Matene-Te-Nga—A “Bush-faller’s” Camp—A Maori Village—The Canoe
Dance—Song of the Night—Mochau’s Tale—An Open-air Concert—Violin
Solos—The Brown-eyed Girl—Boyhood—Onward to the Past!
I VISITED many places during my wanderings in New Zealand, among them
the beautiful Bay of Akaroa, and many other romantic scenes. The New
Zealand bush is wild and grand enough, and the Maoris deeply interested
me. I visited one aged Maori warrior, called Matene-Te-Nga. Samoan
tattooing was nothing compared to the engraving on his big frame. He
spoke English perfectly, but said little. He had kind, deep-set eyes and
a wrinkled face that was also deeply carved; indeed he looked like a
stalwart bit of brownish Greek sculptural work, covered with
hieroglyphics, when he moved with majestic precision. Curves of artistic
tattooing joined his stern, straight nose to his chin and upward to his
eyebrows. He was the one surviving warrior of a time when New Zealand
was a real Maori land, when the beautiful legendary lore of to-day was
poetical reality to the land’s original race. Matene had fought with the
tribes while fleets of canoes were ambushed in the gulf.
At Rotorua too I interviewed Maoris in their native pah. They wore but
few clothes. The girls and women had good-looking, stoical faces.
The Maoris strongly resemble the islanders of the Samoan and Tongan
Groups; indeed so pronounced is the likeness that one cannot help
thinking that the two races are allied by blood ties, and probably
drifted from New Zealand to the Pacific Isles, or vice versa, ages ago.
For several weeks I went off on my wanderings, accompanied by my beloved
comrade—my violin. I had still a pound or so in my possession, which I
intended to keep for the rainy day that would be sure to darken the blue
sky of glorious vagabondage. So, while the skies were bright, I made my
bed in the bush, and by the light of the moon read Byron’s _Poems_. I
had bought a paper-covered edition of them in Wellington and carried
them in my violin-case. Oh! the romantic splendour of those days and
nights, when I drank in the Byronic atmosphere. The glorious illusion of
youth, the rosy glamour that is not what it seems and seems what it’s
not, hung about me, as I sat under the giant karri-trees by the track,
or approached the Maori stronghold with Don Juan sparkling in my eyes.
On the west coast ranges, North Island, I came across a “bush-faller’s”
camp. I walked across the slope and introduced myself to the solitary
occupant, an old Irishman. He turned out to be an interesting and
congenial member of the wandering species. His camp was pitched by a
creek that led to a lake, the banks of which were surrounded by
beautiful ferns, eucalyptus and trees covered with fiery blossoms
musical with the moan of bees. As we sat together and sunset touched the
lake waters with fire, and primeval silence brooded over the forest,
broken only by the weird note of birds, I could easily have imagined
that I and my comrade occupied a new continent alone. Parakeets went
shrieking across the forest and over the lake; we only saw their shadows
in the still water and heard the tuneless beaks scream as they passed
overhead and left a deeper silence behind. I stopped with the
“bush-faller” one night. “Good-bye, mate,” he said, as he looked up to
me with his grateful, round blue eyes and placed my gift in his pocket.
He had told me where there was a Maori pah several miles away, and had
come stumbling with me through the undergrowth for a long way, to direct
me to the track that led to the main road.
That same evening I came across several old whares by a sheet of water,
at the foot of a tremendous range of hills that rolled to the southward.
It was extremely hot weather, and, as I followed the track round by the
water’s edge, I saw the little Maori children paddling by the lake
shores as the native women were fishing. On the other side of the lake
were several wooden homesteads where some whites lived.
I walked into the Maori village and the children stared stolidly at me
as they stood by the shed doors. Presently I came across an old Maori
chief sitting under a mangrove. He looked very aged, possibly more so
through his face being carved with dark blue tattoo. He spoke English
well, and as I approached he welcomed me and said: “Play me your music.”
I at once sat down by him and began to talk. As we were speaking a crowd
of Maori girls came round us, and some men, who wanted to hear me play
the violin. The old chief took me into his dwelling. It was strikingly
clean. I saw his wife squatting in the corner, reading a book printed in
the Maori language. She was a very ugly old woman and when she smiled
revealed bare gums that seemed to reach to her ears. Her hideousness
intensified the youthful beauty of the Maori girls, who came rushing
into the pah while I was speaking to the old man. They were beautiful
girls, with the usual fine eyes, and a marvellous wealth of hair that
glistened over their bare shoulders and fell to their bosoms. The sight
of them reminded me of my pretty Maori girl, who had long haunted my
dreams.
I stayed near that settlement for several days and attended the
rehearsal of a canoe dance. The weird beauty of that scene in many ways
recalled memories of the fantastic sights I had seen in the South Sea
Islands. One night, when the moon was shining over the lake and forest,
the Maori girls came forth from the pah, attired in scanty robes of
woven grass and flowers reaching to their knees. Across the forest patch
in front of the pah they ran with bare feet, waving their arms and
singing a chant in their native language. Then lying down in a row,
prone, in the deep grass, they moved their bodies and arms as though to
imitate canoe-paddling, all the time chanting a Maori melody. It was an
unforgettable sight, the moonlight glimpsing over their bodies as the
night wind lifted their luxuriant hair. They looked like mermaids
paddling in seaweed at the bottom of an ocean of moonlight. All the
while the Maori men gazed with admiring eyes.
I heard many Maori songs. They struck me as being full of a wild, poetic
atmosphere that suggested tribal battles and the legendary sadness of
far-off deeds of passion and love.
I give here a few bars of melody which may faintly express my memory of
their music:
[Music: HUMMING CHORUS, or Whistle, _ad lib_. A.S.M.
1st VOICE. Andante moderato. 1st voice. Espressivo.
2nd VOICE. (Hum, with closed lips.)
etc.]
I recall the solemn grandeur of the New Zealand bush, the cry of the
melancholy curlew in the forest as I tramped along the wild tracks to
Rotorua. I had my violin with me, and in the strange perspective of
memory I still hear and see the romping, sunburnt bush children rushing
out by the bush homesteads to welcome the troubadour who had suddenly
appeared. Once or twice I got pretty hard up and had to resort to my
violin’s appealing voice for help.
Not far from a little bush township, by a range of hills that rolled to
the westward, I came across another pah, where my fiddle and I were
welcomed by the old Maori chiefs, whose blinking eyes lit up their
tattooed faces. I remember I was warmly received by that primitive
community. It seemed hard to believe that they were descendants of
bloodthirsty cannibals as I sat among them and accompanied their songs,
songs that breathed tenderness and poetry. The character of their music
strikingly resembled Samoan melodies I had heard sung by the Siva chorus
girls in the South Sea villages. The following suggests the atmosphere
of Samoan or Maori music:—
[Music: SONG OF THE NIGHT. (_Samoan Entr’acte._)
Composed by A. S. M.
Moderato.
Con anima. Ped.
Ped. a piacere. etc.
Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Boosey & Co., London, W.]
I will tell you a native fairy tale, as nearly as I can remember just as
the pretty mouth of Mochau, the Maori girl, told it to me. One evening
she was singing sweetly while I strummed a tinkling accompaniment on my
violin. The shadows were falling over the forest karri-trees and across
the slanting roofs of the whares, and the sunset fire blazed the lake
waters until they seemed a mighty burnished mirror that reflected the
Maori village, with its sloping roofs and the romping children on the
banks. “Good-bye, Mochau, I must go home now,” I said at last, and the
old chief, Mochau’s father, looked up as he squatted with his back
against a tree and said, his tattooed, wrinkled face smiling: “You stay
in pah till to-morrow?”
“All right,” I replied; and then Mochau’s eyes shone with pleasure, and
her bunched hair flew out in the soft forest breeze as she ran across
the patch into the whare to peel the potatoes and boil corn-cobs for
supper. After supper the kind old chief and his pretty daughter sat by
me on the slope; the moon shone over the lake and was reflected in the
still water, wherein the gum-trees stood upside down in a shadow world.
[Illustration: HALF-CASTE MAORI GIRLS]
Sitting on the grass, with her chin on her knees and her romantic eyes
staring straight in front of her, Mochau started to chant to herself.
“Come on, Mochau,” I said, “tell me some more fairy tales.” She laughed,
then grew very earnest, for she always imagined she was the heroine of
the tales she told. Then, facing me and looking into my eyes, she began:
“Long, long ago out of the sea rose the head of a beautiful youth,
Takaroa. His eyes were two stars, which he had stolen one night out of
the sky. Running up the shore, he looked on the land and clapped his
hands with delight to see the beautiful trees and all _horahia te
marino_” (so peaceful); “and as he stood looking, the water dripping
from his body in the golden sunlight, he said: ‘Where is she? Where is
she?’ Then all the warri flowers on the big trees suddenly heard and
looked down, for they had turned into the faces of beautiful girls, and
they opened their mouths and cried together: ‘I am she! I am she!’ Then
the beautiful youth of the sea looked up at them closely with his
wide-open eyes, and said: ‘You are not beautiful enough, not any of you;
she whom I love has eyes made out of the sunsets, and the stars all
shine in the dark night of her hair; so go away, go away.’ And all these
beautiful girls cried bitterly, and shrank up and were only flowers
again. Then the boy from the sea, Takaroa, shouted once more: ‘Where is
she? Where is she?’ and all the caverns along the shores and the
mountains echoed back sadly to him: ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ Then
Takaroa lay on the shore in the deep grass and cried to himself and fell
asleep.
“In the morning, when the great sunrise was shining over the sea, and
all the mountains inland were on fire with golden light, he was awake,
and, jumping up, he lifted his hands to the sky. ‘O god of the sky,
where is she? Where is she?’ And at once a little hihi bird came flying
across the forest sky and, sitting on the pohutukawa tree just above the
beautiful youth, started to sing sweetly on its twig. Takaroa listened,
and looked up and said: ‘Are you my love?’ And the little bird started
at once to swell, its feathers all puffed out, and it grew and grew;
then lo! out jumped a beautiful girl!
“Oh, so lovely she was,” said Mochau, as she stopped and looked at her
imaged face in the moonlit lake; for, as I told you, she always would
believe that she was the beautiful heroine; then she continued: “Her
hair was like the tangled forest with the stars shining in it, and her
eyes more beautiful than the sunset. ‘Oh, oh, you are my love, you are
my love; sing to me, sing to me,’ the immortal youth said; and side by
side they sang together. Then he plucked a bamboo cane and made a magic
flute, and she sang and danced. ‘Oh, how beautiful you are,’ he said as
he looked upon her lovely body. And she said: ‘Do you love _me_,
Takaroa, or my body?’ And he said: ‘Oh, Tamo mi Werie, I love you, not
your body, but your beautiful eyelight.’ Then all day they danced and
sang together.
“Then night came, and he made a lovely soft bed for her, and she lay
down on the grey moss and curled up her warm limbs. The beautiful youth
lay down beside her and kissed her red coral lips and said: ‘Oh, my
love, place your arms round me.’ And she said: ‘I dare not, oh, I dare
not.’ But still he pleaded, and he was as beautiful as was his voice, so
she relented and put her arms out and sighed; and he clasped—a little
bird! Oh! how he cried, and cried, for in the grey moss was still the
impression of the beautiful girl’s body; and though the little bird had
flown away, he still kept looking down at the grey moss bed and crying
out: ‘Oh, come back to me.’ But the little bird came not back, and he
was alone with the silent night; and all around him the old giant trees,
with gnarled trunks, sighed and moaned in the moonlight with deep, windy
voices as the wind blew through them; for they were the stalwart
warriors, the long dead tattooed chiefs who had once lived in the world
of love and grief.”
Then Mochau looked once more into the lake water at herself, and the
tears were in her eyes; and the old tattooed chief’s eyes blinked in the
moonlight as we sat together and looked at each other. I cannot show you
the surrounding forest and the deep stillness of the waters, or paint
the moon that shone over the lake, or Mochau the Maori girl’s romantic
eyes and face.
Presently Mochau looked up into her father’s face and said, “Parro, tell
us a tale also”; and immediately the old chief, who longed to outrival
his daughter, for the Maoris seem to live chiefly that they may dream of
far-off battles and tell weird legends, began and told me how this world
got into our Universe.
“Before the very beginning of things a mighty god was walking across the
clouds in the sky. He had not slept for thousands and thousands of
years. So he put his giant feet against some stars that twinkled between
his toes and, with his head pillowed on the roaming cloud, sat and
rested; and his shadow moved across the sky like a mountain-man wherever
the cloud moved along, and obscured the fixed stars in its passage. On
and on he went for thousands of years, resting, which to the mighty god
was only like a tiny rest of one minute. Then he suddenly said: ‘Oh, I
do feel tired’; and as he slowly rose to his feet and obscured all the
Milky Way he yawned, and lo! out of his mouth, to the mighty god’s own
surprise, jumped thousands of tiny boys and girls. Round and round the
god they swam in space, with gleaming eyes and laughing voices; and
then, suddenly growing tired, they too cried: ‘We are tired, give us
something to sit upon.’ The old god sighed, and on his breath came all
the stars of the lower firmament; and he shed tears at the thought that
he had become sleepy and yawned, and made boys and girls come, and those
tears made the great seas beneath him! Then, as the children cried
again, the great earth heaved up silently under him also, and he threw
the moon into the sky. Still the children cried out: ‘Oh, we are so
cold!’ So he tore out one of his eyes and threw it into the sky, and lo!
the great sun shone and warmed them! Then they said: ‘Oh, dear god, we
are hungry.’ And the god sighed again and touched a fleecy cloud, and
out jumped thousands of woolly sheep; and from his new clouds of
moonlight he plucked bunches of glittering wings; and birds soared,
singing across the new sky. Still they cried: ‘Oh, dear god, we want
something else, and then something else.’ And the great god became
terribly fierce and shouted the thunder; then the rain fell! Still the
children were unsatisfied, and the god said: ‘All right, you shall grow
old and ugly’; and when they understood what that meant they cried
loudly to the god for forgiveness. So he relented and said: ‘Though you
must grow old and ugly, you shall have little children to take your
place.’ And they clapped their hands for joy. But still they were
unsatisfied; and he got fierce again and said: ‘You shall fall asleep,
and your bodies turn to flowers, and trees, and dust.’ And then at last
they felt a little more satisfied; because, when they found that they
had to leave the beautiful world for ever, the stars, the flowers, the
trees, the ocean and the sunsets became sad and seemed more beautiful to
look upon: and so the first old Maori men and women got very ugly and
crept into the earth to die quite satisfied!” Thus finishing, the old
chief licked his dry lips and sang me a chant, as he lived on in some
past age; and Mochau looked at him tenderly and sang softly with him.
They looked like two children together, and not father and daughter at
all. They lived in a dreamland and cared for nothing else, for they
lived within themselves.
Eventually I bade the Maori world farewell, and arrived at Christchurch,
where I was forced to stay for two or three weeks, for whilst gazing at
a derrick that was hauling up a huge coping-stone I slipped and sprained
my ankle, and was laid up for a week, and thereby got into low water.
In the house in which I was lodging there was also staying a retired
actor, who was, like me, _in extremis_ through the lack of the essential
wherewithal. This old actor was an amusing man, always cheerful and a
good companion. He was a man of about sixty years of age; and when I sat
on the side of my bed and played my violin to him one evening his eyes
gleamed with intense pleasure. “Bravo, youngster!” he said, and in his
extreme delight his clean-shaved face wrinkled up with happy thought.
“Fancy you talking about being hard up when you can play the fiddle like
that.” Immediately he unfolded a plan, which was to give concerts in
public without any preliminary expenses; in common parlance, we agreed
on the spot to go “buskin.”
The idea of playing in the streets of a city was not congenial. It
lacked all the romantic troubadour element of my previous experiences in
the little bush towns up country. But nevertheless my companion’s
cheerfulness and optimism gave me courage. He had a remarkably good
voice, and in our room we rehearsed all the songs that he knew. Together
next night, with our wild harps slung behind us, we sallied forth. My
comrade had brushed his antiquated tall hat up till it shone with
renewed prosperity. He had also cut out of paper a pair of new white
cuffs, for he had a great belief in looking respectable. “My boy,” he
said, “we must let them see that we are not allied in any way to common
plebeian street players. How do I look?” Then he gazed at himself in our
looking-glass with pride, while I told him that he looked the last kind
of man to be singing in the street. I meant what I said too, for he had
a very distinguished look, and his speech had the intonation of bygone
polish in it.
In the heart of the city, by the kerb-side, we started the first
open-air concert. It was after dark, and the well-lit street was
thronged with people, who generously dropped coins into my partner’s
tall hat; for as soon as he had finished singing he went into the crowd,
as I played on. Whether it was my comrade’s melodious voice, or my
violin-playing, or our respectable appearance, I know not, but I was
astounded at the money he collected. After each “pitch” we retired into
a bar and counted out the proceeds and shared alike.
My comrade smacked me on the back with delight as he continually had
another drink. “Don’t you think we had better finish now?” I said, as I
noticed that he was getting a bit excited; but he would not hear of such
a thing. At the next pitch, by the arcade, he started to shout out,
going through his old parts; he even opened his mouth and went through
Hamlet! The vast crowd that collected to watch his antics stopped the
traffic, and the police moved him on. “We had better get off,” I said to
him, and to my great relief he agreed.
Just as we were turning a corner an aristocratic-looking old gentleman
came up to us and, touching me on the back and saying, “You play the
violin rather well for the streets,” got into conversation with us. He
invited us up to his residence, where we had a good supper, and my
friend entertained our host with reminiscences of better days. We were
invited to stay the night, and left next morning as guests. I did not go
out with my friend any more, but at once sought for a post.
I eventually secured a good orchestral job as violinist. I also got into
“society,” and played drawing-room solos at a residence where the
hostess was a person of very high standing in Christchurch. One day
while I was playing a violin solo to her daughters in the drawing-room
the door suddenly opened and a loud-voiced lady swept into the room,
bringing a pungent odour of scent with her. She looked at me hard for a
moment, then put on her pince-nez and once more surveyed me critically,
saying: “Dear me, how you do resemble the young man who was playing a
violin in Queen Street with _another_ awful man!” I do not recommend
violinists to go “buskin” if they can do better and wish to rise from
the vagabond state. If they do they will be recognised long after they
have forgotten the incident themselves.
To have even your ability recognised is sometimes distressing. I
remember being awarded the first prize in an amateur violin solo
competition at Bathurst, in New South Wales. I played Paganini’s _Le
Streghe_ and his violin concerto in D. I was awarded the first prize by
the adjudicator; then someone recognised me as a professional and I was
immediately disqualified. I remonstrated, but an old programme was
produced, whereon it was stated that I had been special Court violinist
to the kings, queens and high chiefs of the South Sea Islands! I think
that is the only time in my career that my position as first violinist
and composer to royalty has ever been recognised! also the only occasion
when the musical and critical ability of the royal houses of the
Southern Seas, through choosing me as their Court violinist, has ever
been acknowledged.
Many things happened during my New Zealand wanderings, and one incident
stands out in stronger, yet sadder, relief than many of the others as I
dive and grope back, deep down in the silent waters for my dead sea
fruit.
You will admit, I am sure, that I have not gone into rhapsodies over my
virtues, but verily I believe the worst of us are better than we seem!
One day I was resting against a tree by the track. I was on my way to
Wellington, to reply personally to an advertisement that offered a good
salary to a violin dance player. It was a long, weary road and I was
very tired, but happy, for I had about a sovereign in my possession. I
had been reading my Byron and Keats’s _Ode to a Nightingale_, to which I
had written music, notwithstanding that the ode was the utterance of
music itself, for when we are young we rush forward to paint the cheeks
of the gods and teach wise old “bush-fallers” philosophy. I was feeling
lonely and poetical, which, in the worldly sense, means slightly insane.
The world seemed to have a glamour of poetry about it after all. The
grandeur of the sombre forest bush seemed a part of me as the old
gnarled giant trees stood silently in the gloom, like wise old friends
staring at me, who would protect my homelessness if they could. The sun
was blazing hot, and, just as I was thinking that I only had the silent
butterflies for companions in a magic world of bright flowers and wise
old trees, a tired-looking girl came round the bend of the track. As she
was passing me she looked quietly into my face and smiled. I had never
seen her before, so you may guess a good deal about that smile, and not
be far wrong in thinking that Mrs Grundy’s unprivate opinion is a
correct one.
It was a wan smile, and as weary looking as the feet of the owner of the
smile as they dragged along the dusty bush track as though they cared
not where they led the wretched body. I looked up and returned the
smile, for the eyes of the girl were brown and earnest-looking. She came
straight up at once and sat down beside me! “I suppose you haven’t a
shilling or so to spare, sir?”
I looked at her kindly, I am sure, and, with the quick intuition of her
sex, her manner immediately changed. She saw that I returned the smile
in a spirit of woeful fellowship only. She was a good-looking girl,
about twenty-four, two or three years older than I. Her hair was glossy
and thick, and to this day I remember her fine brow and the look that
lighted up her face. She had a pretty, yet weak, mouth, but the star
shone on the dim horizons of her eyes. As she looked long and earnestly
at me, I got up and said: “I’m off; I’ve got to get to Wellington”; and
away we went along the track side by side. I asked her a lot of
questions about herself and she answered me truthfully, telling me that
she was a three-quarter caste Maori girl. I should never have noticed it
if she had not told me so. Her father was an engineer and had been
killed in an accident, and her mother had taken to drink and gone to the
devil. I saw by her manner and by all she said that she wanted to
impress me with the disadvantages she had had in her brief career; also
that she regretted that first familiar tell-tale smile. I looked much
older than I was, for I was tall, well made, with thick bronzed hair,
grey eyes and sensitive, curved nostrils and lips. Indeed I possessed
all those physiological defects that have made me what I am! For to get
on in this world one should have square nostrils and a protruding,
bull-dog jaw, and eyes with a mental squint that can scan north, south
east and west of one’s world of prospects all at once.
Yet I was happy enough, untrammelled, and out of the grip of
conventionality—that relentless old man of the sea could not cling to
me. My soul roamed at will, like a riderless wild horse, across the
plains of life. And as I was romantic, and the glamour of Byron’s
gallant corsairs sparkled in my head, attuned to the tenderness of
Keats, I spoke of the beautiful sunset and the goodness of God, and
gazed down on the frail derelict beside me trudging along in her
dilapidated shoes. How I remember her earnest eyes as she looked up at
me! Most assuredly the great poets are really the sad, truthful Bibles
of this world. For the tenderness, the atmosphere, of their inspired
minds still sighed out of their graves into my heart, like the scent of
the flowers growing over them. Her voice became soft and sighed with
mine, and, God knows it’s true enough, I was never so proud and
religiously happy as when that “bad woman’s” eyes gazed up into mine
with admiration—my eyes indeed! Oh, we men, who write as though _she_
would do that which we would never do!
Presently we saw the wooden houses of a township ahead, and as we
entered the little main street, ignoring the curious looks of the
stragglers who were leaning against the verandahs of the few shops,
sheltered by their big-rimmed bush hats, I took her into an
eating-house, where we ate together. She became very silent, and when we
started off again, down the main road, I noticed that tone of respect in
her voice that we give to those who we think we realise are better than
ourselves. So I started to sing cheerily and made her laugh.
We arrived at the outskirts of Wellington at dusk and stood under a
lamp-post. I gave her several shillings; she refused to take them at
first, until I said: “That’s all right, I lend it to you.” She clutched
my hand, looked up at me quickly and then hung her head and cried like a
child. I soon cheered her up and made her promise to write to me,
saying: “I am a musician and can make plenty of money!” “I thought you
were something great like that; you’ve got the look in your face,” and
she looked at me as though I was some wonderful being. We were standing
outside a third-rate theatre, and I asked her if she would like to see
the play. As she said she would, we went in, the “loose street woman”
and I.
When we came out I said good-bye to her, and she got on a car to go to
some friends. She seemed so happy as she looked back at me. She did
write to me, and I gathered that she had obtained a situation in a boot
factory. They were neatly written letters, and ah! how I recall the
soul, the woman part of those letters, and what they really meant; but
suddenly they ceased. How I pray that her life after that was a happier
one than that of the gallant corsair she met on the bush track in New
Zealand long ago.
As I look back I see again the weary face of that neglected girl; her
eyes are looking at me. I did not love her then, but, strange as it may
seem, I love her passionately now. Her shabby skirts and the bit of
dirty coloured blue ribbon round her throat are sacred memories to me,
and the old dilapidated shoes are shuffling a dusty song on the weary
track, a song so unutterably sad that I think Christ must have composed
it. I think God gathers all His beauty from grief; that, enthroned in
loneliness, He gazes eternally across His stars and across His dark
infinities and sees some Long Ago! For not in the vastness of things, or
the mighty ocean of space, can we see or feel so much of Infinity as we
can see in the derelict eyes of the friendless; as I saw, and see now,
in the tramping Maori girl of my spiritual passion.
Ah! how I love the memory of those imaginative boyish days. I often
wonder if many boys were, and are, as I was, and see the strange things
that I saw. My earliest recollection is of the little bedroom at the top
of the house where I slept when I was six or seven years of age. On
moonlight nights I could see the poplar-trees swaying to the wind
outside my window as I lay alone in bed. Just beyond the trees was a
stable, and its chimney had a large cowl on it. That cowl was shaped
like a helmet and had ribbed marks on it, like deep wrinkles on an old
man’s throat, and as the wind blew it turned slowly and majestically
round. I used to peep from the sheets out on the moonlight night with
frightened, awestruck eyes; for my childish brain firmly believed that
it was God’s head moving against the sky—watching me whenever it turned
towards my window!
I told my mother about it, and they all assured me that it was only a
chimney cowl, but still I did not like the look of it, and I was
delighted when they shifted my bed into another room. At another time I
stole some green apples off a tree in our garden and got very sick and
ill. My dear mother made me promise to steal apples no more; and she
said to me: “Though I cannot always see you, God can, for He is always
walking about everywhere.”
“What is He like?” I asked, and then she described Him.
Not long after that I was going up a lonely lane near our house when I
suddenly spied some green gooseberries in a long front garden. Being a
born vagabond, I opened the gate and crept in, and kneeling down by the
bushes I stole a pocketful of the unripe gooseberries. Just as I was
bolting off an old gentleman with a long white beard, who held a
walking-stick to help him along, quietly opened the gate, walked in and
looked at me with solemn eyes. I stood before him trembling like a leaf,
quite certain that God stood before me! I hung my head with shame and
said: “Oh, God, I am so sorry, please forgive me”; and then I saw a kind
look in God’s eyes. I promised never to steal again. He let me out of
the gate; and I rushed off home, thrilled with excitement. I almost
burst the door open and, rushing up to my mother, shouted: “I’ve seen
God! He’s such a kind old man. He’s given me a penny!” Sometimes now I
think that God is dead, that He has died of sheer loneliness and grief
over the sad lot of His lost children.
I have often wondered what I have lost through embracing scallawagism
with its visionary splendours. Probably, were it not for that, I should
be the proud possessor of a brick house in a decorous suburb, and oh!
vast ambition, wear a white collar and cuffs. And, who knows, be pushing
my lawn-mower, hiding my sarcastic grin over its ostentatious hum—as I
watch my envious neighbour cut his grass with shears!
Even so, I think the greater prize is in being able to sit over the
hearth fire or the camp fire with one’s comrades, revelling in the
realism of the “Not Permissible,” turning the Universe the other way and
singing the reminiscent vagabond’s Excelsior—Onward to the Past! Ever
back to some happy past, back to the miser hoards from the glorious Past
to the loaded wine cellars of dreamland’s infinity. To uncork the
bottled dead sunsets, foaming champagnes of forgotten forest moonlights
and blazing camp fires, bubbling laughter and friendly eyes. Drink
deeply to her lips of other days, renew the old vows, clasp her tightly,
gaze in her eyes ere the desert wind blow her from your arms—as
scattered dust! And, if she be old, if her face, her loveliness, be
changed to the wrinkled map, the sad parchment whereon Time’s hand ever
toils to write creation’s grief, kiss her passionately, dip her in the
bath of old cleansing imagination, rewhiten her limbs and make her
beautiful! Watch her happiness! Make the only future man ever knew, or
ever will know; gladden and become rich with life’s old wine of the
beautifully unreal! Friend, shut your eyes and look at the past; see
sunsets and sunrises, the mirrored blue days of silent skies, soaring
birds, ancient cities, nations and their histories, empires of splendid
chaotic violence, laughter, love and intense tragical drama. Now shut
your eyes and look at the future—can you see one moment of its reality?
No, you cannot. So make your spiritual creed some dim, long-ago
remembrance of your own happiness, and cherish and make the old the new!
Make yesterday, and to-day, and to-morrow shining planets that came, and
are coming from the illimitable past to swim into the happy skies of
your ken. And let the lawn-mower’s triumphant, respectable humming go
by!
Probably we vagabonds are mad, and the great majority who laugh at
sentiment are the really sane ones. How strange indeed if, after all,
the poets are wrong, and the great and glorious aim and end of the
Universe is—affluence, with flabbiness, grand pianofortes, Brussels
carpets, retinues of wooden servants and gold! Gold! Indeed, for all
those things we vagabonds must hold the candle to the devil. For alas!
the body cannot live on sunsets and the memory of sad derelicts, dead
sailors and forgotten heroes. But mentally we are wealthy. We have
explored the gold-fields of the universe and struck a rich vein. It is
rough gold, truly, but perhaps our Creator never meant it to be reforged
and rehallmarked after He scattered it among the stars. Certainly it has
always appealed to me in the rough state, more so than in the polish of
strange, unmusical voices, high collars and a great lack of appreciation
for shabby men. We vagabonds are not conscientious judges of worldly
greatness. We are strangely biassed in favour of those lost outcasts who
drift on the waters of infinity, singing chanteys to the wandering
stars, and not caring so long as “God’s in His heaven—all’s right with
the world!” What matters if men are happy? Yes, even though “they fall
by the roadside and die,” with no obituary notice and the “cause of
little crape,” as one of my critics said. He and I, I think, would tramp
the world together if we had a chance to live our life over again. We
may live again; I sometimes think I have lived before. And what greater
truth is there in the hearts of men than their own belief in all that
they believe?
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