one in the last letter I wrote to you. It reminds me of the only _bon
mot_ to which I can lay claim. When I was about six years old, my
mother and I were visiting an aunt of mine, and, one evening, my mother
read aloud to my aunt a letter she had just received. It was lengthy,
and no doubt interesting to the two ladies, while the contents were
probably beyond my comprehension. “Little pigs have long ears,” and I
noticed that, at the conclusion of the letter, my mother read “_P.S._,”
and then some final sentences. Immediately afterwards I was ordered to
bed, and, once there, my mother came to see me. My small mind was full
of this new idea, and I was thirsting for information as to the meaning
of these mysterious letters. Therefore, when my mother had bid me good
night and was going away, I said, “Mother, what does _P.S._ mean; is
it Parting Subject?” She smiled and said, “No, the letters stand for
_post scriptum_, but the meaning is not very different.” She afterwards
helped me to wrestle with the Latin grammar, and in time I arrived at
the exact translation of _post scriptum_, but my childish rendering
of _P.S._ would do just as well. I was made to bitterly regret having
ever suggested it; for, when my proud mother told the story, my various
brothers and sisters, separately and collectively, insisted that some
one had told me to say it, and I am not sure that they did not, each in
turn, give me a thrashing to impress upon me the vice of “trying to be
sharp.” When children have brothers and sisters, their schooling begins
early and lasts a long time--fortunately for themselves and the world
at large.
That, however, has nothing to do with the matter I was going to write
about. I suppose you sometimes look through those galleries of garments
which begin and end ladies’ journals, just as I occasionally glance at
the advertisements of new books, which I find at the end of a modern
novel. The other day I was idly turning over the pages of such a series
of advertisements (each page devoted to one book, and quotations from
the newspaper reviews of it), and I could not help noticing how, in the
case of every book, if not in every _critique_, the author was compared
with some well-known writer--Dickens, Thackeray, George Meredith, Zola,
Ibsen, De Maupassant--it does not seem to matter who it is, so long
as it is some one. As for Mr. Rudyard Kipling, a writer who mentions
India, China, Japan, Siam, the French or Dutch Indies, or any place
within two or three thousand miles of them, is certain to find himself
compared with the astonishingly talented author of “Soldiers Three,”
“The Drums of the Fore and Aft,” and a dozen other tales that had made
Mr. Kipling famous in India years before his name had been heard in the
West.
I know that whenever we visit a new place, we have a ridiculous desire
to compare it with some totally different spot that is familiar to us;
and I suppose we make the comparison, either because we want to show
that we have been somewhere and seen something, or because we are so
devoid of ideas or language to express them, that this comparison is
our only means of description. Like London, only bigger; Petersburg in
winter, but not so cold; bluer than the Mediterranean, and so on. It
seems to imply poverty of resource; but if to help readers to realise
the appearance of a spot in New Zealand, that place is compared with
the Carse of Stirling, the information is not of much use to those who
do not know their Scotland.
Is it the same with literary critics? Hardly, I fancy; because even
though they write easily of Lake Toba, the Thibetan highlands, or more
or less known writers, it can’t give them any real satisfaction, for
their own names are but seldom disclosed.
Enlightened people who attend places of Christian worship, often wish
that the occupant of the pulpit would read a sermon by some great
divine, rather than stumble through an original discourse, which
possibly arouses only the scorn, the resentment, or the pity of his
hearers. The preacher who is conscious of his own want of eloquence, or
realises that the spring of his ideas trickles in the thinnest and most
uncertain of streams, may seek to improve his language, or replenish
his own exhausted stock of subjects, by studying the sermons of abler
men. I doubt if he is greatly to be blamed. Some illustrious writers
have won renown after a diligent study of the works of dead authors,
and a suggestion of the style of a famous master may be observable in
the work of his admirer; just as a modern painter may, consciously or
unconsciously, follow the methods, the composition, or the colour
schemes of a genius who has given his name to a school of imitators. It
would, however, be a little unreasonable to compare all play-writers
with Shakespeare, all essayists with Macaulay. If there is nothing new
under the sun, two or more men or women, contemporaries, may have the
same ideas on a given subject without either being open to a charge
of plagiarism. They may express the same ideas differently, or put
different ideas in somewhat the same style of language: both may have
drawn inspiration from a more or less original source, not generally
known or quoted--in all these cases comparisons may be, and often
are, simply inept. Some subjects are not yet entirely exhausted, and
while it is interesting to compare the different views of recognised
authorities, it is annoying to both writers and readers to find that
the highest flight of criticism of a new work seems often to consist in
mentioning the names of other writers on the same subject--as though
it were, in a sense, their personal property, or they had some vested
interest in it, by reason of discovery or continual harping on that
particular theme. I suppose reviewers, except in a few instances,
have no time to really read the books they criticise, and judge them
on their merits; but, if they could, it would be more satisfactory
to possible readers, who, as things are, can form very little opinion
of what a book contains, its relative value or worthlessness, from
statements like this, which purports to be an extract from a review in
a leading London paper:--
“The opening chapters have a savour of Dickens; the climax is
almost Zolaesque.”
Or this:--
“The knowledge of character revealed reminds us of George
Eliot’s ‘Scenes of Clerical Life.’”
You will think that one who wanders from an infantile legend about the
word _postscript_ to a growl anent newspaper reviews, is indifferently
qualified to criticise any one or anything. As a letter-writer I
acknowledge that I am inconsequent. I do not even seek to be otherwise.
XXXII
A CHALLENGE
Oh! Oh! Oh! What a storm! But are you not a little unreasonable?
You are not a circulating library, you say, nor a railway book-stall;
you don’t want to hear tales of forest and flood which have
no personal interest for you or me; and you cannot carry on a
correspondence with a phrase-book, a thing that has no existence as a
human being, and, when not lecturing you, or taking advantage of your
good-nature to air boring platitudes, is doling out little stories to
you, as though you were a child in a Sunday School.
My dear lady, I hope that you feel better after that tirade; but as you
have attacked me with violence, and at all points at once, I claim the
right to defend myself, and again I say you are unreasonable. We were
never strangers to each other, or so it seems to me, but circumstances
and a certain mental attraction drew us into friendship. In the
delight of your society I realised what it would be to me if, through
that friendship, I might win your affection. I even dreamed that I
might compel the impossible, and attain to an earthly paradise of sweet
alliance whence no mortal promises and no inspired writings could ever
win me.
Whilst we dream of life’s big possibilities, its little duties drive
us where they will. We were parted, and, if I do not now remind you
of that time, it is because I know that there are few things a woman
hates more than to be told she once, by word or deed, showed any tender
feeling for a man who no longer holds the same place in her regard. You
went and I stayed; you spoke and I believed; and what I did not say was
only what you told me not to repeat, lest parting should seem over-hard
to bear. Then I wrote and you wrote, and, at first, your letters were
so fine a gift that they almost consoled me for your absence, and, in
my great gratitude, I wrote some of the thoughts of my inmost heart. My
fervour seemed to frighten you, and the chill of your surroundings came
through your letters to me. It may have been the fault of those about
you; it may have been that you were tried beyond endurance, possibly
even that I, in some indirect way, was a cause of your distress. But
you never said so; you never took me into your confidence and frankly
told me you were in any trouble; only your letters went through those
phases which I, once, cynically suggested were the common fate of those
whose friendship could not survive a real separation. I was too slow
to at once trim my sails to the varying breeze, nor could I call back
letters which were already on their way. Therefore I fell under your
displeasure, and you ordered me to write only of “the daily round, the
common task.” I obeyed you, as nearly as I was able. When you asked
me to tell you of what I saw, of what I was doing, I attempted to do
so, and to make the telling as little personal as I could. To weary
you with the trivialities of my daily life, to describe to you the
wearisome people I met, the _banalités_ they uttered--that was beyond
me. Therefore, to try and interest you, I gave you the best of what had
interested me, and even that was only done with some sacrifice, for
you know my time is not all my own. Naturally those letters were empty
of personal reference. To have written of myself would have been to
write of you, and that might have brought down on my head another storm
of invective. I am in the position of the burnt child: I dread the
fire. Even now I dare not accept your invitation. I might write, and,
before the letter could reach you, receive from you another missive,
telling me your present letter was written under an impulse you regret
but cannot explain, and that of course it meant nothing. You would add
that you delight in the discussion of abstract questions, and queer
little stories are, to you, as rain to dry land. Then I can imagine the
sternly traced characters of that other destroying scroll, in which
you would sum up the tale of my sins, after reading such a letter
as I might send in answer to your present message of discontent and
provocation. So, I warn you. I shall give you time to think; in spite
of your scoffing, I shall continue to write to you as I have done in
these latter days; and then--and then--your blood be on your own head.
If the outward cold of damp and fog, of weeks of sunless gloom and
surroundings of rain-drenched rows of hideous dwellings, muddy roads,
sullen skies, and leaden seas produce what you no doubt think is a
virtuous frame of mind, when the state of the crops and the troubles of
the farmers are the only matters with which a conscience-burdened woman
can occupy her mind, I shall pander to your appetite, and write to you
of famine and plague, the prospects of the poppy (the opium poppy,
you understand) and I will even stretch a point to discuss the silver
question and the fate of the rupee. If, on the other hand, you throw
discretion to the winds; if in that atmosphere where you say you are
always frozen, “outside and in,” you pine for a glimpse of sunlight;
if you like to watch a conflagration when at a safe distance from the
flames, or even if the contortions of the cockchafer, when impaled by
the pin, excite your amusement;--then also I will help you to realise
these very reasonable wishes. Yes, then I will write you a love-letter
that will be but a poor substitute for the impassioned words that
should stir your heart, were once my lips within reach of yours.
Even from here I see you smile; even now I hear you say, “Well,
write--after all vivisection has benefited the race, and the
contortions of the cockchafer will perhaps distract one’s attention
for a moment from the eternal monotony of the narrow life.”
XXXIII
IN EXILE
In order that I may keep on perfectly safe ground, and successfully
resist the temptation to depart from my resolve, I will tell you a
story of my visit to Burmah, where, wandering aimlessly, I found an old
friend in a distinguished Indian civilian, who invited me to accompany
him on a tour of inspection. I gladly accepted his invitation, and
we had been travelling for some time, driving, riding, walking, and,
finally, after rafting over a magnificent series of rapids, had been
some days paddling down the river in house-boats, when we reached a
remote inland station called Phatmah. I caught my first view of the
place as our boat swung round a bend in the great river, disclosing a
reach of brown water, enclosed between high, jungle-covered banks, and
shut in, at the end, by a green hill, crowned by a plank bungalow with
a mat roof.
The boat was soon alongside the rough landing-stage, where a young
civilian, introduced as Basset, was waiting to receive his chief. We
climbed the steep hill, and Basset conducted us to the house devoted to
our shelter for the couple of days we were to spend at Phatmah.
In my two days’ stay there, I had ample opportunities of seeing the
place, and realising its few attractions and its many drawbacks. There
was a tiny native village on the bank of one of the two streams that
here united in one great river, and flowed in stately, ever-widening
progress for over two hundred miles before it reached the sea: two
hundred miles of virgin forest, save for the native villages and
clearings that lined the banks at uncertain intervals. A few jungle
tracks leading to distant mines were the only apology for roads; the
river was the real highway, and the sole means of transport were native
boats. Comfortable enough, these boats, for men used to jungle travel;
flat and wide, with a palm-leaf roof, the fore-part occupied by the
crew, the after-part by passengers. There was a deck of boards or split
bamboos, and you could only move about it by crawling on your hands and
knees. Entrance and exit were accomplished by the same means. A door,
at the back of the enclosed after-deck, led on to a bamboo frame over
the rudder; the steersman sat on the palm-leaf awning, and the only
privacy was obtained by hanging a screen between crew and passengers.
There was room for two mattresses on the after-deck, and there the
passengers sat or lay through the blazing heat of the tropical day and
the star-lit stillness of the Burmese night.
At this station there dwelt, besides Basset, an officer of police,
another concerned with public works, and an apothecary in charge of
a hospital. That was all. Their quarters were dotted about on the
high land behind Basset’s bungalow. For the rest, the eye was met
by jungle--near and far--endless jungle, and the river-reach. Silent
and placid the waters, moving along in brown eddies, when, as now,
the river was in flood; clear and shallow, disclosing groups of rocks
dotted about the bed, in what was called the dry season.
At the time of our visit it was spring, and the jungle, especially in
certain parts of the mountainous country, was a truly marvellous sight.
The forest had put on its wedding garment, and the new leaves of many,
even of most of the trees, were dazzling in the brilliance of their
colouring. The prevailing hues were red and yellow; but then there were
shades of red and of yellow that one never seemed to have dreamed of,
such quantity, such intensity that the eyes almost ached with gazing at
the glory of it all.
One is struck, especially in the East, by the wonder of flowering
trees, or the striking creepers that cling to the tops of forest
giants; but imagine these same trees in all their height, their wealth
of foliage, and beauty of form, one mass of colour! There were trees of
delicate lemon, of brilliant cadmium, of deepest orange; trees of such
crimson that every leaf looked as though it were dripping with fresh
blood; trees of copper and pale pink, of terra-cotta and scarlet--all
these in one pure colour, or intermingled with every shade of green
from palest apple, through varying tones of emerald, to the shining
dark leaves that seemed all but black. Dotted about, here and there,
stood trees of some shade of brown, or graceful forms clothed in darker
or paler heliotrope. The virgin Eastern forest is a sight to see, but
the glory of the jungle in the first freshness of spring leafage is a
revelation.
That jungle was one of the attractions of Phatmah;--not monopolised by
Phatmah, only shared, and not to so large an extent as by a thousand
other places nearer the great hills.
Then there was the river reach, where all day long the shadows crept
gradually closer under one bank as they were projected from the other;
while now and then a native boat passed up or down the river, and,
for a few minutes, broke the melancholy of that changeless stretch of
water. The sunsets made the last, and perhaps the greatest attraction
of Phatmah. Then, in the after-glow, great beams of light would rise,
fan-like, from east and west, almost meeting in the zenith, and leave,
between their rays, sharply-defined, heavenly roads of deepest blue;
while the soft white clouds, riding through the sky, took shades of
gold and rose and pearly-grey, until the stars shone out and set all
the cicadas shrilling a chorus to waken every other denizen of the
jungle.
Sunsets cannot be commanded; they are intermittent, and, though they
are comforting--in a way--they do not always come when they are most
wanted. In Phatmah it would rain in torrents on the evening that you
had set your heart upon seeing a gorgeous sunset, and, when it did not
rain, it was hotter than in almost any other spot in Burmah, and that
is saying a great deal. Moreover, it was as dull probably as any place
on earth, except to the three white men who lived there and had their
work to do, or whose business took them, weekly, or at least monthly,
into some other more or less desolate part of the district.
I noted these things in that first day I was at Phatmah, while my
friend and Basset were talking about roads to be made and buildings
constructed, natives to be encouraged or sat upon, dacoits harried,
and all the things that make the life of the exiled English officer in
the outermost parts of the Empire. I also observed Basset. I knew he
had a wife, a girl whom he had just married, when at home on leave in
England, and who was now in that house, across the grass, a hundred
yards away. I had not seen Basset’s wife, but I had heard of her from
some who had met her, before she left the last confines of civilisation
and started for what must in future be her home. What I had heard made
it seem unlikely that Mrs. Basset would reconcile herself to jungle
life, and, when I understood Phatmah, I thought it would be very
surprising if such a miracle could be wrought for the sake of Basset.
Basset was a most excellent fellow, a good officer, good to look at,
lithe and well-made, a man who had found favour with his seniors and
was likely to do well. He was young, but that was a fault for which he
was not responsible, and one that every day was curing. And yet, when
I saw Phatmah, I thought Basset had been unwise, and when I saw his
wife, as I did the next day, I felt certain of it.
I had been told she was very young in years and child-like at that,
nervous to the last degree, selfish, unreasonable, full of fancies,
and rather pretty--but the one or two ladies who were my informants
differed as to this last important particular.
What I saw for myself, when I went to call upon “the only lady in
Phatmah,” was this: a glory of fair waving hair framing a young, but
not very youthful face; a pallid complexion, and features where nothing
specially appealed for admiration; a voice that was not more than
pleasant, and a figure that, while very _petite_, seemed well enough
shapen, as far as could be seen under the garment of silk and lace that
must have been the first of its kind to visit Phatmah. The house did
not strike me as showing more than the evidences of a young man’s
anxiety to make it what he would call “fit for a lady”; but then the
resources of Phatmah were strictly limited, the Bassets had only just,
so to speak, arrived, and things entrusted to the tender mercies of
river transport were often months upon the way. On the whole there was
nothing about Mrs. Basset to excite either sympathy or interest, if
you had met her in any civilised place; but as the only white woman
in Phatmah, come here to gain her first real experiences of life,
scared by frogs and lizards, and terrified by the many insects that fly
straight at you and stick on your hair, your face, your clothes, one
could not help feeling that the experiment, if not a cruel one to her,
was at least thoughtless, and, if persisted in, might end in disaster.
My friend and I exerted ourselves that afternoon and evening (for
the Bassets dined with us) to put as good a complexion as we could
on Burmah in general and Phatmah in particular; and though, to the
ordinary spectator, we might have appeared to succeed fairly well, I
carried away with me vague suspicions, born of my own observation and
the conversation I had had with the lady as we sat and looked over
that jungle-shrouded river-reach, while the path to the stars grew an
ever-deepening blue, and she told me somewhat of herself and her life.
There was no doubt that she not only _looked_ dissatisfied, but felt
it, and said it, and took credit for her candour. Then she complained
that Phatmah offered no opportunities for “getting into mischief,” but
that was probably merely another way of saying that she was utterly
bored; and, in truth, when she asked if I could conceive a greater
dulness, the trite reply that she had her husband stuck in my throat,
and I admitted that it was immeasurably dull, but talked cheerfully
of what it would be when communication with the outside world was
easier, and then fell to asking her if she read, or played, or sang,
or sketched, as Phatmah seemed to be the very place for study, or the
practice of accomplishments. She pleaded that she was too lately from
school to hanker after study, but became almost enthusiastic on the
subject of music.
Then our _tête-à-tête_ was interrupted, and in the evening the only
thing that struck me was that, for a girl so lately from school,
our guest drank rather more in quantity and variety than was usual,
and whenever in the after-days my thoughts went back to Phatmah, I
remembered this with an uncomfortable feeling of the awful loneliness
of that reach of brown river, the boundless forest, and the girl, left
for days to her own devices, and the possibility of “getting into
mischief” by drowning a craving, not for excitement so much as for the
companionship of her kind.
A hundred miles below Phatmah the river wound through the plains
in long reaches, six or seven miles in length; the country was more
open, and the banks were occasionally fringed with palms and orchards
surrounding the huts of a native hamlet. The moon was waxing to the
full, and, sitting at the stern of my boat, looking back up the long
stretch of water bathed in mellow light, till the wide band of silver
narrowed to a point that vanished in grey mist, I could not help
thinking that, even here, the sense of loneliness, of monotony, and
banishment, was less acute than in Phatmah’s forest-bound clearing.
* * * * *