THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD
In that nationally interesting Poem, or Dramatic Satire, once famous,
THE RAJAH IN LONDON (London, Limbo and Sons, 1889), now obliterated
under the long wash of Press-matter, the reflection--not unknown to
philosophical observers, and natural perhaps in the mind of an Oriental
Prince--produced by his observation of the march of London citizens
Eastward at morn, Westward at eve, attributes their practice to a
survival of the Zoroastrian form of worship. His Minister, favourable
to the people or for the sake of fostering an idea in his Master's head,
remarks, that they show more than the fidelity of the sunflower to her
God. The Rajah, it would appear, frowns interrogatively, in the princely
fashion, accusing him of obscureness of speech:--princes and the louder
members of the grey public are fraternally instant to spurn at the whip
of that which they do not immediately comprehend. It is explained by the
Minister: not even the flower, he says, would hold constant, as they, to
the constantly unseen--a trebly cataphractic Invisible. The Rajah
professes curiosity to know how it is that the singular people nourish
their loyalty, since they cannot attest to the continued being of the
object in which they put their faith. He is informed by his prostrate
servant of a settled habit they have of diligently seeking their
Divinity, hidden above, below; and of copiously taking inside them doses
of what is denied to their external vision: thus they fortify credence
chemically on an abundance of meats and liquors; fire they eat, and they
drink fire; they become consequently instinct with fire. Necessarily
therefore they believe in fire. Believing, they worship. Worshipping,
they march Eastward at morn, Westward at eve. For that way lies the key,
this way the cupboard, of the supplies, their fuel.
According to Stage directions, THE RAJAH AND HIS MINISTER Enter a Gin-
Palace.--It is to witness a service that they have learnt to appreciate
as Anglicanly religious.
On the step of the return to their Indian clime, they speak of the hatted
sect, which is most, or most commercially, succoured and fattened by our
rule there: they wave adieu to the conquering Islanders, as to 'Parsees
beneath a cloud.'
The two are seen last on the deck of the vessel, in perusal of a medical
pamphlet composed of statistics and sketches, traceries, horrid blots,
diagrams with numbers referring to notes, of the various maladies caused
by the prolonged prosecution of that form of worship.
'But can they suffer so and live?' exclaims the Rajah, vexed by the
physical sympathetic twinges which set him wincing.
'Science,' his Minister answers, 'took them up where Nature, in pity of
their martyrdom, dropped them. They do not live; they are engines,
insensible things of repairs and patches; insteamed to pursue their
infuriate course, to the one end of exhausting supplies for the renewing
of them, on peril of an instant suspension if they deviate a step or
stop: nor do they.'
The Rajah is of opinion, that he sails home with the key of the riddle of
their power to vanquish. In some apparent allusion to an Indian story of
a married couple who successfully made their way, he accounts for their
solid and resistless advance, resembling that of--
The doubly-wedded man and wife,
Pledged to each other and against the world
With mutual union.
One would like to think of the lengthened tide-flux of pedestrian
citizens facing South-westward, as being drawn by devout attraction to
our nourishing luminary: at the hour, mark, when the Norland cloud-king,
after a day of wild invasion, sits him on his restful bank of bluefish
smack-o'-cheek red above Whitechapel, to spy where his last puff of icy
javelins pierces and dismembers the vapoury masses in cluster about the
circle of flame descending upon the greatest and most elevated of
Admirals at the head of the Strand, with illumination of smoke-plumed
chimneys, house-roofs, window-panes, weather-vanes, monument and
pedimental monsters, and omnibus umbrella. One would fair believe that
they advance admireing; they are assuredly made handsome by the beams.
No longer mere concurrent atoms of the furnace of business (from coal-
dust to sparks, rushing, as it were, on respiratory blasts of an enormous
engine's centripetal and centrifugal energy), their step is leisurely to
meet the rosy Dinner, which is ever a see-saw with the God of Light in
his fall; the mask of the noble human visage upon them is not roughened,
as at midday, by those knotted hard ridges of the scrambler's hand seen
from forehead down to jaw; when indeed they have all the appearance of
sour scientific productions. And unhappily for the national portrait, in
the Poem quoted, the Rajah's Minister chose an hour between morning and
meridian, or at least before an astonished luncheon had come to composure
inside their persons, for drawing his Master's attention to the quaint
similarity of feature in the units of the busy antish congregates they
had travelled so far to visit and to study:
These Britons wear
The driven and perplexed look of men
Begotten hastily 'twixt business hours
It could not have been late afternoon.
These Orientals should have seen them, with Victor Radnor among them,
fronting the smoky splendours of the sunset. In April, the month of
piled and hurried cloud, it is a Rape of the Sabines overhead from all
quarters, either one of the winds brawnily larcenous; and London, smoking
royally to the open skies, builds images of a dusty epic fray for
possession of the portly dames. There is immensity, swinging motion,
collision, dusky richness of colouring, to the sight; and to the mind
idea. London presents it. If we can allow ourselves a moment for not
inquireing scrupulously (you will do it by inhaling the aroma of the ripe
kitchen hour), here is a noble harmony of heaven and the earth of the
works of man, speaking a grander tongue than barren sea or wood or
wilderness. Just a moment; it goes; as, when a well-attuned barrel-organ
in a street has drawn us to recollections of the Opera or Italy, another
harshly crashes, and the postman knocks at doors, and perchance a
costermonger cries his mash of fruit, a beggar woman wails her hymn.
For the pinched are here, the dinnerless, the weedy, the gutter-growths,
the forces repressing them. That grand tongue of the giant City inspires
none human to Bardic eulogy while we let those discords be. An
embittered Muse of Reason prompts her victims to the composition of the
adulatory Essay and of the Leading Article, that she may satiate an angry
irony 'upon those who pay fee for their filling with the stuff. Song of
praise she does not permit. A moment of satisfaction in a striking
picture is accorded, and no more. For this London, this England, Europe,
world, but especially this London, is rather a thing for hospital
operations than for poetic rhapsody; in aspect, too, streaked scarlet
and pock-pitted under the most cumbrous of jewelled tiaras; a Titanic
work of long-tolerated pygmies; of whom the leaders, until sorely
discomforted in body and doubtful in soul, will give gold and labour,
will impose restrictions upon activity, to maintain a conservatism of
diseases. Mind is absent, or somewhere so low down beneath material
accumulations that it is inexpressive, powerless to drive the ponderous
bulk to such excisings, purgeings, purifyings as might--as may, we will
suppose, render it acceptable, for a theme of panegyric, to the Muse of
Reason; ultimately, with her consent, to the Spirit of Song.
But first there must be the cleansing. When Night has fallen upon
London, the Rajah remarks:
Monogamic Societies present
A decent visage and a hideous rear.
His Minister (satirically, or in sympathetic Conservatism) would have
them not to move on, that they may preserve among beholders the
impression of their handsome frontage. Night, however, will come; and
they, adoreing the decent face, are moved on, made to expose what the
Rajah sees. Behind his courteousness, he is an antagonistic observer of
his conquerors; he pushes his questions farther than the need for them;
his Minister the same; apparently to retain the discountenanced people in
their state of exposure. Up to the time of the explanation of the puzzle
on board the departing vessel (on the road to Windsor, at the Premier's
reception, in the cell of the Police, in the presence of the Magistrate-
whose crack of a totally inverse decision upon their case, when he
becomes acquainted with the titles and station of these imputedly
peccant, refreshes them), they hold debates over the mysterious
contrarieties of a people professing in one street what they confound
in the next, and practising by day a demureness that yells with the
cat of the tiles at night.
Granting all that, it being a transient novelist's business to please the
light-winged hosts which live for the hour, and give him his only chance
of half of it, let him identify himself with them, in keeping to the
quadrille on the surface and shirking the disagreeable.
Clouds of high colour above London City are as the light of the Goddess
to lift the angry heroic head over human. They gloriously transfigure.
A Murillo beggar is not more precious than sight of London in any of the
streets admitting coloured cloud-scenes; the cunning of the sun's hand so
speaks to us. And if haply down an alley some olive mechanic of street-
organs has quickened little children's legs to rhythmic footing, they
strike on thoughts braver than pastoral. Victor Radnor, lover of the
country though he was, would have been the first to say it. He would
indeed have said it too emphatically. Open London as a theme, to a
citizen of London ardent for the clear air out of it, you have roused an
orator; you have certainly fired a magazine, and must listen to his
reminiscences of one of its paragraphs or pages.
The figures of the hurtled fair ones in sky were wreathing Nelson's
cocked hat when Victor, distinguishably bright-faced amid a crowd of the
irradiated, emerged from the tideway to cross the square, having thoughts
upon Art, which were due rather to the suggestive proximity of the
National Gallery than to the Flemish mouldings of cloud-forms under
Venetian brushes. His purchases of pictures had been his unhappiest
ventures. He had relied and reposed on the dicta of newspaper critics;
who are sometimes unanimous, and are then taken for guides, and are
fatal. He was led to the conclusion that our modern-lauded pictures
do not ripen. They have a chance of it, if abused. But who thinks of
buying the abused? Exalted by the critics, they have, during the days
of Exhibition, a glow, a significance or a fun, abandoning them where
examination is close and constant, and the critic's trumpet-note
dispersed to the thinness of the fee for his blowing. As to foreign
pictures, classic pictures, Victor had known his purse to leap for a
Raphael with a history in stages of descent from the Master, and critics
to swarm: a Raphael of the dealers, exposed to be condemned by the
critics, universally derided. A real Raphael in your house is
aristocracy to the roof-tree. But the wealthy trader will reach to
title before he may hope to get the real Raphael or a Titian. Yet he
is the one who would, it may be, after enjoyment of his prize, bequeath
it to the nation--PRESENTED TO THE NATION BY VICTOR MONTGOMERY RADNOR.
There stood the letters in gilt; and he had a thrill of his generosity;
for few were the generous acts he could not perform; and if an object
haunted the deed, it came of his trader's habit of mind.
He revelled in benevolent projects of gifts to the nation, which would
coat a sensitive name. Say, an ornamental City Square, flowers,
fountains, afternoon bands of music--comfortable seats in it, and a
shelter, and a ready supply of good cheap coffee or tea. Tobacco?
why not rolls of honest tobacco! nothing so much soothes the labourer.
A volume of plans for the benefit of London smoked out of each ascending
pile in his brain. London is at night a moaning outcast round the
policeman's' legs. What of an all-night-long, cosy, brightly lighted,
odoriferous coffee-saloon for rich or poor, on the model of the
hospitable Paduan? Owner of a penny, no soul among us shall be
rightly an outcast . . . .
Dreams of this kind are taken at times by wealthy people as a cordial at
the bar of benevolent intentions. But Victor was not the man to steal
his refreshments in that known style. He meant to make deeds of them,
as far as he could, considering their immense extension; and except for
the sensitive social name, he was of single-minded purpose.
Turning to the steps of a chemist's shop to get a prescription made up
for his Nataly's doctoring of her domestics, he was arrested by a rap on
his elbow; and no one was near; and there could not be a doubt of the
blow--a sharp hard stroke, sparing the funny-bone, but ringing. His
head, at the punctilio bump, throbbed responsively--owing to which or
indifference to the prescription, as of no instant requirement, he
pursued his course, resembling mentally the wanderer along a misty beach,
who hears cannon across the waters.
He certainly had felt it. He remembered the shock: he could not remember
much of pain. How about intimations? His asking caused a smile.
Very soon the riddle answered itself. He had come into view of the
diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum; recollecting a
couplet from the pen of the disrespectful Satirist Peter, he thought of a
fall: his head and his elbow responded simultaneously to the thought.
All was explained save his consequent rightabout from the chemist's shop:
and that belongs to the minor involutions of circumstances and the will.
It passed like a giver's wrinkle. He read the placards of the Opera;
reminding himself of the day when it was the single Opera-house; and now
we have two-or three. We have also a distracting couple of Clowns and
Pantaloons in our Pantomimes: though Colney says that the multiplication
of the pantaloon is a distinct advance to representative truth--and
bother Colney! Two Columbines also. We forbear to speak of men, but
where is the boy who can set his young heart upon two Columbines at once!
Victor felt the boy within him cold to both: and in his youth he had
doated on the solitary twirling spangled lovely Fairy. The tale of a
delicate lady dancer leaping as the kernel out of a nut from the arms of
Harlequin to the legalized embrace of a wealthy brewer, and thenceforth
living, by repute, with unagitated legs, as holy a matron, despite her
starry past, as any to be shown in a country breeding the like
abundantly, had always delighted him. It seemed a reconcilement of
opposing stations, a defeat of Puritanism. Ay, and poor women!--women in
the worser plight under the Puritan's eye. They may be erring and good:
yes, finding the man to lift them the one step up! Read the history of
the error. But presently we shall teach the Puritan to act by the
standards of his religion. All is coming right--must come right. Colney
shall be confounded.
Hereupon Victor hopped on to Fenellan's hint regarding the designs of
Mrs. Burman.
His Nataly might have to go through a short sharp term of scorching--
Godiva to the gossips.
She would come out of it glorified. She would be reconciled with her
family. With her story of her devotion to the man loving her, the world
would know her for the heroine she was: a born lady, in appearance and
manner an empress among women. It was a story to be pleaded in any
court, before the sternest public. Mrs. Burman had thrown her into
temptation's way. It was a story to touch the heart, as none other ever
written of over all the earth was there a woman equalling his Nataly!
And their Nesta would have a dowry to make princesses envious:--she would
inherit . . . he ran up an arithmetical column, down to a line of
figures in addition, during three paces of his feet. Dartrey Fenellan
had said of little Nesta once, that she had a nature pure and sparkling
as mid-sea foam. Happy he who wins her! But she was one of the young
women who are easily pleased and hardly enthralled. Her father strained
his mind for the shape of the man to accomplish the feat. Whether she
had an ideal of a youth in her feminine head, was beyond his guessing.
She was not the damsel to weave a fairy waistcoat for the identical
prince, and try it upon all comers to discover him: as is done by some;
excuseably, if we would be just. Nesta was of the elect, for whom
excuses have not to be made. She would probably like a flute-player
best; because her father played the flute, and she loved him--laughably
a little maiden's reason! Her father laughed at her.
Along the street of Clubs, where a bruised fancy may see black balls
raining, the narrow way between ducal mansions offers prospect of the
sweep of greensward, all but touching up to the sunset to draw it to the
dance.
Formerly, in his very early youth, he clasped a dream of gaining way
to an alliance with one of these great surrounding houses; and he had
a passion for the acquisition of money as a means. And it has to be
confessed, he had sacrificed in youth a slice of his youth, to gain it
without labour--usually a costly purchase. It had ended disastrously: or
say, a running of the engine off the rails, and a speedy re-establishment
of traffic. Could it be a loss, that had led to the winning of his
Nataly? Can we really loathe the first of the steps when the one in
due sequence, cousin to it, is a blessedness? If we have been righted
to health by a medical draught, we are bound to be respectful to our
drug. And so we are, in spite of Nature's wry face and shiver at a
mention of what we went through during those days, those horrible days:
--hide them!
The smothering of them from sight set them sounding he had to listen.
Colney Durance accused him of entering into bonds with somebody's
grandmother for the simple sake of browsing on her thousands: a picture
of himself too abhorrent to Victor to permit of any sort of acceptance.
Consequently he struck away to the other extreme of those who have a
choice in mixed motives: he protested that compassion had been the cause
of it. Looking at the circumstance now, he could see, allowing for human
frailty-perhaps a wish to join the ranks of the wealthy compassion for
the woman as the principal motive. How often had she not in those old
days praised his generosity for allying his golden youth to her withered
age--Mrs. Burman's very words! And she was a generous woman or had been:
she was generous in saying that. Well, and she was generous in having a
well-born, well-bred beautiful young creature like Nataly for her
companion, when it was a case of need for the dear girl; and
compassionately insisting, against remonstrances: they were spoken by
him, though they were but partial. How, then, had she become--at least,
how was it that she could continue to behave as the vindictive Fury who
persecuted remorselessly, would give no peace, poisoned the wells round
every place where he and his dear one pitched their tent!
But at last she had come to charity, as he could well believe. Not too
late! Victor's feeling of gratitude to Mrs. Burman assured him it was
genuine because of his genuine conviction, that she had determined to end
her incomprehensibly lengthened days in reconcilement with him: and he
had always been ready to 'forget and forgive.' A truly beautiful old
phrase! It thrilled off the most susceptible of men.
His well-kept secret of the spacious country-house danced him behind a
sober demeanour from one park to another; and along beside the drive to
view of his townhouse--unbeloved of the inhabitants, although by
acknowledgement it had, as Fredi funnily drawled, to express her sense
of justice in depreciation, 'good accommodation.' Nataly was at home,
he was sure. Time to be dressing: sun sets at six-forty, he said, and
glanced at the stained West, with an accompanying vision of outspread
primroses flooding banks of shadowy fields near Lakelands.
He crossed the road and rang.
Upon the opening of the door, there was a cascade of muslin downstairs.
His darling Fredi stood out of it, a dramatic Undine.