communication with the animals, a new world will swim into our ken
beside which the discovery of America will seem but an unimportant
event. Half of the unexplained puzzles of science will be solved with
ease, and whole departments of knowledge as yet undreamed of will be
opened to our astonished understandings.
Perhaps by our little dumb brothers we are still compassionately
reckoned as the deaf and blind giant.
August 5.
Fever Dreams.
A thousand times the great clock's heart has beat--
A thousand, thousand times,
And ever at the hours the sudden, sweet,
Low, unexpected ringing of the chimes
Tells how the night doth slowly pass away.
The hissing snow fell through the air all day,
But with the dark did cease--
I hear the shivers of the frozen trees.
The night-lamp's gleam--though weak the flame and small--
Casts shadows giant tall
That to the ceiling crawl--
The cap-frill of the sleeping nurse doth fall
And nod this way and that against the wall.
Quiet the great dark house, and deeply sleep they all--
They held me fast, they could not hear the call
That I heard always--chill the winds did blow--
The skies were dark--the ways were white with snow--
He did not call--I wandered to think so.
But now they sleep, I will arise and go.
They think him dead, but his sweet voice I know.
I stretch my hands, my heart beats hard--his voice is sweet and low,
But muffled by the weight of earth, and hath a note of woe--
He calls to me: I cannot stay; I must arise and go--
I step out on the floor--
(How loud that nurse doth snore)
But I softly close the door.
I quickly pass from the outer door.
It is very, very cold!--
But he will me closely fold
With a tender clasping arm,
And still my deep alarm--
In his heart I shall be warm!
The snow is smooth as glass.
I scarcely leave a foot-print as I pass--
It is very cold, and the way is long, alas!
And they have buried him deep, so deep under the frozen grass.
It was cruel to bury him so deep;
He was not dead, he was only asleep--
He was not dead; it makes me weep
To think he is in this frozen ground--
Why does the moon whirl round and round!
My head is dizzy; I'm faint and ill--
Will no one make the moon stand still?
The foolish moon whirls round and round--
What is it that the pine trees know,
That they rustle and whisper together so?
Someone was buried under the snow
More than a thousand years ago!--
My long black shadow runs by my side.
Was it I, or my love that died
And was buried deeply under the snow
So many hundred years ago?
Oh! _how_ can I reach him under the ground?
I am burning with fire, my head turns round.
He does not call me, I hear no sound--
Ah!--will no one come to me? I'm all alone,
The nurse does not hear, she's as deaf as a stone,
The walls of the grave together have grown,
The dead man lies still and makes no moan,
They have left me here with this corpse alone--!
His golden hair is tarnished with rust;
His eyes have withered and fallen to dust--
His subtle, secret, amber eyes;
The worms might have spared those amber eyes--
His lips are grey with dust and sunken;
His heart is cold, and his cheeks are shrunken--
He must be dead, so still he lies!
* * * * *
I lay in my bed and he called to me,
They held me, but it might not be
That we should rest so far apart,
And we have lain here, heart to heart,
Since I came out across the snow
More than a thousand years ago.
September 7.
A Misunderstood Moralist.
Mary R---- was telling us to-day the details of Zola's accidental
death--if it was an accident. There are a few, she tells me, who
whisper privately that the enemies he made by "Lourdes" and "Rome" are
of the sort who wait long and patiently, and strike hard, and strike
at the back when the time of vengeance comes. That sounds rather
sensational, and certainly the general public have heard no such
suggestion.
The story of the death-chamber is like a chapter from one of his own
books, and one can't but feel how gruesome and vivid he would have made
the account of the tragedy could he have recorded it.
It's rather odd how the multitude still judge Zola at the rating of
twenty years since, before he had developed the meaning of his methods
and proved himself one of the greatest of the moral teachers.
It was certainly as long ago as that when a battered, grimy copy of
"Nana" drifted by some swirl of chance into my youthful hands. I was
quite old enough to realize that my pastors and masters would be
convulsed with horror did they at all suspect what I was at, but being
in those days as omnivorous as Lamb--"Shaftesbury was not too genteel
for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low"--everything on which a hand could
be laid passed into my greedy mental maw, from Locke "On the Human
Understanding" to the novels of the Duchess, and I had intelligence
enough not to chatter about every book I opened.
I remember with perfect vividness the moral revelation given me by the
chapter descriptive of the drunken orgie in Nana's rooms, where they
wound up the gaieties of the evening by the spirited jest of pouring
the champagne into the piano. In a flash was made clear to me what I
had never previously suspected, that vice was tedious and unamusing!
Until that moment I had accepted in perfect good faith the insistence
of the moralists upon the delicious, exciting, irresistible nature
of vice, which, though deplorable in its eventual effects, was too
agreeable to be refrained from unless fortified by either religion or
the choicest collection of moral maxims.
We were the contented owners, at that same period, of a large
engraving of a popular painting entitled "The Prodigal Son"; one of
those pictures supposed to have a "good moral" and help silently,
in season and out of season, to point towards virtue like a sign at
the crossroads. The engraving was divided into three parts, like a
triptych; the central, and by far the largest portion, showed the
famous ne'er-do-weel prodigalling with all his might in a sort of
lordly pleasure dome, all columns and sweeping curtains and steps, open
to the sunshine on every side, and decorated with the most expensive
cut flowers. A meal, which plainly deserved to be called by no meaner
name than a banquet, was toward, and the naughty young gentleman,
bedecked in velvet and soothed by the music of viols, was feasting
amid a medley of young ladies of the most dazzling physical charms,
all attired in those sketchy toilets which have no visible means
of support, and which allow the artist to prove his inexhaustible
talent for drawing arms and busts. So vivacious and sumptuous was this
scene that at first one hardly noticed the narrow panels to right
and left, in one of which the profuse prodigal was on a subsequent
occasion dining en famille with the swine, and later journeying toward
forgiveness and veal.
The moralists, from Isaiah down, have so dearly loved to show their
talent for drawing arms and busts. The delineation of vice always
usurps all the foreground of the canvas. According to them, the broad
road is unfailing in its crops of flowers, the wine is always red
in the cup, "with beaded bubbles winking at the brim." The frisky
enchantresses are without exception young and charming. The reverse
of the picture is depressingly bleak--by way of proper dramatic
contrast, perhaps, though to any one less austere than a moralist
it would seem unintelligent to point out that in one direction all
was gay, brilliant, and agreeable, yet one must follow the gloomy,
tedious, and unpleasant road in order to find some intangible spiritual
satisfaction, which to youthful and ardent minds seems drearily
remote, and unsatisfying when reached. Besides it really isn't
true. Life as a matter of fact is certainly more agreeable when one
behaves one's self decently. Nothing was ever more blatantly untrue
than the cynical proverb which declares that everything pleasant is
either indigestible, expensive, or immoral. But the mind of youth
is almost touchingly credulous. It rarely questions the accuracy of
the descriptions of the moralists, who claim to be experts, though
instinctively it develops a necessity for experimenting a little with
those forbidden sweets of which it has heard so much praise.
Until I read "Nana" it never occurred to me to question that vice was
in itself agreeable, since I had never heard aught to the contrary;
but that champagne poured into the piano washed away the conviction
forever. It seemed so squalid, so unimaginative, so dull; and all the
vice I have observed since has shared its lack of charm. I found that
the broad road had no patent on flowers and sunshine, that dishonesty
nine times out of ten failed of returns at all commensurate with the
energy devoted to it; that loose behaviour was nearly always noisome
and fatiguing; that the prodigal, instead of being a beautiful young
person in velvet, generally had a red nose and a waist, and borrowed
from his acquaintances, and that the enchantresses had not nearly as
good figures as the painters credited them with, and as a rule had no
real feeling for soap and water. The truth is that all forms of vice
are for the most part not only repulsive but intolerably unamusing, and
Zola was the first of the moralists who had the courage to be original
and speak disrespectfully of it.
September 10.
The Pleasures of Pessimism.
A man who took me in to dinner Wednesday night said, pityingly,
"You seem to be a pessimist. Why is that? Are you unhappy?"
That sort of remark is a shot between wind and water, and leaves one
speechless. I crossly denied being an ----ist of any sort, and changed
the subject.
Possibly he was led to his banal personality by some remark I had made,
of the sort that is commonly called cynical because it is true.
The optimists have a theory that those who don't take the same view
of life as themselves must therefore be unhappy. It's an amazing
conclusion. They seem to have no idea how the pessimists enjoy their
own sense of superiority. It is as if the blind should say to the man
with eyes: "How unhappy you must be to see things just as they are. Now
I can imagine them to be anything I please!"
The man with eyes could, of course, only smile; it being obviously
impossible to discuss such a proposition.
The believers in personal immortality labour under the same curious
illusion apparently. They are so sorry for those who don't believe
in it, and imagine them frightened at the thought of death. To their
minds the universe is inconceivable without their presence, seemingly
forgetful of the fact that it got on quite well before they came. It is
rather an imposing bit of egotism, after all. It rises to the level of
grandeur.
Catholics, I know, have the same pity and astonishment about the
state of mind of Protestants that the optimists feel for pessimists,
the religious for the unbelieving. Each thinks the heretic in parlous
state and fancies he must be secretly disturbed by it, when of a truth
the heretic is simply amused by this anxiety for his welfare, and
cheerfully certain of his own superiority.
September 18.
Moral Pauperism.
M----, who has, with some flourish of trumpet and tuck of drum, gone
over to Rome, is the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, I am told,
and, what is odder still, is a very clever and humorous creature. One
can discount the parson and the cleverness, but a _humorous_ Protestant
'verting is more difficult to understand.
I tried hard to get some explanation from her as to her point of view,
but she was entirely vague. Fancy--she has a patron saint, beads, etc.!
One can only gape.
Very probably every one is at birth--no matter what the
environment--either Catholic or Protestant by nature. To many it is an
absolute necessity that someone else should furnish their spiritual and
mental support. With these, no matter how frequently one sets them
on their feet their knees will give under them; no matter how often
one starts them in spiritual business one has eventually to come again
to the rescue. To such an one the perpetual supervision and personal
tyranny of the Catholic Church must seem deliciously comfortable and
protecting. No wonder they are drawn to it across all barriers.
To the born Protestant such bondage is as intolerable as spoon feeding
and a wheeled chair would be to an athlete. Whatever the moral or
mental situation may be he must deal with it for himself--must stand on
his own feet--use his own moral muscles. Neither can ever understand
the other. Their whole attitude toward life is directly opposed. Each
seeks what his nature demands.
September 30.
On a Certain Lack of Humour in Frenchmen.
The book-club has eliminated Marcel Prevost's "Mariage de Julianne" as
too naughty for our perusal--though not until we had _all_ read it, to
see how undesirable it was.
To what H---- calls my "robust nature" it seemed merely deliciously
funny and human, and I am not fond of French fiction as a rule. Most of
it leaves in my mind only a sense of dreary nastiness--a sort of more
closely knit Hall Caine-ism, with his sloppiness of style left out.
Yet a good many of one's contemporaries profess to find French fiction
vastly superior to English literature of the same sort: to find Balzac
a greater artist than Thackeray; but those who make this assertion
are, I find, generally lacking in humour and imagination themselves,
and therefore blind to a whole side of life. They, of nature, think
marionettes liker life than beings of flesh and blood. Balzac's dry,
minute descriptions give them an impression of reality. To hear that
a man had a red nose, had iron-grey hair growing thin on top, and
that his bottle-green trousers wrinkled at the knees, gives them the
sensation that Balzac is presenting them with "a slice of life"--not
being aware, it would seem, that this might be equally truthful a
description of a wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. Such matters as these
are not the essentials that differentiate a man from his fellows.
Henry James thinks this elaboration of detail is Balzac's "strongest
gift" and adds, "Dickens often sets a figure before us with
extraordinary vividness, but the outline is fantastic and arbitrary--we
but half believe in it." It seems to me that James has, like Balzac,
but a half developed sense of life. He too is meticulous in his efforts
to make one see and feel what he wishes to convey, because he only half
feels and sees it himself; though he is concerned rather with emotions
than objects, and in spite of the labour and care expended by each,
but a shadowy impression remains. Dickens can dash in a few broad,
half caricatured lines of a portrait because the figure he wishes to
show is so vivid to his own eye he feels it only necessary to indicate
it broadly to make others recognize it. Uncle Pumblechook in "Great
Expectations" is suggested, as far as written description goes, in
merest outline--"A large, hard-breathing, middle-aged, slow man, with a
mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright
on his head"--yet after half a page of his conversation and his welcome
to Pip at the funeral, "breathing sherry and crumbs," one needs no
more. The man lives and moves. One knows him inside and out.
James speaks again of Balzac's "choking one with his bricks and
mortar," and thinks his houses, his rooms, his towns, "unequalled for
vividness of presentation, of realization." To an imaginative reader
they are as dry and superfluous as a real-estate agent's pamphlets; one
has a sense of the author's heavy straining effort to make the places
palpable to his own mental vision. It is the weary iteration of the
bore, who having no imagination can leave nothing to that of his hearer.
Dickens somewhere describes a room merely by telling how the winking
fire was reflected in every smooth object. The fire winks cheerily; the
pewters winking dully, as if afraid of being suspected of not seeing
the joke; the furniture twinkling slyly from every polished point,
etc., etc., in Dickens's well-known fashion of pursuing a happy fancy
round and round. There is not one word of catalogue of the room's
contents, yet it remains forever as vivid in the reader's memory as a
chamber with which one is intimately familiar.
Bulwer says that "French nature is not human nature," and if human
nature was necessarily the Anglo-Saxon conception of life it would
be true. Nothing so points French heterogeneousness from ourselves
as the attitude of our two chosen masters of the novel, Balzac and
Thackeray. Not a gleam of humour ever irradiates for a moment the pages
of the former. A mere glimmer would make impossible his story of the
young man who endeavours to compromise a pretty woman, whose refusal
to yield to his dishonourable suggestions so puzzles and disgusts him
that he can only explain her coldness as being the probable results
of some secret but mortal disease!... A lover abducts a reluctant
fair by mingled force and stratagem, and attempts to brand her with
hot irons; accompanying this gentle gallantry with the mummeries of a
thirteenth-century Inquisition. This picturesque proof of devotion so
touches the lady that she promptly grovels in an agony of affection for
this chivalrous admirer....
All this is told with perfect gravity, the author having not the
smallest suspicion of its absurdity--and yet there be actually
Anglo-Saxons who solemnly announce that Balzac knew human nature to its
depths. French nature, perhaps; certainly not ours....
A spinster lives twenty years in a family, all of whose members she
venomously hates, and not one of them suspect her unselfish devotion
until she aids in humiliating them and wrecking their fortunes....
Madame Hulot is a saint, and yet at fifty years of age offers her
person to a repulsive scoundrel in order to provide a marriage portion
for her daughter; Balzac evidently considering this one of her noblest
acts.
The point at which one finds the widest divergence of the French and
English attitudes toward life is in the essay made by each of these
chosen spokesmen to show us the adventuress. Taine, who honestly tried
to see English literature from English eyes and interpret it to his
countrymen, breaks down entirely when he reaches this angle of vision.
He says: "There is a personage unanimously recognized as Thackeray's
masterpiece, Becky Sharp.... Let us compare her with a similar
personage of Balzac in 'Les Parents Pauvre,' Valerie Marneff. The
difference in the two works will exhibit the difference in the two
literatures"--and they do indeed.
Valerie to the English reader is the old commonplace, stereotyped
adventuress of the melodrama. One can imagine none save those as vile
and stupid as herself being deceived by such a greedy, outrageous
creature. The descriptions of her looks and behaviour smack of the
unhumorous shilling shocker. She gives glances from beneath "her long
eyelids like the glare of cannon seen through smoke!" ... and again
"her eyes flashed like daggers."
Such figures of speech sound like the pompous rhodomontade of a Laura
Jean Libby, yet Taine quotes them with much admiration.
Becky, Taine finds incomprehensible. He complains that Thackeray
"degrades her" when he laughingly reveals her secret vulgar shifts.
Also he is resentful because her carefully built schemes crumble one by
one like houses of cards, being ignorant, apparently, of that choice
old utilitarian proverb as to Honesty being the best policy, founded
upon a very general observation that the same cleverness and energy
employed by adventurers in their nefarious schemes pays a far higher
rate of interest when turned to legitimate pursuits.
The half affectionate, half contemptuous humour with which her
creator regards Becky shocks Taine. With his French passion for
logical completeness he cannot comprehend that Thackeray's vision
for truth should make him capable of admitting and admiring that
arch-adventuress's good qualities,--the very qualities of her defects
which made her career of deception possible. The consistent monster
Valerie could delude no one, while Becky's patience, gaiety, and good
nature made Rawdon Crawley's devotion plausible, and forced even
Lord Steyne, who recognized her baseness, after a fashion to respect
and like her, and consent to be used by her, until--by a fundamental
impulse of womanliness--"she admired her husband standing there, grand,
brave, victorious," above the prostrate body of her seducer. It is that
same underlying womanliness in Becky--of which Valerie lacked even an
intimation--which makes her human and real. Its absence leaves Valerie
incredible and shadowy.
Take again Lear and Goriot. The latter's children have no excuse
whatever for their crimes of greed and selfishness. They are grotesque
succubi, while the astounding wickedness of Regan and Goneril is made
credible by Lear's own violent foolishness and vanity. His tempestuous
senility is of the sort that wakes the blindest revolt of youth, which
is always restless under the dominance of age, a restlessness likely to
deepen to cruelty when age is unrestrained by wisdom or dignity.
A Frenchman once complained to me bitterly of the comic porter in
Macbeth, who comes grumbling to unlock the gate so soon after the
horror of the murder of Duncan. To him the touch of comedy seemed
vulgar and inept. It was impossible to make him understand how to
the Anglo-Saxon mind this veracious touch of comedy jostling tragedy
but heightened the dramatic poignancy of the play. This incapacity
to see the humorous contrasts of life and character is generally
characteristic of youth with its narrow inexperience of realities, and
the French and the unhumorous of our own race seem never to outgrow
this juvenility.
October 15.
The Value of a Soul.
I wonder if anyone will ever muster up sufficient courage to write the
true history of the ferocious egotism engendered in the human heart
by a belief in human immortality. The most cynical might well shrink
from the sorrowful task. Self-preservation, supposedly the first law
of nature, is but a feeble instinct when placed in comparison, for
motherhood, patriotism, sexual love; a thousand minor passions will
induce human beings to abandon their inheritance in the warm precincts
of the cheerful day, but all that a man hath, and all that his friends,
and the wife of his bosom, and the children of his loins have, will he
give for that wretched little flyspecked object he calls his soul.
Buckle rather shocked a pious world when he announced that in many
cases the best kings, considered from the point of view of their
private characters, made the worst rulers; but all history is loud
with this truth. The moment anyone in power began to consider the
question of his soul with seriousness, tears and blood soon began to
flow. A ruler who had strong secular tendencies usually had some sort
of consideration for human happiness, but one who turned his mind to
what was called "higher things" waded through the wretchedness of those
in his power with noble insouciance. Henri IV., who was cheerfully
indifferent as to whether he heard preaching by parsons or the mass
of priests, provided he might have Paris for his capital, quieted the
fratricidal religious conflicts of France and made life happy for his
subjects; and Henry II. of England, who was the only one of the Angevin
Kings entirely unconcerned about his immortal future, did more for
England than any ruler since Alfred, and would have trebled those wise
secular benefits had à-Becket and the rest of the troublesome clergy
permitted it.
I have been roused to these moral generalizations by Quiller-Couch's
novel, "Hetty Wesley." It's a poignant book.
Hetty was the sister of the founders of Methodism, and Quiller-Couch
has availed himself, in writing the book, of the letters and papers of
that remarkable family. He has told his tale very simply and with an
artist's comprehension and sympathy, setting down nothing in malice and
leaving the reader to draw his own inferences.