treasures in the market; yet there is no deep thought or display of
learning in them to win our admiration. They violate facts of history,
they outrage the grammar of academic art, and even their drawing may be
inaccurate. Why, then, are such works cherished and treasured? Because,
with all their faults, they have power, they have feeling; they speak to
the heart. The men who painted them were unlearned and ignorant, but
they were artists to the finger-tips. There is a spiritual something
breathing beneath the surface of the true painter's work which leaps to
the eye and draws upon us and bestirs our emotions. Other
pictures--laboured, scholastic, monumental, they leave us cold and
passionless, and we pass them by on the other side.
A good architect also is to the manner born. The principles of
proportion in designing a building are difficult to adjust to give
pleasure to the eye. Now, the sense of proportion is a gift which some
men possess and others lack; although they are architects by profession,
they are amateurs in construction. Without that subtle sense of
proportion a man blunders through his designs, and puts no feeling of
beauty or joy in the finished structure which is the work of his hands.
Ruskin says: "It is just as rational an attempt to teach a young
architect how to proportion truly and well by calculating for him the
proportions of fine works as it would be to teach him to compare
melodies by calculating the mathematical relations of the notes in
Beethoven's 'Adelaide' or Mozart's 'Requiem.' The man who has eye and
intellect will invent beautiful proportions, and cannot help it; but he
can no more tell us how to do it than Wordsworth could tell us how to
write a sonnet, or than Scott could have told us how to plan a romance."
What the faculty of feeling is to the artist, what the sense of
proportion is to the architect, the gift of style is to the writer.
Style is the witchery of words; style is clothing thought in captivating
language. Style is the setting of the gem. The gem may be rare, but it
needs the aid of the goldsmith's art to make the most of it. It is the
skilful setting that holds up the sparkling gem to our admiration.
Style is everything in writing; it makes the thoughts sparkle. Niceties
of style you cannot explain by rule-of-three, nor dissect its
individuality by the drastic deed of vivisection; you cannot slash the
heart out of it with a critickin's reckless knife. You can unravel a
piece of rare old Flemish tapestry, and destroy the beautiful design and
harmonious colouring of it. In fact, you can reduce the tapestry to a
heap of valueless threads of worsted fit only for burning; but style in
literature you cannot pick to pieces. You cannot find the master-thread
on which the secret of the pattern runs, and which reveals the cunning
of the workman's craft. By some mysterious process the writer weaves
words together that the chambers of our imagination may be hung with
tapestries rare and pleasant to behold. No explanation of the gift of
penmanship is possible. Moulding words into forms of beauty is not an
achievement: it is a gift of the gods, and no handbook of literature,
however diligently pursued, can turn an artisan into an artist cunning
in gold-minted phrases.
When Castiglione sent the manuscript of his book, "The Perfect
Courtier," to Vittoria Colonna for her approval, she replied in a
flattering letter thanking the author, saying: "The subject is new and
beautiful, but the excellence of the style is such that, with a
sweetness never before felt, it leads us up a most pleasant and fertile
slope, which we gradually ascend without perceiving that we are no
longer on the level ground from which we started; and the way is so well
cultivated and adorned that we scarce can tell whether Art or Nature has
done most to make it fair."
It is expression that counts, and the writer who expresses himself
simply, vividly, concisely, boldly, and plays upon our heart-strings at
pleasure, is naturally a "gifted" man. He not only sees in clear, full
vision himself, but he brings his vision home to our cloudy brains and
makes us see clearly; that is the wonder of it. It needs all the art
and magic and persuasion of language to accomplish this difficult task.
We _see_ the subject presented as a picture when he writes with a
graphic pen; we _feel_ poignantly when his sharp and polished periods
pierce like a rapier our understanding; we are _fascinated_ when his
impassioned eloquence flows, glittering like running water in the
sunlight, dazzling our bewildered brains. And when he scores by his
native wit and writes in his trenchant, racy mother-tongue there is a
smile in the stalls and loud laughter in the pit.
How mysteriously beauty steals into language and warms up the radiant
face of poetry with glowing vitality. There is no beauty in stale
prosaic sentences like "Trespassers will be prosecuted" or "Rubbish may
be shot here," because they say exactly and completely all that they
have to say and nothing more can be squeezed out of them. There is
beauty in a sentence like "The bright day is done. And we are for the
night," or "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass," because
in them, although they seem quite simple, the poet is trying to say
infinitely more than he can pack into words. It is the effort to do
something beyond the power of words; it is the effort to investigate the
alluring Infinite with a mind closely fettered within the cramped and
narrow finite that can only stretch forth a hand here and there between
prison bars and touch the azure of infinitude which is the dreamland of
the soul; it is this reaching out that brings beauty into language: it
enflames the imagination; it ruffles the emotions; unutterable thoughts
linger on the lips and fail to break away. There is a greatness in
these winged words feathered with beauty because they mean a thousand
times more than speaks on the surface.
When I was young the magic of words took possession of my virgin mind.
The first master of language that I served under was John Ruskin. The
aim of good writing is to communicate feeling; Ruskin did this
intensely. The indefinable richness and power of words as they flowed
from his pen, the musical and measured cadence of his prose, and the
limpid clearness of his thoughts when cast on paper, placed an hypnotic
spell upon me. When reading one of his books, I dwelt in dreamland.
Another reading that I enjoyed with avidity in the seventies and
eighties of the last century was the long literary leaders, never too
long for me, in the _Daily Telegraph_. The best literary talent of the
day wrote them. Many of them I cut out and placed in my scrap-book;
alas! to be buried in decent sepulchre, for I never see them now. Lord
Burnham, the proprietor of the _Daily Telegraph_, put himself into these
leaders, although other pens wrote them. They were his special hobby,
and grew under his inspiration. His biographer tells us: "He had the
rhetorical sense strongly developed. He liked full-blooded writing, and
had a tenderness for big words and big adjectives, well-matched and in
pairs. He revelled in the warmth and colour of certain words, and the
more resonant they were, the better he liked them." Words carry not
only meaning, but atmosphere with them. Sometimes a single word well
chosen and well placed in a sentence gives feeling, and lights it up
with a glow of beauty. J. A. Symonds says: "The right word used in the
right place constitutes the perfection of style." In my youth a
literary friend was pruning a crude essay I had written; he paused in
his reading on the word "fallacious," and he said: "That's a good word
and well chosen; it's the right word." It was a revelation to me at the
time that one word was better than another if they both meant the same
thing. On thinking it over, I saw that no two words do mean exactly the
same thing, and that there is only one right word in a hundred to
express exactly your meaning and to give life to it. The other
ninety-and-nine words are but poor relations--nay! they are all dead
corpses.
Perhaps you remember Millais' wonderfully popular picture called
"Cinderella." A beautiful healthy English child, with deep dreamy eyes
and long wavy golden hair sits on a stool by the kitchen fire holding in
her hand a birch broom emblem of her kitchen toil. It is a fascinating
picture. At home I look on a coloured print of it nearly every day of
the week. The most brilliant thing on the canvas is the patch of
scarlet in the dainty cap the child wears. That single dab of red seems
to concentrate in itself the whole colour-scheme of the picture. It is
the keynote. Now a single word in a sentence sometimes gives a
startling effect. It strikes a strong, clear, ringing note which keys
the writer's passing mood, fascinates us with its vividness, and sticks
in the memory ever after. It is a colour-patch in literary art which
dominates the picture and arrests attention, as in Shakespeare's
"Every yesterday hath lighted fools
The way to _dusty_ death!"
Or,
"The _primrose_ path to the eternal bonfire."
Or Pope's
"Quick effluvia darting through the brain
Die of a rose in _aromatic_ pain."
Also
"Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me _languish_ into life."
And Gray's inimitable couplet:
"There pipes the song-thrush, and the skylark there
Scatters his _loose_ notes in the waste of air."
It is the height of literary skill to gather up your thought into a
single word and fling it flaming on canvas. It is more convincing than
a long chapter of dull argument which drugs the senses. Tennyson knew
the magic of a single epithet in the thought scheme of the moment when
he sang: "All the charm of all the muses often flowering in a lonely
word." It is not as easily done as eating hot cakes for tea, for it is
not the first word that comes sailing into a man's head that is the
right word. "The comely phrase, the well-born word," is a prince of
high degree, and you may wait in his anteroom days before an audience is
granted. The elect word does not sit on the tip of the tongue and drop
into its place at call. You may search diligently and not find it, and
presently of its own free will it comes to you, a happy thought flashed
from the void where whispering spirits dwell. Gray's Elegy is the most
perfect poem in the English language. It was not thrown together
carelessly in an idle hour one sleepy summer afternoon. Every word and
every line of it cost thought, was written and rewritten, and patiently
polished over again. For eight years the author held the poem between
the hammer and the anvil, beating it into shape before he passed it into
print. He damaged reams of paper developing a fair copy of those
immortal verses.
*V*
*THE LURE OF AN OLD TUSCAN GARDEN*
A delightful French writer says "to grow old in a garden in sight of
softly undulating hills, beneath a sky variable as the human soul, is
very sweet, very consoling, very easy. One becomes more of a child and
for the first time a philosopher. Poetry and wisdom on every hand
permeate the close of life, just as the oblique rays of the setting sun
penetrate into the heart of the densest foliage, which is impervious to
the vertical beams of noonday." This charming writer touches the spot;
experience, tenderness, and sympathy flow from mellowed lips well
rounding to the autumn of life. Old age does reflect more discerningly
than impatient youth, and in a garden, too, surrounded by a heavenly
host of flowers whose blossom is as laughter and whose perfume is a
song. Romance sketches wonderful pictures with such a beatific
background to inspire it, and imagination wanders into a carnival of
dreams. How many pleasant thoughts and noble thoughts have been brought
to birth in a garden which afterward grew into brave deeds and gentle
lives contributing generously to enrich the sum of human happiness!
I sit under an ilex-tree in an old Tuscan garden which in course of many
generations has belonged to many owners. A haunting beauty fills the
ancient place, which one can feel, but cannot understand. A friendly
atmosphere that pervades old gardens saturates the solitude. It is more
than atmosphere, it is influence--a caressing influence almost human
that holds us up and tantalizes. Vague ancestral memories of old
families flash upon the mind; for more than four hundred years men and
women have walked and talked and thought in this Tuscan garden of mine,
and tended its flowers and enjoyed its tranquillity. Children have
played in it, often going to bed tired and happy after romping in it the
livelong day, and so generation after generation mankind repeats itself
in the life-story of the old garden on a Tuscan hillside. The spirit of
the past haunts it in shadow and in sunshine, because wherever men have
been they leave a little of themselves behind in ghostly exhalations.
When one is in a contemplative humour a garden is full of object-lessons
interesting to study. By dint of watching leaf replace leaf, insects
come into life and die, blossoms change into fruit, fruit ripen and
fall, the swallows come with the daffodils and depart when the hunter's
moon frightens them away--by watching these things methodically and
silently accomplishing their allotted tasks, I have come to think about
myself with brave resolution and resigned conformity to natural laws. I
grieve less over myself when I regard the change which is universal; the
setting sun and the dying summer help me also to decline gently. Life
is a splendid heritage to hold in fee, but we quit and deliver up
possession when our lease expires. The light must be kept burning if
our own little taper flickers into darkness.
A young girl visited us in Florence one spring-time. She lived in the
garden among the flowers, caressed them, talked to them, and gathered
them by the handful, the armful, the basketful. She decorated the rooms
with flowers, filled glass bowls and bronze vases with flowers, and her
art touched its zenith in glorifying the dinner-table every evening with
the choicest of them all. She chatted, smiled, and sang whilst doing
it, for she dearly loved the flowers that she fondled.
We took her to the Uffizi to see the world-renowned Old Masters there;
but she yawned in front of masterpieces of art, and her eyes wandered
round searching the smart costumes of the ladies in the room. We took
her to Rome and showed her the sights of the Eternal City, but Bond
Street and Regent Street interested her more than St. Peter's and the
Coliseum. We visited the Forum with its ruined temples and triumphal
arches, and trod the Via Sacra; but the place was only an old stoneyard
to her, devoid of interest, so we left her to herself, and she wandered
over the Forum on other pleasure bent, and we found her afterwards
picking violets amongst the ruins.
When at home again a friend asked how she enjoyed her visit to Rome, and
had she seen the Forum? In blank despair she appealed to me to help her
out of it. "Yes," I replied, "you saw the Forum; that is where you
picked the violets." The Forum to her was deadly dull and forgotten
even by name, but a bunch of wild violets lived vividly in her memory as
the crown and flower of her heart's desire, more excellent than all the
ruins of Rome.
Dulness comes to us in uncongenial company and occupation. You may be
surrounded by objects of interest and beauty which amuse other people,
but if these worthy objects do not fit your taste, for you they contain
no element of delight, and you are bored utterly with them whoever may
sing their praise. It is a question of temperament. The heart is not
dull if the head is _triste_. Every eye makes its own beauty and every
heart forms its own kinships. Put me in front of a post-impressionist
picture and dulness covers me like a funeral pall. The beauties of the
glowing picture composed of significant form and bunkum are lost on me
completely. Here is something tremendously original that makes demands
on my intelligence that I cannot meet. I am mentally bankrupt in front
of this maddening art.
Looking at a post-impressionist picture, you see only shapes and forms
tangled together within the limited area of a gilt frame; you see
relations and quantities of colour splashed on canvas meaning anything
you choose to label it, but in the likeness of nothing God made or man
ever saw. It distorts nature and scoffs at portraiture. "Creating a work
of art," trumpets the evangelist of post-impressionism, "is so
tremendous a business that it leaves no leisure for catching a
likeness." "You look at a landscape, and you are not to see it as
fields and cottages; instead you are to see it as lines and colours."
Yet up against this lucid statement I observe no reason why the portrait
of a man should be drawn like a peculiarly shaped market-garden divided
into plots for growing vegetables. Nor can I explain why the picture of
a village street should look like a fortnight's wash suspended in a
cherry orchard, and the policeman standing in front of the village inn
at the corner should look like a laundry-maid hanging out the clothes.
It requires uncommon genius to work the illusion successfully, and to
start an indolent British public frivolling with the captivating puzzle.
But it leaves me cold and passionless, for I am slow of understanding
these things. They say an impressionist picture of top-note character
is a painfully exciting object for the spectator to worship. To do it
justice, he must squirm in front of it, for it is a picture that creates
a thunderstorm of rhapsody, a deluge of delight, a roaring cataract of
aesthetic emotion in the soul of the man who understands its cryptic
language. The artist who limned the picture suffers agonies whilst
working up significant form, being pricked with pins and needles of
excitement, and is continually dancing on the hot-plate of rapture. The
spectator's duty when viewing a work of art is to come into touch with
the mind of the artist. To do this no wonder the spectator has a bad
time when digesting a whole gallery of post-impressionist pictures.
Their religion is as bewildering as their art. For their moral vision is
out of kilter, as their eyesight is out of focus. The aforesaid
evangelist of the cult says: "I doubt whether the good artist bothers
much more about the future than about the past. Why should artists
bother about the fate of humanity? If art does not justify itself,
aesthetic rapture does.... Rapture suffices. The artist has no more
call to look forward than the lover in the arms of his mistress. There
are moments in life that are ends to which the whole history of humanity
would not be an extravagant means; of such are the moments of aesthetic
ecstasy."
We return to the garden, for the lure of a garden relaxes not. The joy
of it entangles you in its toils. Each successive season of the year
unfolds new developments which lead you on to the next season. So you
are handed on from one month to another throughout the gardener's
calendar by endless enticements which keep the interest gently
simmering. The procession of gay flowers that promenade the sheltered
borders and disport themselves with flagrant pride on open beds during
spring and summer days, tricked in rainbow colours, dazzle the eye with
splendour, win the heart's endearment, and pay in noblest coin full
recompense for the chill, dull toil given in grey winter hours.
A lady friend who lived to a ripe old age said to me jocosely, "To be a
good gardener you need a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, for you
are bending and stooping all day long in the garden." Only by constant
labour spent on the good brown earth can you become candidate for
possession of this useful garden requisite, a wooden back with an iron
hinge to it, or the neatest imitation offered on the market. In the
garden you get in touch with Nature, breathe fresh air, cultivate a
contented mind, and never stagnate in idleness or degenerate into ennui.
Your body, inured to all weathers, escapes many little ills of the
flesh, and gradually you harden into an iron constitution, which is the
nearest earthly substitute to a wooden back hung on iron hinges.
You never need remain indoors to smoke or sew or yawn because there is
nothing doing in the garden: you can weed there the livelong day in the
open. This lowly service offers immediate reward; it begets a healthy
appetite at meal-times, and develops a night's sound sleep, which is
some pleasure no millionaire can buy with his millions. Weeding puzzles
my blind gardener Emilio.
I have two brothers gardeners, Enrico and Emilio. Enrico has sight only
of one eye, Emilio is blind both eyes. The two brothers work together
in brotherly love, and have only one working eye between them, yet it is
wonderful how much good work the one eye accomplishes per day. Emilio
sees with his hands. It is weeding that puzzles him most. He never
pulls a flower instead of a weed--he feels the difference between them.
It is the weeds that elude his fingers as he works along the border that
grieve him. Weeding is a fascinating occupation to me. Nice people
won't profane their hands grubbing in common garden soil, but, being a
groundling myself, I enjoy the fun of coming into contact with my native
element. Clean, sweet, caressing earth, it is the last flowery coverlet
all of us will sleep under; why shun thy friendly touch to-day? There is
always an abundant crop of weeds to practise on in an Italian garden,
and your fingers itch to uproot them to the very last offender. I
suppose it is the ruthlessness and slaughter of the deed, the close
handgrip on the enemy, that compels you on; and when the skirmish is
over, surveying the ground cleared of the foe and the heaps of the slain
withering at your feet gives a pleasurable thrill of excitement in the
hour of victory. You exult, for there is something done, and well done,
to show for your backache.
The gardener's lure is irresistible. The devotee walks in flowerland of
his own creation. In dreary winter hours he dreams splendid dreams of
himself surrounded by summer harmonies, summer fragrance, and summer
flowers, for which he has planned and planted and patiently tended along
the covering months of winter and spring. The hour of full realization
approaches when the roses mass their rival glories and spread their
coloured raptures in the garden that he loves. This puts the crown on
the brow of summer. This is the gardener's festival of the year. He
invites his horticultural cronies to tea on the lawn, and they all talk
rose jargon together. He takes them on a tour of inspection round the
garden, and they congratulate the founder of the feast of flowers. They
are happy as a band of Sunday-school children spending the afternoon
out. They sit on the lawn under the spreading ilex-tree, which casts
ample shadow for their comfort, and the summer sunshine lays ardent on
the green-sward around them. It is a genial gathering, but the man who
understands not roses would be speechless in their midst and not a
little bored. Conversation cools off, the evening shadows lengthen, and
in an interlude of silence there is a sort of whispering stillness in
the warm evening air, as if the flowers and grass and trees are all
saying kind words to one another, for having done their best to please.
The lure of the garden is never so poignant as at this great moment, for
your heart is brimming of sweet content, and you say to yourself: "Can
it be true? Can anything in the world be more beautiful?"
There is another lure that lays hands on a man like grappling-irons
tackling a Spanish galleon laden with treasure, with a grip which cannot
be shaken off: I mean the writer's lure. I am fond of reading. The
enticements of a good book are hard to resist, especially if you have no
inclination to resist, but tumble a ready victim to the writer's charm.