+Born 1853.+
Of Mr. Henry Pettitt, at the age of three, we have nothing to recount;
but at fourteen he ran away from school to Sadler's Wells Theatre,
obtained an engagement, went on the stage as an Irish boy armed with
a shillelagh, broke the head of a utility actor, and got a drubbing
which left him senseless. After this taste of stage-life he obtained
an engagement as an usher at the North London Collegiate School, a
post which he was holding at the age of our second portrait. But all
this while he was writing poems, sketches, and burlesque lectures, and
finally, in collaboration with Paul Meritt, he wrote his first play,
_British Born_, which was a grand success. Since then he has produced
innumerable dramas, and, as a master of construction and as a realistic
writer, he has probably no equal at the present day.
[Illustration:
_From a Photo. by_ +AGE 21.+
_T. Coleman._]
[Illustration:
_From a Photo. by_ +AGE 38.+
_Samuel A. Walker._]
_A New Industry for Ladies._
+By Miss Grace Harriman.+
The object of this New Industry is to open up a new, profitable,
and, I hope, pleasant way out of the present congested state of the
Lady Labour Market. The Ladies' Fruit and Salad Gardens have been
established at Grange Gardens, Sawley, near Derby, to provide pleasant
homes and remunerative employment for gentle-women who have a taste for
gardening work and wish to add to their incomes or to earn a living.
[Illustration: MISS GRACE HARRIMAN.]
It seems to have been seven or eight years since the idea first came to
me that ladies with a taste for gardening might possibly earn a living
by it; but so much needed thinking out, and detail after detail fitting
in, that it is only five years since I myself became a practical
gardener.
The more I inquired into the matter the more plainly I saw that market
gardeners, as a rule, made a good thing of it.
After trying two rented gardens that only proved quicksands, as far as
money-spending on them went, the soil being worn out, and the fruit
trees that were in them most uncertain, I determined to take new ground
in hand, _i.e._, break up old pasture and plant a garden after my own
idea of obtaining the greatest amount of produce with the least amount
of labour. I advocate planting dwarf hardy fruit-trees in the open;
and for this reason, that during nine months of the year they need no
labour expending on them after they are once well planted and securely
fenced from rabbits, their winter depredators, and with reason we may
look for a good crop of fruit five years out of seven.
My own experimental garden was planted, March, 1889. That year we had
enormous crops of vegetables of splendid flavour, and a very fair
amount of fruit. Last year our crop of fruit, in addition to the
vegetables, was very considerable. Had the produce of this garden been
for sale, it must have realised a very handsome sum.
To my mind it would be unwise for a woman single-handed to expect to
make a sure, comfortable living out of one isolated garden, but by
well-directed cooperation, thereby being able to grow a great variety
of fruits and vegetables and salads to meet the wants of a private
trade, the chance of the possibility of failure is reduced to a minimum.
It is not desirable for more than six owners of gardens to live in one
house. When fruit, salads, and vegetables are grown by the acre, and
sold by the dozen, the bunch, or the pound, the book-keeping necessary
must be very considerable. These six ladies can well look after the
three-acre garden, or, rather, fruit plantation. Each lady has her own
portion of half an acre solely under her care, and she keeps a strict
account of everything sold off her portion; and, after all necessary
expenses are paid, the profits, are divided exclusively among the lady
cultivators in proportion as each may, by diligence and constant
attention, have produced abundant crops or otherwise.
Our cultivation of flowers is mainly directed to late autumn, winter,
and early spring ones, those for Christmas and Easter decorations
paying as well as any. The ladies gladly undertake table and other
decorations at any time, as we do not entirely confine ourselves to
autumn, winter, and spring flowers.
[Illustration: BEDDING OUT.]
Well directed co-operation being so much more powerful than
single-handed efforts, as soon as the sufficient number of ladies have
definitely signified their intention of joining and showed us they
have the necessary £100 capital (for my five years of active practical
gardening work have plainly showed me that a little capital is
absolutely necessary for a woman to start successful market gardening),
a private Limited Liability Company will be formed--of course composed
entirely of lady gardeners. The first year they must not expect to make
more than covers expenses, including board of each household. The work
is such that any lady is well able to perform; the produce grown, all
kinds of hardy and dessert fruit under glass and in the open. Especial
attention is given to delicate vegetables and salads, mushrooms, &c.,
with flowers and poultry as an adjunct.
The market of the produce grown has from the beginning stood out
plainly before me as the vital point of success. Fortunately by
starting in a thickly populated consuming neighbourhood there seems
every probability of the greater portion, if not the whole, of the
produce being taken by people kind enough to open up deposit accounts
with the lady gardeners. After April 1, the gardens may be seen each
Thursday between 2 and 5 o'clock. Those going will kindly write their
names in the visitors' book, and pay one shilling each for being shown
over. This latter is a necessity, as it takes up the valuable time of
the lady gardeners.
The household arrangements are conducted with the greatest regularity;
the details of the _menu_ even may be gathered by those visiting the
place. The hours of meals are as follow:--
Breakfast at 8 a.m.
Early dinner 1 p.m.
Afternoon tea 4 p.m.
High tea 7 p.m.
During the busiest months of the year, April, May, and June, most of
the day will be taken up with one kind or other of light gardening
work. The long holidays must be taken in the winter. Those left at
home can send off with ease the stored crops as ordered, attend to the
plants under glass, and feed the poultry.
[Illustration: THE VINERY.]
I have been repeatedly asked why I have not started the industry near
London. My reasons for not doing so are many:--
(1) Well-situated, good land, near to a station within a few miles of
town, commands far too high a price to be thought of.
(2) The London market all the year round is far from being the best
obtainable. Some instances have come under my notice where Middlesex
growers have sent their garden produce to one or other of the great
Midland markets, the far higher price obtainable more than out-weighing
the greater amount of freight.
(3) It seemed wiser to start the Industry in a neighbourhood where the
promoter was well known, and had many friends and acquaintances. It is
also within easy distance of one or more of the late summer and autumn
crowded health resorts. The late summer and autumn being the season
when the bulk of all perishable fruits ripen, a moment's reflection
will point out to all that these health resorts are, as a rule, whether
by the seaside or inland, usually in a non-fruit-growing district. But
it would not answer to rely on these places entirely, because for some
months of the year they are practically empty.
(4) No sane people would plant fruit trees on other land than their own
without the protection of a long lease, the very shortest being thirty
years.
[Illustration: PRUNING AND POTTING.]
I am continually receiving offers of land from all parts of the
country, but I wish it distinctly understood that we entertain the idea
of none unless owned by those of sufficient influence and enterprise to
secure a ready market for the produce grown by the lady gardeners.
[Illustration: PLANTING POTATOES.]
I gather from my correspondents that some do not even grasp the
fundamental fact that their £100 is required solely to provide their
own share of garden and house; the smallest, and at the same time
the largest, number to be advantageously placed during the summer
is thirty-six, as many expenses necessary to a fewer number could
well be common to all. More than that number I can also easily and
advantageously place. I have had some hundreds of applications, but I
prefer none to decide until they see the exact model of the Industry,
in full working order now.
Full particulars may be obtained of the business part by sending a
stamped address to the promoter,
+Miss Grace Harriman+,
The Hut, Mount-park.
Harrow-on-the-Hill.
[Illustration]
_The Waltz in "Faust."_
+By Richard Dowling.+
My original name was John Fowler. I am known to the world by one much
more high sounding. This is the first time since I came to man's estate
that I have written the name of my boyhood, and I have never spoken
it. The one I have gone by most of my life is hardly more removed in
splendour from plain John Fowler than the life of variety and rich
experiences I now enjoy compared with the experience of my early years.
I follow one of the fine arts as a profession, and in the impetuous
days of my youth I adopted a _nom de guerre_ of fine sound and
picturesque associations.
I have refused all requests that I would furnish an account of my
youth. I would not speak of it now if I did not feel absolutely certain
that the man well known in certain art circles in London can never be
identified through the autobiographical sketch with John Fowler, the
miller's youngest son.
Private reasons, of no interest to the public, prevent me localising
my early home. I am neither a criminal nor a hero, that people should
be interested in my private life, and my only romantic experience will
be found in this narrative. Telling my story over here will beguile
my heart of a troublesome unrest which came to be positive pain,
pain springing from a flood of memories, when a few moments ago a
piano-organ at the next house played the waltz in "Faust."
[Illustration: THE MILL AT BRACKEN GLEN.]
I was born in the dwelling-house attached to a water-mill in a secluded
glen far away in the north of England. My family held religious views
shared by no sect I ever heard of, and lived lives of extraordinary
austerity. No mirror, no musical instruments, no volumes of poetry, no
novels, no games of any kind were permitted in our house. The furniture
was the most simple, consistent with maintaining bodily efficiency for
the performance of the day's work without hindrance or loss of time;
our carpets were of the dullest colour, and were considered merely as
a means of keeping out the cold and economising fuel. We had curtains
on the windows, but they were only to exclude or divert the draughts.
Our clothes were ample and warm, but they were of the hues of the
earth in winter. We spoke few words and in low tones. We ate and drank
in silence. We had no place of worship. The whole Sunday was spent
in solemn walks and reading the Scriptures and a few pious books. We
regarded Quakers as lax Christians.
The household consisted of my father, his wife and children, and my
father's brother, his wife and children. We were so large a family
that all the mill work was done without the aid of strangers, and we
all lived under one roof, in the mill house of Bracken Glen. I was the
youngest, the youngest of all.
Before I knew of any world beyond the mill and Bracken Glen, I thought
it was a busy and cheerful place. Now that I come to look back on
it I know it was one of the most desolate and lonely situations in
all England. People talk of the woes of solitude in the forest, in
an unpeopled island, in a crowd. But the most terrible and corroding
solitude of all is that of a small group of human beings, a large
family sunk deep among mountains far out of the reach of ordinary human
intercourse, and living in such strict customs and observances as
obtained at Bracken Glen. Of course we had the business always going
on, and that prevented our people from going mad. But the mill was not
in the main road. You had to turn up into the Glen to reach it, and
no faces ever appeared in the yard but the faces of people coming on
business to the mill.
[Illustration: "I FELL GRIEVOUSLY ILL."]
As I have said, I was the youngest of the whole Fowler family, brothers
and sisters and cousins. The winter that I was twelve years of age I
fell grievously ill, so ill that they thought I should never recover.
Then, for the first time, I saw a doctor. Our people had no great faith
in doctors, and this was the only occasion on which one had been in
Bracken Glen for ten years.
My father and mother were assured that I was certain to die if I were
not instantly sent to a milder climate, say the Isle of Wight or some
genial part of the South Coast. There was a grave demur, a long debate,
and finally I was despatched to the home of a married cousin whose name
I had heard and of whom I knew little except that he was the son of my
father's eldest sister, that he was not a miller, which was a reproach
to him, and that he did not conform to the observances seen at Bracken
Glen, or indeed hold the same form of religious belief.
I was too weak and wretched when I left home to care about anything, to
care whether I was moved or not, whether I was to taste warmer air or
not, whether I lived or not. If they would only let me alone I think I
should have preferred to die.
I was taken from the cold, bleak, northern Glen where, although we
ground corn never any grew, and carried hundreds of miles south; an
interminable journey, it seemed to my young mind and feeble, sensitive
body.
All through that winter I was delicate, and not allowed out of doors.
My cousin's name was Harding. I had never met either him or his wife
before. He was about thirty, and she twenty-five. They were simple
people, with much of the hereditary aversion from frivolity, but they
were not dogmatic or censorious, and they were beyond and above all the
very kindest people I ever met in all my life. They lived a mile out of
the little town of Bickerton, on the high road. They were childless. He
traded in corn in Bickerton. The taste for grain seemed to run in the
blood of our family.
In my old home my education had not been neglected. I could read and
cypher, and I knew the heaviness of all the weights, and the dryness
of all the dry measures. My father had taught me the elements of
Euclid and Algebra, and I remember that the most awful terrors were
in my mind of what these sciences could be in operation if their mere
elements were so forbidding, and cold, and tyrannical. My father had
a theory that any man able to "keep a set of books" could never be
ship-wrecked in life. He had tried to instil a passion for book-keeping
into my mind. So intense was my loathing of that black art that to this
day the mere mention of it rouses me to fury. In fine, I may say that
I had laid the foundation of what was called a commercial education,
and upon this I had raised up my own sole and overwhelming horror of
arithmetical figures, triangles, debtor and creditor, and unknown
quantities.
Sufficient of the old leaven of the Fowlers worked in Harding, not only
to draw him into the grain trade, but to make him still shy of "sweet
sounds that give delight and hurt not." There was no musical instrument
in the house, but books--
There were hundreds of books!
An inexhaustible mine of books, and such as I had never dreamed of
before! Books that my cousins Nellie and George had had when they were
young. Fairy tales and stories of adventure, novels and poetry!
In the cold grey times of that winter my soul took fire. My spirit
sprang up from long drowsing in the husk of the chrysalis, and put
forth golden and azure and purple wings, and soared into skies of
endless glories beyond the sun. All day long I went enchanted through
enchanted palaces, where moved stately princesses with gold brocaded
robes and haughty eyes, and voices of mystic tones. I led armies
against the Saracen, and spread terrors never dreamed on earth before,
and exercised clemencies that made heaven envious. I headed cavalcades
through winding streets where the air was thick with banners. I bore
the Black Knight backward out of his saddle in the list, and clove
the plumed helmet of the leaguer in the breach. I harangued my troops
on the field of victory, and pardoned my foes in the shrines of their
heathen gods.
But I did not know how the sound of a trumpet stirred, or what dancing
was, or love. I had never heard a musical instrument in my life or seen
a festival, and I was too young for love--and yet, perhaps, not all too
young for noble love and chivalry, if the princess or the lady came my
way.
With the spring of the next year health began to stir in my veins. I
shook off all the lassitudes and languors of illness, and by April I
felt better than ever in my young life before. With returning health,
the romantic rapture which had come to me out of books grew and
intensified. There was no talk of my going home, or more correctly,
there had been talk of it, and my kind relatives, the Hardings, had
declared that nothing but force should take me from them until I had
been fully fortified by spending a whole summer in the more genial
south.
In our own Glen, all the time I could steal from the detested weights
and measures and triangles, and debit and credit side of the fabulous
transactions of that creature, John Jones, Esq., I spent far afield
among the hills. Here, near Bickerton, this spring I found all I cared
for of Nature in the sky above me, and in the large, old-fashioned
garden; and all I desired of enchantment in the magical books. I
rarely went beyond the garden-gate, and never into the town. I became
a youthful recluse in the boundless realms of fancy. I lorded it over
empires and cities of men. Space, the space of the furthest wandering
star, was not vast enough to accommodate the realms that rose in mist
out of the pages of the poets and romancists.
I was a precocious boy. I knew nothing of boys' games and sports, and
all at once I had come out of the cold, arid life at Bracken Glen
into the rich and varied lights and colours of poetry. The change was
overwhelming and intoxicating. My reading had, in a vague way, been
progressive. I had begun with fairy tales. To these had succeeded
stories of adventure and travel, and to them poetry and plays. Prose
romances and novels came last, for I had fought shy of them at first,
considering that they dealt too much with people and scenes like those
in my own experience of life. When first I broke free among books I
wished to forget the world.
Towards the end of April two things drove me to the novels. The supply
of other books had been exhausted, and I began to yearn after a glimpse
at what possibilities of poetry and wonder still existed in the world,
as the world was going on outside the sphere of my experience. I
wanted to see in books the things now visible to other eyes still on
earth--things hidden from me by barriers of age and circumstances I
could not understand.
From this desire arose the romance of my life.
One evening George Harding mentioned at tea that Mr. Seymour, a
gentleman who owned an estate in the neighbourhood and had a fine
house, Trafford Manor, a couple of miles further out from Bickerton,
was going to give a ball the end of that month. The Hardings did not
look on balls as exactly wicked, and said nothing for or against the
approaching party. They did not, of course, know the Trafford Manor
folk, who were county people, and quite inaccessible to traders in
Bickerton.
If my cousins had conscientious scruples against going to balls, and
if the social position of the Seymours forbade any chance whatever
of an invitation, the husband and wife were willing to talk of the
approaching festival. They discussed it in no measured terms. They
said it would be the most distinguished and splendid event of the
neighbourhood for the year. They enumerated the distinguished and rich
and powerful people who would attend. They talked of the grounds being
lighted up with lamps, and the house one vast illumination from roof
to cellar. They spoke of the dancing and the bounteous table and the
plenteous wine and the strings of carriages coming up the drive, of the
brilliant costumes, and the jewels and lovely women, of the fountain
spouting on the lawn, and the band--the band of famous musicians from
London, who, though they came by night to places like Bickerton in
sober black cloth coats and played with fiddles, were yet entitled to
wear in London magnificent red coats all slashed and braided and piped
and gathered with cords and knots of gold; musicians who not only
could play with marvellous skill on stringed, brown wood instruments
while they sat on chairs, but had, in their natural sphere in London,
great brazen and silver instruments to play upon as they rode through
the crowded streets of the marvellous capital on jet black prancing
chargers, whose bridles were of steel shining like silver, and upon
whose forehead blazed burnished, brazen stars.
[Illustration: "THEY SPOKE OF THE FAMOUS MUSICIANS."]
In the novels I had read there had been descriptions of balls. I had no
more thought when reading that it could ever be my luck to see one than
I had considered my chance good of fighting North American Indians, or
cutting out French sloops, or riding from London to York on Black Bess.
Now, a ball had not only come within my ken, but had been brought to my
very door. What could be easier than for me to slip out of my room when
all the house was asleep, walk to Trafford Manor, enter the grounds,
and behold the miraculous sight through a window or open door, and,
when I had filled my soul with a scene of fairy-land realised, steal
back to my room unnoticed by anyone in the house? The Hardings were, of
course, much older than I. They were man and woman and I only a boy not
yet in his teens, but they had no halo of parental awe, no parental
authority or infallibility.
I had never in all my life heard a musical instrument. At the ball
there would be a band. A band was several musical instruments playing
all together. What could that be like? Would it resemble several people
talking at once? That would be horribly confusing. But it could not be
like several people talking together, for people spoke of a band as a
source of fine pleasure. Would a band of several instruments playing
at one time be like a parti-coloured card spun round? Hardly; for
that only confused the colours, so long as they could be known to be
separate colours, and only made a dull stain when they mingled in one
tint.
My first care was to keep my intention to myself. My second was to
survey the ground of future enterprise. There was no difficulty about
either of these precautions. I had merely to hold my tongue and to walk
to Trafford Manor along a beautiful, undulating, winding, wooded road
which passed by our modest gate, and before the stately portal of the
great house.
The beauty of Trafford Manor was renowned in all the south, and the
owner was proud of his grounds and opened them to all who chose to see
them.
One morning, to the astonishment of my cousin Nellie, I announced my
intention of going for a long walk. She was delighted, crammed my
pockets full of the best good things in the larder, and declared that
she should resent seeing me before dinner.
That whole day I spent in the Trafford demesne. Surely nowhere was
scene more fitted for a fairy _fête_. It was mid April, and clear
and sunny weather. The air was full of fresh spices of the swelling
buds and of the dainty, delicate, flat leaves already unsheathed and
glittering moist and green in the flowing air. It was rapture to live
and breathe, and heaven to know as much and no more of the world
of things than books taught, no more than enough to set the spirit
dreaming. All the senses brought fuel for poetry, if the sacred flame
fluttered inside. As yet the trees were only misty with verdure. The
depths in depth of vestal green in the woods took the eye into such
enchanted bowers of the imagination, it was like praying, to stand and
listen to the soft, ample murmurs of the multitudinous leaves as the
broad air came by them out of the opening south.
[Illustration: "CRAMMED MY POCKETS FULL."]
In that far off Bracken Glen I often knew promptings towards the
spirit of the heather and the glen and the skies. But then I felt
Nature spoke a language I did not understand, which no one about me
seemed to hear. In the midst of my most ecstatic trances I recalled
myself by conceiving what a poor opinion John Jones, Esquire, of the
soddened book-keeping, would hold of me if he knew that I was wasting
time in hearkening to fancy instead of those pipes of wine which never
knew rest in the day-book, journal, or ledger, or trying to remember
thirteen times, or endeavouring at all events to trisect the angle at
which the brown ground of the bluff bit through the verdure of the hill
to the gash where the stream gushed forth through ragged rocks on its
way to the pond above our overshot wheel.
But now I had met, in the modest library of the Hardings, men who would
gag John Jones, Esquire, if he opened his mouth to speak in those
sylvan dales of Trafford, men who would condescend to have no dealings
whatever with pipes of wine, except to drink in them the ladies of
their love, and who would not allow a triangle into their presence,
except for the purpose of tricing up John Jones, Esquire, to it, and
giving him five dozen with the cat!
[Illustration: "SLIPPED DOWNSTAIRS."]
The Hardings usually retired early, and in the first days of my visit,
when I felt the first flush of freedom from the stricter rules of my
own home, when I stirred under the inspiriting touch of the outer
world, faint though it might be, through the intercourse of George
Harding with it, I felt grieved that they would not sit later of nights
and let me listen in awakening silence to their news of the great world
beyond.
On the night of the ball I thought they would never rise to go. It
would not do for me to betray the least anxiety. Other nights I had
never shown any desire to go to bed. It would not do to challenge
attention or excite suspicion by exhibiting any hurry this night. It
was hard to sit and hear of all the preparations for the great ball,
and feel that my cousins were standing between me and a sight of the
glories about which they could only speculate.
I had heard that people would not begin to arrive at Trafford Manor
until late, but I was consumed with impatience to be off. At last the
blessed moment of release came. My cousins went to bed, and I found
myself alone in my room at the back of the house.
No great strategy or caution was necessary to escape. I waited half an
hour, then slipped downstairs, carrying my boots in my hand, and stole
out by the back door.
When I found myself in the garden I had almost to grope my way, the
night was so dark. I could not see the clouds over-head, but they must
have been thick, for not a star shone in all heaven, and they must have
been low, for the air was unusually warm considering the season. I sat
down on a garden chair and put on my boots. Then rising, I drew a full
breath, made quietly for the road, and, turning my back upon the town,
set off at a good pace towards Trafford Manor.
I don't know what o'clock it was, but the low mutter of vehicles was
behind me and before me in the darkness, and every now and then the
lights of a carriage flashed into view in the rear, and the carriage
dashed past, carrying before it into the blackness a shield of light
raised up by its lamps.
Here was lonely I at last, the hero of a romance! Surely it was a
romance to steal away in the dead of night and set out alone in
search of adventure. For although I had but one intention clearly
defined at starting, that of getting sight of the ball, now that I
found myself on the way was I not fairly circumstanced to encounter
adventures? Might not the horses under one of the carriages break away
from control, placing in peril the precious and lovely inmates, until
I dashed forward and rescued them, winning guerdon of lovely looks
and loud-sounding fame? Might not thieves and highwaymen lurk in the
impenetrable boscage, and, breaking forth, threaten the ladies with
death, until I, bursting among the throng, scattered the marauders
and entered the Manor in triumph with my peerless charge? A great
general driving by might fall into some terrible danger from onslaught
of enemies, or the breaking of a wheel, and I might chance upon his
deliverance, and he, in gratitude, might make a general of me, and
send me against the Indians or the Kaffirs. Or a high admiral, being
unused to the land, might be met by me wandering about on foot and
alone--lost, not knowing where to turn for food or shelter, and I might
guide him to both, and he might order that henceforth I was to be
Captain of the saucy _Arethusa_.
Any one of these adventures was likely to befall one in my position
and circumstances, and it would be only prudent to keep oneself in a
fit state of mind to deal with all of them. The fit state of mind was
the enthusiastic and heroic; and in a very enthusiastic and heroic
disposition I trod the road, and arrived at the lodge of Trafford Manor
demesne.
Here no difficulty presented itself, for both the great iron portal and
the two side gates stood wide, inviting all men to enter.
I had not in my old home at Bracken Glen been used to bars and bolts,
and I had no awe of social superiors, because I had come in contact
with none. But I had grave timidity towards strangers of any kind, and,
although the rank of the folk at Trafford Manor had no fears for me,
I stood in awe of people who could command the wonders of which the
Hardings had spoken. Such people were of rather a different order of
being, like the genii of Eastern tales, than merely richer and better
born people of the same race as myself.
I walked into the grounds with as much confidence as I had travelled
the high road.
All thoughts of the past and future left me in presence of the scene
on the lawn before the house. I no longer wanted to take part in any
enterprise of hazardous adventure. I no longer yearned to distinguish
myself and win plaudits or enduring fame. I only wanted to be let
alone. I only wanted to be. I only wanted to wander about this land of
romance, and drink in all the loveliness at my wide young eyes.
In the centre of the lawn the fountain threw up a ghostly wavering
pillar of water, soft as smooth, and tinted with light of various hues.
Down the arcades of the tress swung lines of coloured lamps. Here and
there, round the trunk of oak, or beech, or lime, clustered a group
of blue, and green, and yellow lamps, like the flame of giant gems
sparkling on the dark, tasselled, trailing robe of night.
People were walking about, not bidden guests at the Manor, but those
who, like myself, had come to see the place by night. I took no
notice of anyone. I took no notice of anything, but the intoxicating
atmosphere of delight through which I moved. I did not think. I was
content merely to feel the enthralling influence of the scene. This was
my first experience of poetry realised, of dreams in tangible form, of
visions of the day taking material form at night.
All at once I came upon a French window wide open, with, beyond it, a
vast room lit by one huge chandelier. The floor shone like dark ice
shadowed by brown rocks, and down the dark ice figures of men and
women glided. The necks and shoulders and arms of the women were bare,
and in their hair flashed incandescent points of shifting fire. Their
robes were flowing, and of all colours, like the silent column of smoke
rising up in the lawn, only the colours were richer and more varied.
The long dresses of the women swept the floor as they moved to and fro,
their white-gloved hands on the arms of their cavaliers.
I stood spell-bound. My eyes went on seeing, yet discovering nothing
new, as when one looks at the lonely sea. Mere seeing was a delight
inexpressible, a delight that held me fast, as though the air around me
was adamant.
In front of me, by the window, stood a woman whose beauty was so
splendid it did not seem human. It was a perfectly colourless face, of
most exquisite profile, clear and sweet as a cameo. She did not strike
me as of any age. As she seemed now she must always have been, for
any change would not leave her perfect, and it was very plain she was
designed for perfection. There was in her a settled decision of line
that precluded the idea of her ever being otherwise than as she was
now--beauty absolute.
Could ever man that lived be worthy to touch the hand of this ethereal
princess standing tall and dark against the light of the chandelier
in the doorway? Could any mere man be privileged to do her a service,
to save her from fire or battle or the sea? To breathe the air she
sanctified by her presence? To live in the garden through which she
walked? To merit her smile? To die for her?
When poets spoke of goddesses they thought of her.
Then softly, and yet all at once, as my amazed and incredulous eyes
were fixed upon this miracle, the air was stirred in a way I had never
known it stirred before. Something subtler than light came through it
and touched me, and stole into my veins, and made my blood richer and
indescribably precious in my heart. The flames of the candles swayed
in a strange, intelligible, inexplicable sympathy with this new sense
in me. The essences of all perfumes were poured in upon my brain and
made me giddy with a rapture I had never dreamed life could hold. All
at once and by no effort of my own I came into possession of some
property of joy beyond the glory of light and colour, beyond the reach
of perfume. It came from beyond where this miracle of womanhood against
the light stood. It beat by her like wind, and yet it stirred not one
petal of the flowers in her hair. But the influence of it possessed
her face, and she who had been Grecian goddess became an enraptured
spirit. What could it be? Had the gate of Paradise opened, and was some
large and subtle and fine rapture flowing towards me and around me, and
possessing me with rhythmical joy?
[Illustration: "THE POOR BOY HAS FAINTED."]
What could this new thing, this mysterious agony of delight be?
Then, like a flash, I knew.
It was the band!
It was the band, and I was hearing music for the first time in my life!
After that with me all grew dark and blank.