that particularly one-horse Colony, every native of India is known
indiscriminately by the term of "coolie." John, it is true, was a native
of India, but he was no "coolie"; he could read, write, and speak
English, and was altogether a superior person. I would not take him up
country to be bullied and demeaned as a "coolie," and I made for him an
arrangement with the proprietor of my hotel that during my absence John
should help to wait in his restaurant. During the Zulu campaign I was
abominably served by a lazy Africander and a lazier St. Helena boy. When
Ulundi was fought, and Cetewayo's kraal was burned, I was glad to return
to Durban, and take passage for India. John, I found, had during my
absence become one of the prominent inhabitants of Durban. He had now
the full charge of the hotel restaurant--he was the centurion of the
dinner-table, with men under him, to whom he said "do this," and they
did it. His skill in dishes new to Natal, especially in curries, had
crowded the restaurant, and the landlord had taken the opportunity of
raising his tariff. He came to me privily, and said frankly that John
was making his fortune for him, that he was willing to give him a share
in his business in a year's time if he would but stay, and meantime was
ready to pay him a stipend of twenty dollars a week. The wages at which
John served me, and I had been told I was paying him extravagantly, was
eleven dollars a month. I told the landlord that I should not think of
standing in the way of my man's prosperity, but would rather influence
him in favour of an opportunity so promising. Then I sent for John,
explained to him the hotel-keeper's proposal, and suggested that he
should take time to think the matter over. John wept. "I no stay here,
master, not if it was hundred rupees a day! I go with master; I no stop
in Durban!" Nothing would shake his resolve, and so John and I came to
England together.
[Illustration: "JOHN BEHAVED MAGNIFICENTLY."]
The only thing John did not like in England was that the street boys
insisted on regarding him as a Zulu, and treating him contumeliously
accordingly. His great delight was when I went on a round of visits to
country houses, and took him with me as valet. Then he was the hero of
the servants' hall. I will not say that he lied, but from anecdotes of
him that occasionally came to my ears, it would seem he created the
impression that he habitually waded in knee-deep gore, and that he was
in the habit of contemplating with equanimity battle-fields littered
with the slaughtered combatants. John was quite the small lion of the
hour. He had very graceful ways, and great skill in making tasteful
bouquets. These he would present to the ladies of the household when
they came downstairs of a morning, with a graceful salaam, and the
expression of a hope that they had slept well. The spectacle of John,
seen from the drawing-room windows of Chevening, Lord Stanhope's seat in
Kent, as he swaggered across the park to church one Sunday morning in
frock coat and silk hat, with a buxom cook on one arm and a tall and
lean lady's maid on the other, will never be effaced from the
recollection of those who witnessed it with shrieks of laughter.
[Illustration: "A BUXOM COOK ON ONE ARM AND LEAN LADY'S MAID ON THE
OTHER."]
In those days I lived in a flat, my modest establishment consisting of
an old female housekeeper and John. For the most part my two domestics
were good friends, but there were periods of estrangement during which
they were not on speaking terms; and then they sat on opposite sides of
the kitchen table, and communicated with each other exclusively by
written notes of an excessively formal character, passed across the
table. This stiffness of etiquette had its amusing side, but was
occasionally embarrassing, since neither was uniformly intelligible with
the pen. The result was that sometimes I got no dinner at all, and at
other times, when I was dining alone, the board groaned with the
profusion, and when I had company there would not be enough to go round;
these awkwardnesses arising from the absence of a good understanding
between my two domestics. I could not part with the old female servant,
and I began rather to tire of John, whose head had become considerably
swollen because of the notice which had been taken of him. It was all
very well to be in a position to gratify ladies who were giving dinner
parties, and who wrote me little notes asking for the loan for a few
hours of John, to make that wonderful prawn curry of which he had the
sole recipe. But John used to return from that culinary operation very
late, and with indications that his beverage during his exertions had
not been wholly confined to water. To my knowledge he had a wife in Goa,
yet I feared he had his flirtations here in London. Once I charged him
with inconstancy to the lady in Goa, but he repudiated the aspersion
with the quaint denial: "No, master, many ladies are loving me, but I
don't love no ladies!"
However, I had in view to spend a winter in the States, and resolved to
send John home. He wept copiously when I told him of this resolve, and
professed his anxiety to die in my service. But I remained firm, and
reminded him that he had not seen his wife in Goa for nearly three
years. That argument appeared to carry little weight with him; but he
tearfully submitted to the inevitable. I made him a good present, and
obtained for him from the Peninsular and Oriental people a free passage
to Bombay, and wages besides in the capacity of a saloon steward. I saw
him off from Southampton; at the moment of parting he emitted lugubrious
howls. He never fulfilled his promise of writing to me, and I gave up
the expectation of hearing of him any more.
Some two years later, I went to Australia by way of San Francisco and
New Zealand. At Auckland I found letters and newspapers awaiting me from
Sydney and Melbourne. Among the papers was a Melbourne illustrated
journal, on a page of which I found a full-length portrait of the
redoubtable John, his many-syllabled name given at full length, with a
memoir of his military experiences, affixed to which was a fac-simile of
the certificate of character which I had given him when we parted. It
was further stated that "Mr. Compostella de Crucis" was for the present
serving in the capacity of butler to a financial magnate in one of the
suburbs of Melbourne, but that it was his intention to purchase the
goodwill of a thriving restaurant named. Among the first to greet me on
the Melbourne jetty was John, radiant with delight, and eager to
accompany me throughout my projected lecture tour. I dissuaded him in
his own interest from doing so; and when I finally quitted the pleasant
city by the shore of Hobson's Bay, John was running with success the
"Maison Dore" in Burke Street. I fear, if she is alive, that his wife in
Goa is a "grass widow" to this day.
[Illustration: The Idler's Club Subject for Discussion The Artistic
Temperament.]
[Sidenote: Dr. Parker says It depends upon the health of the artist.]
Is the artistic temperament a blessing or a curse? We should first
decide what the artistic temperament means. Artistic is a large word. It
includes painting, acting, poetry, music, literature, preaching. Whether
the temperament is a blessing or a curse largely depends upon the health
of the artist. If De Quincey was an artist, the artistic temperament was
a curse. So also with Thomas Carlyle. So also with Charles Lamb. The
artistic temperament is creative, sympathetic, responsive; it sees
everything, feels everything, realises everything, on a scale of
exaggeration. It is in quest of ideals, and all ideals are more or less
in the clouds, and not seldom at the tip-top of the rainbow. Those who
undertake such long journeys are subject to disappointment and fatigue
by the way; if ever they do come to the end of their journey it is
probably in a temper of fretfulness and exasperation. A sudden knock at
the door may drive an artist into hysterics. He is always working at the
end of his tether. There is nothing more tantalising than an eternal
quest after the ideal; like the horizon, it recedes from the traveller;
like the mirage, it vanishes before the claims of hunger and thirst. On
the other hand, it has enjoyments all its own. The idealist is always
face to face with a great expectation. Perhaps to-night he may realise
it; certainly in the morning it will be much nearer; and as for the
third day, it will be realised in some great festival of delight. There
is, too, a subtle selfishness in this quest after the ideal--the Holy
Grail of the imagination. The artist keeps the secret from his brother
artists until he can startle them with some gracious surprise. He almost
pities them, as he thinks of the revelation that is about to dawn upon
unsuspecting and slumberous minds. Postponement of this surprise is a
torment to the mind which had planned its dazzling disclosure. The
greatest pain of all to the artistic temperament is that it lives in the
world of the Impossible and the Unattainable. That arm must be very
weary which for a lifetime has been stretched out towards the horizon.
Then think of the cross-lights, the mingled colours, the uncalculated
relations which enter into the composition of the dreamer's life, and
say whether that life is not more of a chaos than a cosmos. If the
artistic temperament came within the range of our own choice and will,
possibly we could do something with it; but inasmuch as it is ours by
heredity, and not by adoption, we must do the best we can with the
stubborn fatality.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mrs. Lynn Linton thinks it depends upon ourselves.]
If to feel keenly be a nobler state than to drone with blunt edges
through that thicket of myrtle and nightshade we call life, then is the
artistic temperament a blessing. If the oyster be more enviable than the
nightingale, then is it a curse. It all depends on our angle, and the
colours we most prefer in the prism. He who has the artistic temperament
knows depths and heights such as Those Others cannot even imagine. The
feet that spring into the courts of heaven by a look or a word--by the
glory of the starry night or the radiance of the dawn--stray down into
the deepest abysses of hell, when Love has died or Nature forgets to
smile. To the artistic temperament there is but little of the mean of
things. The "Mezzo Cammin" is a line too narrow for their eager steps.
Proportion is the one quality in emotional geometry which is left out of
their lesson of life. Their grammar deals only with superlatives; and
the positive seems to them inelastic, dead and common-place. Imaginative
sympathy colours and transforms the whole picture of existence. By this
sympathy the artistic of temperament knows the secrets of souls, and
understands all where Those Others see nothing. And herein lies one
source of those waters of bitterness which so often flood his heart.
Feeling for and with his kind, as accurately as the mirror reflects the
object held before it, he finds none to share the pain, the joy, the
indignation he endures by this sympathy, which is reflection. He visits
the Grundyite, who says "Shocking," "Not nice," when human nature
writhes in its agony and cries aloud for that drop of water which he,
the virtuous conformist, refuses. He goes to the flat-footed and
broad-waisted; those who plod along the beaten highway, and turn neither
to the right hand nor to the left, neither to the hills nor the hollows.
But he speaks a foreign language, and they heed him not. The iron-bound
care nought. Does that cry of suffering raise the price of stocks or
lower that of grain? Tush! let it pass. To each back its own burden. So
he carries the piteous tale whereby his heart is aching for sympathy,
and Those Others give him stones for bread and a serpent for a fish.
Then he looks up to heaven, and asks if there be indeed a God to suffer
all this wrong; or if there be, How long, O Lord, how long! The artistic
temperament is not merely artistic perception, with which it is so often
confounded. You may be steeped to the lips in that temperament, and yet
not be able to arrange flowers with deftness, draw a volute, or strike a
true chord. And you may be able to do all these, and yet be dead in
heart and cold in brain--a mere curly-wigged poodle doing its clever
tricks with dexterity, and obedient to the hand that feeds it. The
artistic temperament is not this, but something far different. Would you
know what it is, and what it brings? It is the Key of Life, without
which no one can understand the mysteries nor hear the secret music; and
it plants a dagger in the flesh, with the handle outward. And at this
handle, the careless, the brutal, the malicious, and the dense
witted--all Those Others--lunge, pull, and twist by turns. But they do
not see the blood trickling from the wound; and they would neither care
nor yet desist if they did.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Rutland Barrington regards it as a mixed blessing.]
The artistic temperament is a most decidedly "mixed" blessing, and the
more artistic the more mixed! This is strongly demonstrated to me
personally in the person of a _friend_ of my school days who has become
in later years an _acquaintance_ only; a falling away, due entirely to
the abnormal development of his artistic temperament, which will not
allow him to see any good in anything or anybody that does not come up
to his ideal, the artistic temperament in _his_ case taking the form of
a kind of mental yellow jaundice! Of course, I consider that I myself
possess this temperament, and am willing to admit that the natural
friction caused by the meeting with a less highly developed temperament
(?) than his own may have led to the feeling of mental and artistic
superiority which has convinced _one_ of us that association with the
_other_ is undesirable! I fancy that the two classes most strongly
influenced by this temperament are the painters and the actors, who
display characteristics of remarkable resemblance, as, for instance, all
painters (I use the word "painters" because "artists" is applied equally
to both classes) are fully alive to the beauties of Nature in all her
varied moods, but, when those beauties are depicted on the canvasses of
_others_, are somewhat prone to discover a comprehension of those
beauties inferior to their own! So, too, with actors, the majority of
whom possess the feeling, though they may not always express it, that,
although Mr. Garrick Siddons's efforts were distinctly _good_, there
_are_ people, not a hundred miles off, who _might_ have shone to more
advantage in the part! There is no doubt that the artistic temperament
magnifies all the pleasures of one's life by the infusion of a keener
zest for enjoyment, the natural outcome of such temperament, but the
reverse of the medal is equally well cut, and the misfortunes and
disappointments of life are the more keenly felt in consequence of the
possession of this temperament! Whether the balance is equally
maintained or not is a question only to be answered by the individual,
but I incline to the belief that life is smoother to the phlegmatic than
the artistic temperament!--though I should not believe it would be
possible to find any person possessing the latter who would be willing
to renounce it, in spite of its disadvantages, so I must perforce
conclude it to be a blessing! _Q.E.D._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Miss Helen Mathers looks upon it as a curse.]
If the artistic temperament will enable a man to be rendered profoundly
happy by one of those trifles that Nature strews each day in our
path--say a salmon-pink sunset seen through the lacing of tall black
boles of leafless trees, or a flower, happed upon unexpectedly, that
reads you a half-forgotten lesson in "country art"--that same man will
be reduced to abject misery and real suffering by a dirty tablecloth, a
vulgar, uncongenial companion, or even the presence of a bright blue
gown in a chamber subdued to utmost harmonies in gold and yellow. The
curse with him follows all too swiftly on the blessing of enjoyment--and
lasts longer. And in matters of love, the artistic temperament is a
doubtful blessing. The shape of a man's nose will turn a woman's eyes
away from the goodness of his character, and a badly-fitting coat so
outrage her beauty-loving propensities, that she is provoked into
mistaking her mind's approval for real heart affection, and she chooses
the artistic man, only to find, probably, that, like the O'Flaherty, one
cannot comfortably worship a lily, without a considerable amount of
mutton chops as well--and in the end she may sigh for the tasteless man
who yet had the taste to love her.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: We worship the "beautiful" too much.]
I think most of us carry this tendency to worship the beautiful too far,
and our scorn for the physically unsatisfactory is one of our cruellest
and most glaring latter-day faults. It is true we are equally cordially
hard on ourselves, and hate our vile bodies, when their aches and pains
intrude themselves between us and our soul's delight--for it is from the
Pagan, not the Christian, point of view that most lovers of beauty
regard life. And if a man's taste require costly gratification of it,
say by pictures, by marbles, by the thousand and one sumptuous trifles
that go to make the modern house beautiful, then that man is not
possessed of true taste, and he will be poorer in his palace than if he
dwelt ragged in Nature's lap, with all her riches, and those of his own
mind, at his disposal. For the true artistic sense impels one to work
always--and always to better and not worsen, what it touches. The
artistic sense that lazes, and lets other people work to gratify it, is
a bastard one, more, it is immoral, and neither bestows, nor receives,
grace. It cannot be fashioned, it may not be bought, this strange sense
of the inward beauty of things; nor a man's wife, nor his own soul, nor
his beautiful house shall teach it him, and he will never be one with
the Universe, with God, understanding all indeed, but not by written
word or speech, but by what was born in him. And though he may suffer
through it too, though to the ugly, the deaf, and the afflicted, such a
gift may seem bestowed in cruellest irony, still when all is said and
done I can think of no better summary of the whole than that given by
Philip Sydney's immortal lines on love. You all know them--
"He who for love hath undergone
The worst that can befall
Is happier thousandfold than he
Who ne'er hath loved at all ...
For in his soul a grace hath reigned
That nothing else could bring."
[Sidenote: Alfred C. Calmour is doubtful.]
The artistic temperament is both a blessing and a curse. It is a
blessing when it lifts a man's soul out of the slough of vulgar
commonplace, and turns his thoughts to the contemplation of noble
things, while at the same time it enables him to give something to the
world which it would not willingly lose, and for which he can obtain
adequate remuneration. But it (the artistic temperament) is a curse when
it tempts a man from that honest employment which provides him with
bread and butter, and leaves him a defeated, disappointed, and
heartbroken wretch, unable to return to that humble course of life which
had happily supplied his daily wants.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mrs. Panton considers it a fantastic demon.]
Personally speaking, I consider the possession of the artistic
temperament a distinct curse to those unfortunate folk who have to live
with the owner of this fantastic demon; while if the possessor knows how
to deal with his old Man of the Sea he has a most powerful engine at his
command: for once let the world at large know that the "artistic
temperament" has entered into him, his strangest freaks become more than
put-up-able with, and the brighter he is in company, and the more
irritable and offensive he is at home, the more law is given him, and
the less work, and, may I add, decency, is expected of him, until he
appears to agree with his compeers or followers, and begins to be as
eccentric as he likes. Commencing with long hair touching his shoulders,
and with an absence of the use of Someone's soap, he passes on through
mystic moonlight glances to a still more artistic appreciation of the
charms of Nature at her simplest, until Mrs. Grundy looks askance, and
duchesses and other leaders of Society squabble over him, and try one
against the other for the honour and pleasure of his society. So far,
then, the artistic temperament is for its possessor a fine thing, for it
cannot put up with indifferent fare and lodging: it can only prove its
existence by the manner in which it annexes all that is richest, most
beautiful, and, to use a byegone slang word, most Precious. For it is
reserved the luxurious Chesterfield or Divan, heaped with rainbow-like
cushions, and placed in the most becoming light, until the quick,
unhappy day dawns when another "artistic temperament" comes to the fore,
and the first retires perforce, if not a better, certainly a sadder,
man, for all that has been happening unto him. Now comes the time when
one sees the slow-witted creature sinking gradually into the mere
haunter of the Gaiety bar: when the sacred lamp burns brightly, and
causes him to recollect, sadly indeed, the days that are no more. Or we
find the man who has learned his bitter lesson, and recognising that
_he_ still exists--albeit the beast is dead--turns to the work he was
meant to do, and does that nobly, though the mad and beautiful days of
his youth have done, and all that caused life to be lovely has faded
slowly into the _ewigkeit_.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: But that, if true, it must often be a delight.]
If the "artistic temperament" is true and not a sham, to the owner at
least it must often be a sheer delight, for the elf or "troll" which
goes by this name takes such possession of the owner that under his
guidance he sees "What man may never see, the star that travels far."
"The light" that the poet declares shone on sea or shore, shines for him
always, if for no one else: he walks with Beatrice in Paradise, not in
the "other place;" and his delight in the mere rapture of existence is
such that he hardly cares to speak for joy, and for the certainty that
not one living creature on earth would understand him if he did. For
even if he recognised another elf or troll, peeping out of the eyes of a
friend, it would not be his own familiar spirit, and, in consequence, he
would not understand the other, because no two of these fantastic
creatures ever speak entirely alike. But if we mention those who have to
exist with the owner of this fantastic Will-o'-the-wisp--for he is as
often absent as present--this makes the whole thing a matter of
speculation. I feel as if I could not do justice to the idea, for I,
too, have lived once on a time with these others; and I would rather not
repeat the experiment.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Joseph Hatton declares it to be the choicest gift of all.]