was void. A touch of distant phosphorescence that waned, and intensified
again to a strong white glow, presently gave the void one far and lonely
hilltop. A cloud elsewhere appeared out of nothing, and persisted, a
lenticular spectre of dull fire. These aerial spectres became a host;
some were so far away that they were faint smears of orange, and others
so near and great that they pulsed and revealed the shapes of the clouds.
It was all impersonal, it was England itself that was reflected, the
hills that had awakened. It was the emanation of a worthy tradition,
older than ourselves, that was re-kindled and was glowing, and that would
be here when we are not. It was so receptive, it was so spacious, that
our gravest memories could abide there, as if night were kind to the
secrets we dare not voice, and understood folly and remorse, and could
protect our better visions, and had sanctuary and consolation for that
grief which looks to what might have been, but now can never be.
A spark glittered near, a spark that towered and hovered overhead, and
burst into coiling volumes of lurid smoke with a moving heart of flame.
Light broke on a neighbouring hill that had been unseen and forgotten;
the hill was crowned with fantastic trees that danced, and a wavering
tower. From our own valley below there came a vicious tearing that gave
me a momentary chill (so sounds a stream of machine-gun lead, going
over), and a group of coloured stars expanded over us. Their bright light
showed the night reticulated with thin lines of smoke, like veins of
calcite in a canopy of black marble. Our immediate country, pallid and
tremulous, faded again, but in that brief prospect of a shadow land I
glimpsed a road, the presentment of the long road to Bapaume. So the
Bapaume road showed at night by inconsequential and unexpected lights.
That hill-crest of leaping trees could be the ridge of Loupart with its
wood, and Achete in flames beyond. The notion gave me enough of our hill
top. I descended from it.
There is a public-house at the foot of the hill, and a lane of harsh
noises and a beam of light projected together from its open door across
the road. Beyond it I turned into a house, for I knew I should find there
an aged and solitary man who would have his own thoughts on such a night
as this; for he had a son, and the spectre of the Bapaume road had
reminded me where that boy was celebrating whatever peace he knew. His
father was not communicative; and what could I say? He sat, answering me
distantly and austerely, and he might have been a bearded sage seeing in
retrospect a world he had long known, and who at last had made up his
mind about it, though he would not tell me what that was. Outside we
could hear revellers approaching. They paused at our door; their feet
began to shuffle, and they sang:
"If I catch you bending,
I'll turn you upside down,
Knees up, knees up,
Knees up, knees up,
Knees up, Father Brown."
XXVII. The Real Thing
JANUARY 9, 1920. There was a country town of which we heard wonderful
tales as children. But it was as far as Cathay. It had many of the
qualities that once made Cathay desirable and almost unbelievable. We
heard of it at the time when we heard of the cities of Vanity Fair and
Baghdad, and all from a man with a beard, who once sat by a London fire,
just before bedtime, smoking a pipe and telling those who were below him
on the rug about the past, and of more fortunate times, and of cities
that were fair and far. Nothing was easier for us then than to believe
fair reports. Good dreams must be true, for they are good. Some day, he
said, he would take us to Torhaven; but he did not, for his luck was not
like that.
Nothing like that; so instead we used to look westward to where Torhaven
would be, whenever the sunset appeared the right splendour for the sky
that was over what was delectable and elsewhere. We made that do for
years. Torhaven existed, there was no doubt, for once we made a journey
to Paddington Station--a long walk--and saw the very name on a railway
carriage. It was a surprising and a happy thought that that carriage
would go into such a town that very day. What is more confident than the
innocence of youth? Where, if not with youth, could be found such willing
and generous reliance in noble legend?
And how enduring is its faith! Long after, but not too long after, for
fine appearances to us still meant fine prospects, we arrived one morning
bodily in the haven of good report. Its genius was as bright as we
expected. It had a shining face. It was the equal of the morning. Its
folk could not be the same as those who lived within dark walls under a
heaven that was usually but murk. It lost nothing because we could
examine its streets. We went from it with a memory even warmer and more
comforting. What would happen to us if youth did not more than merely
believe the pleasant tales that are told, if it did not loyally desire to
believe that things are what they are said to be?
This country town is of the Southern kind which, with satisfaction, we
show to strangers as something peculiarly of our country. It is ancient
and luminous in an amphitheatre of hills, and schooners and barques come
right among its gables. It is wealthy, but it is not of the common sort,
for it never shows haste. It knows, of course, that wealth is cheap,
until it has matured and has attained that dignity which only leisure and
the indifference of usage can confer. The country around has a long
history of well-sounding family names as native as its hills--they
arrived together, or thereabouts--and the lodge gates on its highways,
with their weathered and mossy heraldic devices, have a way of
acquainting you with the measure of your inconsequence as you pass them
when walking. Torhaven has no poverty. It tolerates some clean and
obscure but very profitable manufactures. But its shipping is venerable,
and is really not an industry at all, being as proper as the owning of
deer-parks. On market day you would think you were in a French town, so
many are the agriculturists, and so quiet and solid the evidence of their
wellbeing. They own their farms, they love good horses, their wagons are
built like ships, and their cattle, as aboriginal as the county families,
might be the embodiment of the sleek genius of those hills and meadows,
so famous are they for cream. The people of that country live well. They
know their worth and the substance which they add to the strength of the
British community. And they pride themselves on the legends, peculiarly
theirs, which tell of their independence of mind, of their love of
freedom, of their liberal opinions and the nonconformity of their
religious views. They are stout folk, kind and companionable, and they do
not love masters.
It was the summer following the end of the War, and we were back again in
Torhaven. The recollection of its ancient peace, of its stillness and
light, of the refuge it offered, had enticed us there. Its very name had
been the hope of escape. Where should we find people more likely to be
quick and responsive? They would be among the first to understand the
nature of the calamity which had overtaken us. They would know, long
before amorphous and alien London, what that new world should be like
which we owed to the young, a world in which might grow a garden for the
bruised souls of the disillusioned.
Its light was the same. It was not only untarnished by such knowledge as
we brought with us, it was radiant. Yet it was not without its memory of
the disaster. We went into the church, whose porch had been restored;
symbolical, perhaps, of our entry into a world from which, happily, the
old things had passed. The church was empty, for this was market day.
Through its gloom, as through the penumbra of antiquity, shone faintly
the pale forms of a few recumbent knights, and the permanent appeal of
their upturned hands and faces kept the roof aware of human contrition.
Above one of the figures was a new Union Jack, crowned with laurels. The
sun made too vivid a scarlet patch of one of its folds.
Just below the church was the theatre, now a cinema hall. This was market
day, and the house was full. A poster outside pictured a bridge blowing
up, and a motor-car falling into space. The midday sun was looking full
at Torhaven's High Street, which runs south and downhill steeply to the
quay; a schooner filled the bottom of the street that day. Anything a not
too unreasonable man could desire was offered in the shops of that
thoroughfare. This being a time of change, when our thoughts are all
unfixed and we have had rumours of the New Jerusalem, the side window of
a fashionable jeweller's was devoted to tiny jade pigs, minute dolls,
silver acorns, and other propitiators of luck which time and experience
have tested. Next door to the jeweller's was a studio supporting the
arts, with local pottery shaped as etiolated blue cats and yellow
puppies; and there one could get picture postcards of the London
favourites in revue, and some water-colour paintings of the local coast
which an advertisement affirmed were real.
That was not all. Opposite was the one bookshop of the town. Its famous
bay front and old diamond panes frankly presented the new day with
ladies' handbags, ludo and other games, fountain pens, mounted texts from
Ella Wilcox, local guide books, and apparently a complete series--as much
as the length of the window would hold, at least--of Hall Caine's works;
and in one corner prayer-books in a variety of bindings.
Down on the quay, sitting on a bollard, with one leg stretched stiffly
before him, was a young native I had not met since one day on the Menin
Road. I had known him, before that strange occasion, as an ardent student
of life and letters. He had entered a profession in which sound learning
is essential, though the reward is slight, just when the War began. Then
he believed, in high seriousness, as young and enthusiastic students
did, all he was told in that August; and his professional career is now
over.
He pointed out to me mildly, and with a little reproach, that I was wrong
in supposing Torhaven had not changed. I learned that the War had made a
great change there. Motor-cars were now as commonly owned as bicycles
used to be, though he admitted that it did not seem that the queue
waiting to buy books, our sort of books, was in need of control by the
police. But farmers who had been tenants when Germany violated the
independence of Belgium were now freeholders. Men who were in essential
industries, and so could not be spared for the guns, were now shipowners.
We could see for ourselves how free and encouraging was the new wealth in
this new world; true, the size of his pension did not fairly reflect the
new and more liberal ideas of a better world, but we must admit he had no
need to travel to Bond Street to spend it. "Why fear," he asked me,
pointing with his crutch up the busy High Street behind us, "that what
our pals in France learned was wrong with that old Europe which made the
War, will not be known there? Have you seen," he said, "our bookshop,
our cinema, and the new memorial porch of our church?"
Near us was waiting a resplendent motor-car, in which reposed a young
lady whose face decorates the covers of the popular magazines every
month, and as the wounded soldier finished speaking it moved away with a
raucous hoot.
XXVIII. Literary Critics
MARCH 27, 1920. The last number of the _Chapbook_, containing "Three
Critical Essays on Modern English Poetry," by three well-known critics of
literature, I read with suspiciously eager attention, for I will confess
that I have no handy rule, not one that I can describe, which can be run
over new work in poetry or prose with unfailing confidence. My
credentials as a literary critic would not, I fear, bear five minutes'
scrutiny; but I never cease to look for that defined and adequate
equipment, such as even a carpenter calls his tool-chest, full of cryptic
instruments, each designed for some particular task, and every implement
named. It is sad to have to admit it, but I know I possess only a
home-made gimlet to test for dry-rot, and another implement, a very
ancient heirloom, snatched at only on blind instinct, a stone ax. But
these are poor tools, and sooner or later I shall be found out.
There was a time when I was very hopeful about discovering a book on
literary criticism which would make the rough places plain for me, and
encourage me to feel less embarrassed when present where literary folk
were estimating poetry and prose. I am such a simple on these occasions.
If one could only discover the means to attain to that rather easy
assurance and emphasis when making literary comparisons! Yet though this
interesting number of the _Chapbook_ said much that I could agree with at
once, it left me as isolated and as helpless as before. One writer said:
"There is but one art of writing, and that is the art of poetry. The test
of poetry is sincerity. The test of sincerity is style; and the test of
style is personality." Excellent, I exclaimed immediately; and then
slowly I began to suspect a trap somewhere in it. Of course, does not the
test for sunlight distinguish it at once from insincere limelight? But
what is the test, and would it be of any use to those likely to mistake
limelight for daylight?
I cannot say I have ever been greatly helped by what I have read
concerning the standards for literary criticism. Of the many wise and
learned critics to whose works I have gone for light, I can remember only
Aristotle, Longinus, Tolstoy, and Anatole France--probably because it is
easy for the innocent to agree with dominating men. Of the moderns I
enjoy reading anything "Q" has to say about books; useless pleasure
again, for what does one get but "Q's" full, friendly, ironic, and
humorous mind? Lately, too, the critics have been unanimously
recommending to us--and that shows the genuine value to the community of
mere book reviewers--the _Letters of Tchehov_, as noble a document as we
have had for a very long time. But I thought they did not praise Tchehov
enough as a critic, for that wise and lovable author, among his letters,
made many casual asides about art that were pleasing and therefore right
to me. I begin to fear that most of the good things said about literature
are said in casual asides.
If I were asked to say why I preferred Christabel or Keats's odes to
Tennyson's Revenge or the _Barrack-Room Ballads_, I should find it hard
to explain satisfactorily to anyone who preferred to read Tennyson or
Kipling. Where are the criteria? Can a Chinaman talk to an Arab? The
difference, we see at once, is even deeper than that of language. It is a
difference in nature; and we may set up any criterion of literature we
like, but it will never carry across such a chasm. Our only consolation
is that we may tell the other man he is on the wrong side of it, but he
will not care, because he will not see it. The means by which we are able
to separate what is precious in books from the matrix is not a process,
and is nothing measurable. It is instinctive, and not only differs from
age to age, but changes in the life of each of us. It is as indefinable
as beauty itself. An artist may know how to create a beautiful thing, but
he cannot communicate his knowledge except by that creation. That is all
he can tell us of beauty, and, indeed, he may be innocent of the measure
of his effort; and the next generation may ridicule the very thing which
gave us so much pleasure, pleasure we proved to our own satisfaction to
be legitimate and well founded by many sound generalizations about art.
The canons of criticism are no more than the apology for our personal
preferences, no matter how gravely we back them. Sometimes it has
happened that a book or a poem has succeeded in winning the approval of
many generations, and so we may call it a classic. Yet what is the virtue
of a classic, or of the deliberate and stately billows going with the
wind when the world has sweep and is fair, or of a child with a flower,
or of the little smile on the face of the dead boy in the muck when the
guns were filling us with fear and horror of mankind? I don't know; but
something in us appears to save us from the punishing comet of Zeus.
XXI. The South Downs
MAY 22, 1920. The southern face of the hill fell, an abrupt promontory,
to the woods of the plain. Its face was scored by the weather, and the
dry drainage channels were headlong cascades of grey pebbles. Clumps of
heather, sparse oak scrub with young leaves of bronze, contorted birch,
and this year's croziers of the bracken (heaven knows their secret for
getting lush aromatic sap out of such stony poverty), all made a tough
life which held up the hill, steep as it was; though the hill was going,
for the roots of some of the oaks were exposed, empty coils of rope from
which the burden had slipped. In that sea of trees whose billows came to
the foot of our headland, and out of sight beneath its waves, children
were walking, gathering bluebells. We knew they were there, for we could
hear their voices. But there was no other sign of our form of life except
a neolithic flint scraper one of us had picked up on the hilltop. The
marks of the man who made it were as clear as the voices below. It had
been lost since yesterday, it might be--anyhow, about the day the first
Pyramid was finished. It depends on how one looks at the almanac. For you
could feel the sun fire was young. It had not been long kindled. Its heat
in the herbage was moist. One of the youngsters with me, bruising the
bracken and snuffing it, said it smelt of almond and cucumber. Another
said the crushed birch leaves smelt of sour apples. We could not say what
the oak leaves smelt like. Then another grabbed a handful of leafmould,
damp and brown and full of fibre. What did that smell of? They were not
sure that they liked it. Perhaps it was the smell of the hill. They
admitted that it wasn't a bad smell. They seemed a little afraid of that
odour.
But I was trying to read, and neolithic times and the bluebell gatherers
had run together. They were in the same day. My book had made of that May
morning in Surrey an apparition without time and place. We hear ourselves
laughing now, intent, for instance, on confirming the almond and cucumber
in bruised bracken, or catch the sound of our serious voices raised in a
dispute over literature or politics. But these things are not really in
our minds. We would not betray our secret thoughts to bluebell gatherers
and boys snuffing the bracken. This book I was reading, and a fancied
resemblance in that hill and its prospect, moved the shadows again--they
are so readily moved--and I saw two of us in France on such a hill,
gazing intently and innocently over just such a prospect, in the summer
of 1915, without in the least guessing what, in that landscape before us,
was latent for us both. Those downs across the way would be Beaumont
Hamel and Thiepval. Bluebells! The publishers may send out what advice
they choose to authors concerning the unpopularity of books about the
War--always excepting, of course, the important reminiscences, the soft
and heavy masses of words of the great leaders of the nations in the War,
which merely reveal that they never knew what they were doing. Certainly
we could spare that kind of war book, though it continues to arrive in
abundance; a volume by a famous soldier explaining why affairs went
strangely wrong is about the last place where we should look for anything
but folly solemnly pondering unrealities. But whatever the publishers may
say, we do want books about the War by men who were in it. Some of us
have learned by now that France is a memory of such a nature that, though
it is not often we dare stop to look directly at it, for the day's work
must be done, yet it looms through the importance of each of these latter
days as though the event of our lives were past, and we were at present
merely watching the clock. The shadow of what once was in France is an
abiding presence for us. We know nothing can happen again which will
release us from it. And yet how much has been written of it? That is the
measure of its vastness and its mystery--it possesses the minds of many
men, but they are silent on what they know. They rarely speak of it,
except to one of the fraternity. But where are their thoughts? Wandering,
viewless and uneasy wraiths, over Flanders, in Artois and Picardy. Those
thoughts will never come home again to stay.
It is strange to me that publishers should suppose that books, intimate
about the invisible but abiding shadow which is often more potent than
present May sunshine, should not be wanted. Take for example this book I
was reading, _The Squadroon_, by Ardern Beaman. To induce readers to buy
it it has a picture on its dust-cover which kept me from reading it for
weeks. This wrapper shows a ghostly knight in armour leading a charge of
British cavalry in this War. I should have thought we had had enough of
that romantic nonsense during the actual events. The War was written for
the benefit of readers who made a luxury of the sigh, and who were told
and no doubt preferred to believe that the young soldier went into battle
with the look we so admire in the picture called The Soul's Awakening. He
was going to glory. There are no dead. There are only memorial crosses
for heroes and the Last Post. The opinions of most civilians on the War
were as agreeable as stained-glass windows. The thought of a tangle of a
boy's inside festooned on rusty wire would naturally have spoiled the
soul's awakening and the luxury of the sigh. I heard of a civilian
official, on his way to Paris after the Armistice, who was just saved by
rapid explanations from the drastic attention of a crowd of Tommies who
mistook him for a War Correspondent.
But Mr. Beaman's book is not like war correspondence. It can be commended
to those who were not there, but who wish to hear a true word or two. Mr.
Beaman as a good-natured man remembers how squeamish we are, and being
also shy and dainty indicates some matters but briefly. I wish, for one
thing, that when describing the doings of his cavalry squadron after the
disaster on the Fifth Army front--the author enables you to feel how
slender was the line of resolute men which then saved the Army from
downfall--he had ventured to record with more courage the things which it
shamed him to see. Why should only such as he know of those shocks to
affability? But all he says about some unpleasant matters is: "During
those days we saw things of which it is not good to speak--of which
afterwards we never did speak, except late at nights, in the privacy of
our own mess."
Mr. Beaman's simple narrative, however, with its humanity and easy
humour, often lets in light on strange affairs, as though he had
forgotten what had been locked up, and had carelessly opened a forbidden
door. He shuts it again at once, like a gentlemen, and we follow him
round hoping that presently he will do the same again. Ambrose Bierce
could have made something of what is suggested in such a passage as
this:
"On the borders of this horrid desolation (the Somme) we met a
Salvage Company at work. That warren of trenches and dugouts
extended for untold miles.... They warned us, if we insisted on
going further in, not to let any man go singly, but only in strong
parties, as the Golgotha was peopled with wild men, British,
French, Australian, German deserters, who lived there underground,
like ghouls among the mouldering dead, and who came out at nights
to plunder and kill. In the night, an officer said, mingled with
the snarling of carrion dogs, they often heard inhuman cries and
rifle-shots coming from that awful wilderness. Once they (the
Salvage Company) had put out, as a trap, a basket containing food,
tobacco, and a bottle of whisky. But the following morning they
found the bait untouched, and a note in the basket, 'Nothing
doing!'"
XXX. Kipling