present.
Even when there is no interference with the fine flushed narration of
others, this cheeseparing habit in talk is detestable. There are some
men who will handle words and images in their talk as if they were
making miniature watches instead of re-creating a world. Give me a man
like Carlyle, who roared for the truth night and morning, and yet did
not hesitate to juggle with the universe, to cut and carve it and parcel
it out afresh, for his own good purposes. Where there is such divine
bounty, to cut the fashion of one’s speech like some pitiful little
tailor snipping his own cloth is the very height of meanness. It is base
ingratitude, an affront to the maker of the stars, which are themselves
numberless and born of a stupendous prodigality. Nature herself, the
mother of us all, has a most queenly and delectable passion for
hyperboles; the shadows of her monstrous exaggerations sprawl across the
world, trumpeting through the forest as the elephant and floundering in
the water as Leviathan. If it is Madame Nature who gives us the truth,
who sets up the standard by which our talk must be judged, then there is
hardly room in this universe for bold lying and no man should be accused
of it.
The great poets follow Nature as closely in this love of the hyperbole
as they do in other matters. It is your little poets, your timid
versifiers, who write in fear of the raised eyebrows of the pedant and
the guffaw of the unimaginative, and keep their images down to the level
of coffee-room gossip. It is true that a man may rant it and roar it
with the best, may try to scale Parnassus as the Titans did Olympus and
pile up gigantic image upon image, and yet be no poet; but it is equally
true to say that all great poets have shown the same love of amazing
hyperboles. Those extraordinary persons who hate a swelling image, a
genial exaggeration, who distrust the hyperbole, may read their
Shakespeare (though I doubt it) but they cannot read him with constant
pleasure. Most of his best things are either the most audacious yet
triumphant specimens of the hyperbole to be found in literature or they
are pieces of sheer nonsense. And with the poet’s own creatures we may
note differences in the manner of their talk that are significant, some
characters contenting themselves with merely taking hold of stubborn
fact, and others fashioning the whole world to suit their particular
moods. But all the great characters, the poet’s own darlings, whose
speech and gestures linger in the memory, are lovers of hyperbolism and
talk greatly. Dismissing Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Mercutio, Imogen,
Perdita, and a host of other fine figures, we have only to examine the
four that are considered his most perfect creations, Hamlet, Falstaff,
Cleopatra, and Iago, to discover the truth of this. Iago has the trait
in a less marked degree than the others; his talk keeps a closer hold
upon circumstance; but then he is a deep rogue and has to act an
unimaginative part. When he is left to himself and talking for his own
satisfaction, we soon discover what manner of man he is, for then his
fancy begins to boil and we hear muttered talk of Hell and Night, of
poppy and mandragora. As for Hamlet and Cleopatra, they often seem to
destroy the world and recreate it again in a single casual sentence;
only the most towering images are allowed to wait upon their gigantic
moods. And Falstaff--what of him? There are persons who disapprove of
Falstaff; probably they are the very same people who will not tolerate
any sort of exaggeration, who sniff at hyperboles, who dislike a
thousand other fine things. We who love the hyperbolical both in
literature and talk will take our stand on Falstaff, a sufficient
bulwark against legions of such sticklers and quibblers. Small pedants
thrive and statisticians creep on like an army of ants; the fiery
nimble spirits that can turn mere words into so many soaring coloured
balloons are departing from the world; if it were not for the poets, the
Sporting Press and Mrs. What’s-her-name’s publishers, the hyperbole
would be almost unknown to our generation. In a world of calipers,
ammeters, burettes, speedometers, calculating machines, card index
cabinets, and blue books, where the fact is everything and its
significance nothing, fortified by the great rampart of Falstaff, we
will see to it that the hyperbole does not perish. Standing in that vast
shadow, I for one am prepared to defend to the death even the story of
the eleven men in buckram.
ON CARTOMANCY
A short time ago, in a strange town, evil chance confined me in a dingy
room overlooking a dismal little street and then, having done this, left
me to my own devices, without company and with few books. A grey tide of
boredom and depression was already threatening and would have soon
engulfed me, had I not come across a little volume in a corner of the
bookshelf. It was--to set forth the full title--_Cartomancy, or Occult
Divination by Cards_. The identity of the writer was not revealed; he or
she was shrouded in true oracular fashion. I had heard of
fortune-telling by cards; indeed, I had vague memories of having my
destiny unfolded, in the dim past, by elderly ladies who tapped the
assembled cards impressively and talked of letters, journeys by land,
and dark ladies. But I had no idea such occult knowledge could be
gleaned from books. If I had thought about the matter at all (which is
doubtful), I had probably imagined that the art of Cartomancy was
preserved by oral tradition, handed down through generations of maiden
aunts; or that the clue to its mysteries was the inalienable property of
a League of Decayed Gentlewomen. But no, here it was in a trumpery
little volume, sold everywhere for a shilling. Truly, this is an age of
books.
So I lost no time in making myself acquainted with the art, and boredom
fled. Nor could I have found a better preceptor, for in this little book
all was revealed; with fitting gravity and wealth of detail, it set
forth the meaning of the cards and the various methods of laying them
out. Each card had a distinct meaning, which was modified by the
presence of other cards. All this was made clear, but the instructions
were delightfully free from pedantry: ‘If intuition leads you to give a
different meaning, do so’ was the advice it tendered--and what could be
better? There was good reason attached to the meaning of some few of the
cards, which had a very pretty symbolism. What else could the Queen of
Hearts be but a fair woman? What could be a better symbol of death than
the Ace of Spades reversed? Never again shall I see that innocent piece
of pasteboard without feeling a sudden chill. But the symbolism of most
of the cards was not so obvious. Why--it might be asked--should the
eight of diamonds represent a roadway journey, the nine of spades
disappointment and tears, the ace of clubs a letter of good news? These
are mysteries, and not to be lightly comprehended. All the cards,
however, are alike in this: they stand for the life that the centuries
leave unchanged, the eternal verities of human existence, the things
that are significant alike to the emperor and the clown; they do not
adapt themselves to any pale, half-hearted way of living, but are
downright and talk boldly of birth, death, and marriage, of jealousy,
love and anger, of quarrels, accidents, and sudden endings. As to the
various methods of shuffling, cutting and laying out the cards, the
little book dealt with all these matters with high seriousness and at
some length; and no sooner was I acquainted with one or two of the
methods than I began to put them into practice. ‘These coloured scraps
of pasteboard,’ I said to myself, as I ranged the cards, ‘shall be the
tiny windows through which I will stare at the past, and peer
wonderingly into the future. And I shall be as a god.’
As no other person was near, I decided to read my own fortunes, past,
present, and future. I learned from the book that this was a difficult
thing to do, and so I found it. True it is that through the medium of
the cards, ‘the gay triumph-assuring scarlets--the contrasting
deadly-killing sables’--as Lamb called them, my fortunes appeared to
take on richer hues, to run to more passionate extremes, than I had
imagined; and in the vague mass, both my past and future took on the
aspect of a riotous, crowded pageant of love and intrigue, of tremendous
sins and strange virtues. All this was heart-stirring enough, but there
were difficulties waiting upon any sort of direct interpretation. Though
I lived splendidly, and appeared to swagger through an existence crowded
with incident, the whole fifty-two, hearts and all, seemed to combine to
make me out a rascal, whose mind must have been corroded with the
‘motiveless malignity’ of an Iago. Why, for example, should I rejoice at
the death of a dark boy in a railway accident? Why should I hound a
white-haired old gentleman to his grave? And why--for there were
numerous other incidents of this kind foreshadowed--should my villainy
always take this vile form? Was I this kind of man, I asked myself and
the cards, after each new instance of my calculated knavery, and if not,
at what precise moment in the near future were all the forces of evil to
take command of my soul. So I abandoned the attempt to discover my own
fortunes, and, turning to the book, found that if one ‘thought strongly
of one’s absent friends’ it was possible to dip into their past and
future.
For some little time I shrank from this course. To pry into their past
was bad enough, but to attempt to look into their future, which even
Time has the decency to keep covered for a while, seemed positively
immoral, an action compared with which the publication of a man’s
love-letters was a mark of friendship. It was not long, however, before
I had stifled this feeling by some sophistry about warning them of
dangers and so forth; and so I proceeded to satisfy my curiosity. As I
shuffled and laid out the cards, I saw myself as the sinister magician
of lurid fiction, and relished the part. I had only to take up the cards
and the stage was set for great dramas, bravely tricked out in crimson
and sable for one secret spectator. If this is not puissance, then where
is it to be found among men? What were books when one could spell out
the narrative of the cards, and make each friend in turn the hero or
heroine of the pictured story. Or if books were to continue, what
magnificent plots could be evolved from these strange combinations of
coloured paste-board! But if, through the cards, my own existence had
assumed brave proportions, though everywhere smirched by villainy, that
of my friends was no less highly-coloured and crowded with incident. As
I ranged the cards, and spied into the secret life, past and future, of
one friend after another, I was dumbfounded, aghast at my former
ignorance. Men who had been hidden away, for the last twenty years, in
college rooms and lecture-halls, whose outward existence had appeared as
smooth and unruffled as the immemorial lawns outside their windows, now
seemed to be moving in a violent Elizabethan drama. They made love to
dark ladies, and were in turn adored by fair ones; they lost and gained
great sums of money, aroused the jealousy of dark men, wrecked
innumerable homes, and lived in a constant whirl of good and evil
tidings, sea-voyages, railway journeys, and strong passions. Here was a
set of men who had been living like this (and were to go on doing so)
for years, and yet I, who counted myself as one of their friends, had
been kept in ignorance. What consummate actors!--to present an unruffled
front to the world, and even to their friends, and yet all the while to
know, in secret, a life that resembled nothing so much as a
thunderstorm. Could such things be? In truth, I came, in the end, to
doubt the cards.
But though I have forsworn Cartomancy, and hold such occult practices in
abhorrence, I will say to every man who has suddenly found that life is
one long piece of boredom, dull grey in warp and weft: Go to the cards,
and see existence woven madly in black and crimson--The life they
present knows nothing of boredom, for no card in all the pack stands for
such a thing--Go read the cards! As for myself, I have but one
confession to make: I dare not play at cards now, for they are fraught
with such significance to me that I could not trifle with them in a mere
game. I cannot rid them of their meanings, and while others are thinking
of nothing but winning tricks, I see myself, and my unconscious
colleagues, playing havoc with the destinies of dark ladies and fair
men. I cannot trump an opponent’s Queen, but what I feel that I am
probably bringing misfortune upon some unknown innocent woman. If I
fling down the Ace of Spades upon the King, it is not unlikely that I am
consigning some dark man--a good fellow probably--to his grave. This
would be murder, and an odd trick is not worth it. So there is nothing
for it but to leave the cards alone.
ON BEING KIND TO THE OLD
England, it is said, is cruel to the young and kind to the old. The
remark usually takes on the tone of an accusation; we who hear it from a
critical foreigner find ourselves struggling against a sense of shame;
we are quick to denounce something or other, the House of Lords,
Sentimentality, Meat-eating, the Educational System, and we uproot and
demolish, and are clearly filled with a noble public spirit. If, then,
the remark is always construed as a criticism, and if it nearly always
succeeds in touching us on the raw, there must be something in it.
Apparently, being kind to the old is no excuse for being cruel to the
young. Perhaps this kindness itself is wrong. Let us be nice in our
ethics, and look a little more closely at the question.
The remark refers, of course, to our English habit of relying upon
experience or even mere weight of years. We are--or have been--so apt
to listen to a man only when he is tottering on the verge of senility.
In politics, the clean young enthusiast has been discouraged, and only
the old intriguers have been respected. We have begun to take an artist
seriously only when he was past his prime. Pantaloon is our national
hero. Even Mr. Bernard Shaw, who ought to know better, would have
politicians living for two or three hundred years to acquire wisdom, as
if there was not folly enough in the world to delude a man for thrice
three hundred years if he should choose to live and look for it. As for
the young, they have not been given a hearing amongst us. If one of
them, of more courage and energy than his fellows, pushed his way
forward and told us something we did not know, we murmured ‘Oh, it’s
only young So-and-So,’ and turned our backs upon him. We could afford to
wait until his ideals and enthusiasms were gone, his energy sapped, and
his body and mind shivering in their late autumn, before we listened to
him. Such is our English attitude, which you and I have loudly deplored
when we have met the sneers of men from newer countries. But actually
there is a good deal to be said for it. In the last resort it does us
credit.
But mark, this attitude of ours does not bring us any profit. We shall
not try to defend it as a useful thing. When we are kind to the old, and
put none but the aged and infirm in places of responsibility and trust,
we are not better served; and we know it. The young, whom we put aside,
would do the work much better. That, I fancy, is the ground of the
criticism against us; but we are regarding it as an ethical question,
and the very fact that our attitude works against our profit only makes
our ethics shine more brightly. In order that we may give to the old, we
have to deny the young some measure of power and substance, but whereas
we are certainly kind to the one, it does not follow that we are cruel
to the other.
We can afford to be hard upon the young, for youth itself is hard. The
young are not dependent in any way upon what we think of them, for they
are still convinced that the powers of the universe plotted amicably to
fill them with greatness, so that whether the lesser mortals that
encompass them think well or ill of them matters little. They are still
living in Eternity, and, unlike the old, do not understand the need of
claiming some measure of applause while there is yet time for it. Their
hours are spacious, golden, crammed with promise. If we should put a
young man into high office, it is unlikely that he would think any
better of us: he owes us nothing; he has received only his deserts; he
has got one office, but he might have had any one of a hundred others
that were shining before his path. The world appears to him so fruitful
of glorious opportunities that even to thrust him into a post of honour
is to do him an injury by limiting his choice. And as for the young who
scribble and paint and write music (and they are legion), what can be
done for them? They are all geniuses whose work is above the
understanding and taste of the age, and as such are beyond our
ministrations, for your misunderstood young genius is perhaps the only
completely independent, self-satisfied thing in the universe. What are
little paragraphs in the papers, invitations to dinner, and the like, to
him when he is the man for whom the century has been waiting to give it
voice. He can exist, as a young friend of mine did, on stale cake and
cocoa, and yet march about the world like an emperor, attended by the
glittering cohorts of his vain and heated fancy. If it were possible to
measure and tax youthful vanity; if young men could be imprisoned for
egotism; if it were a hanging matter to imagine oneself a genius; then
we might have a chance of being cruel to the young. Short of that, we
cannot reach them. In order to protect ourselves from their dreadful
efficiency, we may deny them place and profit, but what are our trumpery
rewards to the largess of a fond imagination. So our gifts go where they
are appreciated--to the old.