Produced by Al Haines
OVER THE FIRESIDE
WITH SILENT FRIENDS
BY RICHARD KING
WITH A "FOREWORD" BY
SIR ARTHUR PEARSON, BART., G.B.E.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
WITH SILENT FRIENDS
THE SECOND BOOK OF SILENT FRIENDS
PASSION AND POT-POURRI
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
MCMXXI
_Many of the following Essays
appear by kind permission of
the Editor of "The Tatler."_
_Fifty per cent. of the author's
profit on the sale of this book
will be handed over to the
National Library of the Blind,
Tufton Street, Westminster, S.W._
I DEDICATE,
THIS LITTLE BOOK TO THOSE
V.A.D.'S WHO, THOUGH THE
WAR IS OVER, STILL "CARRY
ON" AND TO THOSE OTHER
MEN AND WOMEN WHO,
LIVING IN FREEDOM, HAVE
NOT FORGOTTEN THE MEN
WHO FOUGHT OR DIED FOR IT
FOREWORD
BY SIR ARTHUR PEARSON, BART., G.B.E.
Those who buy "Over the Fireside" will purchase for themselves the real
joy of mentally absorbing the delightful thoughts which Mr. Richard
King so charmingly clothes in words. And they will purchase, too, a
large share of an even greater pleasure--the pleasure of giving
pleasure to others--for the author tells me that he has arranged to
give half of the profits arising from the sale of this book to the
National Library for the Blind, thus enabling that beneficent
Institution to widen and extend its sphere of usefulness.
You will never, perhaps, have heard of the National Library for the
Blind, and even if it so happens that you are vaguely aware of its
existence, you will in no true degree realise all that it means to
those who are compelled to lead lives, which however full and
interesting, must inevitably be far more limited in scope than your
own. Let me try to make you understand what reading means to the
intelligent blind man or woman.
Our lives are necessarily narrow. Blind people, however keen their
understanding, and however clearly and sympathetically those around
them may by description make up for their lack of perception, must,
perforce, lead lives which lack the vivid actuality of the lives of
others. To those of them who have always been blind the world, outside
the reach of their hands, is a mystery which can only be solved by
description. And where shall they turn for more potent description
than to the pages in which those gifted with the mastery of language
have set down their impressions of the world around them?
And for people whose sight has left them after the world and much that
is in it has become familiar to them, reading must mean more than it
does to any but the most studious of those who can see. Some are so
fortunate as to be able to enlist or command the services of an
intelligent reader, but this is not given to any but a small minority,
and even to these the ability to read at will, without the necessity of
calling in the aid of another, is a matter of real moment, helping as
it does to do away with that feeling of dependence which is the
greatest disadvantage of blindness.
All this Mr. Richard King knows nearly as well as I do, for he has been
a splendidly helpful friend to the men who were blinded in the War, and
none know better than he how greatly they have gained by learning to
read anew, making the fingers as they travel over the dotted characters
replace the eyes of which they have been despoilt.
Disaster sometimes leads to good fortune, and the disaster which befell
the blinded soldier has given to the service of the blind world
generally the affection and sympathy which Mr. Richard King so
abundantly possesses. Your reading of this book--and if you have only
borrowed it I hope that these words may induce you to buy a copy--will
help to enable more blind folk to read than would otherwise have been
the case, and thus you will have added to the happiness of the world,
just as the perusal of "Over the Fireside" will have added to your own
happiness.
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
Draw your chair up nearer to the fireside.
It is the hour of twilight. Soon, so very soon, another of Life's
little days will have silently crept behind us into the long dim limbo
of half-forgotten years.
We are alone--you and I. Yet between us--unseen, but very real--are
Memories linking us to one another and to the generation who, like
ourselves, is growing old. How still the world outside seems to have
grown! The shadows are lengthening, minute by minute, and presently,
the garden, so brightly beautiful such a little time ago in all the
colour of its September beauty, will be lost to us in the magic mystery
of Night. Who knows? if in the darkest shadows Angels are not
standing, and God, returning in this twilight hour, will stay with us
until the coming of the Dawn!
Inside the room the fire burns brightly, for the September evenings are
very chilly. Its dancing flames illumine us as if pixies were shaking
their tiny lanterns in our faces.
DON'T you love the Twilight Hour, when heart seems to speak to heart,
and Time seems as if it had ceased for a moment to pursue its Deathless
course, lingering in the shadows for a while!
It is the hour when old friends meet to talk of "cabbages and kings,"
and Life and Love and all those unimportant things which happened long
ago in the Dead Yesterdays. Or perhaps, we both sit silent for a
space. We do not speak, yet each seems to divine the other's thought.
That is the wonder of real Friendship, even the silence speaks, telling
to those who understand the thoughts we have never dared to utter.
So we sit quietly, dreaming over the dying embers. We make no effort,
we do not strive to "entertain." We simply speak of Men and Matters
and how they influenced us and were woven unconsciously into the
pattern of our inner lives.
So the long hour of twilight passes--passes. . . . . .
And each hour is no less precious because there will be so many hours
"over the fireside" for both of us, now that we are growing old.
But we would not become young again, merely to grow old again.
No! NO!
Age, after all, has MEMORIES, and each Memory is as a story that is
told.
Do you know those lovely lines by John Masefield--
_"I take the bank and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornfield, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers."_
And so I hope that a few of the embers in this little book will help to
warm some unknown human heart.
And that is all I ask!
CONTENTS
Books and the Blind
The Blind Man's Problem
Dreams
How to Help
On Getting Away from Yourself
Travel
Work
Farewells!
The "Butters"
Age that Dyes
Women in Love
Pompous Pride in Literary "Lions"
Seaside Piers
Visitors
The Unimpassioned English
Relations
Polite Conversation
Awful Warnings
It's oh, to be out of England--now that Spring is here
Bad-tempered People
Polite Masks
The Might-have-been
Autumn Sowing
What You Really Reap
Autumn Determination
Two Lives
Backward and Forward
When?
The Futile Thought
The London Season
Christmas
The New Year
February
Tub-thumpers
I Wonder If . . .
Types of Tub-thumpers
If Age only Practised what it Preached!
Beginnings
Unlucky in Little Things
Wallpapers
Our Irritating Habits
Away--Far Away!
"Family Skeletons"
The Dreariness of One Line of Conduct
The Happy Discontent
Book-borrowing Nearly Always Means Book-stealing
Other People's Books
The Road to Calvary
Mountain Paths
The Unholy Fear
The Need to Remember
Humanity
Responsibility
The Government of the Future
The Question
The Two Passions
Our "Secret Escapes"
My Escape and Some Others
Over the Fireside
Faith Reached through Bitterness and Loss
Aristocracy and Democracy
Duty
Sweeping Assertions from Particular Instances
How I came to make "History"
The Glut of the Ornamental
On Going "to the Dogs"
A School for Wives
The Neglected Art of Eating Gracefully
Modern Clothes
A Sense of Universal Pity
The Few
The Great and the Really Great
Love "Mush"
Wives
Children
One of the Minor Tragedies
The "Glorious Dead"
Always the Personal Note
Clergymen
Their Failure
Work In the East-end
Mysticism and the Practical Man
Abraham Lincoln
Reconstruction
Education
The Inane and Unimaginative
Great Adventure
Travel
The Enthralling Out-of-Reach
The Things which are not Dreamed of in Our Philosophy
Faith
Spiritualism
On Reality in People
Life
Dreams and Reality
Love of God
The Will to Faith
OVER THE FIRESIDE
_Books and the Blind_
Strange as the confession may appear coming from one who, week in, week
out, writes about books, I am not a great book-lover! I infinitely
prefer to watch and think, think and watch, and listen. All the same,
I would not be without books for anything in this world. They are a
means of getting away, of forgetting, of losing oneself, the past, the
present, and the future, in the story, in the lives, and in the
thoughts of other men and women, in the thrill and excitement of
extraneous people and things. One of the delights of winter--and in
this country winter is of such interminable length and dreariness that
we hug any delight which belongs to it alone as fervently as we hug
love to our bosoms when we have reached the winter of our lives!--is to
snuggle down into a comfy easy-chair before a big fire and, book in
hand, travel hither and thither as the author wills--hate, love,
despair, or mock as the author inveigles or moves us. I don't think
that most of us pay half enough respectful attention to books seeing
how greatly we depend upon them for some of the quietest pleasures of
our lives. But that is the way of human nature, isn't it? We rarely
value anything until we lose it; we sigh most ardently for the thing
which is beyond our reach, we count our happiest days those across the
record of which we now must scrawl, "Too late!" That is why I always
feel so infinitely sorry for the blind. The blind can so rarely get
away from themselves, and, when they do, only with that effort which in
you and me would demand some bigger result than merely to lose
remembrance of our minor worries. When we are in trouble, when we are
in pain, when our heart weeps silently and alone, its sorrow
unsuspected by even our nearest and dearest, we, I say, can ofttimes
deaden the sad ache of the everyday by going out into the world,
seeking change of scene, change of environment, something to divert,
for the nonce, the unhappy tenor of our lives. But the blind, alas!
can do none of these things. Wherever they go, to whatever change of
scene they flee for variety, the same haunting darkness follows them
unendingly.
_The Blind Man's Problem_
It is so difficult for them to get away from themselves, to seek that
change and novelty which, in our hours of dread and suspense, are our
most urgent need. All the time, day in, day out, their perpetual
darkness thrusts them back upon themselves. They cannot get away from
it. Nothing--or perhaps, so very, very few things--can take them out
of themselves, allow them to lose their own unhappiness in living their
lives for something, someone outside themselves. Their own needs,
their own loss, their own loneliness, are perpetually with them. So
their emotions go round and round in a vicious circle, from which there
is no possible escape. Never, never can they _give_. They have so
little to offer but love and gratitude. But, although gratitude is so
beautiful and so rare, it is not an emotion that we yearn to feel
always and always. We want to give, to be thanked ourselves, to cheer,
to succour, to do some little good ourselves while yet we may. There
is a joy in _giving_ generously, just as there is in _receiving_
generously. Yet, there are many moments in each man's life when no
gift can numb the dull ache of the inevitable, when nothing, except
getting away--somewhere, somehow, and immediately--can stifle the
unspoken pain which comes to all of us and which in not every instance
can we so easily cast off. Some men travel; some men go out into the
world to lose their own trouble in administering to the trouble of
other people; some find forgetfulness in work--hard, strenuous labour;
most of us--especially when our trouble be not overwhelming--find
solace in art, or music, and especially in books. For books take one
suddenly into another world, among other men and women; and sometimes
in the problem of their lives we may find a solution of our own trials,
and be helped, encouraged, restarted on our way by them. I thought of
these things the other day when I was asked to visit the National
Library for the Blind in Tufton Street, Westminster. It is hidden away
in a side street, but the good work it does is spread all over the
world. And, as I wandered round this large building and examined the
thousands of books--classic as well as quite recent works--I thought to
myself, "How the blind must appreciate this blessing!" And from that I
began to realise once more how those who cannot see depend so greatly
on books--that means of "forgetting" which you and I pass by so
casually. For _we_ can seek diversion in a score of ways, but _they_,
the blind, have so few, so very few means of escape. Wherever they go,
they never find a change of scene--merely the sounds alter, that is
all. But in books they can suddenly find a new world--a world which
_they can see_.
_Dreams_
I can remember talking once to a blinded soldier about dreams. I have
often wondered what kind of dreams blind people--those who have been
blind from birth, I mean--dream, what kind of scenes their vision
pictures, how their friends, and those they love, look who people this
world of sleeping fancy. I have never had the courage to ask those
blind people whom I know, but this soldier to whom I talked, told me
that every night when he goes to bed he prays that he may
dream--because in his dreams he is not blind, in his dreams he can see,
and he is once more happy. I could have sobbed aloud when he told me,
but to sob over the inevitable is useless--better make happier the
world which is a fact. But I realised that this dream-sight gave him
inestimable comfort. It gave him something to think about in the
darkness of the day. It was a change from always thinking about the
past--the past when he could laugh and shout, run wild and enjoy
himself as other boys enjoy their lives. And this blinded soldier used
to be reading--always reading. I used to chaff him about it, calling
him a book-worm, urging him to go to theatres, tea-parties, long walks.
He laughed, but shook his head. Then he told me that, although he
never used to care much for reading, books were now one of the comforts
of his life. "When I feel blind," he said--"and we don't always feel
blind, you know, when we are in the right company among people who know
how to treat us as if we were not children, and as if we were not
deaf--I pick up a book, and, if I stick to it and concentrate, I begin
to lose remembrance and to live in the story I am reading and among the
people of the tale. And--_it is more like seeing the world than
anything else I do!_"
_How to Help_
I must confess, his remark gave me an additional respect for those huge
volumes of books written in Braille which he always carried about with
him than I had ever felt before. When you and I are "fed up" with life
and everybody surrounding us--and we all have these moods--we can
escape open grousing by taking a long walk, or by seeing fresh people
and fresh places, watching, thinking, and amusing ourselves in a new
fashion. But the blind have only books--they alone are the only handy
means by which they can get away from the present and lose themselves
amid surroundings new and strange. All the more need, then, for us to
help along the good work done by the National Library for the Blind.
It needs more helpers, and it needs more money. Working with the
absolute minimum of staff and outside expenses, it is achieving the
maximum amount of good. As a library, I have only to tell you that it
contains 6,600 separate works in 56,000 volumes, supplemented by 4,000
pieces of music in 8,000 volumes--a total of 64,000 items, which number
is being added to every week as books are asked for by the various
blind readers. And in helping this great and good work, I realise now
that, to a certain extent, you are helping blind people _to see_. For
books do take you out of yourself, don't they? They do help you to
lose cognizance of your present surroundings, even if you be surrounded
perpetually by darkness, they do transplant you for a while into
another world--a world which you can _see_, and among men and women
whom, should the author be great enough, you seem to know as well.
Books are a blessing to all of us--but they are something more than a
blessing to the blind, they are a deliverance from their darkness. And
we can all give them this blessing, if we will--thank Heaven, and the
women who give their lives to the work of the National Library for the
Blind!--this blessing, which is not often heard of, is a work which
will grow so soon as it is known, a work the greatness and goodness of
which are worthy of all help.
_On Getting Away from Yourself_
I always feel so sorry for the blind, because it seems to me they can
never get away from themselves by wandering in pastures new. It is
trite to say that the glory of the golden sunsets, the glory of the
mountains and the valleys, the coming of spring, the radiance of
summer--all these things are denied them. They are. But their great
deprivation is that none of these things can help them to get away from
themselves, from the torments of their own souls, the haunting
dreadfulness of their own secret worries. We, the more fortunate, not
only can fill our souls with beauty by the contemplation of beautiful
things, but, when the tale of our inner-life possesses the torments of
Hell, we can turn to them in our despair because we know that their
glory will ease our pain, will help us to forget awhile, will give us
renewed courage to go on fighting until the end. But where all is
blackness, those inner-torments must assume gigantic proportions.
Nothing can take them away--except time and the weariness of a soul too
utterly weary to care any longer. But time works so slowly, and the
utter weariness of the soul is often so prolonged before, as it were,
the spirit snaps and the blessed numbness of indifference settles down
upon our hearts. People who can see have the whole of the wonder of
Nature working for them in their woe. It is hard to feel utterly
crushed and broken before a wide expanse of mountain, moorland, or sea.
Something in their strength and vastness seems to bring renewed vigour
to our heart and soul. It is as if God spoke words of encouragement to
you through the wonder which is His world. But blind--one can have
none of these consolations. All is darkness--darkness which seems to
thrust you back once more towards the terror of your own heart-break.
Sometimes I wonder that the blind do not go mad. To them there is only
music and love to bring renewed courage to a heart weary of its own
conflict. To get away from yourself--and not to be able to do it--oh,
that must be Hell indeed! Verily sometimes the human need of pity is
positively terrifying.
_Travel_
We know what it would be were we never for a single instant able to get
away from the too-familiar scenes and people who, unconsciously,
because of their very familiarity, drive us back upon ourselves. In
each life there are a series of soul crises, when the spirit has to
battle against some great pain, some great trouble, some overwhelming
disillusion--to win, or be for ever beaten. But few, very few souls
are strong enough to win that battle unaided. A friend may do
it--though friends to whom you would tell the secret sorrows of your
life are rare! But a complete change of scene and environment works
wonders. Nature, travel, work--all these things can help you in your
struggle towards indifference and the superficially normal. But where
Nature and travel are useless, and work--well, work has to be something
all-absorbing to help us in our conflict--is the only thing left, I
wonder how men and women survive, unless, with sightlessness, some
greater strength is added to the soul, some greater numbness to the
imagination and the heart. But this I so greatly doubt. Truthfully,
as I said before, the need for pity seems sometimes overwhelming,
surpassing all imagining. I am sure that I myself would assuredly have
gone mad had I not been able to lose myself a little in travel and
change of scene. When the heart is tormented by some great pain, the
spirit seems too utterly spiritless to do anything but despair. But
life teaches us, among other things, some of the panaceas of pain. It
teaches us that the mind finds it difficult to realise two great
emotions at once, and that, where an emotion helps to take us out of
ourselves, by exactly the strength of that emotion, as it were, is the
other one robbed of its bitterness and its pain. Some people seek this
soul-ease one way and some people by other means, but seek it we all
must one day or another, and it seems to me that one of the wonders of
the natural world, the sunlight and the stars, is that they are always
there, magnificent and waiting, for the weary and the sorrowing to find
some small solace in their woe.
_Work_
Work and Travel, Travel and Work--and by Work I mean some labour so
absorbing as to drug all thought; and by Travel I mean Nature, and
books, and art, and music, since these are, after all, but
dream-voyages in other men's minds--they alone are for me the panacea
of pain. Not the cackle of the human tongue--that for ever leaves me
cold; not the sympathy which talks and reproves, or turns on the tap of
help and courage by the usual trite source--that never helps me to
forget. But Work, and Travel, and (for me) Loneliness--these are the
three things by which I flee from haunting terrors towards numbness and
indifference. Each one, of course, has his own weapons--these are
mine. Years ago, when I was young and timid, I dreaded to leave the
little rut down which I wandered. Now experience has given me the
knowledge that Life is very little after all, and that it is for the
most part worthless where there is no happiness, no forgetfulness of
pain, no inner peace. The opinion of other people, beyond the few who
love me, leaves me cold. The praise or approbation of the world--what
is it worth at best, while it is boring nearly always? Each year as it
passes seems to me, not so much a mere passing of time and distance,
but a further peak attained towards some world, some inner vision,
which I but half comprehend. Each peak is lonelier, but, as I reach it
and prepare to ascend the next, there comes into my soul a wider vision
of what life, and love, and renunciation really mean, until at last I
seem to _see_--what? I cannot really say, but I see, as it were, the
early radiance of some Great Dawn where everything will be made clear
and, at last and at length, the soul will find comfort, and happiness,
and peace. And the things which drag you away from this
inner-vision--they are the things which hurt, which age you before your
time, which rob you of joy and contentment. As a syren they seem to
beckon you into the valleys where all is sunshine and liveliness, and
if you go . . . if you go, alas! it is not long before once more you
must set your face, a lonelier and a sadder man, towards the mountain
peaks. That seems to me to be the story of--oh, so many lives! That
seems to me to be the one big theme in a tale which superficially is
all jollity and laughter.
_Farewells!_
When Youth bids "Good-bye" to anything, it is usually to some very
_tremendous thing_--or at least, it seems to be tremendous in the eyes
of Youth. But Age--although few people ever suspect--is always saying
Farewell, not to some tremendous thing, because Age knows alas! that
very few things are tremendous, but to little everyday pleasures which
Youth, in the full pride of its few years, smiles at complaisantly, or
ignores--for will they not repeat themselves again and again, tomorrow
perhaps, certainly next year? But the "I Will" of Youth has become the
"I may" of Old Age. That is why Old Age is continually saying
"Farewell" secretly in its heart. Nobody hears it bid "Adieu" to the
things which pass; it says "Addio" under its breath so quietly that no
one ever knows: and Old Age is very, very proud. And Youth, seeing the
smile by which Old Age so often hides its tears, imagines that Age can
have no sadness beyond the fact of growing old. Youth is so strong, so
free, so contemptuous of all restraint, so secretly uncomprehending
face to face with the tears which are hastily wiped away. "For, what
has Age to weep over?" it cries. "After all, it has lived its life; it
has had its due share of existence. How stupid--to quarrel with the
shadows when they fall!" But Old Age hearing that cry, says nothing.
Youth would not understand it were it to speak a modicum of its
thoughts. Besides, Old Age is fearful of ridicule; and Youth so often
mistakes that fear for envy--whereas, Old Age envies Youth so little,
so very, very little! Would Old Age be young again? Yes, yes, a
thousand times _Yes_! But would Age be young again merely _to grow old
again_? No! A hundred thousand times No! Old Age is too difficult a
lesson to learn ever to repeat the process. Resignation is such a
hard-won victory that there remains no strength of will, no desire to
fight the battle all over again. And resignation _is_ a victory--a
victory which nothing on earth can rob us. And because it is a
victory, and because the winning of it cost us so many unseen tears, so
many pangs, so much unsuspected courage, it is for Age one of the most
precious memories of its inner-life. No; Age envies Youth for its
innocence, its vigour and its strength; for its well-nigh unshakable
belief in itself, in the reality of happiness and of love: but Age
envies it so little--the mere fact of being young. It knows what lies
ahead of Youth, and, in that knowledge, there can be no room for envy.
The Dawn has its beauty; so too has the Twilight. And night comes at
length to wrap in darkness and in mystery the brightest day.
_The "Butters"_
Of all the human species--preserve, oh! preserve me from the monstrous
family of the Goats. I don't mean the people who go off mountain
climbing, nor those old gentlemen who allow the hair round their lower
jaw to grow so long that it resembles a dirty halo which has somehow
slipped down over their noses; nor do I mean the sheepish individuals,
nor those whom, in our more vulgar moments, we crossly designate as
"Goats." No; the people I really mean are the people who can never
utter a favourable opinion without butting a "but" into the middle of
it; people who, as it were, give you a bunch of flowers with one hand
and throw a bucket of cabbage-water over you with the other. People,
in fact, who talk like this: "Yes, she's a very nice woman, _but_ what
a pity she's so fat!" or, "Yes, she's pretty, _but_, of course, she's
not so young as she was!" Nothing is ever perfect in the minds of
these people, nor any person either. For one nice thing they have to
say concerning men, women, and affairs, they have a hundred nasty
things to utter. They are never completely satisfied by anything nor
anybody, and they cannot bear that the world should remain in ignorance
of the causes of their dissatisfaction.
It isn't that they know there is often a fly in the amber so much as
that they perceive the fly too clearly, and that amber, even at its
best, always looks to them like a piece of toffee after all. How
anybody ever manages to live with these kind of people perpetually
about the house I do not know. And the worst of it is there seems no
cure for the "Goats," and, unlike real Goats, nothing will ever drive
them into the wilderness for ever. Even if you do occasionally drive
them forth, they will return to you anon to inform you that the
wilderness, to which you have never been, is a hundred times nicer than
the cultivated garden which it is your fate to inhabit. The most
beautiful places on this earth are, according to them, just those
places which you have never visited, nor is there any likelihood of you
ever being fortunate enough to do so. If you tell them that the most
lovely spot you have ever seen is Beaulieu in May, when the visitors
have gone, they will immediately tell you that it isn't half so lovely
as Timbuctoo--even when the visitors are there. Should you talk to
them of charming people, they will describe to you the people they
know, people whom you really would fall violently in love with--only
there is no chance of you ever meeting them, because they have just
gone to Jamaica. They "butt" their "but" into all your little
pleasures, and even when you really are enjoying yourself, and the
"but" would have to be a bomb to upset your equanimity, they will throw
cold water upon your ardour by gently hinting that you had better enjoy
yourself while you can, because you won't be young much longer. Ough!
Even when one is dead, I suppose, these "Goats" will stand round you
and say: "It's very sad . . . _But_ we all have to die some time."
And if they do, I hope I shall come back suddenly to life to butt in
with my own "but" . . . "_But_ I hope I shan't meet YOU in Heaven."
But I suppose these "butters" enjoy themselves, even though other
people don't enjoy them. They love to take you by the hand, as it
were, and lead you from the sunshine into the shady side of every
garden. Not their delight is it to work the limelight. Rather they
prefer to cast a shadow--when they can't turn out the lights
altogether. And, strangely enough, these people are the very people
whose life is passed in the pleasantest places. It may be that,
metaphorically speaking, they have been so long used to the Powers of
existence that they delight in treasuring the weeds. Well, I, for one,
wish that they could live among these weeds for just so long a time as
to become quite sick of them--when, doubtless, they would return to us
only too anxious to see nothing but the simple flowers, and each simple
flower an exquisite joy in itself--although it fades!
_Age that Dyes_
So many women seem to imagine that when they dip their heads in henna
twenty years suddenly slips from off them into the mess. As a matter
of fact, they invariably pick up an additional ten years with the dye
every time. After all, the hair, even at its dullest and greyest,
shows fewer of the painful signs of Anno Domini than almost any part of
the body. The eyes and the hands, and, above all, the mind--these tell
the tale of the passing years far more vividly for those who pause to
read. But then, so very many women make the mistake of imagining that
if their hair is fully-coloured and their skin fairly smooth the world
will be deceived into taking them for twenty-nine. As a matter of
fact, the world is far too lynx-eyed ever to be taken in by any such
apparent camouflage. On the contrary, it adds yet another ten years to
the real age, and classes the dyed one among the "poor old things" for
evermore. No, the truth of the matter is that, to keep and preserve
the illusion of youthfulness long after youth has slipped away into the
dead years behind us, is a far more difficult and complicated matter
than merely painting the face, turning brown hair red, and being
divorced. Perhaps one of the most rejuvenating effects is to show the
world, while trying to believe it yourself, that you don't honestly
really care tuppence about growing old. To show that you do care, and
care horribly, is to look every second of your proper age, with the
additional effect of a dreary antiquity into the bargain. It isn't
sufficient to be strictly economical with your smiles for fear lest
deep lines should appear on your face (deep lines will come in spite of
your imitation of a mask), or to dye your hair a kind of lifeless
golden, or to draw your waist in, dress as youthfully as your own
daughter, and generally try to skip about as giddily as your own
grandchildren. No, if you want to seem youthful--and where is the
woman who doesn't?--you must _think_ youthfully all the time. This
doesn't mean that you must _act_ youthfully as well. Oh, dear me, no!
Old mutton skipping about like a super-animated young lamb--that,
indeed, gives an impression of old age which approaches to the
antiquity of a curio. No, you must keep your intelligence alert, your
sympathies awake; you must never rust or get into a "rut"; above all,
you must keep in touch with the _aims_ of youth, without necessarily
merely imitating its _antics_--then a woman will always possess that
interest and that charm which never stales, and which will carry her
through the years with the same triumph as her youth once did, or her
beauty--if she ever possessed any. And if _she_ must use the
artificial deceptions of chemists, which deceive nobody, let her do it
so artfully that, metaphorically speaking, she preserves the lovely
mellow atmosphere of an "old picture," not the blatant colouring of a
lodging-house daub.
But, of course, one of the hardest problems of a woman's life is to
realise just when she must acknowlege that her youthful prime is past.
Some women never seem able to solve it. They either hang on to the
burlesque semblance of twenty-five, or else go all to pieces, and take
unto themselves "views" as violent as they are sour. When they cannot
command the uncritical admiration of the gaping crowd, they descend
from their thrones to shy brickbats at everyone who doesn't look at
them twice. A wise woman realises that although at forty she cannot be
the centre of attraction for her youthfulness alone, she can yet
command a circle of true friends, which, though smaller in number, is
more deeply devoted in intention. But she will never be able to keep
even these unless her sympathies are wide, her heart full of
understanding, unless she keeps herself mentally alert and her sense of
humour perpetually bright. Should she do so, hers will be the triumph
of real charm; and, providing that she grows older not only gracefully
but also cheerfully, not by plastering herself over with chemical
imitations of her own daughter's youth, but by shading becomingly, as
it were, the inevitable ravages of time, which nothing on earth will
ever hide; by dressing not more than five years younger than she really
is--then her attractiveness will continue until she is an old, old
woman. And I would back her in the race for real devotion against all
the flappers who ever flapped their crêpe de chine wings to dazzle the
eyes of that cheapest of feminine prey--the elderly married man.
_Women in Love_
Have you noticed how a woman displays much more "sang froid" in love
than a man? Her heart may be aflame, but there always seems to be a
tiny lump of ice which keeps her head cool. Only when a woman is not
quite sure of her captor does she begin to lose her feminine
"un-dismay." So long as she is being chased she can always remain calm
and collected, perhaps because she knows that, however hot her lover
may be in pursuit, the race began by giving her a long start, and,
being well ahead, she can listen in camouflaged amusement to the man's
protestations of her "divinity" as he "galollups" madly after her.
When you come across lovers in that state of oblivion to staring
eyes--as you do come across them so often during these beautiful warm
evenings--it is always the man who looks supremely sheepish; the woman
doesn't "turn a hair." She simply stares at the intruder as if she
wanted him to see for himself how very attractive she is. The man, on
the other hand, never meets the stranger's eyes. His expression
invariably shows that he is wishing for the earth to open--which, in
parenthesis, it never does when you most want it to. But the girl is
quite unembarrassed. Even when it is she who is making love, a staring
and smiling crowd will not force her to desist. She just goes on
stroking her lover's face and kissing him. But the man looks a perfect
fool, and, I am sure, feels it. It seems indeed, as if he would cry to
the onlookers, "Don't blame me. It's human nature. I shall get over
it quite soon!" But the girl seems to say: "By all means--watch us!
This, for me, is 'Der Tag'!" No, you can't disconcert a woman in
love--it makes her quite vain-glorious.
I wonder why love always seems such a splendid "joke" to those who are
out of it, when it was a paralysing reality while they were in it. And
yet, as one looks back upon one's love affairs one invariably refers to
the incident as the time when "I made a fool of myself." And yet love
is no laughing matter. Considering that ninety-nine per cent. of our
novels and plays are about nothing else; considering that our songs and
our poetry, and the scandal we like to hear, all centre around this one
theme, we really ought to take it more seriously. But if we see two
lovers making love to each other we laugh outright. It is very
strange! I suppose it is that everybody else's love affairs are
ridiculous; only our own possess the splendour of a Greek tragedy.
Perhaps we share with Nature her sense of humour, which makes love one
of the biggest practical jokes in life. So we jeer at love in order to
hide our own "soreness," just as we laugh at the man who sits down
suddenly in Piccadilly because his foot stepped on a banana skin--we
laugh at him because it wasn't we who sat down. Altogether love is a
conundrum, and we laugh at the answer Fate gives us because we dare not
show the world we want to cry. Laughter is the one armour which only
the gods can pierce. Lovers never laugh--at least, they never laugh at
love--that is why we can turn them into such glorious figures of fun.
But I always wonder why a woman of a "thousand loves" assumes a kind of
"halo," when a man of equal passion only gets called a "libertine," if
not worse things. I suppose we think it must have been so clever of
her. We speak of her as _inspiring_ love, though a man who inspires
the same wholesale affection isn't considered nice for young women to
know. It is, apparently because we realise that a woman very rarely
loses her head in love. She may have had a thousand lovers, but only
made herself look a "silly idiot" over one. But a man looks a "silly
idiot" every time. We know he must have uttered the usual eternal
protestations on each occasion. But a woman only has to _listen_, and
can always hear "the tale" without losing her dignity. She merely
begins to talk when a man comes "down to earth." While his "soul" had
soared verbally she enjoyed him as she enjoys a "ballad concert," those
love songs which say so much and mean so very little.
_Pompous Pride in Literary "Lions"_
I always think that the author who places his own photograph as an
illustrated frontispiece to his own book must be either an exceedingly
brave man or an exceedingly misguided one. At any rate, he runs a
terrible risk, amounting almost to certain calamity, in regard to his
literary admirers. I have never yet known an author--and this applies
to authoresses as well--whose face, if you liked his work, was not an
acute disappointment the moment you clapped eyes upon it. For example,
I am a devoted admirer of "Amiel's Journal", but it is years since I
have torn Amiel's photograph from the covers of his book. I could not
bear to think that such lovely, such poetical thoughts, should issue
from a man who, in his portrait, anyway, looks like nothing so much as
a melancholy Methodist minister, the most cheerful characteristic of
whom is "Bright's disease."
In the days of my extreme youth I admired a well-known authoress--_in
public_, be it understood, as is the way of youth. The world was given
to understand that in her seductive heroines she really drew her own
portrait. This same world lived long in blissful ignorance that what
was stated to be a fact was only the very small portion of a
half-truth. For years this famous lady _refused_ to have her photo
published. She even went so far as to tell the world so in every
"interview" which journalists obtained from her--either regarding her
views on "How best to obtain an extra sugar-allowance in war-time," or
concerning "Queen Mary's noble example to English women to wear always
the same-sort-of-looking hat." This extreme modesty piqued the
curiosity of her ten million readers enormously. The ten million, of
which I was a member, imagined that she must be too beautiful and too
elegant to possess brains, unless she were a positive miracle. We
pictured her as tall and graceful, with a lovely willowy figure and an
expression all sad tenderness when it wasn't all sweet smiles.
Then one fatal day the famous authoress decided--too late, I'm afraid,
by more than twenty years--to show her face to the ten million
worshippers who demanded so greatly to see it. The irrevocable step
being taken, disillusion jumped to our eyes, as the French say, and
nearly blinded us. Instead of the goddess we had anticipated, all we
saw was, gazing at us out of the pages of an illustrated newspaper, an
over-plump, middle-aged "party" with no figure and a fuzzy fringe, who
stood smiling in an open French window, and herself completely filling
it! The shock to our worship was so intense that it made most of us
think several times before spending 7_s_. on her new love story, were
it ever so romantic. And so that was the net result of _that_!
Wiser far is the other well-known authoress, who apparently had her
last photograph taken somewhere back in the early nineties, and still
sends it forth to the press as her "latest portrait study," which,
perhaps, if she be as wise as she is witty, it will for ever be.
No, I think that authors who insist upon their own photographs
appearing in their own books are either very foolish or puffed out with
pompous pride. Nobody really wants to look at them a second time; or,
even if they do, nine times out of ten those who stay to look remain to
wish they hadn't. I have never yet known an author's face which
compared in charm and interest with the books he writes. Taking
literature as a professional example, it cannot truthfully be said that
beauty often follows brains. In the case of authors, as in so many
other cases, to leave everything to the imagination is by far the
better policy in the long run. But there is this consolation,
anyway--we are what we are, after all, and our faces are very often
libels on our "souls."
Granting this, the theory of the resurrection of the body always leaves
me inordinately cold. As far as I, myself, am concerned, the worms can
have my body--and welcome. May I prove extremely indigestible, that's
all! Preferably, I want to "cease upon the midnight without pain," in
the middle of a dynamite explosion. I want, as it were, to return to
the dust from which I came in one big bang! And if I must have a
Christian burial, then I hope that all of me which remains for my more
or less sorrowing relatives to bury, decently and in order, will, at
most, be one--old boot! Of course, if I do die in the middle of an
explosion, I grant that, if the resurrection of the body really be a
fact, then I shall find it extremely tiresome to hunt everywhere for my
spare parts. It will be such a colossal bore having to worry all the
other people, also busy collecting themselves, who went up with me in
the "bang," by keeping on demanding of them the information, "Excuse
me, but have you by any chance seen anything of a big-toe nail knocking
about?" I always feel so sorry for those Egyptian princesses whose
teeth and hair, whose jewels and old bones, proved such an irresistible
attraction to the New Zealand and Australian soldiers when they were in
camp near Cairo, that they stole out at night to rob their tombs, and
sent the plunder thus obtained "way back home to the old shack" as
souvenirs of the Great War. It will be so perfectly aggravating for
these royal ladies to resurrect in a tomb which, in parenthesis, they
had purposely constructed to last them until the Day of Judgment--to
resurrect therein, only to discover that some of their necessary parts
are either in Auckland, or in Sydney, or in Melbourne, or, perhaps, in
all three cities. It will be but poor consolation to learn that the
rest of them may, perhaps, be discovered among the sands of the
desert--that is to say, if they scratch about long enough looking for
them. Personally, if I get the chance, I shall immediately go about
purloining other people's physical perfections, so that, when at last I
am ready for the next move onward, I shall consist of one part Hercules
and three-parts Owen Nares! I shall indeed look lovely, shan't I? In
the meanwhile, I realise that, physically speaking, I am far better
imagined than understood. Not that I am very much worse than the
average? on the other hand, I am certainly not much better--so who
would be the happier for gazing at my photograph? No, indeed, it
cannot be for their beauty that authors insert their own
photographs--sometimes, even, on the outside covers of their own books!
For what beauty they do possess has usually been lost somewhere on the
original negative. If they still yearn to let themselves be _seen_, as
well as _read_, I would suggest that the frontispiece be the one page
in the book to be uncut, so that their readers, should they wish to
peep at the author's physiognomy for curiosity's sake, may--if that
curiosity prove its own punishment--leave those first pages uncut until
the book falls to pieces on the bookshelf. For myself, I hate to read
some beautifully written thought, only to have the author's distinctly
unbeautiful face always protruding between me and my delight--like some
utterance of the commonplace in the middle of a discussion on "souls."
I suppose it is that authors--like everybody else--cannot understand
that how they look to themselves and to those who love them, and so are
used to them, they will not necessarily look to other people, who
merely want to gaze upon their photograph because they cannot look upon
their waxwork. We all get so used to our own blemishes by seeing them
every morning when we brush our hair that we have long since ceased to
regard them seriously. But ten to one a stranger will notice nothing
else. That is always the way of a stranger's regard. But, after all,
to fail to impress someone who knows you and loves you is nothing at
all; to fail, however, to impress someone who yearns to become
acquainted with you, is very often to lose a possible friend. Better a
thousand times that an adoring reader should keep yearning to know what
her favourite author looks like than, having at last satisfied her
curiosity, she should exclaim disappointedly, "_Gosh! To think that he
could look like that!!_"
If an author feels that indeed he must show the world what he looks
like, let him issue to the public merely a "vague impression" of
himself--a Cubist one for preference. A Cubist portrait can look like
anything . . . but to look like anything is infinitely preferable to
looking like _nothing on this earth_, isn't it?
_Seaside Piers_