The inimitable and forever to be lamented Gilbert, in one of his
delightful songs in Pinafore, bade us once to remember that--
Things are seldom what they seem--
Skim-milk masquerades as cream;
Highlows pass as patent-leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers.
The good woman who sang this song--little Buttercup, they called
her--was in a pessimistic mood at the moment; for had she not been so
she would have reversed the sentiment, showing us with equal truth how
sometimes cream masquerades as skim milk, and how underneath the wear
and tear of time what outwardly appears to be a "high low" still
possesses some of the glorious polish of the "patent leather."
Everywhere I travel I find something of this latter truth; but never was
it more clearly demonstrated than when on one of my Western jaunts I
came unexpectedly upon an almost overwhelming revelation of a finely
poetic nature under an apparently rough and unpromising exterior.
It happened on a trip in Arizona back in 1906. My train after passing
Yuma was held up for several hours. Ordinarily I should have found this
distressing; but, as the event proved, it brought to me one of the most
delightfully instructive experiences I have yet had in the pursuit of my
platform labors. As the express stood waiting for another much belated
train from the East to pass, the door of the ordinary day coach--in
which I had chosen to while away the tedium of the morning, largely
because it was fastened to the end of the train, whence I could secure a
wonderful view of the surrounding country--was opened, and a man
apparently in the last stages of poverty entered the car.
He was an oldish man, past sixty, I should say, and a glance at him
caused my mind instinctively to revert to certain descriptions I had
heard of the sad condition of the downtrodden Westerner, concerning
whose unhappy lot our friends the Populists used to tell us so much. He
looked so very poor and so irremediably miserable that he excited my
sympathy. Upon his back there lay loosely the time-rusted and threadbare
remnant of what had once in the days of its pride and freshness been a
frock coat, now buttonless, spotted, and fringing at the edges. His
trousers matched. His neck was collarless, a faded blue polka-dotted
handkerchief serving as both collar and tie. His hat suggested service
in numerous wars, and on his feet, bound there for their greater
security with ordinary twine, were the uppers and a perforated part of
the soles of a one-time pair of congress gaiters. As for his face--well,
it brought vividly to mind the lines of Spenser--
His rawbone cheekes, through penurie and pine,
Were shronke into his jawes, as he did never dyne.
[Illustration: In the last stages of poverty.]
The old fellow shambled feebly to the seat adjoining my own, gazing
pensively out of the window for a few moments, and then turning fixed a
pair of penetrating blue eyes upon me. "Pretty tiresome waiting," he
ventured, in a voice not altogether certain in its pitch, as if he had
not had much chance to use it latterly.
"Very," said I carelessly. "But I suppose we've got to get used to this
sort of thing."
"I suppose so," he agreed; "but just the same for a man in your business
I should think it would be something awful. Don't it get on your
nerves?"
"What do you know about my business?" I asked, my curiosity aroused.
"Oh," he laughed, "I know who you are. I read one of your books once.
I've forgotten what it was about; but it had your picture in the front
of it, and I knew you the minute I saw you. Besides I was down in Tucson
the other day, and--you're going to lecture at Tucson Tuesday night,
aren't you?"
"I am if I ever get there," said I. "At this rate of speed I'm afraid
it'll be season after next."
"Well, they'll be ready for you when you arrive," he chuckled. "They've
got your picture plastered all over the place. It's in every drug-store
and saloon window in the town. They've got it tacked onto every tree,
hydrant, hitching post, billboard, and pump, from the railway station
out to the university and back. I ain't sure that there ain't a few of
'em nailed onto the ash barrels. You can't look anywhere without seeing
John Kendrick Bangs staring out at you from the depths of a
photographer's arm chair. Fact is," he added with a whimsical wink, "I
left Tucson to get away from the Bangs rash that's broken out all over
the place, and, by Jehosaphat! I get aboard this train, and _there sets
the original_!"
I laughed and handed the old fellow a cigar, which he accepted with
avidity, biting off at least a quarter of it in his eagerness to get
down to business.
"I'm not so bad as I'm lithographed," I said facetiously.
"So I see," he replied, "and it must be some comfort to you to realize
that if you ever get down and out financially you've got a first-class
case for libel against the feller that lithographed you."
He puffed away in silence for a minute or two, and then leaning over
the arm of his seat he re-opened the conversation.
"I say, Mr. Bangs," he said, rather wistfully, I thought, "you must read
a great deal from one year's end to another--maybe you could recommend
one or two good books for me?"
It was something of a poser. Somehow or other he did not suggest at
first glance anything remotely connected with a literary taste, and I
temporized with the problem.
"Why, yes," I answered cautiously. "I do run through a good many books
in the course of a year; but I don't like to prescribe a course of
literary treatment for a man unless I have had time to diagnose his
case, and get at his symptoms. You know you mightn't like the same sort
of thing that I do."
"That may be so too," he observed coolly. "But we've got some time on
our hands--suppose you try me and find out. I'm willin' to testify. Fire
ahead--nothin' like a few experiments."
"Well," said I, "personally I prefer biography to any other kind of
reading. I like novels well enough; but after all I'd rather read the
story of one real man's life, sympathetically presented, than any
number of absorbing tales concerning the deeds and emotions of the
fictitious creatures of a novelist's fancy. I like Boswell better than
Fielding, and Dr. Johnson is vastly more interesting to me than Tom
Jones."
"Same here," said my new friend. "That's what I've always said. What's
the use of puttin' in all your time on fiction when there's so much
romance to be found in the real thing? The only trouble is that there
ain't much in the way of good biography written these days--is there?"
"Oh, yes, there is," said I. "There's plenty of it, and now and then we
come upon something that is tremendously stimulating. I don't suppose it
would interest you very much, but I have just finished a two-volume life
of a great painter--it is called 'Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones,'
written by his wife."
The old man's face fairly shone with interest as I spoke, and reaching
down into the inner pocket of his ragged coat he produced a
time-smeared, pocket-worn envelop upon which to make a memorandum, and
then after rummaging around in the mysterious recesses of an over-large
waistcoat for a moment or two he brought forth the merest stub of a
pencil.
"Who publishes that book?" he asked, leaning forward and gazing eagerly
into my face.
"Why--the Macmillan Company," I replied, somewhat abashed. "But--would
_you_ be interested in that?"
And then came the illuminating moment--I fear its radiance even affected
the color of my cheeks when I thought of my somewhat patronizing manner
of a moment before.
"I guess I would be interested in that!" he replied with a real show of
enthusiasm. "_I've always been interested in that whole Preraphaelite
movement!_"
I tried manfully to conceal my astonishment; but I am very much afraid
that in spite of all my efforts my eyes gave my real feelings away. I
swallowed hard, and stared, and the old man chuckled as he went on.
"They were a great bunch, that crowd," he observed reflectively, "and I
don't suppose the world realizes yet what we owe to them and their
influence. Burne-Jones, William Morris, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, and
Rossetti--I suppose you know your Rossetti like a book?"
I tried to convey the impression that I was not without due familiarity
with and appreciation of my Rossetti; but I began to feel myself getting
into deeper water than I had expected.
"There's a lot of fine things in poetry and in paint we'd never have had
if it hadn't been for those fellows," the old man went on. "Of course
there's a lot of minds so calloused over with the things of the past
that they can't see the beauty in anything that takes 'em out of a rut,
even if it's really old and only seems to be new. That's always the way
with any new movement, and the fellow that starts in at the head of the
procession gets a lot of abuse. Take poor old Rossetti, for instance,
how the critics did hand it to him, especially Buchanan--the idea of a
man like Robert Buchanan even daring to criticize Rossetti's 'Blessed
Damozel'! It's preposterous! It's like an elephant trying to handle a
cobweb to find out how any living thing could make a home of it. Of
course the elephant couldn't!"
I quite agreed that the average elephant of my acquaintance would have
found the average cobweb a rather insecure retreat in which to stretch
his weary length.
"Do you remember," he went on, "what Buchanan said about those lines?--
"And still she bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm
_Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm._
He said those lines were bad, and that the third and fourth were quite
without merit, and _almost without meaning_! Fancy that!--
"_Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm_
_almost without meaning_! Suffering Centipedes!" he cried indignantly.
"That man must have been brought up on the bottle!"
I think I may truthfully say that from that point on I listened to the
old man breathlessly. Buchanan's monograph on "The Fleshly School of
Poetry" though wholly out of sympathy with my own views has long been a
favorite bit of literary excoriation with me, comparable to Victor
Hugo's incisive flaying of Napoleon III, and to have it spring up at me
thus out of the alkali desert, through the medium of this beloved
vagabond, was indeed an experience. Instead of conversing with my
friend, I turned myself into what theatrical people call a "feeder" for
the time being, putting questions, and now and then venturing a remark
sufficiently suggestive to keep him going. His voice as he ran on
gathered in strength, and waxed tuneful and mellow, until, if I had
closed my eyes, I could almost have brought myself to believe that it
was our much-loved Mark Twain who was speaking with that musical drawl
of his, shot through and through with that lyrical note which gave his
voice such rare sweetness.
[Illustration: "Suffering Centipedes!" he cried. "That man must have
been brought up on the bottle!"]
From Rossetti my new-found friend jumped to Whistler--to whom he
referred as "Jimmy"--thence to Watts, and from Watts to Ruskin; from
Ruskin he ran on to Burne-Jones, and then harked back to Rossetti again.
Rossetti now seemed to become an obsession with him; only it was
Rossetti the poet instead of Rossetti the painter to whom he referred.
In a few moments the stillness of that sordid coach was echoing to the
sonnet of "Lost Days":
"The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squander'd and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spill'd water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see--
Each one a murder'd self, with low last breath;
'I am thyself--what hast thou done to me?'
'And I--and I--thyself' (lo! each one saith)--
'And thou thyself to all eternity.'"
His voice trembled as he finished, and a long silence followed.
"Pretty good stuff, that, eh?" he said, at length.
"Fine!" said I, suddenly afflicted with a poverty of language quite
comparable to his own in the way of worldly goods.
"Takes you here, however," said he, tapping his forehead. "Makes you
think--and somehow or other I--I don't like to think. I'd rather
feel--and when it comes to that it's Christina Rossetti that takes you
here." He tapped his left breast over his heart. "She's got all the rest
of 'em skinned a mile, as far as I'm concerned. I love that 'Up Hill'
thing of hers--remember it?--
"Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
"But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for where the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that Inn.
"Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at the door.
"Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
"Ah, me!" he said. "I've got a deal of heartening out of that, and then
some day when things don't seem to go just right, I sing for my comfort
that song of hers:
"When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me,
With showers and dew-drops wet,
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
"I shall not see the shadows.
I shall not feel the rain.
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget."
The train had long since started on toward our destination, the old
fellow discoursing gloriously as we ran along, I utterly unconscious of
everything save the marvelous contrasts of that picture--a seemingly
wretched vagabond, held in the grip of a relentless poverty, pouring
forth out of the depths of a rich mind as rare a spiritual disquisition
as I ever remember to have enjoyed. Our destination finally reached, I
held out my hand to bid him good-by.
"I can't thank you sufficiently," I said, "for a wonderful hour. I want
you to do something for me. You see you have the advantage of me. You
know who I am; but I don't know who you are. Won't you tell me your
name, that I may add it to the list of my friends?"
The old fellow's eyes filled with tears. He laid his hand gently on my
shoulder. "My young friend," he said, his voice growing hoarse and husky
again, "_who_ I am is one of the least important things on the face of
God's beautiful green earth. What is really important is the kind of man
I am. _I am one of those unfortunates who started in life at the top of
the ladder and moved in the only direction he thought was left open to
him._"
He seized my hand, gave it a soft, seemingly affectionate pressure, and
walked away, leaving me standing alone, and I have not seen nor heard
from him since.