mist of the houstonias are recalled by the alternate glinting sunshine
and bleak gloom of an April day; and the blossoming chestnut woods form
the background to many recollections of the old home life. But these
pictures which have become a part of one's inmost consciousness are
scarcely more dear than that one, seen for a few moments, of the
low-lying Jersey meadows flushing rose-pink with the mallows in the
misty morning sunshine; or than that other 'vision of scarce a moment,'
the river bluff scarlet with the flowers of the campion, seen from the
windows of a railway train.
[Illustration]
Studies in Solitude
By Fannie Stearns Gifford
I
She was never lonely, she told herself. The solitude of her little old
white house, sitting retired from the village street among its lilac
trees and syringas did not frighten or depress her. She could spend a
whole day of rain there, seeing no one but the grocer's boy, the big
gray cat, and occasional stooped hurrying figures out in the wet street
and could come down into evening calmly, busied with her enforced or
chosen duties and thoughts. A cloud seemed to wrap her round in many
folds of seclusion till the common world of hurry and friction and loud
or secret loves and hates was dim to her eyes and ears. Street sounds
and whistles of trains at the cross-roads were muffled echoes; but the
ticking of the tall clock, the throbbing of rain on a tin roof, the
infrequent wind banging at a loose window, the cat's creepy tread on the
stairs, grew rhythmic and insistent.
Yet she was not lonely. She never stopped to brood, listening long to
perilous voices. She denied even to certain pieces of furniture, books,
or ornaments, their passive right to conjure up the spectre of her
solitude. If a room seemed too vibrant with unseen presences, she would
enter it and drive out the quivering mystery with some brisk petty
business of sweeping, of shifting a picture, or rearranging a
book-shelf. Often she whistled softly about her work, although there
were moments when as if by an instinct she would stop short and glance
over her shoulder, to see nothing, and after that to be still.
So the day would shift from gray dawn to gray dusk; and she had not
allowed herself to think that she might have cause for loneliness, there
in the quiet house behind its dripping lilac trees.
Only in the evenings did the clock and the rain become too loud and
real. Then, as she sat with a pleasant book or broidery in the yellow
lamplit circle of her sitting-room, warm and quaint in its accumulation
of color,--old gay reds, greens, blues, tumbled together by generations
of fond house-holders, and now subdued into harmony by years and the low
light,--she would find herself all at once rigid as an ice-image, yet
alert as a coiled serpent; listening, listening,--for what? For a quick
step on the flags before the door? For a long jangling peal at the bell?
For a voice in the hall, or a sick querulous summons from the downstairs
chamber, or the scraping of a chair from above? No, she knew that she
had no cause to wait for these things. There was only the rain, the
clock, sleek Diogenes purring on the white fox-skin, the lamp wick
fretting a little to itself, and once in a while, out in the dark
street, the splash and clatter of wheels, the faint wet whisper of feet
that always passed her gate.
So, with a self-scorning smile and a drawing of her hand across her
eyes, she would take up again the book or needle-work, and stop abruptly
that rigid listening for sounds which never came. Long since, on her
first solitary night in the old house, she had vowed to herself that she
would not be sad, or strange, no matter what tricks her heart and mind
might play her. She would not fear memory and anticipation, but would
compel them to be her servants, to keep their distance. She had been
young then, and had not quite believed in her solitude. Now that she
knew it through and through, she was still aware that to look too far
back or too far forward would equally undo her. On these rainy nights of
withdrawal, her trial-times were still upon her. If she failed now, if
one shudder or one tear escaped her, she was lost forever; and the white
house would drive her out, into a world where she could no more choose
her own way of being alone.
But she was not lonely, she repeated; and to prove it, her mind would
indulge in a fantasia of loneliness. The book would slip from her hand,
and she, gazing half-hypnotized into shadowy corners, visited all the
solitary people over the wide world. It pleased her to imagine homesick
officers in stifling Indian bungalows; young men and girls, fresh come
to the City, wandering forlorn through the glare of streets, or idling
under their meagre lodging-house gas-jets; light-keepers on desolate
sand-dunes and rock-ledges, climbing at night twisted iron steps to tend
the eternal lamp; night-watchmen pacing deserted yards and
mill-corridors; sailors in the dead watch; poets and prophets trying
passionately to capture the wild visions which leaped across their
darkness; and most of all, many women sitting as she did in warm quaint
rooms, near village streets, hearing the clock tick and the rain throb.
It pleased her, to travel so on light unhindered wing. Almost it seemed
as if her soul left her body, and fared out to knock against every
lonely window and to keep dumb company round every solitary lamp. And
she felt that she was one of an endless army, marching straightforwardly
and silently out upon their lives, stripped of the disguises that
kindred and close friendship invent, and making, in return for the
silence of their hearts and the smiling of their lips, only one demand
of all that encountered them.
That demand she never shaped, of her own will. But when she had sat a
long time, dreaming, and had at length roused herself to make fast doors
and windows, had shut the cat in the kitchen, taken her hand-lamp and
gone up the broad stairs to bed--then, in the gay chintz-hung security
of her own chamber, her throat would fashion involuntarily those words
that her heart and lips refused to let themselves speak.
'It is all right enough,' her throat would say for her, as she turned
down the counterpane, untied her shoes, and wound her watch. 'I am quite
all safe and right. But--no one must ask me--if I am lonely. No one must
ever ask me that.'
II
It had appeared presently that her house was haunted, though not by
ghostly terrors. For herself, she had only felt, at times, the vaguely
imagined intimation of some presence other than her own in the quiet
rooms. But she had no surer knowledge of her dimly harbored guests until
a friend, wearied out with the love and care of over-many babies, came
to her for rest; and after two days of grateful idleness in her sunny
window, asked suddenly,--
'Miriam, whose are the Voices?'
'What voices?' Miriam parried; and Lucy described them: happy, laughing
voices, as of young people playing and gossiping together. 'I have heard
them so often when I was lying alone and you were out, or off somewhere.
I almost asked a dozen times who was talking. They are always
downstairs, or across the hall, or under the window; and they are such
happy voices: young voices--oh, very sweet and glad.'
Miriam smiled and stroked her friend's nervous fingers. Lucy had always
heard and seen more than other people did, and now that she was so
tired, no doubt her worn-out fancy befooled her lightly. They talked it
over together. Lucy, smiling at herself, none the less insisted: there
were Voices in the house.
'Some time you'll hear them too,' she nodded. 'They're not sad or
dreadful or gloomy; oh, no! They're just young and glad. I love to hear
them.'
And another evening, when Miriam came into the sitting-room after an
errand down the street, Lucy greeted her eagerly, saying,--
'It was music this time. Oh, I've heard such music! I almost went to see
if some one wasn't playing. It was like a harp, I think, with a violin
and piano: it was very beautiful. I thought some one _must_ be playing,
until it came to me that of course it was the Young People. It was happy
music, just as the Voices are so happy. Miriam, there _are_ young people
somehow in your house.'
It became a sort of gentle pleasant joke between them, while Lucy stayed
on. 'Have you heard them to-day?' Miriam would ask; and sometimes Lucy
replied, 'No; they must have gone off on a picnic; it was such a good
day'; or 'Yes; they were here while you were out this afternoon. I don't
see why you don't hear them.'
And Miriam would shake her head. 'I never hear and see Things, you know.
They are your Voices, Lucy; they are your babies grown-up who are
talking to you even here in my old-maid house.'
But Lucy denied it. 'No, Miriam, I never heard them anywhere else. They
belong to you and your house, and they mean something good, and sweet,
and _coming_, not gone by. They're not ghosts.'
And when at last Miriam kissed her good-bye at the train, Lucy was
saying, 'I'm glad to think of you, there in your nice sunny house, with
the Voices, and the Music. Good-bye, dear.'
As Miriam sat alone that evening, she wondered about those young happy
presences. She wished that she could hear them laugh and sing and play;
not merely feel them blindly stirring about her. She sat, deep in
reverie, smiling at Lucy's merry yet honest insistence upon her quaint
little hallucination,--at herself for more than half believing it.
'It is better that I never hear them,' she concluded at last, rather
soberly. 'I couldn't live alone this way if I heard them. It is all well
enough for Lucy, with her husband and her houseful of babies, to hear
things like that; granting that she truly did, dear mysterious
Lucy!--But if I heard them--if I heard them,--' she glanced about the
room as if she half expected to see a gay face above the piano, a bright
head bending by the lamp,--'it would mean that I was going a little bit
mad: yes, just a little bit mad, for all that they are sweet, young
voices.'
She shivered, stood up quickly, and went over to the long mirror.
'Miriam,' she whispered, looking into the shadowy face that met hers,
'Lucy said those were young voices, _coming_ voices, not gone by. But
you know, Miriam, that if they are, they belong to some one else who may
live in this house: to some one else, I tell you, not to you at all.
Don't be a fool.--You've been quite sensible so far: don't spoil it all
now. Do you hear? you mustn't even wish to hear those Voices, or that
lovely harp-music. Now you understand.'
Months later she saw her friend again. 'How are the Voices?' Lucy asked
gayly, across the laughing baby who pulled at her necktie and snatched
down her curls.
'I never hear them,' Miriam answered, almost shortly. 'You know, don't
you,--"to him that hath shall be given"?--Please may I hold the baby?'
III
Yet often, when she had spent a part of the day or evening away from
home, she had a curious expectation of returning to find her house not
empty and silent, but with something alive in it to greet her. She did
not think of the people who had been her own in the different days so
far past, nor of her living friends, nor of the young presences whose
laughter Lucy had insisted upon hearing. It seemed to her simply that
there was more life and motion and personality in her waiting house,
than just Diogenes crouching on the front porch, and the kettle steaming
to itself on the back of the stove.
One winter evening she walked late down the village street. The moon
rode high and white. Every frosty breath shone, every step creaked and
crackled in the snow. Through the thin leafless maple-trunks and
lilac-boughs she could see her house plainly: the snowy roof, glittering
to the moon, the low eaves, ragged with silver icicles, and the four
yellow windows of the hall and sitting-room, which she had lighted
against her late return.
She had a definite sense of expectancy. She was going back to something,
to somebody--and found herself hurrying almost joyfully. But with her
hand on the gate, she stopped, and stared at the house as if it were
strange to her. An icy little stream flowed suddenly round her heart.
For a second, all the world--the moon, the village, the house, and her
own inner secret universe--staggered and reeled and shook. But as
suddenly, everything grew calm and still again. The frightful chill
melted from her blood; the moon watched her with the same high virgin
regard, and the yellow windows beckoned her home.
She went slowly up the path and into the warm silent hall.
In that moment at the gate, she had realized that it was only Herself to
whom she was going back. Herself, who made those windows bright, who
piled the logs on the hearth that now she could light and sit by,
dreaming. It was Herself, would be running down the stairs to greet
her, and fetching an apple from the pantry, and listening to her story
of the evening's doings.
It seemed to her almost as if she had become two individuals. One of her
went out into the village and the world. The other stayed always in the
little white house. She would always be waiting to greet her home.
That was all. Now that she understood it, it did not concern her any
more.
She was becoming a good hermit, she commented; but noticed, with the
detachment that had grown upon her, that she was not going to remember
that shuddering moment at the gate. She blew the fire high, thinking,
'After all, there is nobody but Myself who understands me much,' and was
amused at her simple egotism.
IV
But secretly she knew her most perilous enemy. It was not sadness, or
selfishness, or the Voices, or the odd wilderness of a determined
recluse. It was Eternity.
There was no telling when Eternity might claim her. Sometimes she awoke
at dawn, and went down into the dewy garden to work among the roses and
iris and pansy plants, with the birds all singing and the sun dancing
like a great wise morning star. The day wore on, as she digged and
transplanted and clipped and watered, till, weary a little, she went
into the house and took up the endless bit of sewing, or some story or
poem to finish. And all at once, in spite of the sun, the earth-smell,
the brisk village-sounds beyond her garden-fence, she knew that her
anchor dragged,--she had slipped her moorings in the safe harbor of
Time, and was drifting off, off into Eternity.
Then she cared nothing for rose-bugs, or iris-roots, or stockings to
darn, or stories to read. She thought of Love, and Sin, and Death; of
nations at war and her friends' souls in joy or agony, of God
Himself,--and they were all as nothing. She saw the flickering garden,
she heard the song-sparrow and the clucking hen, she felt her own
scrubbed and earth-stained fingers and her beating heart, but these were
not necessary to her. She was terribly remote; terribly careless and
still and proud; for she was in Eternity.
'What does it all matter?' she would murmur. 'What if they drink and
steal and sin and die? or love and lose and win and die too? And what of
me? What of me?--We are all in Eternity. God Himself is in Eternity.'
But she kept the peril close. None of the neighbors, who hailed her on
the street or gossiped on the vine-hung porch, ever noticed that often,
as she talked, she would clasp her hands with a sudden fierce little
gesture, as if she were holding tight to some strong arm, and that in
her heart she was whispering, even while the swift crooked smile danced
across her lips, 'O God, make me remember! make me remember! We're in
Time, now: not in Eternity yet: _not in Eternity yet!_'
[Illustration]
The Greek Genius
By John Jay Chapman
The teasing perfection of Greek Literature will perhaps excite the world
long after modern literature is forgotten. Shakespeare may come to his
end and lie down among the Egyptians, but Homer will endure forever. We
hate to imagine such an outcome as this, because, while we love
Shakespeare, we regard the Greek classics merely with an overwhelmed
astonishment. But the fact is that Homer floats in the central stream of
History, Shakespeare in an eddy. There is, too, a real difference
between ancient and modern art, and the enduring power may be on the
side of antiquity.
The classics will always be the playthings of humanity, because they are
types of perfection, like crystals. They are pure intellect, like
demonstrations in geometry. Within their own limitations they are
examples of miracle; and the modern world has nothing to show that
resembles them in the least. As no builder has built like the Greeks, so
no writer has written like the Greeks. In edge, in delicacy, in
proportion, in accuracy of effect, they are as marble to our sandstone.
The perfection of the Greek vehicle is what attacks the mind of the
modern man and gives him dreams.
What relation these dreams bear to Greek feeling it is impossible to
say--probably a very remote and grotesque relation. The scholars who
devote their enormous energies to a life-and-death struggle to
understand the Greeks always arrive at states of mind which are
peculiarly modern. The same thing may be said of the severest types of
Biblical scholar. J. B. Strauss, for instance, gave his life to the
study of Christ, and, as a result, has left an admirable picture of the
German mind of 1850. Goethe, who was on his guard if ever a man could
be, was still a little deceived in thinking that the classic spirit
could be recovered. He left imitations of Greek literature which are
admirable in themselves, and rank among his most characteristic works,
yet which bear small resemblance to the originals. The same may be said
of Milton and of Racine. The Greeks seem to have used their material,
their myths and ideas, with such supernal intellect that they leave this
material untouched for the next comer. Their gods persist, their
mythology is yours and mine. We accept the toys,--the whole baby-house
which has come down to us: we walk in and build our own dramas with
their blocks.
What a man thinks of influences him, though he chance to know little
about it; and the power which the ancient world has exerted over the
modern has not been shown in proportion to the knowledge or scholarship
of the modern thinker, but in proportion to his natural force. The Greek
tradition, the Greek idea became an element in all subsequent life; and
one can no more dig it out and isolate it than one can dig out or
isolate a property of the blood. We do not know exactly how much we owe
to the Greeks. Keats was inspired by the very idea of them. They were an
obsession to Dante, who knew not the language. Their achievements have
been pressing in upon the mind of Europe, and enveloping it with an
atmospheric appeal, ever since the Dark Ages.
Of late years we have come to think of all subjects as mere departments
of science, and we are almost ready to hand over Greece to the
specialist. We assume that scholars will work out the history of art.
But it is not the right of the learned and scholarly only, to be
influenced by the Greeks, but also of those persons who know no Greek.
Greek influence is too universal an inheritance to be entrusted to
scholars, and the specialist is the very last man who can understand it.
In order to obtain a diagnosis of Greek influence one would have to seek
out a sort of specialist on Humanity-at-large.
I
Since we cannot find any inspired teacher to lay before us the secrets
of Greek influence, the next best thing would be to go directly to the
Greeks themselves, and to study their works freshly, almost innocently.
But to do this is not easy. The very Greek texts themselves have been
established through modern research, and the footnotes are the essence
of modernity.
The rushing modern world passes like an express train; as it goes, it
holds up a mirror to the classic world--a mirror ever changing and ever
false. For upon the face of the mirror rests the lens of fleeting
fashion. We can no more walk straight to the Greeks than we can walk
straight to the moon. In America the natural road to the classics lies
through the introductions of German and English scholarship. We are met,
as it were, on the threshold of Greece by guides who address us
confidently in two very dissimilar modern idioms, and who overwhelm us
with complacent and voluble instructions. According to these men we have
nothing to do but listen to them, if we would understand Greece.
Before entering upon the subject of Greece, let us cast a preliminary
and disillusioning glance upon our two guides, the German and the
Briton. Let us look once at each of them with an intelligent curiosity,
so that we may understand what manner of men they are, and can make
allowances in receiving the valuable and voluble assistance which they
keep whispering into our ears throughout the tour. The guides are
indispensable; but this need not prevent us from studying their
temperaments. If it be true that modern scholarship acts as a lens
through which the classics are to be viewed, we can never hope to get
rid of all the distortions; but we may make scientific allowances, and
may correct results. We may consider certain social laws of
refraction--for example, spectacles, beer, sausages. We may regard the
variations of the compass due to certain local customs, namely, the
Anglican communion, school honor, Pears' soap. In all this we sin not,
but pursue intellectual methods.
The case of Germany illustrates the laws of refraction very pleasantly.
The extraordinary lenses which were made there in the nineteenth century
are famous now, and will remain as curiosities hereafter. During the
last century, Learning won the day in Germany to an extent never before
known in history. It became an unwritten law of the land that none but
learned men should be allowed to play with pebbles. If a man had been
through the mill of the Doctorate, however, he received a certificate as
a dreamer. The passion which mankind has for using its imagination could
thus be gratified only by men who _had been_ brilliant scholars. The
result was a race of monsters, of whom Nietzsche is the greatest.
The early social life of these men was contracted. They learned all they
knew while sitting on a bench. The classroom was their road to glory.
They were aware that they could not be allowed to go out and play in the
open until they had learned their lessons thoroughly; they therefore
became prize boys. When the great freedom was at last conferred upon
them, they roamed through Greek mythology, and all other mythologies,
and erected labyrinths in which the passions of childhood may be seen
gamboling with the discoveries of adult miseducation. The gravity with
which the pundits treated each other extended to the rest of the world,
because, in the first place, they were more learned than any one else,
and in the second, many of them were men of genius. The 'finds' of
modern archaeology have passed through the hands of these men, and have
received from them the labels of current classification.
After all, these pundits resemble their predecessors in learning.
Scholarship is always a specialized matter, and it must be learned as we
learn a game. Scholarship always wears the parade of finality, and yet
suffers changes like the moon. These particular scholars are merely
scholars. Their errors are only the errors of scholarship, due, for the
most part, to extravagance and ambition. A new idea about Hellas meant a
new reputation. In default of such an idea a man's career is _manquee_;
he is not an intellectual. After discounting ambition, we have left
still another cause for distrusting the labors of the German professors.
This distrust arises from a peep into the social surroundings of the
caste. Here is a great authority on the open-air life of the Greeks: he
knows all about Hellenic sport. Here is another who understands the
brilliant social life of Attica: he has written the best book upon
Athenian conversation and the market-place. Here is still a third: he
has reconstructed Greek religion: at last we know! All these miracles of
learning have been accomplished in the library--without athletics,
without conversation, without religion.