Produced by David Widger
STUDIES AND ESSAYS, Complete By John Galsworthy
CONTENTS
CONCERNING LIFE, Part 1.
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL
SHEEP-SHEARING
EVOLUTION
RIDING IN MIST
THE PROCESSION
A CHRISTIAN
WIND IN THE ROCKS
MY DISTANT RELATIVE
THE BLACK GODMOTHER
CONCERNING LIFE, Part 2.
QUALITY
THE GRAND JURY—IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME
GONE
THRESHING
THAT OLD-TIME PLACE
ROMANCE—THREE GLEAMS
MEMORIES
FELICITY
STUDIES AND ESSAYS
CONCERNING LETTERS
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY
SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA
MEDITATION ON FINALITY
WANTED-SCHOOLING
REFLECTIONS ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
THE WINDLESTRAW
CENSORSHIP AND ART
ABOUT CENSORSHIP
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART
“Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal.” —ANATOLE FRANCE
CONCERNING LIFE
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY
Under a burning blue sky, among the pine-trees and junipers, the
cypresses and olives of that Odyssean coast, we came one afternoon on a
pink house bearing the legend: “Osteria di Tranquillita,”; and, partly
because of the name, and partly because we did not expect to find a
house at all in those goat-haunted groves above the waves, we tarried
for contemplation. To the familiar simplicity of that Italian building
there were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual change, for out of
the olive-grove which grew to its very doors a skittle-alley had been
formed, and two baby cypress-trees were cut into the effigies of a cock
and hen. The song of a gramophone, too, was breaking forth into the air,
as it were the presiding voice of a high and cosmopolitan mind. And,
lost in admiration, we became conscious of the odour of a full-flavoured
cigar. Yes—in the skittle-alley a gentleman was standing who wore a
bowler hat, a bright brown suit, pink tie, and very yellow boots. His
head was round, his cheeks fat and well-coloured, his lips red and full
under a black moustache, and he was regarding us through very thick and
half-closed eyelids.
Perceiving him to be the proprietor of the high and cosmopolitan mind,
we accosted him.
“Good-day!” he replied: “I spik English. Been in Amurrica yes.”
“You have a lovely place here.”
Sweeping a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent forth a long puff of
smoke; then, turning to my companion (of the politer sex) with the
air of one who has made himself perfect master of a foreign tongue, he
smiled, and spoke.
“Too-quiet!”
“Precisely; the name of your inn, perhaps, suggests——”
“I change all that—soon I call it Anglo-American hotel.”
“Ah! yes; you are very up-to-date already.”
He closed one eye and smiled.
Having passed a few more compliments, we saluted and walked on; and,
coming presently to the edge of the cliff, lay down on the thyme and the
crumbled leaf-dust. All the small singing birds had long been shot and
eaten; there came to us no sound but that of the waves swimming in on a
gentle south wind. The wanton creatures seemed stretching out white arms
to the land, flying desperately from a sea of such stupendous serenity;
and over their bare shoulders their hair floated back, pale in the
sunshine. If the air was void of sound, it was full of scent—that
delicious and enlivening perfume of mingled gum, and herbs, and sweet
wood being burned somewhere a long way off; and a silky, golden warmth
slanted on to us through the olives and umbrella pines. Large wine-red
violets were growing near. On such a cliff might Theocritus have lain,
spinning his songs; on that divine sea Odysseus should have passed. And
we felt that presently the goat-god must put his head forth from behind
a rock.
It seemed a little queer that our friend in the bowler hat should move
and breathe within one short flight of a cuckoo from this home of Pan.
One could not but at first feelingly remember the old Boer saying: “O
God, what things man sees when he goes out without a gun!” But soon the
infinite incongruity of this juxtaposition began to produce within one
a curious eagerness, a sort of half-philosophical delight. It began
to seem too good, almost too romantic, to be true. To think of the
gramophone wedded to the thin sweet singing of the olive leaves in the
evening wind; to remember the scent of his rank cigar marrying with this
wild incense; to read that enchanted name, “Inn of Tranquillity,” and
hear the bland and affable remark of the gentleman who owned it—such
were, indeed, phenomena to stimulate souls to speculation. And all
unconsciously one began to justify them by thoughts of the other
incongruities of existence—the strange, the passionate incongruities
of youth and age, wealth and poverty, life and death; the wonderful odd
bedfellows of this world; all those lurid contrasts which haunt a man's
spirit till sometimes he is ready to cry out: “Rather than live where
such things can be, let me die!”
Like a wild bird tracking through the air, one's meditation wandered
on, following that trail of thought, till the chance encounter became
spiritually luminous. That Italian gentleman of the world, with his
bowler hat, his skittle-alley, his gramophone, who had planted himself
down in this temple of wild harmony, was he not Progress itself—the
blind figure with the stomach full of new meats and the brain of
raw notions? Was he not the very embodiment of the wonderful child,
Civilisation, so possessed by a new toy each day that she has no time to
master its use—naive creature lost amid her own discoveries! Was he not
the very symbol of that which was making economists thin, thinkers pale,
artists haggard, statesmen bald—the symbol of Indigestion Incarnate!
Did he not, delicious, gross, unconscious man, personify beneath his
Americo-Italian polish all those rank and primitive instincts, whose
satisfaction necessitated the million miseries of his fellows; all those
thick rapacities which stir the hatred of the humane and thin-skinned!
And yet, one's meditation could not stop there—it was not convenient to
the heart!
A little above us, among the olive-trees, two blue-clothed peasants, man
and woman, were gathering the fruit—from some such couple, no doubt, our
friend in the bowler hat had sprung; more “virile” and adventurous than
his brothers, he had not stayed in the home groves, but had gone forth
to drink the waters of hustle and commerce, and come back—what he was.
And he, in turn, would beget children, and having made his pile out of
his 'Anglo-American hotel' would place those children beyond the coarser
influences of life, till they became, perhaps, even as our selves, the
salt of the earth, and despised him. And I thought: “I do not despise
those peasants—far from it. I do not despise myself—no more than reason;
why, then, despise my friend in the bowler hat, who is, after all,
but the necessary link between them and me?” I did not despise the
olive-trees, the warm sun, the pine scent, all those material things
which had made him so thick and strong; I did not despise the golden,
tenuous imaginings which the trees and rocks and sea were starting in my
own spirit. Why, then, despise the skittle-alley, the gramophone, those
expressions of the spirit of my friend in the billy-cock hat? To despise
them was ridiculous!
And suddenly I was visited by a sensation only to be described as a sort
of smiling certainty, emanating from, and, as it were, still tingling
within every nerve of myself, but yet vibrating harmoniously with the
world around. It was as if I had suddenly seen what was the truth of
things; not perhaps to anybody else, but at all events to me. And I felt
at once tranquil and elated, as when something is met with which rouses
and fascinates in a man all his faculties.
“For,” I thought, “if it is ridiculous in me to despise my friend —that
perfect marvel of disharmony—it is ridiculous in me to despise anything.
If he is a little bit of continuity, as perfectly logical an expression
of a necessary phase or mood of existence as I myself am, then,
surely, there is nothing in all the world that is not a little bit of
continuity, the expression of a little necessary mood. Yes,” I thought,
“he and I, and those olive-trees, and this spider on my hand, and
everything in the Universe which has an individual shape, are all
fit expressions of the separate moods of a great underlying Mood or
Principle, which must be perfectly adjusted, volving and revolving on
itself. For if It did not volve and revolve on Itself, It would peter
out at one end or the other, and the image of this petering out no man
with his mental apparatus can conceive. Therefore, one must conclude
It to be perfectly adjusted and everlasting. But if It is perfectly
adjusted and everlasting, we are all little bits of continuity, and if
we are all little bits of continuity it is ridiculous for one of us to
despise another. So,” I thought, “I have now proved it from my friend in
the billy-cock hat up to the Universe, and from the Universe down, back
again to my friend.”
And I lay on my back and looked at the sky. It seemed friendly to my
thought with its smile, and few white clouds, saffron-tinged like the
plumes of a white duck in sunlight. “And yet,” I wondered, “though my
friend and I may be equally necessary, I am certainly irritated by him,
and shall as certainly continue to be irritated, not only by him, but
by a thousand other men and so, with a light heart, you may go on being
irritated with your friend in the bowler hat, you may go on loving those
peasants and this sky and sea. But, since you have this theory of life,
you may not despise any one or any thing, not even a skittle-alley, for
they are all threaded to you, and to despise them would be to blaspheme
against continuity, and to blaspheme against continuity would be to deny
Eternity. Love you cannot help, and hate you cannot help; but contempt
is—for you—the sovereign idiocy, the irreligious fancy!”
There was a bee weighing down a blossom of thyme close by, and
underneath the stalk a very ugly little centipede. The wild bee, with
his little dark body and his busy bear's legs, was lovely to me, and
the creepy centipede gave me shudderings; but it was a pleasant thing to
feel so sure that he, no less than the bee, was a little mood expressing
himself out in harmony with Designs tiny thread on the miraculous quilt.
And I looked at him with a sudden zest and curiosity; it seemed to me
that in the mystery of his queer little creepings I was enjoying the
Supreme Mystery; and I thought: “If I knew all about that wriggling
beast, then, indeed, I might despise him; but, truly, if I knew all
about him I should know all about everything—Mystery would be gone, and
I could not bear to live!”
So I stirred him with my finger and he went away.
“But how”—I thought “about such as do not feel it ridiculous to despise;
how about those whose temperaments and religions show them all things so
plainly that they know they are right and others wrong? They must be
in a bad way!” And for some seconds I felt sorry for them, and was
discouraged. But then I thought: “Not at all —obviously not! For if they
do not find it ridiculous to feel contempt, they are perfectly right to
feel contempt, it being natural to them; and you have no business to
be sorry for them, for that is, after all, only your euphemism for
contempt. They are all right, being the expressions of contemptuous
moods, having religions and so forth, suitable to these moods; and the
religion of your mood would be Greek to them, and probably a matter for
contempt. But this only makes it the more interesting. For though to
you, for instance, it may seem impossible to worship Mystery with one
lobe of the brain, and with the other to explain it, the thought that
this may not seem impossible to others should not discourage you; it is
but another little piece of that Mystery which makes life so wonderful
and sweet.”
The sun, fallen now almost to the level of the cliff, was slanting
upward on to the burnt-red pine boughs, which had taken to themselves a
quaint resemblance to the great brown limbs of the wild men Titian drew
in his pagan pictures, and down below us the sea-nymphs, still swimming
to shore, seemed eager to embrace them in the enchanted groves. All was
fused in that golden glow of the sun going down-sea and land gathered
into one transcendent mood of light and colour, as if Mystery desired
to bless us by showing how perfect was that worshipful adjustment,
whose secret we could never know. And I said to myself: “None of those
thoughts of yours are new, and in a vague way even you have thought them
before; but all the same, they have given you some little feeling of
tranquillity.”
And at that word of fear I rose and invited my companion to return
toward the town. But as we stealthy crept by the “Osteria di
Tranquillita,” our friend in the bowler hat came out with a gun over his
shoulder and waved his hand toward the Inn.
“You come again in two week—I change all that! And now,” he added, “I
go to shoot little bird or two,” and he disappeared into the golden haze
under the olive-trees.
A minute later we heard his gun go off, and returned homeward with a
prayer.
1910.
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL
I lay often that summer on a slope of sand and coarse grass, close to
the Cornish sea, trying to catch thoughts; and I was trying very hard
when I saw them coming hand in hand.
She was dressed in blue linen, and a little cloud of honey-coloured
hair; her small face had serious eyes the colour of the chicory flowers
she was holding up to sniff at—a clean sober little maid, with a very
touching upward look of trust. Her companion was a strong, active boy
of perhaps fourteen, and he, too, was serious—his deep-set, blacklashed
eyes looked down at her with a queer protective wonder; the while he
explained in a soft voice broken up between two ages, that exact process
which bees adopt to draw honey out of flowers. Once or twice this hoarse
but charming voice became quite fervent, when she had evidently failed
to follow; it was as if he would have been impatient, only he knew he
must not, because she was a lady and younger than himself, and he loved
her.
They sat down just below my nook, and began to count the petals of a
chicory flower, and slowly she nestled in to him, and he put his arm
round her. Never did I see such sedate, sweet lovering, so trusting on
her part, so guardianlike on his. They were like, in miniature —-though
more dewy,—those sober couples who have long lived together, yet whom
one still catches looking at each other with confidential tenderness,
and in whom, one feels, passion is atrophied from never having been in
use.
Long I sat watching them in their cool communion, half-embraced, talking
a little, smiling a little, never once kissing. They did not seem shy
of that; it was rather as if they were too much each other's to think of
such a thing. And then her head slid lower and lower down his shoulder,
and sleep buttoned the lids over those chicory-blue eyes. How careful
he was, then, not to wake her, though I could see his arm was getting
stiff! He still sat, good as gold, holding her, till it began quite to
hurt me to see his shoulder thus in chancery. But presently I saw him
draw his arm away ever so carefully, lay her head down on the grass,
and lean forward to stare at something. Straight in front of them was a
magpie, balancing itself on a stripped twig of thorn-tree. The agitating
bird, painted of night and day, was making a queer noise and flirting
one wing, as if trying to attract attention. Rising from the twig, it
circled, vivid and stealthy, twice round the tree, and flew to another
a dozen paces off. The boy rose; he looked at his little mate, looked
at the bird, and began quietly to move toward it; but uttering again its
queer call, the bird glided on to a third thorn-tree. The boy hesitated
then—but once more the bird flew on, and suddenly dipped over the hill.
I saw the boy break into a run; and getting up quickly, I ran too.
When I reached the crest there was the black and white bird flying low
into a dell, and there the boy, with hair streaming back, was rushing
helter-skelter down the hill. He reached the bottom and vanished into
the dell. I, too, ran down the hill. For all that I was prying and must
not be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in among the trees to the
edge of a pool that could know but little sunlight, so thickly arched
was it by willows, birch-trees, and wild hazel. There, in a swing
of boughs above the water, was perched no pied bird, but a young,
dark-haired girl with, dangling, bare, brown legs. And on the brink of
the black water goldened, with fallen leaves, the boy was crouching,
gazing up at her with all his soul. She swung just out of reach and
looked down at him across the pool. How old was she, with her brown
limbs, and her gleaming, slanting eyes? Or was she only the spirit of
the dell, this elf-thing swinging there, entwined with boughs and the
dark water, and covered with a shift of wet birch leaves. So strange a
face she had, wild, almost wicked, yet so tender; a face that I could
not take my eyes from. Her bare toes just touched the pool, and flicked
up drops of water that fell on the boy's face.
From him all the sober steadfastness was gone; already he looked as
wild as she, and his arms were stretched out trying to reach her feet.
I wanted to cry to him: “Go back, boy, go back!” but could not; her elf
eyes held me dumb-they looked so lost in their tender wildness.
And then my heart stood still, for he had slipped and was struggling in
deep water beneath her feet. What a gaze was that he was turning up
to her—not frightened, but so longing, so desperate; and hers how
triumphant, and how happy!
And then he clutched her foot, and clung, and climbed; and bending down,
she drew him up to her, all wet, and clasped him in the swing of boughs.
I took a long breath then. An orange gleam of sunlight had flamed in
among the shadows and fell round those two where they swung over the
dark water, with lips close together and spirits lost in one another's,
and in their eyes such drowning ecstasy! And then they kissed! All round
me pool, and leaves, and air seemed suddenly to swirl and melt—I could
see nothing plain! . . . What time passed—I do not know—before their
faces slowly again became visible! His face the sober boy's—was turned
away from her, and he was listening; for above the whispering of leaves
a sound of weeping came from over the hill. It was to that he listened.
And even as I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the
pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in
her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him
back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming,
it could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water,
she watched him abandon her.
Slowly the struggling boy gained land, and lay there, breathless. And
still that sound of lonely weeping came from over the hill.
Listening, but looking at those wild, mourning eyes that never moved
from him, he lay. Once he turned back toward the water, but fire had
died within him; his hands dropped, nerveless—his young face was all
bewilderment.
And the quiet darkness of the pool waited, and the trees, and those lost
eyes of hers, and my heart. And ever from over the hill came the little
fair maiden's lonely weeping.
Then, slowly dragging his feet, stumbling, half-blinded, turning and
turning to look back, the boy groped his way out through the trees
toward that sound; and, as he went, that dark spirit-elf, abandoned,
clasping her own lithe body with her arms, never moved her gaze from
him.
I, too, crept away, and when I was safe outside in the pale evening
sunlight, peered back into the dell. There under the dark trees she
was no longer, but round and round that cage of passion, fluttering
and wailing through the leaves, over the black water, was the magpie,
flighting on its twilight wings.
I turned and ran and ran till I came over the hill and saw the boy and
the little fair, sober maiden sitting together once more on the open
slope, under the high blue heaven. She was nestling her tear-stained
face against his shoulder and speaking already of indifferent things.
And he—he was holding her with his arm and watching over her with eyes
that seemed to see something else.
And so I lay, hearing their sober talk and gazing at their sober little
figures, till I awoke and knew I had dreamed all that little allegory of
sacred and profane love, and from it had returned to reason, knowing no
more than ever which was which.
1912.
SHEEP-SHEARING
From early morning there had been bleating of sheep in the yard, so that
one knew the creatures were being sheared, and toward evening I went
along to see. Thirty or forty naked-looking ghosts of sheep were penned
against the barn, and perhaps a dozen still inhabiting their coats. Into
the wool of one of these bulky ewes the farmer's small, yellow-haired
daughter was twisting her fist, hustling it toward Fate; though pulled
almost off her feet by the frightened, stubborn creature, she never let
go, till, with a despairing cough, the ewe had passed over the threshold
and was fast in the hands of a shearer. At the far end of the barn,
close by the doors, I stood a minute or two before shifting up to watch
the shearing. Into that dim, beautiful home of age, with its great
rafters and mellow stone archways, the June sunlight shone through
loopholes and chinks, in thin glamour, powdering with its very
strangeness the dark cathedraled air, where, high up, clung a fog of old
grey cobwebs so thick as ever were the stalactites of a huge cave. At
this end the scent of sheep and wool and men had not yet routed that
home essence of the barn, like the savour of acorns and withering beech
leaves.
They were shearing by hand this year, nine of them, counting the
postman, who, though farm-bred, “did'n putt much to the shearin',” but
had come to round the sheep up and give general aid.
Sitting on the creatures, or with a leg firmly crooked over their heads,
each shearer, even the two boys, had an air of going at it in his own
way. In their white canvas shearing suits they worked very steadily,
almost in silence, as if drowsed by the “click-clip, click-clip” of the
shears. And the sheep, but for an occasional wriggle of legs or head,
lay quiet enough, having an inborn sense perhaps of the fitness of
things, even when, once in a way, they lost more than wool; glad too,
mayhap, to be rid of their matted vestments. From time to time the
little damsel offered each shearer a jug and glass, but no man drank
till he had finished his sheep; then he would get up, stretch his
cramped muscles, drink deep, and almost instantly sit down again on
a fresh beast. And always there was the buzz of flies swarming in the
sunlight of the open doorway, the dry rustle of the pollarded lime-trees
in the sharp wind outside, the bleating of some released ewe, upset at
her own nakedness, the scrape and shuffle of heels and sheep's limbs on
the floor, together with the “click-clip, click-clip” of the shears.
As each ewe, finished with, struggled up, helped by a friendly shove,
and bolted out dazedly into the pen, I could not help wondering what was
passing in her head—in the heads of all those unceremoniously treated
creatures; and, moving nearer to the postman, I said:
“They're really very good, on the whole.”
He looked at me, I thought, queerly.
“Yaas,” he answered; “Mr. Molton's the best of them.”
I looked askance at Mr. Molton; but, with his knee crooked round a young
ewe, he was shearing calmly.
“Yes,” I admitted, “he is certainly good.”
“Yaas,” replied the postman.
Edging back into the darkness, away from that uncomprehending youth,
I escaped into the air, and passing the remains of last year's stacks
under the tall, toppling elms, sat down in a field under the bank.
It seemed to me that I had food for thought. In that little
misunderstanding between me and the postman was all the essence of
the difference between that state of civilisation in which sheep could
prompt a sentiment, and that state in which sheep could not.
The heat from the dropping sun, not far now above the moorline, struck
full into the ferns and long grass of the bank where I was sitting, and
the midges rioted on me in this last warmth. The wind was barred out, so
that one had the full sweetness of the clover, fast becoming hay, over
which the swallows were wheeling and swooping after flies. And far up,
as it were the crown of Nature's beautiful devouring circle, a buzzard
hawk, almost stationary on the air, floated, intent on something
pleasant below him. A number of little hens crept through the gate one
by one, and came round me. It seemed to them that I was there to feed
them; and they held their neat red or yellow heads to one side and the
other, inquiring with their beady eyes, surprised at my stillness. They
were pretty with their speckled feathers, and as it seemed to me, plump
and young, so that I wondered how many of them would in time feed me.
Finding, however, that I gave them nothing to eat, they went away, and
there arose, in place of their clucking, the thin singing of air passing
through some long tube. I knew it for the whining of my dog, who had
nosed me out, but could not get through the padlocked gate. And as I
lifted him over, I was glad the postman could not see me—for I felt that
to lift a dog over a gate would be against the principles of one for
whom the connection of sheep with good behaviour had been too strange
a thought. And it suddenly rushed into my mind that the time would no
doubt come when the conduct of apples, being plucked from the mother
tree, would inspire us, and we should say: “They're really very good!”
And I wondered, were those future watchers of apple-gathering farther
from me than I, watching sheep-shearing, from the postman? I thought,
too, of the pretty dreams being dreamt about the land, and of the people
who dreamed them. And I looked at that land, covered with the sweet
pinkish-green of the clover, and considered how much of it, through the
medium of sheep, would find its way into me, to enable me to come out
here and be eaten by midges, and speculate about things, and conceive
the sentiment of how good the sheep were. And it all seemed queer. I
thought, too, of a world entirely composed of people who could see the
sheen rippling on that clover, and feel a sort of sweet elation at the
scent of it, and I wondered how much clover would be sown then? Many
things I thought of, sitting there, till the sun sank below the moor
line, the wind died off the clover, and the midges slept. Here and there
in the iris-coloured sky a star crept out; the soft-hooting owls awoke.
But still I lingered, watching how, one after another, shapes and
colours died into twilight; and I wondered what the postman thought of
twilight, that inconvenient state, when things were neither dark nor
light; and I wondered what the sheep were thinking this first night
without their coats. Then, slinking along the hedge, noiseless, unheard
by my sleeping spaniel, I saw a tawny dog stealing by. He passed without
seeing us, licking his lean chops.
“Yes, friend,” I thought, “you have been after something very unholy;
you have been digging up buried lamb, or some desirable person of that
kind!”
Sneaking past, in this sweet night, which stirred in one such sentiment,
that ghoulish cur was like the omnivorousness of Nature. And it came to
me, how wonderful and queer was a world which embraced within it, not
only this red gloating dog, fresh from his feast on the decaying flesh
of lamb, but all those hundreds of beings in whom the sight of a fly
with one leg shortened produced a quiver of compassion. For in this
savage, slinking shadow, I knew that I had beheld a manifestation of
divinity no less than in the smile of the sky, each minute growing more
starry. With what Harmony —I thought—can these two be enwrapped in this
round world so fast that it cannot be moved! What secret, marvellous,
all-pervading Principle can harmonise these things! And the old words
'good' and 'evil' seemed to me more than ever quaint.
It was almost dark, and the dew falling fast; I roused my spaniel to go
in.
Over the high-walled yard, the barns, the moon-white porch, dusk had
brushed its velvet. Through an open window came a roaring sound. Mr.
Molton was singing “The Happy Warrior,” to celebrate the finish of the
shearing. The big doors into the garden, passed through, cut off the
full sweetness of that song; for there the owls were already masters of
night with their music.
On the dew-whitened grass of the lawn, we came on a little dark beast.
My spaniel, liking its savour, stood with his nose at point; but, being
called off, I could feel him obedient, still quivering, under my hand.
In the field, a wan huddle in the blackness, the dismantled sheep lay
under a holly hedge. The wind had died; it was mist-warm.
1910
EVOLUTION
Coming out of the theatre, we found it utterly impossible to get a
taxicab; and, though it was raining slightly, walked through Leicester
Square in the hope of picking one up as it returned down Piccadilly.
Numbers of hansoms and four-wheelers passed, or stood by the curb,
hailing us feebly, or not even attempting to attract our attention,
but every taxi seemed to have its load. At Piccadilly Circus, losing
patience, we beckoned to a four-wheeler and resigned ourselves to a
long, slow journey. A sou'-westerly air blew through the open windows,
and there was in it the scent of change, that wet scent which visits
even the hearts of towns and inspires the watcher of their myriad
activities with thought of the restless Force that forever cries: “On,
on!” But gradually the steady patter of the horse's hoofs, the rattling
of the windows, the slow thudding of the wheels, pressed on us so
drowsily that when, at last, we reached home we were more than half
asleep. The fare was two shillings, and, standing in the lamplight to
make sure the coin was a half-crown before handing it to the driver, we
happened to look up. This cabman appeared to be a man of about sixty,
with a long, thin face, whose chin and drooping grey moustaches seemed
in permanent repose on the up-turned collar of his old blue overcoat.
But the remarkable features of his face were the two furrows down his
cheeks, so deep and hollow that it seemed as though that face were a
collection of bones without coherent flesh, among which the eyes
were sunk back so far that they had lost their lustre. He sat quite
motionless, gazing at the tail of his horse. And, almost unconsciously,
one added the rest of one's silver to that half-crown. He took the coins
without speaking; but, as we were turning into the garden gate, we heard
him say:
“Thank you; you've saved my life.”
Not knowing, either of us, what to reply to such a curious speech, we
closed the gate again and came back to the cab.
“Are things so very bad?”
“They are,” replied the cabman. “It's done with—is this job. We're not
wanted now.” And, taking up his whip, he prepared to drive away.
“How long have they been as bad as this?”
The cabman dropped his hand again, as though glad to rest it, and
answered incoherently:
“Thirty-five year I've been drivin' a cab.”
And, sunk again in contemplation of his horse's tail, he could only be
roused by many questions to express himself, having, as it seemed, no
knowledge of the habit.
“I don't blame the taxis, I don't blame nobody. It's come on us, that's
what it has. I left the wife this morning with nothing in the house. She
was saying to me only yesterday: 'What have you brought home the last
four months?' 'Put it at six shillings a week,' I said. 'No,' she said,
'seven.' Well, that's right—she enters it all down in her book.”
“You are really going short of food?”
The cabman smiled; and that smile between those two deep hollows was
surely as strange as ever shone on a human face.
“You may say that,” he said. “Well, what does it amount to? Before I
picked you up, I had one eighteen-penny fare to-day; and yesterday I
took five shillings. And I've got seven bob a day to pay for the cab,
and that's low, too. There's many and many a proprietor that's broke and
gone—every bit as bad as us. They let us down as easy as ever they can;
you can't get blood from a stone, can you?” Once again he smiled. “I'm
sorry for them, too, and I'm sorry for the horses, though they come out
best of the three of us, I do believe.”
One of us muttered something about the Public.
The cabman turned his face and stared down through the darkness.
“The Public?” he said, and his voice had in it a faint surprise. “Well,
they all want the taxis. It's natural. They get about faster in them,
and time's money. I was seven hours before I picked you up. And then you
was lookin' for a taxi. Them as take us because they can't get better,
they're not in a good temper, as a rule. And there's a few old ladies
that's frightened of the motors, but old ladies aren't never very free
with their money—can't afford to be, the most of them, I expect.”
“Everybody's sorry for you; one would have thought that——”
He interrupted quietly: “Sorrow don't buy bread . . . . I never had
nobody ask me about things before.” And, slowly moving his long face
from side to side, he added: “Besides, what could people do? They can't
be expected to support you; and if they started askin' you questions
they'd feel it very awkward. They know that, I suspect. Of course,
there's such a lot of us; the hansoms are pretty nigh as bad off as we
are. Well, we're gettin' fewer every day, that's one thing.”
Not knowing whether or no to manifest sympathy with this extinction, we
approached the horse. It was a horse that “stood over” a good deal
at the knee, and in the darkness seemed to have innumerable ribs. And
suddenly one of us said: “Many people want to see nothing but taxis on
the streets, if only for the sake of the horses.”
The cabman nodded.
“This old fellow,” he said, “never carried a deal of flesh. His grub
don't put spirit into him nowadays; it's not up to much in quality, but
he gets enough of it.”
“And you don't?”
The cabman again took up his whip.
“I don't suppose,” he said without emotion, “any one could ever find
another job for me now. I've been at this too long. It'll be the
workhouse, if it's not the other thing.”
And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he smiled for the third
time.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “it's a bit 'ard on us, because we've done
nothing to deserve it. But things are like that, so far as I can see.
One thing comes pushin' out another, and so you go on. I've thought
about it—you get to thinkin' and worryin' about the rights o' things,
sittin' up here all day. No, I don't see anything for it. It'll soon be
the end of us now—can't last much longer. And I don't know that I'll be
sorry to have done with it. It's pretty well broke my spirit.”
“There was a fund got up.”
“Yes, it helped a few of us to learn the motor-drivin'; but what's the
good of that to me, at my time of life? Sixty, that's my age; I'm not
the only one—there's hundreds like me. We're not fit for it, that's the
fact; we haven't got the nerve now. It'd want a mint of money to help
us. And what you say's the truth—people want to see the end of us. They
want the taxis—our day's over. I'm not complaining; you asked me about
it yourself.”
And for the third time he raised his whip.
“Tell me what you would have done if you had been given your fare and
just sixpence over?”
The cabman stared downward, as though puzzled by that question.
“Done? Why, nothing. What could I have done?”
“But you said that it had saved your life.”
“Yes, I said that,” he answered slowly; “I was feelin' a bit low. You
can't help it sometimes; it's the thing comin' on you, and no way out of
it—that's what gets over you. We try not to think about it, as a rule.”
And this time, with a “Thank you, kindly!” he touched his horse's flank
with the whip. Like a thing aroused from sleep the forgotten creature
started and began to draw the cabman away from us. Very slowly they
travelled down the road among the shadows of the trees broken by
lamplight. Above us, white ships of cloud were sailing rapidly across
the dark river of sky on the wind which smelled of change. And, after
the cab was lost to sight, that wind still brought to us the dying sound
of the slow wheels.
1910.
RIDING IN MIST
Wet and hot, having her winter coat, the mare exactly matched the
drenched fox-coloured beech-leaf drifts. As was her wont on such misty
days, she danced along with head held high, her neck a little arched,
her ears pricked, pretending that things were not what they seemed, and
now and then vigorously trying to leave me planted on the air. Stones
which had rolled out of the lane banks were her especial goblins, for
one such had maltreated her nerves before she came into this ball-room
world, and she had not forgotten.
There was no wind that day. On the beech-trees were still just enough of
coppery leaves to look like fires lighted high-up to air the eeriness;
but most of the twigs, pearled with water, were patterned very naked
against universal grey. Berries were few, except the pink spindle one,
so far the most beautiful, of which there were more than Earth generally
vouchsafes. There was no sound in the deep lanes, none of that sweet,
overhead sighing of yesterday at the same hour, but there was a quality
of silence—a dumb mist murmuration. We passed a tree with a proud pigeon
sitting on its top spire, quite too heavy for the twig delicacy below;
undisturbed by the mare's hoofs or the creaking of saddle leather, he
let us pass, absorbed in his world of tranquil turtledoves. The mist had
thickened to a white, infinitesimal rain-dust, and in it the trees began
to look strange, as though they had lost one another. The world seemed
inhabited only by quick, soundless wraiths as one trotted past.
Close to a farm-house the mare stood still with that extreme suddenness
peculiar to her at times, and four black pigs scuttled by and at once
became white air. By now we were both hot and inclined to cling closely
together and take liberties with each other; I telling her about her
nature, name, and appearance, together with comments on her manners; and
she giving forth that sterterous, sweet snuffle, which begins under the
star on her forehead. On such days she did not sneeze, reserving those
expressions of her joy for sunny days and the crisp winds. At a forking
of the ways we came suddenly on one grey and three brown ponies, who
shied round and flung away in front of us, a vision of pretty heads and
haunches tangled in the thin lane, till, conscious that they were beyond
their beat, they faced the bank and, one by one, scrambled over to join
the other ghosts out on the dim common.
Dipping down now over the road, we passed hounds going home. Pied,
dumb-footed shapes, padding along in that soft-eyed, remote world of
theirs, with a tall riding splash of red in front, and a tall splash of
riding red behind. Then through a gate we came on to the moor, amongst
whitened furze. The mist thickened. A curlew was whistling on its
invisible way, far up; and that wistful, wild calling seemed the very
voice of the day. Keeping in view the glint of the road, we galloped;
rejoicing, both of us, to be free of the jog jog of the lanes.
And first the voice of the curlew died; then the glint of the road
vanished; and we were quite alone. Even the furze was gone; no shape of
anything left, only the black, peaty ground, and the thickening mist. We
might as well have been that lonely bird crossing up there in the blind
white nothingness, like a human spirit wandering on the undiscovered
moor of its own future.
The mare jumped a pile of stones, which appeared, as it were, after we
had passed over; and it came into my mind that, if we happened to strike
one of the old quarry pits, we should infallibly be killed. Somehow,
there was pleasure in this thought, that we might, or might not, strike
that old quarry pit. The blood in us being hot, we had pure joy in
charging its white, impalpable solidity, which made way, and at once
closed in behind us. There was great fun in this yard-by-yard discovery
that we were not yet dead, this flying, shelterless challenge to
whatever might lie out there, five yards in front. We felt supremely
above the wish to know that our necks were safe; we were happy, panting
in the vapour that beat against our faces from the sheer speed of our
galloping. Suddenly the ground grew lumpy and made up-hill. The mare
slackened pace; we stopped. Before us, behind, to right and left, white
vapour. No sky, no distance, barely the earth. No wind in our faces, no
wind anywhere. At first we just got our breath, thought nothing, talked
a little. Then came a chillness, a faint clutching over the heart.
The mare snuffled; we turned and made down-hill. And still the mist
thickened, and seemed to darken ever so little; we went slowly, suddenly
doubtful of all that was in front. There came into our minds visions, so
distant in that darkening vapour, of a warm stall and manger of oats;
of tea and a log fire. The mist seemed to have fingers now, long, dark
white, crawling fingers; it seemed, too, to have in its sheer silence
a sort of muttered menace, a shuddery lurkingness, as if from out of
it that spirit of the unknown, which in hot blood we had just now so
gleefully mocked, were creeping up at us, intent on its vengeance. Since
the ground no longer sloped, we could not go down-hill; there were no
means left of telling in what direction we were moving, and we stopped
to listen. There was no sound, not one tiny noise of water, wind in
trees, or man; not even of birds or the moor ponies. And the mist
darkened. The mare reached her head down and walked on, smelling at the
heather; every time she sniffed, one's heart quivered, hoping she had
found the way. She threw up her head, snorted, and stood still;
and there passed just in front of us a pony and her foal, shapes
of scampering dusk, whisked like blurred shadows across a sheet.
Hoof-silent in the long heather—as ever were visiting ghosts—they were
gone in a flash. The mare plunged forward, following. But, in the feel
of her gallop, and the feel of my heart, there was no more that
ecstasy of facing the unknown; there was only the cold, hasty dread of
loneliness. Far asunder as the poles were those two sensations, evoked
by this same motion. The mare swerved violently and stopped. There,
passing within three yards, from the same direction as before,
the soundless shapes of the pony and her foal flew by again, more
intangible, less dusky now against the darker screen. Were we, then, to
be haunted by those bewildering uncanny ones, flitting past ever from
the same direction? This time the mare did not follow, but stood
still; knowing as well as I that direction was quite lost. Soon, with a
whimper, she picked her way on again, smelling at the heather. And the
mist darkened!
Then, out of the heart of that dusky whiteness, came a tiny sound; we
stood, not breathing, turning our heads. I could see the mare's eye
fixed and straining at the vapour. The tiny sound grew till it became
the muttering of wheels. The mare dashed forward. The muttering ceased
untimely; but she did not stop; turning abruptly to the left, she slid,
scrambled, and dropped into a trot. The mist seemed whiter below us;
we were on the road. And involuntarily there came from me a sound,
not quite a shout, not quite an oath. I saw the mare's eye turn back,
faintly derisive, as who should say: Alone I did it! Then slowly,
comfortably, a little ashamed, we jogged on, in the mood of men and
horses when danger is over. So pleasant it seemed now, in one short
half-hour, to have passed through the circle-swing of the emotions, from
the ecstasy of hot recklessness to the clutching of chill fear. But
the meeting-point of those two sensations we had left out there on
the mysterious moor! Why, at one moment, had we thought it finer than
anything on earth to risk the breaking of our necks; and the next,
shuddered at being lost in the darkening mist with winter night fast
coming on?
And very luxuriously we turned once more into the lanes, enjoying the
past, scenting the future. Close to home, the first little eddy of
wind stirred, and the song of dripping twigs began; an owl hooted,
honey-soft, in the fog. We came on two farm hands mending the lane at
the turn of the avenue, and, curled on the top of the bank, their cosy
red collie pup, waiting for them to finish work for the day. He raised
his sharp nose and looked at us dewily. We turned down, padding softly
in the wet fox-red drifts under the beechtrees, whereon the last leaves
still flickered out in the darkening whiteness, that now seemed so
little eerie. We passed the grey-green skeleton of the farm-yard gate.
A hen ran across us, clucking, into the dusk. The maze drew her long,
home-coming snuffle, and stood still.
1910.
THE PROCESSION
In one of those corners of our land canopied by the fumes of blind
industry, there was, on that day, a lull in darkness. A fresh wind had
split the customary heaven, or roof of hell; was sweeping long drifts of
creamy clouds across a blue still pallid with reek. The sun even shone—a
sun whose face seemed white and wondering. And under that rare sun all
the little town, among its slag heaps and few tall chimneys, had an air
of living faster. In those continuous courts and alleys, where the women
worked, smoke from each little forge rose and dispersed into the wind
with strange alacrity; amongst the women, too, there was that same
eagerness, for the sunshine had crept in and was making pale all those
dark-raftered, sooted ceilings which covered them in, together with
their immortal comrades, the small open furnaces. About their work they
had been busy since seven o'clock; their feet pressing the leather lungs
which fanned the conical heaps of glowing fuel, their hands poking into
the glow a thin iron rod till the end could be curved into a fiery hook;
snapping it with a mallet; threading it with tongs on to the chain;
hammering, closing the link; and; without a second's pause, thrusting
the iron rod again into the glow. And while they worked they chattered,
laughed sometimes, now and then sighed. They seemed of all ages and all
types; from her who looked like a peasant of Provence, broad, brown,
and strong, to the weariest white consumptive wisp; from old women of
seventy, with straggling grey hair, to fifteen-year-old girls. In the
cottage forges there would be but one worker, or two at most; in the
shop forges four, or even five, little glowing heaps; four or five of
the grimy, pale lung-bellows; and never a moment without a fiery hook
about to take its place on the growing chains, never a second when the
thin smoke of the forges, and of those lives consuming slowly in front
of them, did not escape from out of the dingy, whitewashed spaces past
the dark rafters, away to freedom.
But there had been in the air that morning something more than the
white sunlight. There had been anticipation. And at two o'clock began
fulfilment. The forges were stilled, and from court and alley forth came
the women. In their ragged working clothes, in their best clothes—so
little different; in bonnets, in hats, bareheaded; with babies born and
unborn, they swarmed into the high street and formed across it behind
the band. A strange, magpie, jay-like flock; black, white, patched
with brown and green and blue, shifting, chattering, laughing, seeming
unconscious of any purpose. A thousand and more of them, with faces
twisted and scored by those myriad deformings which a desperate
town-toiling and little food fasten on human visages; yet with hardly
a single evil or brutal face. Seemingly it was not easy to be evil or
brutal on a wage that scarcely bound soul and body. A thousand and more
of the poorest-paid and hardest-worked human beings in the world.
On the pavement alongside this strange, acquiescing assembly of revolt,
about to march in protest against the conditions of their lives, stood a
young woman without a hat and in poor clothes, but with a sort of beauty
in her rough-haired, high cheek-boned, dark-eyed face. She was not one
of them; yet, by a stroke of Nature's irony, there was graven on her
face alone of all those faces, the true look of rebellion; a haughty,
almost fierce, uneasy look—an untamed look. On all the other thousand
faces one could see no bitterness, no fierceness, not even enthusiasm;
only a half-stolid, half-vivacious patience and eagerness as of children
going to a party.
The band played; and they began to march.