Act I. I get from Goethe, III. from Marlowe,

Transcribed from the December 1909 Arthur L. Humphreys edition by David

Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

MASQUES & PHASES

BY

ROBERT ROSS

LONDON:

ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS

187 PICCADILLY, W.

1909

The author wishes to express his indebtedness, to Messrs. Smith, Elder

for leave to reproduce 'A Case at the Museum,' which appeared in the

_Cornhill_ of October, 1900; to the Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_,

which first published the account of Simeon Solomon; and to the former

proprietors of the Wilsford Press, for kindly allowing other articles to

be here reissued. 'How we Lost the Book of Jasher' and 'The Brand of

Isis' were contributed to two undergraduate publications, _The Spirit

Lamp_ and _The Oxford Point of View_.

_To_ HAROLD CHILD, ESQ.

THE DEDICATION.

MY DEAR CHILD,

It is not often the privilege of a contributor to address his former

editor in so fatherly a fashion; yet it is appropriate because you

justified an old proverb in becoming, if I may say so, my literary

parent. Though I had enjoyed the hospitality, I dare not say the

welcome, of more than one London editor, you were the first who took off

the bearing-rein from my frivolity. You allowed me that freedom, of

manner and matter, which I have only experienced in undergraduate

periodicals. It is not any lack of gratitude to such distinguished

editors as the late Mr. Henley; or Mr. Walter Pollock, who first accorded

me the courtesies of print in a periodical not distinguished for its

courtesy; or Professor C. J. Holmes, who has occasionally endured me with

patience in the _Burlington Magazine_; or Mr. Edmund Gosse, to whom I am

under special obligations; that I address myself particularly to you. But

I, who am not frightened of many things, have always been frightened of

editors. I am filled with awe when I think of the ultramarine pencil

that is to delete my ultramontane views. You were, as I have hinted, the

first to abrogate its use in my favour. When you, if not Consul, were at

least Plancus, I think the only thing you ever rejected of mine was an

essay entitled 'Editors, their Cause and Cure.' It is not included, for

obvious reasons, in the present volume, of which you will recognise most

of the contents. These may seem even to your indulgent eyes a trifle

miscellaneous and disconnected. Still there is a thread common to all,

though I cannot claim for them uniformity. There is no strict adherence

to those artificial divisions of literature into fiction, essay,

criticism, and poetry. Count Tolstoy, however, has shown us that a novel

may be an essay rather than a story. No less a writer than Swift used

the medium of fiction for his most brilliant criticism of life; his

fables, apart from their satire, are often mere essays. Plato, Sir

Thomas More, William Morris, and Mr. H. G. Wells have not disdained to

transmit their philosophy under the domino of romance or myth. Some of

the greatest poets--Ruskin and Pater for example--have chosen prose for

their instrument of expression. If that theory is true of literature--and

I ask you to accept it as true--how much truer is it of journalism, at

least such journalism as mine; though I see a great gulf between

literature and journalism far greater than that between fiction and essay-

writing. The line, too, dividing the poetry of Keats from the prose of

Sir Thomas Browne is far narrower, in my opinion, than the line dividing

Pope from Tennyson. And I say this mindful of Byron's scornful couplet

and the recent animadversions of Lord Morley.

There are essays in my book cast in the form of fiction; criticism cast

in the form of parody; and a vein of high seriousness sufficiently

obvious, I hope, behind the masques and phases of my jesting. The

psychological effects produced by works of art and archaeology, by drama

and books, on men and situations--such are the themes of these passing

observations.

And though you find them like an old patchwork quilt I hope you will

laugh, in token of your acceptance, if not of the book at least of my

lasting regard and friendship for yourself.

Ever yours,

ROBERT ROSS.

5 _Hertford Street_, _Mayfair_, _W_.

A CASE AT THE MUSEUM.

It is a common error to confuse the archaeologist with the mere collector

of ignoble trifles, equally pleased with an unusual postage stamp or a

scarce example of an Italian primitive. Nor should the impertinent

curiosity of local antiquaries, which sees in every disused chalk-pit

traces of Roman civilisation, be compared with the rare predilection

requisite for a nobler pursuit. The archaeologist preserves for us those

objects which time has forgotten and passing fashion rejected; in the

museums he buries our ancient eikons, where they become impervious to

neglect, praise, or criticism; while the collector--a malicious atavist

unless he possess accidental perceptions--merely rescues the mistakes of

his forefathers, to crowd public galleries with an inconsequent lumber

which a better taste has taught as to despise.

In the magic of escaped conventions surely none is more powerful than the

Greek, and even now, though we yawn over the enthusiasm of the

Renaissance mirrored in our more cadenced prose, there are some who can

still catch the delightful contagion which seized the princes and

philosophers of Europe in that Martin's Summer of Middle Age.

Of the New Learning already become old, Professor Lachsyrma is reputed a

master. Scarcely any one in England holds a like position. He is sixty,

and, though his youth is said to have been eventful, he hardly looks his

age. He speaks English with a delightful accent, and there always hangs

about his presence a melancholy halo of mystery and Italy. His quiet

unassumed familiarity with every museum and library on the Continent

astonishes even the most erudite Teuton. Among archaeologists he is

thought a pre-eminent palaeographer, among palaeographers a great

archaeologist. I have heard him called the Furtwangler of Britain. His

facsimiles and collated texts of the classics are familiar throughout the

world. He has independent means, and from time to time entertains

English and foreign _cognoscenti_ with elegant simplicity at his

wonderful house in Kensington. His conversation is more informing than

brilliant. Yet you may detect an unaccountable melancholy in his voice

and manner, attributed by the irreverent to his constant visits to the

Museum. Religious people, of course, refer to his loss of faith at

Oxford; for I regret to say the Professor has been an habitual

freethinker these many years.

However it may be, Professor Lachsyrma is sad, and has not yet issued his

edition of the newly discovered poems of Sappho unearthed in Egypt some

time since--an edition awaited so impatiently by poets and scholars.

Some years ago, on retiring from his official appointment, Professor

Lachsyrma, being a married man, searched for some apartment remote from

his home, where he might work undisturbed at labours long since become

important pleasures. You cannot grapple with uncials, cursives, and the

like in a domestic environment. The preparation of facsimiles,

transcripts, and palaeographical observations, reports of excavations and

catalogues, demands isolation and complete immunity from the trivialities

of social existence.

In a large Bloomsbury studio he found a retreat suitable to his

requirements. The uninviting entrance, up a stone staircase leading

immediately from the street, was open till nightfall, the rest of the

house being used for storage by second-hand dealers in Portland Street.

No one slept on the premises, but a caretaker came at stated intervals to

light fires and close the front door; for which, however, the Professor

owned a pass-key, each room having, as in modern flats, an independent

door that might be locked at pleasure. The general gloom of the building

never tempted casual callers. The Professor purposely abstained from the

decoration or even ordinary furnishing of his chamber. The whitewashed

walls were covered with dust-bitten maps, casts of bas-reliefs,

engravings of ruins. Behind the door were stacked huge packing-cases

containing the harvest of a recent journey to the eastern shores of the

Mediterranean. Along one wall mutilated statues and torsos were

promiscuously mounted on trestles or temporary pedestals made of inverted

wooden boxes. Above them a large series of shelves bulging with folios,

manuscript notebooks, pamphlets, and catalogues ran up to the window,

which faced north-east, admitting a strong top-light through panes of

ground glass; the lower sash was hidden by permanent blinds in order to

shut out all view of the opposite houses and the street below. A long

narrow table occupied the centre of the room. It was always strewn with

magnifying-glasses, proofs, printers' slips, negatives--the litter of a

palaeographic student. There were three or four wooden chairs for the

benefit of scholarly friends, and an armchair upholstered in green rep

near the stove. In a corner stood the most striking, perhaps the only

striking, object in the room--a huge mummy from the Fayyum. The canopic

jars and outer coffins belonging to it were still unpacked in the freight

cases. It had been purchased from a bankrupt Armenian dealer in Cairo

along with a number of Graeco-Egyptian antiquities and papyri, of far

greater interest to the Professor than the mummy itself. As soon as the

interior was examined it was to be presented to the Museum; but more

entertaining and important studies delayed its removal. For many months,

with a curious grave smile, the face on the shell seemed to look down

with amused and permanent interest on Professor Lachsyrma struggling with

the orthography of some forgotten scribe, and arguing with a friend on

mutilated or corrupt passages in a Greek palimpsest.

Here, late one afternoon, Professor Lachsyrma was deciphering some yellow

leaves of papyrus. The dusk was falling, and he laid down the pen with

which he was delicately transcribing uncials on sheets of foolscap, in

order to light a lamp on the table. It was 6.30 by an irritating little

American clock recently presented him by one of his children, noisy

symbol and only indication that he held commune with a modern life he so

heartily despised. As the housekeeper entered with some tea he took up a

copy of a morning paper (a violent transition from uncials), and glanced

at the first lines of the leader:

The Trustees of the British Museum announce one of the most

sensational literary discoveries in recent years, a discovery which

must startle the world of scholars, and even the apathetic public at

large. This is none other than the recovery of the long-lost poems of

Sappho, manuscripts of which were last heard of in the tenth century,

when they were burnt at Rome and Byzantium. We shall have to go back

to the fifteenth century, to the Fall of Constantinople, to the

Revival of Learning, ere we can find a fitting parallel to match the

importance of this recent find. Not since the spade of the excavator

uncovered from its shroud of earth the flawless beauty of the Olympian

Hermes has such a delightful acquisition been made to our knowledge of

Greek literature. The name of Professor Lachsyrma has long been one

to conjure with, and all of us should experience pleasure (where

surprise in his case is out of the question) on learning that his

recent tour to Egypt, besides greatly benefiting his health, was the

means of restoring to eager posterity one of the most precious

monuments of Hellenic culture.

'Dear me, I had no idea the press could be so entertaining,' thought the

Professor, as a smile of satisfaction spread over his well-chiselled

face. Archaeologists are not above reading personal paragraphs and

leaders about themselves, though current events do not interest them. So

absorbing is their pursuit of antiquity that they are obliged to affect a

plausible indifference and a refined ignorance about modern affairs. Nor

are they very generous members of the community. Perhaps dealing in dead

gods, perpetually handling precious objects which have ceased to have any

relation to life, or quarrelling about languages no one ever uses, blunts

their sensibilities. At all events, they have none of that loyalty

distinguishing members of other learned professions. The canker of

jealousy eats perpetually at their hearts.

Professor Lachsyrma was too well endowed by fortune to grudge his former

colleagues their little incomes or inadequate salaries at the Museum.

Still, his recent discovery would not only enhance his fame in the

learned world and his reputed _flair_ for manuscripts--it would irritate

those rivals in England and Germany who, in the more solemn reviews,

resisted some of his conclusions, canvassed his facts, and occasionally

found glaring errors in his texts. How jealous the discovery would make

young Fairleigh, for all his unholy knowledge of Greek vases, his

handsome profile, and his predilection for going too frequently into

society!--a taste not approved by other officials. How it would anger

old Gully! Professor Lachsyrma drank some more tea with further

satisfaction. Sappho herself could not have felt more elated on the

completion of one of her odes; we know she was poignant and sensitive.

Thus for a whole hour he idled with his thoughts--rare occupation for so

industrious a man. He was startled from the reverie by a slight knock at

his door.

'Come in,' he said coldly. There was a touch of annoyance in his tone.

Visitors, frequent enough in the morning, rarely disturbed him in the

afternoon.

'To whom have I the--duty of speaking?' He raised his well-preserved

spare form to its full height. The long loose alpaca coat, velvet skull-

cap, and pointed beard gave him the appearance of an eminent

ecclesiastic.

The subdued light in the room presented only a dim figure on the

threshold, and the piercing eyes of the Professor could only see a

blurred white face against the black frame of the open door. A strange

voice replied:

'I am sorry to disturb you, Professor Lachsyrma. I shall not detain you

for more than--an hour.'

'If you will kindly write and state the nature of your business, I can

give you an appointment to-morrow or the day after. At the present

moment, you will observe, I am busy. I never see visitors except by

appointment.'

'I am sorry to inconvenience you. Necessity compels me to choose my own

hours for interviewing any one.'

The Professor then suddenly removed the green cardboard shade from the

lamp. The discourteous intruder was now visible for his inspection.

He was a fair man of uncertain age, but could not be more than twenty-

eight. He wore his flaxen hair rather long and ill-kempt; his face might

have been handsome, but the flesh was white and flaccid; the features,

though regular, devoid of character; the blue eyes had so little

expression that a professed physiognomist would have found difficulty in

'placing' their possessor. His black clothes were shiny with age; his

gait was shuffling and awkward.

'My name, though it will not convey very much to you, is Frank Carrel. I

am a scholar, an archaeologist, a palaeographer, and--other things

besides.'

'A beggar and a British Museum reader,' was the mental observation of the

Professor. The other seemed to read his thoughts.

'You think I want pecuniary assistance; well, I do.'

'I fear you have come to the wrong person, at the wrong time, and if I

may say so, in the wrong way. I do not like to be disturbed at this

hour. Will you kindly leave me this instant?'

Carrel's manner changed and became more deferential.

'If you will allow me to show you something on which I want your opinion,

something I can leave with you, I will go away at once and come back to-

morrow at any time you name.'

'Very well,' said the Professor, wearily, ready to compromise the matter

for the moment.

From a small bag he was carrying Carrel produced a roll of papyrus. The

Professor's eyes gleamed; he held out his hands greedily to receive it,

fixing a searching, suspicious glance on Carrel.

'Where did you get this, may I ask?'

'I want your opinion first, and then I will tell you.'

The Professor moved towards the lamp, replaced the cardboard green shade,

sat down, and with a strong magnifying-glass examined the papyrus with

evident interest. Carrel, appreciating the interest he was exciting,

talked on in rapid jerky sentences.

'Yes. I think you will be able to help me. I am sure you will do so.

Like yourself, I am a scholar, and might have occupied a position in

Europe similar to your own.'

The Professor smiled grimly, but did not look up from the table as Carrel

continued:

'Mine has been a strange career. I was educated abroad. I became a

scholar at Cambridge. There was no prize I did not carry off. I knew

more Greek than both Universities put together. Then I was cursed not

only with inclination for vices, but with capacity and courage to

practise them--liquor, extravagance, gambling--amusements for rich

people; but I was poor.'

'It is a very sad and a very common story,' said the Professor

sententiously, but without looking up from the table. 'I myself was an

Oxford man. Your name is quite unfamiliar to me.'

'I fancy if you asked them at Cambridge they would certainly remember

me.'

'I shall make a point of doing so,' said the professor drily. He

affected to be giving only partial attention to the narrative; but though

he seemed to be sedulous in his examination of the papyrus, he was

listening intently.

'I was a great disappointment to the Dons,' Carrel said with a short

laugh, and he lit a cigarette with all the swagger of an undergraduate.

'And to your parents?' queried Lachsyrma.

'My mother was dead. I don't exactly know who my father was. I fear

these details bore you, however. To-morrow--' he added satirically.

'A very romantic story, no doubt,' said the Professor, rising from his

chair, 'and it interests me--moderately; but before we go on any further,

I will be candid with you. That papyrus is a forgery--a very clever

forgery, too. I wonder why the writer tried Euripides; we have almost

enough of him.'

'So do I sometimes,' returned Carrel cheerfully. The Professor arched

his eyebrows in surprise.

He removed the green cardboard lampshade to keep his equivocal visitor

under strict observation.

'If you knew it was a forgery, why did you waste my time and your own in

bringing it here? In order to tell me a long story about yourself, which

if true is extraordinarily dull?'

It is almost an established convention for experts to be rude when they

have given an adverse opinion on anything submitted to them. It gives

weight to their statements. In the present case, however, the Professor

was really annoyed.

'I wanted to know if you recognised the papyrus,' said Carrel, and he

smiled disingenuously. The Professor was startled.

'Yes; it was offered to me in Cairo last winter by a German dealer in

antiquities. I recognised it at once. May I felicitate the talented

author?'

'No. You would have been taken in if I were the author.'

Professor Lachsyrma waved a white hand, loaded with scarabs and gems, in

a deprecatory, patronising manner towards Carrel.

'I must apologise if I have wronged you. I am hardened to these little

amenities between brother palaeographers. Envy, jealousy, call it what

you will, attacks those in high places. There may be unrecognised

artists, mute inglorious Miltons, Chattertons, starving in garrets,

Shakespeares in the workhouse, while dull modern productions are

applauded on the silly English stage, and poetasters are crowned by the

Academies; but believe me that in Archaeology, in the deciphering of

manuscripts, the quack is detected immediately. The science has been

carried to such a state of perfection that, if our knowledge is still

unhappily imperfect, our materials inadequate, the public recognition of

our services quite out of proportion to our labours, there is now no

permanent place for the charlatan or the forger. The first would do

better as an art critic for the daily papers; the other might turn his

attention to the simple necessary cheque, or the safer and more enticing

Bank of England note. If you are an honest expert, there is a wide field

for your talents; and if I do not believe you to be anything of the kind,

you have yourself to blame for my scepticism. You came here without an

introduction, without any warning of your arrival. You refuse to leave

my room. You inform me that you want money with a candour unusual among

beggars. You then ask me to inspect a forged manuscript which you either

know or suspect me to have seen before. Should you have no explanation

to offer for this outrageous intrusion, may I ask you to leave the

premises immediately?'

As he finished this somewhat pompous harangue he pointed menacingly

towards the door. He was slightly nervous, for Carrel, who was sitting

down, remained seated, his hands folded, gazing up with an insolent

childish stare. He might have been listening to an eloquent preacher

whom he thoroughly despised.

'Professor Lachsyrma,' Carrel said in a sweet winning voice, 'I will go

away if you like now, but I have nearly finished my errand and we may as

well dispatch an affair tiresome to both of us, this evening, instead of

postponing it. I want you to give me 1000_l_.'

The Professor rubbed his eyes. Was he dreaming? Was this some elaborate

practical joke? Was it the confidence trick? He seemed to lose his self-

possession, gaped on Carrel for some seconds, then controlled himself.

'And why should I give you 1000_l_.?'

'I am a blackmailer. I am a forger of manuscripts. I have more Greek in

my little finger than you have in your long body. I began to tell you my

history. I thought it might interest you. I do not propose to burden

you with it any further. To-night I ask you for 1000_l_., to-morrow I

shall ask you for 2000_l_., and the day after--'

'The Sibyl was scarcely so extortionate when she offered the Tarquin

literary wares that no subsequent research with which I am acquainted has

proved to be spurious. And you, Mr. Carrel, offer me forgeries--merely

forgeries.'

Fear expressed itself in clumsy satire. He was thoroughly alarmed. He

began rapidly to review his own antecedents, and to scrape his memory for

discreditable incidents. He could think of nothing he need feel ashamed

of, nothing the world might not thoroughly investigate. There were mean

actions, but many generous ones to balance in the scale.

His knowledge of life was really slight, as his intimacy with Archaeology

(so he told himself) was profound. One foolish incident, a midsummer

madness, before he went to Oxford, was all he had to blush for. This, he

frequently confessed, not without certain pride, to his wife, the

daughter of a respectable man of letters from Massachusetts. He firmly

and privately believed an omission in a catalogue a far greater sin than

a breach of the Decalogue. But ethics are of little consequence where

conduct is above reproach. When buying antiquities he would come across

odd people from time to time, but never any one who openly avowed himself

a blackmailer and a forger. The novel experience was embarrassing and

unpleasant, but there was really little to fear. In all the delight of a

clear conscience, since Carrel vouchsafed no reply to his sardonic

Sibylline allusion, he said:

'You have advanced no reason why I should hand you to-day or to-morrow

these modest sums you demand.'

'Then I will tell you,' said Carrel, standing up suddenly. 'I fabricated

the poems of Sappho,--yes, the manuscript from which _you_ are reaping so

much credit'--he took up the newspaper--'from the morning press. When I

take to art criticism, as you kindly suggested a dishonest man might do,

it will be of a livelier description than any to which you are usually

accustomed. Vain dupe, you think yourself impeccable. Infallible ass,

there is hardly a museum in Europe where my manuscripts are not carefully

preserved for the greatest and rarest treasures by senile curators, too

ignorant to know their errors or too vain to acknowledge them. I fancied

you clever; until now I do not know that I ever caught you out, though

you may have bought many of my wares for all I know. I find you,

however, like the rest--dull, pedantic, and Pecksniffian. At Cambridge

we were not taught pretty manners, but we knew enough not to give

fellowships to pretentious charlatans like yourself.'

The room swam round Professor Lachsyrma, and the mummy behind the door

grinned. The plaster casts and the statues seemed to wave their

mutilated limbs with the joy of demoniacal possession. Dead things were

startled into life. Sick giddiness permeated his brain. It was some

horrible nightmare. Yet his soul's tempest was entirely subjective;

outwardly his demeanour suffered no change. His tormentor noted with

astonishment and admiration his apparent self-control. There was merely

a slight falter in his speech.

'What proofs have you? A blackmailer must have some token--something on

which to base a ridiculous libel.'

'A few minutes ago I handed you a spurious papyrus, which you tell me you

recognise. In the same lot of rubbish, purporting to come from the

Fayyum, were the alleged poems of Sappho. You swallowed the bait which

has waited for you so long, and, if it is any consolation to you, I will

admit that in the opinion of the profession, to continue my piscatorial

simile, I have landed the largest salmon.'

'I am deeply sensible of the compliment, but I must point out to you, my

friend, that your coming to tell me that a papyrus I happen to have

purchased from one of your shady friends is counterfeit, does not

necessarily prove it to be so.'

The Professor realised that he must act cautiously, and consider his

position quietly. Each word must be charged with suppressed meaning. His

eyes wandered over the room, resting now and again on the majestic,

impassive smile of the mummy. It seemed to restore his nerve. He found

himself unconsciously looking towards it over Carrel's head each time he

spoke. While the blackmailer, seated once more, gazed up to his face

with a defiant, insolent stare, swinging his chair backwards and

forwards, unconcerned at the length of the interview, apparently careless

of its issue. The Professor brooded on the terrible chagrin, the wounded

vanity of discovering himself the victim of an obviously long-contrived

hoax. At his asking for a proof, Carrel laughed.

'You are sceptical at last,' he sneered. 'I have the missing portions of

the papyrus here with me. You can have them for a song. I was afraid to

leave the roll too complete, lest I should invite detection. It would be

a pity to let them go to some other museum. Berlin is longing for a new

acquisition.'

Then he produced from his bag damning evidence of the truth of his

story--deftly confected sheets of papyrus, brown with the months it had

taken to fabricate them, and cracked with forger's inks and acids--ghastly

replicas of the former purchase. Nervously the Professor replaced the

green cardboard shade over the lamp, as though the glare affected his

eyes.

'But how do you know I have not discovered the forgery already?' he said,

craftily. Carrel started. 'And see what I am sending to the press this

evening,' he added.

Walking to the end of the table, he picked up a sheet of paper where

there was writing, and another object which Carrel could not see in the

gloom, so quickly and adroitly was the action accomplished.

'Shall I read it to you, or will you read it yourself?'

He advanced again towards the lamp, held the paper in the light, and

beckoned to Carrel, who leant over the table to see what was written.

Then Professor Lachsyrma plunged a long Greek knife into his back. A

toreador could hardly have done it more skilfully; the bull was pinned

through the heart, and expired instantaneously.

* * * * *

Now he paced the room in deep thought. For the first time he found

himself an actor in modern life, which hitherto for him meant digging

among excavations, or making romantic restoration for jaded connoisseurs,

of some faultless work of art described by Pausanias and hidden for

centuries beneath the rubbish of modern Greece. The entire absence of

horror appalled him. Even the dignity of tragedy was not there. He was

wrestling with hideous melodrama, often described to him by patrons of

Thespian art at transpontine theatres. The vulgarity--the

anachronism--made him shudder. Having till now ignored the issue of the

present, he began to be sceptical about the virtues of antiquity.

Antiquity, his only religion, his god, whose mangled incompleteness

endeared it to him, was crumbling away. He wondered if there were

friends with whom he might share his ugly secret. There was young

Fairleigh, who was always so modern, and actually read modern books. He

might have coped with the blackmailer alive, but hardly with his corpse.

You cannot run round and ask neighbours for coffins, false beards, and

rope in the delightful convention of the _Arabian Nights_, because you

have grazed modern life at a sharp angle, without exciting suspicion or

running the risk of positive refusal. There was his wife, to whom he

confided everything; but she was a lady from Massachusetts, and her

father was European correspondent to many American papers of the highest

repute. How could their pure ears be soiled with so sordid a confidence?

Poor Irene! she was to have an 'At Home' the following afternoon. It

would have to be postponed. Professor Lachsyrma fell to thinking of such

trivial matters, contemptible in their unimportance, as we do at the

terrible moments of our lives. He wondered if they would wait dinner for

him. He often remained at his club--the Serapeum--to finish a discussion

with some erudite antagonist. His absence would therefore cause no

alarm. He consulted the little American clock; it had stopped. How like

America! The only recorded instance, he would explain to Irene, of an

export from that country being required--the commodity proved inadequate.

No, that would make Irene cry. . . . The folly of hopeless, futile

thoughts jingled on. Suddenly he heard the cry of a belated newsvendor,

howling some British victory, some horrible scandal in Paris. Scandal,

exposure, publicity--_there_ was the horror. He could almost hear the

journalists stropping their pens. If his thoughts drifted towards any

potential expiation demanded by officialism, he put them aside. A social

_debacle_ was more fearful and vivid than the dock and its inevitable

consequence. . . . Presently his eyes rested again on the mummy case. A

brilliant inspiration! Here, at all events, was a temporary hiding-place

for the corpse of the blackmailer. If it was putting new wine into old

bottles, circumstances surely justified a violation of the proverb. Till

now a severe unromantic Hellenist, he held Egyptology in some contempt;

and for Egypt, except in so far as it illustrated the art of Greece or

remained a treasure-house for Greek manuscripts, his distaste was only

surpassed by that of the Prophet Isaiah. A bias so striking in the

immortal Herodotus is hardly shared by your modern encyclopaedist. While

the science of Egyptology and its adepts command rather awe and wonder

than sympathy from the uninitiated, who keep their praises for the more

attractive study of Greek art. Yet some of us still turn with relief

from the serene material masterpieces of Greece, soulless in their very

realism and truth of expression, to the vague and happily unexplained

monsters, the rigid gods and hieratic princes, who are given new names by

each succeeding generation. A knowledge that behind painted masks and

gilded, tawdry gew-gaws are the remains of a once living person gives

even the mummy a human interest denied to the most exquisite handiwork of

Pheidias.

Professor Lachsyrma at present felt only the impossibility of a situation

that would have been difficult for many a weaker man to face. Humiliation

overwhelms the strongest. Modern agencies for the concealment of a body

having failed to suggest themselves, he must needs fall back on the

despised expedient of Egypt. Palaeography and Greek art were obviously

useless in the present instance. He understood at last why deplorable

people wanted to abolish Greek from the University curriculum.

The coffin was of varnished sycamore wood, ornamented on the outside with

gods in their shrines and inscriptions relating to the name and titles of

the deceased, painted in red and green. The face was carved out of a

separate piece of wood, with the conventional beard attached to the chin;

the eyelids were of bronze; the eyes of obsidian; wooden hands were

crossed on the breast. Inside the lid were pictures of apes in yellow on

a purple background, symbolising the Spirits of the East adoring the Gods

of the Morning and Evening. The mummy itself was enclosed in a handsome

cartonnage case laced up the back. The Professor lifted it gently out on

the table, and substituted Carrel's body. He staunched as he best could

the blood which trickled on to the glaring pictures of the Judgment of

Osiris and the goddess Nut imparting the Waters of Life; then he turned

to examine the former occupant, whom two thousand years, even at such a

moment endowed with a greater interest than could attach to the corpse of

a defunct blackmailer. It now occurred to him that he might profitably

utilise the mummy cerements along with the coffin for more effectually

concealing Carrel's body until he could arrange for its final disposal.

He hastened to carry his idea into effect.

The cartonnage case, composed of waste papyrus fragments glued together,

was painted with figures of deities. The face was a gilded mask, on the

headdress were lotus flowers, and the collar was studded to imitate

precious stones. Over the breast were representations of Horus, Apis,

and Thoth, and lower down the dead man was seen on his bier attended by

Anubis and the children of Horus, while the soul in the form of a hawk

hovered above. The Professor observed that an earlier method had been

employed for the preservation and protection of the body than is usually

found among Ptolemaic mummies.

Beneath a network of blue porcelain bugles and a row of sepulchral gods

suspended by a wire to the neck was a dusky, red-hued sheet, sewn at the

head and feet and fastened with brown strips of linen. Under this last

shroud were the bandages which swathed the actual corpse, inscribed with

passages from the Book of the Dead, the mysterious fantastic directions

for the life hereafter. The symbolism requisite for the external

decoration of the mummy had been scrupulously executed by skilful

artists, and the conscientious method of wrapping again indicated the

pristine mode of embalmment practised when the craft was at its zenith,

long before the Greek conquest of Egypt.

A considerable time was occupied in unrolling the three or four hundred

yards of linen. Meanwhile a strange fragrance of myrrh, cassia,

cinnamon, the sweet spices and aromatic unguents used in embalming,

filled the room. Gradually the yellow skin preserved by the natron began

to appear through the cross-hatchings of the bandages. Attached to a

thick gold wire round the neck and placed over the heart was a scarab of

green basalt, mounted in a gold setting; and on the henna-stained little

finger of the left hand was another of steatite. As the right arm was

freed from its artificially tightened grasp a peculiar wooden cylinder

rolled on to the floor into the heap of scented mummy dust and bandages.

Languidly inquisitive, Professor Lachsyrma groped for it. Such objects

are generally found beneath the head. There was a seal at each end, both

of which he broke. A roll of papyrus was inside. He trembled, and with

forced deliberation made for the table, his knees tottering from

exhaustion. Excitement at this unexpected discovery made him forget

Carrel. The ghastly events of the evening were for the moment blotted

from his memory. After all, he was a palaeographer--an archaeologist

first, a murderer afterwards. Eagerly, painfully, he began to read,

adjusting his spectacles from time to time, the muscles of his face

twitching with anxiety and expectation. For a long time the words were

strange to him. Suddenly his glasses became dim. There were tears in

his eyes; he was reading aloud, unconsciously to himself, the beautiful

verses familiar to all students of Greek poetry:--

[Greek verse]

and to students of English, in the marvellous, rendering of them by the

late Mr. Rossetti:

'Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,

A-top on the topmost twig,--which the pluckers forgot, somehow,--

Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.'

The papyrus was of great length, and contained the poems of Sappho in a

cursive literary handwriting of the third century--the real poems, lost

to the world for over eight hundred years. It was morning now--a London

spring morning; dawn was creeping through the great north-east light of

the studio; birds were twittering outside. The murderer sobbed

hysterically.

* * * * *

On referring to 'Euterpe,' the second book of the Histories of Herodotus,

Professor Lachsyrma selected the second method of embalming as less

troublesome and more expeditious. The whole matter lasted little longer

than the seventy prescribed days. At the end of which time he was able,

in accordance with his original intention, to deposit in a handsome glass

case at the British Museum the Mummy of Heliodorus, a Greek settler in

Egypt who held some official appointment at the Court of Ptolemy

Philadelphus. It is described in the catalogue as one of the best

examples of its kind in Europe. Indeed, it is probably unique.

Professor Lachsyrma often pauses before the case when visiting our gaunt

House of Art. Even the policeman on duty has noticed this peculiarity,

and smiles respectfully. The Professor has ceased to ridicule

Egyptology; and his confidence in the resources and sufficiency of

antiquity, so rudely shaken for one long evening, is completely

re-established.

_To_ S. S. SPRIGGE, ESQ., M.D.

THE BRAND OF ISIS.

'Videant irreligiosi videant et errorem suum recognoscant. En ecce

pristinis aerumnis absolutus, Isidis magnae providentia gaudens Lucius

de sua fortuna triumphat.' APULEIUS.

'Her image comes into the gloom

With her pale features moulded fair,

Her breathing beauty, morning bloom,

My heart's delight, my tongue's despair.' BINYON.

'An Oxford scholar of family and fortune; but quaint and opinionated,

despising every one who has not had the benefit of an University

education.' RICHARDSON.

[Greek text]. HERODOTUS.

I once had the good fortune to take down to dinner a young American lady

of some personal attractions. Her vivacity and shrewdness were racial;

her charm peculiar to herself. Her conversation consisted in a rather

fierce denunciation of Englishmen, young Oxford Englishmen in particular.

Their thoughts, their dress, their speech, their airs of superiority

offended one brought up with that Batavian type of humanity, the American

youth, to whom we have nothing exactly corresponding in this country

except among drawing-room conjurors. But I was startled at her keen

observation when I inquired with a smile how she knew I was not an Oxford

man myself.

'Had you been one, you would never have listened to what I have been

saying,' she retorted. Rather nettled, I challenged her to pick out from

the other guests those on whom she detected the brand of Isis. A pair of

gloves was the prize for each successful guess. She won seven; in fact

all the stakes during the course of the evening. Over one only she

hesitated, and when he mentioned that he had neither the curiosity nor

the energy to cross the Atlantic, she knew he came from Oxford.

Yes, there is something in that manner after all. It irritates others

besides Americans. Novelists try to describe it. We all know the hero

who talks English with a Balliol accent--that great creature who is

sometimes bow and sometimes cox of his boat on alternate evenings; who

puts the weight at the University Sports and conducts the lady home from

a College wine without a stain on her character; is rusticated for a year

or so; returns to win the Newdigate and leaves without taking a degree.

Or that other delightful abstraction--he has a Balliol accent too--with

literary tastes and artistic rooms, where gambling takes place. He is

invariably a coward, but dreadfully fascinating all the same; though he

scorns women he has an hypnotic influence over them; something in his

polished Oxford manner is irresistible. Throughout a career of crime his

wonderful execution on the piano, his knowledge of Italian painting, and

his Oxford manner never seem to desert him. We feel, not for the first

time, how dangerous it must be to allow our simple perky unspoiled

Colonials to associate with such deleterious exotic beings, who, though

in fiction horsewhipped or (if heroes) shot in the last chapter, in real

life are so apt to become prosperous city men or respected college

officials.

The Oxford manner is, alas, indefinable; I was going to say indefensible.

Perhaps it is an attitude--a mental attitude that finds physical

expression in the voice, the gesture, the behaviour. Oxford, not

conduct, is three-fourths of life to those who acquire the distemper.

Without becoming personal it is not easy to discuss purely social

aspects, and we must seek chiefly in literature for manifestations of the

phenomenon: in the prose of Matthew Arnold for instance--in the poems of

Mr. Laurence Binyon, typical examples where every thought seems a mental

reservation. Enemies rail at the voice, and the voice counts for

something. Any one having the privilege of hearing Mr. Andrew Lang speak

in public will know at once what I mean--a pleasure, let me hasten to

say, only equalled by the enjoyment of his inimitable writing, so pre-

eminently Oxonian when the subject is not St. Andrews, Folk Lore, or

cricket. Though Oxford men have their Cambridge moments, and beneath

their haughty exterior there sometimes beats a Cambridge heart. Behind

such reserve you would never suspect any passions at all save one of

pride. Even frankly irreligious Oxford men acquire an ecclesiastical pre-

Reformation aloofness which must have piqued Thackeray quite as much as

the refusal of the city to send him to Westminster. He complains

somewhere that the undergraduates wear kid gloves and drink less wine

than their jolly brethren of the Cam. He was thoroughly Cambridge in his

attitude towards life, as you may see when he writes of his favourite

eighteenth century in his own fascinating style. How angry he becomes

with the vices and corruption of a dead past! Now no Oxford essayist

would dream of being angry with the past. How annoyed the sentimental

author of _The Four Georges_ would be with Mr. Street's genial treatment

of the same epoch! It would, however, be the annoyance of a father for

his eldest son, whom he sent to Oxford perhaps to show that an old slight

was forgiven and forgotten.

There have been, of course, plenty of men unravaged by the blithe

contagion. Mr. Gladstone intellectually always seemed to me a Cambridge

man in his energy, his enthusiasm, his political outlook. Only in his

High Church proclivities is he suspect. The poet Shelley was an obvious

Cantab. He was, we are told, a man of high moral character. Well,

principles and human weakness are common to all Universities, and others

besides Shelley have deserted their wives: but to desert your wife on

principle seems to me callous, calculating, and Cambridge-like.

A painful but interesting case came under my personal observation, and it

illustrates the other side of the question. A clever young graduate of

my acquaintance, after four years of distinguished scholarship at Oxford,

came up to the metropolis and entered the dangerous lists of literature.

It is not indiscreet if I say that he belonged to what was quite a

brilliant little period--the days of Mr. Eric Parker, Mr. Max Beerbohm,

and Mr. Reginald Turner. So there was nothing surprising in his literary

tastes, though I believe he was unknown to those masters of prose. He

was tall, good-looking, and prepossessing, but his Oxford manner was

unusually pronounced. He never expressed disgust--no Oxford man

does--only pained surprise at what displeased him; he never censured the

morals or manners of people as a Cambridge man might have done. Out of

the University pulpit no Oxford man would dream of scolding people for

their morals. After a year of failure he fell into a decline. His

parents became alarmed. They hinted that his ill success was due to his

damned condescension (the father was of course a Cambridge man). I too

suggested in a mild way that a more ingratiating manner might produce

better luck with editors. At last his health broke down, and a wise

family physician was called in. After studying the case for some months,

Aesculapius (he was M.B. of Cambridge) divined that ill success rather

than ill health was the provocative; and he related to the patient (this

is becoming like an Arabian Night) the following story:

'A certain self-made man, confiding to a friend plans for his son's

education, remarked: "Of course I shall send him to Eton." "Why Eton?"

said the friend. "Because he is to be a barrister, and if he did not go

to Eton no one would speak to him if they knew his poor old father was a

self-made man. Then he will go to Cambridge." "Why not Oxford?" said

the friend, who was a self-made Oxford tradesman. "Because then he would

never speak to me," replied the first self-made man.'

My friend from that moment recovered. He became more tolerant; he became

successful. He became a distinguished dramatist. He justified his early

promise.

There is in this little story perhaps a charge of snobbishness from which

Oxford men are really entirely free. They are too conscious of their own

superiority to be tuft-hunters, and I believe miss some of the prizes of

life by their indifference towards those who have already 'arrived.' Yet

they appear snobbish to others who have not had the benefit of a

University education, and in this little essay I endeavour to hold up the

mirror to their ill-nature--the fault to which I am unduly attached.

Writers besides Richardson have referred to it. I might quote many

eloquent tributes from Dryden to Wordsworth and Byron, all Cambridge men,

who have felt the charm and acknowledged a weakness for the step-sister

University. Cambridge has never been fortunate in having the compliment

reciprocated. Neither Oxford men nor her own sons have been

over-generous in her praises: you remember Ruskin on King's Chapel. And

I, the obscurest of her children, who cast this laurel on the Isis, will

content myself with admitting that I sincerely believe you can obtain a

cheaper and better education at Cambridge, though it has always been my

ambition to be mistaken for an Oxford man.

I often wonder whether Mr. Cecil Rhodes, while he had the English

Government in one pocket, the English Press in the other, and South

Africa in the hollow of his hand, felt a certain impotency before Oxford.

He had to acknowledge its influence over himself--an influence stronger

than Dr. Jameson or the Afrikander Bond. He was never quite sure whether

he admired more the loneliness of the Matoppos or the rather over-crowded

diamond mines of Kimberley. On the grey veld he used to read _Marius the

Epicurean_, and sought in Mr. Pater the key to the mystery he was unable

to solve. He turned to the Thirty-nine Articles (more tampered with at

Oxford than in any other cathedral city) with the same want of success.

That always seems to me a real touch of Oxford in what some one well

said, was an 'ugly life.' What a wonderful subject for the brush of a

Royal Academician! no ordinary artist could ever do it justice: the great

South African statesman on the lonely rocks where he had chosen his tomb;

a book has fallen from his hand (Mr. Pater's no doubt); his eyes are

gazing from canvas into the future he has peopled with his dreams. By

some clever device of art or nature the clouds in the sky have shaped

themselves into Magdalen Tower--into harmony with his thoughts, and the

setting sun makes a mandorla behind him. He is thinking of Oxford, and

round his head _Oriel_ clings as in 'The Blessed Damozel.'

He could terrorise the Colonial Secretary, he could foment a war and add

a new empire to England; he could not overcome his love of Oxford, the

antithesis of all sordid financial intrigue and political marauding.

Athens was after all a dearer name than Groot-Schuurr. He set fire to

both.

I speculate sometimes whether the University was aware of his

testamentary dispositions before it conferred on him an honorary degree.

I hope not. He deserved it as the greatest son of Oxford, the greatest

Englishman of his time. Imre Kiralfy, who has done for a whole district

of London what Mr. Rhodes tried to do for the empire, is but an

_impresario_ beside him. A French critic says we cannot admire greatness

in England; and this was shown by the timid way a large number of

Imperialists, while professing to believe the war a righteous one,

thought they would seem independent if they disclaimed approval of Mr.

Rhodes, by not having the pluck to admit the same motives though ready

enough to share the plunder. You may compare the ungrateful

half-unfriendly obituaries in the press with the leaders a few days

later, after the will was opened.

But what immediately concerns us here is the intention of Mr. Rhodes. Was

it entirely benevolence, or some wish to test the strength of Oxford--to

bring undergraduates into contact with something coarser, some terrific

impermeable force that would be manner-proof against Oxford? Would he

conquer from the grave? Several Americans have been known to go through

the University retaining the Massachusetts _patina_. What if a number of

these savages were grafted on Oxford? How would they alter the tone? We

shall see. It will be an interesting struggle. Shall we hear of six-

shooters in the High?--of hominy and flannel cake for breakfast?--will

undergrads look 'spry?'--will they 'voice' public opinion? . . . I

forbear: my American vocabulary is limited. _Outre_ _mer, outres moeurs_,

as Mr. Walkley might say in some guarded allusion to Paul Bourget. . . .

I shall be sorry to see poker take the place of roulette, and the Christ

Church meadows turned into a ranch for priggish cowboys, or Addison's

Walk re-named the Cake Walk. But no, I believe Mr. Rhodes, if there was

just a touch of malice in his testament, realised that Oxford manners

were stronger than the American want of them. Oxford may be wounded, but

I have complete confidence in the issue. These Boeotian invaders must

succumb, as nobler stock before them. They will form an interesting

subject for some exquisite study by Mr. Henry James, who will deal with

their gradual civilisation. Preserved in the amber of his art they will

become immortal.

I have been able to clip only the fringe of a great theme. Athletes

require an essay to themselves. In later age they seem to me more

melancholy than their Cambridge peers and less successful. These

splendid creatures are really works of art, and form our only substitute

for sculpture in the absence of any native plastic talent. From the

collector's point of view they belong to the best period, while the

graceful convention of isocephaly, which has raised the standard of

height, renders them inapt for the 'battles' of life, however well

equipped for those of their College where the cuisine is at all

tolerable.

I am not enough of an antiquary to conjecture if there was ever a temple

to Isis during the Roman occupation of Britain on the site of the now

illustrious University. But I like to imagine that there existed a

cultus of the venerable goddess in the green fields where the purple

fritillaries, so reminiscent of the lotus, blossom in the early spring.

In the curious formal pattern of their petals I see a symbol of the

Oxford manner--something archaic, rigid, severe. The Oxford Don may well

be a reversion to some earlier type, learned, mystic, and romantic as

those priests of whom Herodotus has given us so vivid a picture. The

worship of Apis, as Mr. Frazer or Mr. Lang would tell us, becomes then

merely the hieroglyph for a social standard, a manner of life. This, I

think, will explain the name Oxford on the Isis--the Ford of Apis, the ox-

god at this one place able to pass over the benign deity. You remember,

too, the horrid blasphemy of Cambyses (his very name suggests Cambridge),

and the vengeance of the gods. So be it to any sacrilegious reformer who

would transmute either the Oxford Don or the Oxford undergraduate--the

most august of human counsellors, the most delightful of friends.

(1902.)

HOW WE LOST THE BOOK OF JASHER.

Everyone who knows anything about art, archaeology, or science has heard

of the famous FitzTaylor Museum at Oxbridge. And even outsiders who care

for none of these things have heard of the quarrels and internal

dissensions that have disturbed that usual calm which ought to reign

within the walls of a museum. The illustrious founder, to whose

munificence we owe this justly famous institution, provided in his will

for the support of four curators, who govern the two separate departments

of science and art. The University has been in the habit of making

grants of money from time to time to these separate departments for the

acquisition of scientific or archaeological curiosities and MSS. I

suppose there was something wrong in the system, but whatever it may be,

it led to notorious jealousies and disputes. At the time of which I

write, the principal curators of the art section were Professor

Girdelstone and Mr. Monteagle, of Prince's College. I looked after the

scientific welfare of the museum with Lowestoft as my understudy--he was

practically a nonentity and an authority on lepidoptera. Now, whenever a

grant was made to the left wing of the building, as I call it, I always

used to say that science was being sacrificed to archaeology. I mocked

at the illuminated MSS. over which Girdelstone grew enthusiastic, and the

musty theological folios purchased by Monteagle. They heaped abuse upon

me, of course, when my turn came, and cracked many a quip on my splendid

skeleton of the ichthyosaurus, the only known specimen from Greenland. At

one time the strife broke into print, and the London press animadverted

on our conduct. It became a positive scandal. We were advised, I

remember, to wash our dirty linen at home, and though I have often

wondered why the press should act as a voluntary laundress on such

occasions, I suppose the remark is a just one.

There came a day when we took the advice of the press, and from then

until now science and art have gone hand in hand at the University of

Oxbridge. How the breach was healed forms the subject of the present

leaf from my memoirs.

America, it has been wisely said, is the great land of fraud. It is the

Egypt of the modern world. From America came the spiritualists, from

America bogus goods, and cheap ideas and pirated editions, and from

America I have every reason to believe came Dr. Groschen. But if his

ancestors came from Rhine or Jordan, that he received his education on

the other side of the Atlantic I have no doubt. Why he came to Oxbridge

I cannot say. He appeared quite suddenly, like a comet. He brought

introductions from various parts of the world--from the British Embassy

at Constantinople, from the British and German Schools of Archaeology at

Athens, from certain French Egyptologists at Alexandria, and a holograph

letter from Archbishop Sarpedon, Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, Curator

of the MSS. in the Monastery of St. Basil, at Mount Olympus. It was this

last that endeared him, I believe, to the High Church party in Oxbridge.

Dr. Groschen was already the talk of the University, the lion of the

hour, before I met him. There was rumour of an honorary degree before I

saw him in the flesh, at the high table of my college, a guest of the

Provost. If Dr. Groschen did not inspire me with any confidence, I

cannot say that he excited any feeling of distrust. He was a small,

black, commonplace-looking little man, very neat in his attire, without

the alchemical look of most archaeologists. Had I known then, as I know

now, that he presented his first credentials to Professor Girdelstone, I

might have suspected him. Of course, I took it for granted they were

friends. When the University was ringing with praises of the generosity

of Dr. Groschen in transferring his splendid collections of Greek

inscriptions to the FitzTaylor Museum, I rejoiced; the next grant would

be devoted to science, in consideration of the recently enriched

galleries of the art and archaeological section. I only pitied the

fatuity of the authorities for being grateful. Dr. Groschen now wound

himself into everybody's good wishes, and the University degree was

already conferred. He was offered a fine set of rooms in a college

famous for culture. He became a well-known figure on the Q.P. But he

was not always with us; he went to Greece or the East sometimes, for the

purpose, it was said, of adding to the Groschen collection, now the glory

of the FitzTaylor.

It was after a rather prolonged period of absence that he wrote to

Girdelstone privately, announcing a great discovery. On his return he

was bringing home, he said, some MSS. recently unearthed by himself in

the monastic library of St. Basil, and bought for an enormous sum from

Sarpedon, the Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis. He was willing to sell

them to 'some public institution' for very little over the original

price. Girdelstone told several of us in confidence. It was public news

next day. Scholars grew excited. There were hints at the recovery of a

lost MS., which was to 'add to our knowledge of the antique world and

materially alter accepted views of the early state of Roman and Greek

society.' On hearing the news I smiled. 'Some institution,' that was

suspicious--MSS.--they meant forgery. The new treasure was described as

a palimpsest, consisting of fifty or sixty leaves of papyrus. On one

side was a portion of the _Lost Book of Jasher_, of a date not later than

the fourth century; on the other, in cursive characters, the too

notorious work of Aulus Gellius--_De moribus Romanorum_, concealed under

the life of a saint.

But why should I go over old history? Every one remembers the excitement

that the discovery caused--the leaders in the _Times_ and the

_Telegraph_, the doubts of the sceptical, the enthusiasm of the

archaeologists, the jealousy of the Berlin authorities, the offers from

all the libraries of Europe, the aspersions of the British Museum. 'Why,'

asked indignant critics, 'did Dr. Groschen offer his MS. to the

authorities at Oxbridge?' 'Because Oxbridge had been the first to

recognise his genius,' was the crushing reply. And Professor Girdelstone

said that should the FitzTaylor fail to acquire the MS. by any false

economy on the part of the University authorities, the prestige of the

museum would be gone. But this is all old history. I only remind the

reader of what he knows already. I began to bring all my powers, and the

force of the scientific world in Oxbridge, to bear in opposition to the

purchase of the MS. I pulled every wire I knew, and execration was

heaped on me as a vandal, though I only said the University money should

be devoted to other channels than the purchase of doubtful MSS. I was

doing all this, when I was startled by the intelligence that Dr. Groschen

had suddenly come to the conclusion that his find was after all only a

forgery.

The Book of Jasher was a Byzantine fake, and he ascribed the date at the

very earliest to the reign of Alexis Comnenus. Theologians became fierce

on the subject. They had seen the MS.; they knew it was genuine. And

when Dr. Groschen began to have doubts on Aulus Gellius, suggesting it

was a sixteenth-century fabrication, the classical world 'morally and

physically rose and denounced' him. Dr. Groschen, who had something of

the early Christian in his character, bore this shower of opprobrium like

a martyr. 'I may be mistaken,' he said, 'but I believe I have been

deceived. I have been taken in before, and I would not like the MS.

offered to any library before two of the very highest experts could

decide as to its authenticity.' People had long learnt to regard Dr.

Groschen himself as quite the highest expert in the world. They thought

he was out of his senses, though the press commended him for his honesty,

and one daily journal, loudest in declaring its authenticity, said it was

glad Dr. Groschen had detected the forgery long recognised by their

special correspondent. Dr. Groschen was furthermore asked to what

experts he would submit his MS., and by whose decision he would abide.

After some delay and correspondence, he could think of only two--Professor

Girdelstone and Monteagle. They possessed great opportunities, he said,

of judging on such matters. Their erudition was of a steadier and more

solid nature than his own. Then the world and Oxbridge joined again in a

chorus of praise. What could be more honest, more straightforward, than

submitting the MS. to a final examination at the hands of the two

curators of the FitzTaylor, who were to have the first refusal of the MS.

if it was considered authentic? No museum was ever given such an

opportunity. Professor Girdelstone and his colleague soon came to a

conclusion. They decided that there could be no doubt as to the

authenticity of the Aulus Gellius. In portions it was true that between

the lines other characters were partly legible; but this threw no slur on

the MS. itself. Of the commentary on the book of Jasher, it will be

remembered, they gave no decisive opinion, and it is still an open

question. They expressed their belief that the Aulus Gellius was alone

worth the price asked by Dr. Groschen. It only remained now for the

University to advance a sum to the FitzTaylor for the purchase of this

treasure. The curators, rather prematurely perhaps, wrote privately to

Dr. Groschen making him an offer for his MS., and paid him half the

amount out of their own pockets, so as to close the bargain once and for

all.

The delay of the University in making the grant caused a good deal of

apprehension in the hearts of Professor Girdelstone and Monteagle. They

feared that the enormous sums offered by the Berlin Museum would tempt

even the simple-minded Dr. Groschen, though the interests of the

FitzTaylor were so near his heart. These suspicions proved unfounded as

they were ungenerous. The _savant_ was contented with his degree and

college rooms, and showed no hurry for the remainder of the sum to be

paid.

One night, when I was seated in my rooms beside the fire, preparing

lectures on the ichthyosaurus, I was startled by a knock at my door. It

was a hurried, jerky rap. I shouted, 'Come in.' The door burst open,

and on the threshold I saw Monteagle, with a white face, on which the

beads of perspiration glittered. At first I thought it was the rain

which had drenched his cap and gown, but in a moment I saw that the

perspiration was the result of terror or anxiety (cf. my lectures on

Mental Equilibrium). Monteagle and I in our undergraduate days had been

friends; but like many University friendships, ours proved evanescent;

our paths had lain in different directions.

He had chosen archaeology. We failed to convert one another to each

other's views. When he became a member of 'The Disciples,' a mystic

Oxbridge society, the fissure between us widened to a gulf. We nodded

when we met, but that was all. With Girdelstone I was not on speaking

terms. So when I found Monteagle on my threshold I confess I was

startled.

'May I come in?' he asked.

'Certainly, certainly,' I said cordially. 'But what is the matter?'

'Good God! Newall,' he cried, 'that MS. after all is a forgery.'

This expression I thought unbecoming in a 'Disciple,' but I only smiled

and said, 'Really, you think so?' Monteagle then made reference to our

old friendship, our unfortunate dissensions. He asked for my help, and

then really excited my pity. Some member of the High Church party in

Oxbridge had apparently been to Greece to attend a Conference on the

Union of the Greek and Anglican Churches. While there he met Sarpedon,

Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, and in course of conversation told him

of the renowned Dr. Groschen. Sarpedon became distant at mention of the

Doctor's name. He denied all knowledge of the famous letter of

introduction, and said the only thing he knew of the Professor was, that

he was usually supposed to have been the thief who had made off with a

large chest of parchments from the monastery of St. Basil.

The Greek Patriarch refused to give any further information. The English

clergyman reported the incident privately to Girdelstone.

Dr. Groschen's other letters were examined, and found to be fabrications.

The Book of Jasher and Aulus Gellius were submitted to a like scrutiny.

Girdelstone and Monteagle came reluctantly to the conclusion that they

were also vulgar and palpable forgeries. At the end of his story

Monteagle almost burst into tears. I endeavoured to cheer him, although

I was shrieking with laughter at the whole story.

Of course it was dreadful for him. If he exposed Dr. Groschen, his own

reputation as an expert would be gone, and the Doctor was already paid

half the purchase money. Monteagle was so agitated that it was with

difficulty I could get his story out of him, and to this day I have never

quite learned the truth. Controlling my laughter, I sent a note round to

Professor Girdelstone, asking him to come to my rooms. In about ten

minutes he appeared, looking as draggled and sheepish as poor Monteagle.

In his bosom he carried the fateful MS., which I now saw for the first

time. If it was a forgery (and I have never been convinced) it was

certainly a masterpiece. From what Girdelstone said to me, then and

since, I think that the Aulus Gellius portion was genuine enough, and the

Book of Jasher possibly the invention of Groschen; however, it will never

be discovered if one or neither was genuine. Monteagle thought the ink

used was a compound of tea and charcoal, but both he and Girdelstone were

too suspicious to believe even each other by this time.

I tried to console them, and promised all help in my power. They were

rather startled and alarmed when I laid out my plan of campaign. In the

first place, I was to withdraw all opposition to the purchase of the MS.

Girdelstone and Monteagle, meanwhile, were to set about having the Aulus

Gellius printed and facsimiled; for I thought it was a pity such a work

should be lost to the world. The facsimile was only to be _announced_;

and publication by the University Press to be put in hand at once. The

text of Aulus Gellius can still be obtained, and a translation of those

portions which can be rendered into English forms a volume of Mr. Bohn's

excellent classical library, which will satisfy the curious, who are

unacquainted with Latin. Professor Girdelstone was to write a preface in

very guarded terms. This will be familiar to all classical scholars.

It was with great difficulty that I could persuade Girdelstone and

Monteagle of the sincerity of my actions; but the poor fellows were ready

to catch at any straw for hope from exposure, and they listened to every

word I said. As the whole University knew I was not on speaking terms

with Girdelstone, I told him to adopt a Nicodemus-like attitude, and to

come to me in the night-time, when we could hold consultation. To the

outer world, during these anxious evenings, when I would see no one, I

was supposed to be preparing my great syllabus of lectures on the

ichthyosaurus. I communicated to my fellow-curators my plans bit by bit

only, for I thought it would be better for their nerves. I made

Monteagle send round a notice to the press:--'That the MS. about to

become the property of the University Museum was being facsimiled prior

to publication, and at the earliest possible date would be on view in the

Galleries where Dr. Groschen's collections are now exhibited.' This was

to quiet the complaints already being made by scholars and commentators

about the difficulty of obtaining access to the MS. The importunities of

several religious societies to examine the Book of Jasher became

intolerable. The Dean of Rothbury, an old friend of Girdelstone's, came

from the north on purpose to collate the new-found work. With permission

he intended, he said, to write a small brochure for the S.P.C.K. on the

Book of Jasher, though I believe that he also felt some curiosity in

regard to Aulus Gellius. I may be wronging him. The subterfuges, lies,

and devices to which we resorted were not very creditable to ourselves.

Girdelstone gave him a dinner, and Monteagle and I persuaded the Senate

to confer on him an honorary degree. We amused him with advance sheets

of the commentary. He was quite a month at Oxbridge, but at last was

recalled on business to the north by some lucky domestic family

bereavement. Our next difficulty was the news that Sarpedon, Patriarch

of Hermaphroditopolis, was about to visit England to attend an Anglican

Synod. I thought Girdelstone would go off his head. Monteagle's hair

became grey in a few weeks. Sarpedon was sure to be invited to Oxbridge.

He would meet Dr. Groschen and then expose him. Our fears, I soon found

out, were shared by the _savant_, who left suddenly on one of those

mysterious visits to the East. I saw that our action must be prompt; or

Girdelstone and Monteagle would be lost. They were horrified when I told

them I proposed placing the MS. on public view in the museum immediately.

A large plate-glass case was made by my orders, in which Girdelstone and

Monteagle, who obeyed me like lambs, deposited their precious burden. It

was placed in the Groschen Hall of the FitzTaylor. The crush that

afternoon was terrible. All the University came to peer at the new

acquisition. I must tell you that Dr. Groschen's antiquities occupied a

temporary and fire-proof erection built of wood and tin, at the back of

the museum, with which it was connected by a long stone gallery, adorned

with plaster casts.

I mingled with the crowd, and heard the remarks; though I advised

Girdelstone and Monteagle to keep out of the way, as it would only upset

them. Various dons came up and chaffed me about the opposition I made to

the MS. being purchased. A little man of dark, sallow complexion asked

me if I was Professor Girdelstone. He wanted to obtain leave to examine

the MS. I gave him my card, and asked him to call on me, when I would

arrange a suitable day. He told me he was a Lutheran pastor from

Pomerania.

I was the last to leave the museum that afternoon. I often remained in

the library long after five, the usual closing hour. So I dismissed the

attendants who locked up everything with the exception of a small door in

the stone gallery always used on such occasions. I waited till six, and

as I went out opened near this door a sash window, having removed the

iron shutters. After dinner I went round to Monteagle's rooms. He and

Girdelstone were sitting in a despondent way on each side of the fire,

sipping weak coffee and nibbling Albert biscuits. They were startled at

my entrance.

'What _have_ you decided?' asked Girdelstone, hoarsely.

'All is arranged. Monteagle and I set fire to the museum to-night,' I

said, quietly.

Girdelstone buried his face in his hands and began to sob.

'Anything but that--anything but that!' he cried. And Monteagle turned a

little pale. At first they protested, but I overcame their scruples by

saying they might get out of the mess how they liked. I advised

Girdelstone to go to bed and plead illness for the next few days, for he

really wanted rest. At eleven o'clock that night, Monteagle and myself

crossed the meadows at the back of our college, and by a circuitous route

reached the grounds surrounding the museum, which were planted with

rhododendrons and other shrubs. The pouring rain was, unfortunately, not

favourable for our enterprise. I brought however a small box of

combustibles from the University Laboratories, and a dark lantern. When

we climbed over the low wall not far from the stone gallery, I saw, to my

horror, a light emerging from the Groschen Hall. Monteagle, who is

fearfully superstitious, began chattering his teeth. When we reached the

small door I saw it was open. A thief had evidently forestalled us.

Monteagle suggested going back, and leaving the thief to make off with

the MS.; but I would not hear of such a proposal.

The door opening to the Groschen Hall at the end of the gallery was open,

and beyond, a man, whom I at once recognised as the little Lutheran, was

busily engaged in picking the lock of the case where were deposited the

Book of Jasher and Aulus Gellius. Telling Monteagle to guard the door, I

approached very softly, keeping behind the plaster casts. I was within a

yard of him before he heard my boots creak. Then he turned round, and I

found myself face to face with Dr. Groschen. I have never seen such a

look of terror on any one's face.

'You scoundrel!' I cried, collecting myself, 'drop those things at once!'

and I made for him with my fist. He dodged me. I ran after him; but he

threaded his way like a rat through the statues and cases of antiquities,

and bolted down the passage out of the door, where he upset Monteagle and

the lantern, and disappeared in the darkness and rain. I then returned

to the scene of his labours. Monteagle was too frightened, owing to the

rather ghostly appearance of the museum by the light of a feeble

oil-lamp. In a small cupboard there was some dry sacking I had deposited

there for the purpose some days before. This I ignited, along with

certain native curiosities of straw and skin, wicker-work, and other

ethnographical treasures.

Some new unpacked cases left by the attendants the previous afternoon

materially assisted the conflagration.

It was an impressive scene, to witness the flames playing round the

pedestals of the torsos, statues, and cases. I only waited for a few

moments to make sure that my work was complete. I shut the iron door

between the gallery and the hall to avoid the possibility of the fire

spreading to the rest of the building. Then I seized Monteagle by the

arm and hurried him through the rhododendrons, over the wall, into the

meadows. I turned back once, and just caught a glimpse of red flame

bursting through the windows. Having seen Monteagle half-way back to the

college, I returned to see if any alarm was given. Already a small crowd

was collecting. A fire-engine arrived, and a local pump was almost set

going. I returned to college, where I found the porter standing in the

gateway.

'The FitzTaylor is burning,' he said. 'I have been looking out for you,

sir.'

* * * * *

There is nothing more to tell. To this day no one suspects that the fire

was the work of an incendiary. The Professor has returned from the East,

but lives in great retirement. His friends say he has never quite

recovered the shock occasioned by the loss of his collection. The rest

of the museum was uninjured.

The death of Sarpedon, Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, at Naples, was a

sudden and melancholy catastrophe, which people think affected Dr.

Groschen more than the fire. Strangely enough, he had just been dining

with the Doctor the evening before. They met at Naples purposely to bury

the hatchet. Sometimes I ask myself if I did right in setting fire to

the museum. You see, it was for the sake of others, not myself, and

Monteagle was an old friend.

THE HOOTAWA VANDYCK.

'My own experience,' said an expert to a group of mostly middle-aged men,

who spent their whole life in investigating spiritual phenomena, 'is a

peculiar one.

'It was in the early autumn of 1900. I was at Rome, where I went to

investigate the relative artistic affinity between Pietro Cavallini and

Giotto (whose position, I think, will have to be adjusted). There were

as yet only a few visitors at the Hotel Russie, chiefly maiden ladies and

casual tourists, besides a certain Scotch family and myself. Colonel

Brodie, formerly of the 69th Highlanders, was a retired officer of that

rather peppery type which always seems to belong to the stage rather than

real life, though you meet so many examples on the Continent. He

possessed an extraordinary topographical knowledge of modern Rome, the

tramway system, and the hours at which churches and galleries were open.

He would waylay you in the entrance-hall and inquire severely if you had

been to the Catacombs. In the case of an affirmative answer he would

describe an unvisited tomb or ruin, far better worth seeing; in that of a

negative, he would smile, tell you the shortest and cheapest route, and

the amount which should be tendered to the Trappist Father. Later on in

the evening, over coffee, if he was pleased with you, he would mention in

a very impressive manner, "I am, as you probably know, Colonel Brodie, of

Hootawa." His wife, beside whom I sat at table d'hote, retained traces

of former beauty. She was thin, and still tight-laced; was somewhat acid

in manner; censorious concerning the other visitors; singularly devoted

to her tedious husband, and fretfully attached to the beautiful daughter,

for whose pleasure and education they were visiting Rome. I gathered

that they were fairly well-to-do.

It was Mrs. Brodie who first broke the ice by asking if I was interested

in pictures. Miss Brodie, who sat between her parents, turned very red,

and said, "Oh, mamma, you are talking to one of the greatest experts in

Europe!" I was surprised and somewhat gratified by her knowledge

(indeed, it chilled me some days later when she confessed to having

learnt the information only that day by overhearing an argument between

myself and a friend at the Colonna Gallery on Stefano de Zevio, and the

indebtedness of Northern Italian art to Teutonic influences).

Mrs. Brodie took the intelligence quite calmly, and merely inspected me

through her lorgnettes as if I were an object in a museum.

"Ah, you must talk to Flora about pictures. I have no doubt that she

will tell you a good deal that even _you_ do not know. We have some very

interesting pictures up in Scotland. My husband is Colonel Brodie of

Hootawa (no relation to the Brodie of Brodie). His grandfather was a

great collector, and originally we possessed seven Raphaels."

"Indeed," I replied, eagerly, "might I ask the names of the pictures? I

should know them at once."

"I have never seen them," said Mrs. Brodie; "they were not left to my

husband, who quarrelled with his father. Fortunately none of us cared

for Raphaels; but the most valuable pictures, including a Vandyck, were

entailed. Flora is particularly attached to Vandyck. He is always so

romantic, I think."

Flora, embarrassed by her mother's eulogy of family heirlooms, leaned

across, as if to address me, and said, "Oh, mamma, I don't think they

really were Raphaels; they were probably only by pupils--Giulio Romano,

Perino del Vaga, or Luca Penni."

"As you never saw them, my dear," said Mrs. Brodie, severely, "I don't

think you can possibly tell. Your grandfather" (she glared at me) "was

considered _the_ greatest expert in Europe, and described them in his

will as Raphaels. It would be impious to suggest that they are by any

one else. There were _two_ Holy Families. One of them was given to your

grandfather by the King of Holland in recognition of his services; and a

third was purchased direct from the Queen of Naples. But your father is

getting impatient for his cigar."

They rose, and bowed sweetly. I joined them in the glass winter-garden a

few minutes later.

"Have you been to the Pincio? But I forgot, of course you know Rome. I

do love the Pincio," sighed Mrs. Brodie over some needlework, and then,

as an afterthought, "Do you know the two things that have impressed me

most since I came here?"

"I could not dare to guess any more than I dare tell you what has

impressed me most," I replied, gazing softly at Flora.

"The two things which have really and truly impressed me most," continued

Mrs. Brodie, "more than anything else, more than the Pantheon, or the

Forum, are--St. Peter's and the Colosseum." She almost looked young

again.

The next day we visited the Borghese; and I was able to explain to Flora

why the circular "Madonna and Angels" was not by Botticelli. And,

indeed, there was hardly a picture in Rome I was unable to reattribute to

its rightful owner. In the apt Flora I found a receptive pupil. She

even grew suspicious about the great Velasquez at the Doria, in which she

fancied, with all the enthusiasm of youth, that she detected the handling

of Mazo. I soon found that it was better for her training to discourage

her from looking at pictures at all--we confined ourselves to

photographs. In a photograph you are not disturbed by colour, or by

impasto. You are able to study the morphic values in a picture, by which

means you arrive at the attribution without any disturbing aesthetic

considerations.

One afternoon, returning from some church ceremony, Flora said to me,

"Oh, Aleister" (we were already engaged secretly), "papa is going to ask

you next winter to stay at Hootawa. Before I forget, I want to warn you

never to criticise the pictures. They are mostly of the Dutch and

English School, and I dare say you will find a great many of the names

wrong; but, you know, papa is irritable, and it would offend him if you

said that the 'Terborch' was really by Pieter de Hooghe. You can easily

avoid saying anything--and then, you will really admire the Vandyck."

"Darling Flora, of course I promise. By the way, you never speak of your

family ghost, although Mrs. Brodie always refers to it as if I knew all

about it; and the Colonel has often told me of Sir Rupert's military

achievements."

"Oh, Aleister, I don't know whether you believe in ghosts: it _is_ very

extraordinary. Whenever any disaster, or any good fortune happens to our

family, Sir Rupert Brodie's figure, just as he appears in the Vandyck, is

seen walking in the Long Gallery; and every night he appears at twelve

o'clock in the green spare bedroom; but only guests and servants ever see

him there. We have a saying at Hootawa, that servants will not stay

unless they are able to see Sir Rupert the first month after their

arrival. Only members of the family are able to see him in the Long

Gallery, and, of course, we never know whether he betokens good or ill

luck. The last time he appeared there, papa was so nervous that he sold

out of Consols, which went down an eighth the day after. We were all

very much relieved. But he invested the money in some concern called

"The Imperial Federation Stylograph Pen Company," and lost most of it; so

it was not of much use."

"Tell me, darling, of your father's other investments," I asked

anxiously.

"Oh, you must ask papa about them, I don't understand business; but I

want to tell you about Sir Rupert. The Society for Psychical Research

sent down a Committee to inquire into the credibility of the ghost, and

recorded four authentic apparitions in the spare bedroom; and on family

evidence accepted at least three events in the Long Gallery. It was just

after their report was issued that papa was invited to lease the house to

some Americans for the summer. He always gets a good price for it now,

simply on account of the ghost. I always think that rather horrid. I

don't believe poor Sir Rupert would like it."

"Perhaps he doesn't know," I suggested.

"Of course, you don't believe in him," she said in rather an offended

way.

"My darling, of course I do; I have always believed in ghosts. Most of

the pictures in the world, as I am always saying, were painted by

_ghosts_."

"Oh, no, Aleister, you're laughing at me; but when you see Sir Rupert, as

you will, in the spare bedroom, you will believe too."

At the end of January, I became Flora's accepted fiance.

In February, I moved with the Brodies to Florence, where I was able to

introduce them to all my kind and hospitable friends,--the Berensons, Mr.

Charles Loeser, Mr. Herbert Horne, and Mr. Hobart Cust. Flora was in

every way a great success, and commenced a little book on Nera di Bicci

for Bell's Great Painters Series. She was invited to contribute to the

_Burlington Magazine_. It was quite a primavera. Our marriage was

arranged for the following February. The Brodies were to return to

Hootawa after it was vacated by the American summer tenants. I was to

join them for Christmas on my return from America, where I was compelled

to go in order to settle my affairs. My father, Lorenzo Q. Sweat, of

Chicago, evinced great pleasure at my approaching union with an old

Scotch family; he promised me a handsome allowance considering his recent

losses in the meat packing swindle--I mean trade. I was able to dissuade

him from coming to Europe for the ceremony. After delivering two

successful lectures on Pietro Cavallini in the early fall at mothers'

soirees, I sailed for Liverpool.

There was deep snow on the ground when I arrived at Hootawa in the early

afternoon of a cold December day. The Colonel met me at the station in

the uniform of the 69th, attended by two gillies holding torches.

"There will just be enough light to glance at the pictures before tea,"

he said gaily, and in three-quarters of an hour I was embracing Flora and

saluting her mother, who were in the hall to greet me. For the most part

Hootawa was a typical old Scotch castle, with extinguisher turrets; an

incongruous Jacobean addition rather enhancing its picturesque ensemble.

"You'll see better pictures here than anything in Rome," remarked the

Colonel; but Flora giggled rather nervously.

In the smoking-room and library, I inspected, with assumed interest,

works by the little masters of Holland, and some more admirable examples

of the English Eighteenth Century School. Faithful to my promise, I

pronounced every one of them to be little gems, unsurpassed by anything

in the private collections of America or Europe. We passed into the

drawing-room and parlour with the same success. In the latter apartment

the Colonel, grasping my arm, said impressively: "Now you will see our

great treasure, the Brodie Vandyck, of which Flora has so often told you.

I have never lent it for exhibition, for, as you know, we are rather

superstitious about it. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in 1780, offered to paint

the portraits of the whole family in exchange for the picture. Dr.

Waagen describes it in his well-known work. Dr. Bode came from Berlin on

purpose to see it some years ago, when he left a certificate (which was

scarcely necessary) of its undoubted authenticity. I was so touched by

his genuine admiration, that I presented him with a small Dutch picture

which he admired in the smoking-room, and thought not unworthy of placing

in the Berlin Gallery. I expect you know Dr. Bode."

"Not personally," I said, as we stepped into the Long Gallery.

It was a delightful panelled room, with oak-beamed ceiling. Between the

mullioned windows were old Venetian mirrors and seventeenth-century

chairs. At the end, concealed by a rich crimson brocade, hung the

Vandyck, the only picture on the walls.

It was the Colonel himself who drew aside the curtain which veiled

discreetly the famous picture of Sir Rupert Brodie at the age of thirty-

two, in the beautiful costume of the period. The face was unusually

pallid; it was just the sort of portrait you would expect to walk out of

its frame.

"You have never seen a finer Vandyck, I am sure," said Mrs. Brodie,

anxiously. I examined the work with great care, employing a powerful

pocket-glass. There was an awkward pause for about five minutes.

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, sternly, "have you nothing to say?"

"It is a very interesting and excellent work, though _not_ by Vandyck; it

is by Jamieson, his Scotch pupil; the morphic forms . . ."--but I got no

further. There was a loud clap of thunder, and Flora fainted away. I

was hastening to her side when her father's powerful arm seized my

collar. He ran me down the gallery and out by an egress which led into

the entrance hall, where some menial opened the massive door. I felt one

stinging blow on my face; then, bleeding and helpless, I was kicked down

the steps into the snow from which I was picked up, half stunned, by one

of the gillies.

"Eh, mon, hae ye seen the bogles at Hootawa?" he observed.

"It will be very civil of you if you will conduct me to the depot, or the

nearest caravanserai," I replied.

I never saw Flora again.'

* * * * *

'But what has happened about the ghost, Mr. Sweat? You never told us

anything about it. Did you ever see it?' asked one of the listeners in a

disappointed tone.

'Oh, I forgot; no, that was rather tragic. _Sir Rupert Brodie never

appeared again_, not even in the spare bedroom; he seemed offended.

Eventually his portrait was sent up to London, where Mr. Lionel Cust

pointed out that it could not have been painted until after Vandyck's

death, at which time Sir Rupert was only ten years old. Indeed, there

was some uncertainty whether the picture represented Sir Rupert at all.

Mr. Bowyer Nichols found fault with the costume, which belonged to an

earlier date prior to Sir Rupert's birth. Colonel Brodie never recovered

from the shock. He resides chiefly at Harrogate. Gradually the servants

all gave notice, and Hootawa ceased to attract Americans. Poor Flora! I

ought to have remembered my promise; but the habit was too strong in me.

Sir Oliver Lodge, I believe, has an explanation for the non-appearance of

the phantom after the events I have described. He regards it as a good

instance of _bypsychic duality_--the fortuitous phenomenon by which

spirits are often uncertain as to whom they really represent. But I am

only an art critic, not a physicist.'

_To_ HERBERT HORNE, ESQ.

THE ELEVENTH MUSE.

In the closing years of the last century I held the position of a

publisher's hack. Having failed in everything except sculpture, I became

publisher's reader and adviser. It was the age of the 'dicky dongs,'

and, of course, I advised chiefly the publication of deciduous

literature, or books which dealt with the history of decay. The

business, unfortunately, closed before my plans were materialised; but

there was a really brilliant series of works prepared for an ungrateful

public. A cheap and abridged edition of Gibbon was to have heralded the

'Ruined Home' Library, as we only dealt with the decline and fall of

things, and eschewed Motley in both senses of the word. 'Bad Taste in

All Ages' (twelve volumes edited by myself) would have rivalled some of

Mr. Sidney Lee's monumental undertakings. It was a memory of these

unfulfilled designs which has turned my thoughts to an old notebook--the

skeleton of what was destined never to be a book in being.

I have often wondered why no one has ever tried to form an anthology of

bad poetry. It would, of course, be easy enough to get together a dreary

little volume of unreadable and unsaleable song. There are, however,

certain stanzas so exquisite in their unconscious absurdity that an

inverted immortality may be claimed for them. It is essential that their

authors should have been serious, because parody and light verse have

been carried to such a state of perfection that a tenth muse has been

created--the muse of Mr. Owen Seaman and the late St. John Hankin for

example. When the Anakim, men of old, which were men of renown--Shelley,

Keats, or Tennyson--become playful, I confess to a feeling of

nervousness: the unpleasant, hot sensation you experience when a

distinguished man makes a fool of himself. Rossetti--I suppose from his

Italian origin--was able to assume motley without loss of dignity, and

that wounded Titan, the late W. E. Henley, was another exception. Both

he and Rossetti had the faculty of being foolish, or obscene, without

impairing the high seriousness of their superb poetic gifts.

But I refer to more serious folly--that of the disciples of Silas Wegg.

Some friends of mine in the country employed a ladies'-maid with literary

proclivities. She was never known to smile; the other servants thought

her stuck up; she was a great reader of novels, poetry, and popular books

on astronomy. One day she gave notice, departed at the end of a month,

left no address, and never applied for a character. Beneath the mattress

of her bed was found a manuscript of poems. One of these, addressed to

our satellite, is based on the scientific fact (of which I was not aware

until I read her poem) that we see only one side of the moon. The ode

contains this ingenious stanza:--

O beautiful moon!

When I gaze on thy face

Careering among the boundaries of space,

The thought has often come to my mind

If I ever shall see thy glorious behind.

It was my pleasure to communicate this verse to our greatest living

conversationalist, a point I mention because it may, in consequence, be

already known to those who, like myself, enjoy the privileges of his

inimitable talk. I possess the original manuscript of the poem, and can

supply copies of the remainder to the curious.

In a magazine managed by the physician of a well-known lunatic asylum I

found many inspiring examples. The patients are permitted to contribute:

they discuss art and literature, subject of course to a stringent

editorial discretion. As you might suppose, poetry occupies a good deal

of space. It was from that source of clouded English I culled the

following:--

His hair is red and blue and white,

His face is almost tan,

His brow is wet with blood and sweat,

He steals from where he can:

And looks the whole world in the face,

A drunkard and a man.

I think we have here a Henley manque. In robustious assertion you will

not find anything to equal it in the Hospital Rhymes of that author. I

was so much struck by the poem that I obtained permission to correspond

with the poet. I discovered that another Sappho might have adorned our

literature; that a mute inglorious Elizabeth Barrett was kept silent in

Darien--for the asylum was in the immediate vicinity of the Peak in

Derbyshire. Of the correspondence which ensued I venture to quote only

one sentence:

'I was brought up to love beauty; my home was more than cultured; it

was refined; we took in the _Art Journal_ regularly.'

Of all modern artists, I suppose that Sir Edward Burne-Jones has inspired

more poetry than any other. A whole school of Oxford poets emerged from

his fascinating palette, and he is the subject of perhaps the most

exquisite of all the _Poems and Ballads_--the '_Dedication_'--which forms

the colophon to that revel of rhymes. I sometimes think that is why his

art is out of fashion with modern painters, who may inspire dealers, but

would never inspire poets. For who could write a sonnet on some

uncompromising pieces of realism by Mr. Rothenstein, Mr. John, or Mr.

Orpen? Theirs is an art which speaks for itself. But Sir Edward Burne-

Jones seems to have dazzled the undergrowth of Parnassus no less than the

higher slopes. In a long and serious epic called 'The Pageant of Life,'

dealing with every conceivable subject, I found:--

With some the mention of Burne-Jones

Elicits merely howls and groans;

But those who know each inch of art

Believe that he can bear his part.

I don't remember what he could bear. Perhaps it referred to his election

at the Royal Academy. Then, again, in a 'Vision' of the next world, a

poet described how--

Byron, Burne-Jones, and Beethoven,

Charlotte Bronte and Chopin are there.

I wonder if this has escaped the eagle eye of Mr. Clement Shorter. Though

perhaps the most delightful nonsense, for which, I fear, this great

painter is partly responsible, may be found in a recent poem addressed to

the memory of my old friend, Simeon Solomon:--

More of Rossetti? Yes:

You follow'd than Burne-Jones,

Your depth of colour his

than that of monochromes!

Yes; amber lilies poured, I say,

A joy for thee, than poet's bay.

But while true art refines

and often stimulates,

ART does, at times, I say,

sit grief within our gates!

Art causes men to weep at times--

If you may heed these falt'ring rhymes.

A small volume of lyrics once sent to me for review afforded another

flower for my garland:--

Where in the spring-time leaves are wet,

Oh, lay my love beneath the shades,

Where men remember to forget,

And are forgot in Hades.

But I have given enough examples for what would form Part I. of the

English anthology. Part II. would consist of really bad verses from

really great poetry.

Auspicious Reverence, hush all meaner song,

is one of the most pompously stupid lines in English poetry. Arnold did

not hesitate to quote instances from Shakespeare:--

Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,

Confronted him with self-comparisons.

You would have to sacrifice Browning, because it might fairly be

concluded--well, anything might be concluded about Browning. Byron is,

of course, a mine. Arthur Hugh Clough is, perhaps, the 'flawless

numskull,' as, I think, Swinburne calls him. Tennyson surpassed

A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman,

in many of his serious poems.

To travellers indeed the sea

Must always interesting be

I have heard ascribed to Wordsworth, but wrongly, I believe. I should,

of course, exclude from the collection living writers; only the select

dead would be requisitioned. They cannot retort. And the entertaining

volume would illustrate that curious artistic law--the survival of the

unfittest, of which we are only dimly beginning to realise the

significance. It is like the immortality of the invalid, now recognised

by all men of science. You see it manifested in the plethora of memoirs.

All new books not novels are about great dead men by unimportant little

living ones. When I am asked, as I have been, to write recollections of

certain 'people of importance,' as Dante says, I feel the force of that

law very keenly.

_To_ FREDERICK STANLEY SMITH, ESQ.

SWINBLAKE: A PROPHETIC BOOK, WITH HOME ZARATHRUSTS.

Every student of Blake has read, or must read, Mr. Swinburne's

extraordinary essay, _William Blake: a critical study_, of which a new

edition was recently published. It would be idle at this time of day to

criticise. Much has been discovered, and more is likely to be

discovered, about Blake since 1866. The interest of the book, for us, is

chiefly reflex. _And does not the great mouth laugh at a gift_, if

scheduled in an examination paper with the irritating question, 'From

what author does this quotation come?' would probably elicit the reply,

'Swinburne.' Yet it occurs in one of Blake's prophetic books.

How fascinated Blake would have been with Mr. Swinburne if by some

exquisite accident he had lived _after_ him. We should have had, I

fancy, another Prophetic Book; something of this kind:

Swinburne roars and shakes the world's literature--

The English Press, and a good many contemporaries--

Tennyson palls, Browning is found--

Only a brownie--

The mountains divide, the Press is unanimous--

Aylwin is born--

On a perilous path, on the cliff of immortality--

I met Theodormon--

He seemed sad: I said, 'Why are you sad--

Are you writing the long-promised life--

Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?'--

He sighed and said, 'No, not that--

Not that, my child--

I consigned the task to William Michael--

Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are cheap to-day--

You can have them for a sextet or an octave.'--

I brightened and said, 'Then you are writing a sonnet?'

He shook his head and said it was symbolical--

For six and eightpence!--

A golden rule: Never lend only George Borrow--

A new century had begun, and I asked Theodormon what he was doing on that

path and where Mr. Swinburne was. Beneath us yawned the gulf of

oblivion.

'Be careful, young man, not to tumble over; are you a poet or a

biographer?'

I explained that I was merely a tourist. He gave a sigh of relief: 'I

have an appointment here with my only disciple, Mr. Howlglass; if you are

not careful he may write an appreciation of you.'

'My dear Theodormon, if you will show me how to reach Mr. Swinburne I

will help you.'

'I swear by the most sacred of all oaths, by Aylwin, you shall see

Swinburne.'

Just then we saw a young man coming along the path with a Kodak and a

pink evening paper. He seemed pleased to see me, and said, 'May I

appreciate you?'

I gave the young man a push and he fell right over the cliff. Theodormon

threw down after him a heavy-looking book which, alighting on his skull,

smashed it. 'My preserver,' he cried, 'you shall see what you like, you

shall do what you like, except write my biography. Swinburne is close at

hand, though he occasionally wanders. His permanent address is the

Peaks, Parnassus. Perhaps you would like to pay some other calls as

well.'

I assented.

We came to a printing-house and found William Morris reverting to type

and transmitting art to the middle classes.

'The great Tragedy of Topsy's life,' said Theodormon, 'is that he

converted the middle classes to art and socialism, but he never touched

the unbending Tories of the proletariat or the smart set. You would have

thought, on homoeopathic principles, that cretonne would appeal to

cretins.'

'Vale, vale,' cried Charles Ricketts from the interior.

I was rather vexed, as I wanted to ask Ricketts his opinions about

various things and people and to see his wonderful collection. Shannon,

however, presented me with a lithograph and a copy of 'Memorable

Fancies,' by C. R.

How sweet I roamed from school to school,

But I attached myself to none;

I sat upon my ancient Dial

And watched the other artists' fun.

Will Rothenstein can guard the faith,

Safe for the Academic fold;

'Twas very wise of William Strang,

What need have I of Chantrey's gold?

Let the old masters be my share,

And let them fall on B. B.'s corn;

Let the Uffizi take to Steer--

What do I care for Herbert Horne

Or the stately Holmes of England,

Whose glories never fade;

The Constable of Burlington,

Who holds the Oxford Slade.

It's Titian here and Titian there,

And come to have a look;

But 'thanks of course Giorgione,'

With Mr. Herbert Cook.

For MacColl is an intellectual thing,

And Hugh P. Lane keeps Dublin awake,

And Fry to New York has taken wing,

And Charles Holroyd has got the cake.

After turning round a rather sharp corner I began to ask Theodormon if

John Addington Symonds was anywhere to be found. He smiled, and said: 'I

know why you are asking. Of course he _is_ here, but we don't see much

of him. He published, at the Kelmscott, the other day, "An Ode to a

Grecian Urning." The proceeds of the sale went to the Arts and Krafts

Ebbing Guild, but the issue of "Aretino's Bosom, and other Poems," has

been postponed.'

We now reached a graceful Renaissance building covered with blossoms; on

each side of the door were two blue-breeched gondoliers smoking calamus.

Theodormon hurried on, whispering: '_That_ is where he lives. If you

want to see Swinburne you had better make haste, as it is getting late,

and I want you to inspect the Castalian spring.'

The walking became very rough just here; it was really climbing. Suddenly

I became aware of dense smoke emerging with a rumbling sound from an

overhanging rock.

'I had no idea Parnassus was volcanic now,' I remarked.

'No more had we,' said Theodormon; 'it is quite a recent eruption due to

the Celtic movement. The rock you see, however, is not a real rock, but

a sham rock. Mr. George Moore has been turned out of the cave, and is

still hovering about the entrance.'

Looming through the smoke, which hung like a veil of white muslin between

us, I was able to trace the silhouette of that engaging countenance which

Edouard Manet and others have immortalised. 'Go away,' he said: 'I do

not want to speak to you.' 'Come, come, Mr. Moore,' I rejoined, 'will

you not grant a few words to a really warm admirer?'--but he had faded

away. Then a large hand came out of the cavern and handed me a piece of

paper, and a deep voice with a slight brogue said: 'If you see mi darlin'

Gosse give this to him.' The paper contained these verses:--

Georgey Morgie, kidden and sly,

Kissed the girls and made them cry;

_What_ the girls came out to say

George never heard, for he ran away.

W. B. Y

We skirted the edge of a thick wood. A finger-post pointed to the

Castalian spring, and a notice-board indicated _Trespassers will be

prosecuted_. _The lease to be disposed of. Apply to G. K. Chesterton_.

Soon we came to an open space in which was situated a large, rather

dilapidated marble tank. I noticed that the water did not reach further

than the bathers' stomachs. Theodormon anticipated my surprise. 'Yes,

we have had to depress the level of the water during the last few years

out of compliment to some of the bathers, and there have been a good many

bathing fatalities of a very depressing description.'

'You don't mean to say,' I replied, 'Richard le Gallienne?'

'Hush! hush! he was rescued.'

'Stephen Phillips?' I asked, anxiously.

'Well, he couldn't swim, of course, but he floated; you see he had the

Sidney Colvin lifebelt on, and that is always a great assistance.'

'Not,' I almost shrieked, 'my favourite poet, the author of "Lord 'a

Muzzy don't you fret. Missed we De Wet. Missed we De Wet"?'

Theodormon became very grave. 'We do not know any of their names,' he

said. 'I will show you, presently, the Morgue. Perhaps you will be able

to identify some of your friends. The Coroner has refused to open an

inquest until Mr. John Lane can attend to give his evidence.'

I saw the Poet Laureate trying very hard to swim on his back. Another

poet was sitting down on the marble floor so that the water might at

least come up to his neck. Gazing disconsolately into the pellucid

shallows I saw the revered and much-loved figures of Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr.

Austin Dobson, and Mr. Edmund Gosse. 'Going for a dip?' said Theodormon.

'Thanks, we don't care about paddling,' Mr. Lang retorted.

'I hope it is not _always_ so shallow,' I said to my guide.

'Oh, no; we have a new water-supply, but as the spring is in the nature

of a public place, we won't turn on the fresh water until people have

learnt to appreciate what is good. That handsome little marble structure

which you see at the end of the garden is really the _new_ Castalian

Spring. At all events, that is where all the miracles take place. The

old bath is terribly out of repair, in spite of plumbing.'

We then inspected a very neat little apartment mosaiced in gold. Round

the walls were attractive drinking-fountains, and on each was written the

name of the new water--I mean the new poet. Some of them I recognised:

Laurence Binyon, A. E. Housman, Sturge Moore, Santayana, Arthur Symons,

Herbert Trench, Henry Simpson, Laurence Housman, F. W. Tancred, Arthur

Lyon Raile, William Watson, Hugh Austin.

'You see we have the very latest,' said Theodormon, 'provided it is

always the best. I am sorry to say that some of the taps don't give a

constant supply, but that is because the machinery wants oiling. Try

some Binyon,' said my guide, filling a gold cup on which was wrought by

some cunning craftsman the death of Adam and the martyrdom of the Blessed

Christina. I found it excellent and refreshing, and observed that it was

cheering to come across the excellence of sincerity and strength at a

comparatively new source . . .

Mr. Swinburne was seated in an arbour of roses, clothed in a gold

dalmatic, a birthday gift from his British Peers. Their names were

embroidered in pearls on the border. I asked permission to read my

address:--

There beats no heart by Cam or Isis

(Where tides of poets ebb and flow),

But guards Dolores as a crisis

Of long ago.

A crisis bringing fire and wonder,

A gift of some dim Eastern Mage,

A firework still smouldering under

The feet of middle age.

For you could love and hate and tell us

Of almost everything,

You made our older poets jealous,

For you alone could sing.

In truth it was your splendid praises

Which made us wake

To glories hidden in the phrases

Of William Blake.

No boy who sows his metric salads

His tamer oats,

But always steals from Swinburne's ballads

The stronger notes.

'Do you play golf?' said Mr. Swinburne, handing me two little spheres

such as are used in the royal game. And I heard no more; for I received

a blow--whether delivered by Mr. Swinburne or the ungrateful Theodormon I

do not know, but I found myself falling down the gulf of oblivion, and

suddenly, with a dull thud, I landed on the remains of Howlglass. The

softness of his head had really preserved me from what might have been a

severe shock, because the distance from Parnassus to Fleet Street, as you

know, is considerable, and the escalade might have been more serious. I

reached my rooms in Half Moon Street, however, having seen only one star,

with just a faint nostalgia for the realms into which for one brief day I

was privileged to peep.

(1906.)

A MISLAID POET.

In the closing years of my favourite last century, when poetry was more

discussed than it is now (at all events as a marketable commodity), few

verse-writers were overlooked. Bosola's observation about 'the neglected

poets of your time' could not be quoted with any propriety. Mr. John

Lane would make long and laborious journeys on the District Railway,

armed _bag-a-pied_, in order to discover the new and unpublished. Now he

has shot over all the remaining preserves; laurels and bays, so necessary

for the breed 'of men and women over-wrought,' have withered in the

London soot. There was one bright creature, however, who escaped his

rifle; she was brought down by another sportsman, and thus missed some of

the fame which might have attached to her had she been trussed and hung

in the Bodley Head. Poaching in the library at Thelema, I came across

her by accident. Her song is not without significance.

In 1878 Georgiana Farrer mentioned on page 190 of her _Miscellaneous

Poems_, 'I am old by sin entangled;' but this was probably a pious

exaggeration. Only some one young and intellectually very vigorous could

have penned her startling numbers. I suggest that she retained more of

her youth than, from religious motives, she thought it proper to admit.

In the 'eighties, when incense was burned in drawing-rooms, and people

were talking about 'The Blessed Damozel,' she could write of Paradise:--

A home where Jesus Christ is King,

A home where e'en Archangels sing,

Where common wealth is shared by all,

And God Himself lights up the Hall.

She was philosemite, and from the reference to Lord Beaconsfield we can

easily date the following:--

You who doubt the truth of Scripture,

Pray tell me, then, who are the Jews?

Scattered in all lands and nations,

Pray why their evidence refuse?

It seems to me you must be blind;

Are they not daily gaining ground?

We find them now in every land,

And well-nigh ruling all around.

Their music is most sweet to hear;

Jews were Rossini and Mozart,

Mendelssohn, too, and Meyerbeer;

Grisi in song could charm the heart.

The funds their princes hold in hand;

Their merchants trade both near and far;

Ill-used and robbed they long have been,

Yet wealthy now they surely are.

In Germany who has great sway?

Prince Bismarck, most will answer me;

Our own Prime Minister retains

A name that shows his pedigree.

Who after this will dare to say

They nought in these strange people see;

Do they not prove the Scripture true,

And throw a light on history?

The twenty-five years that have elapsed since the poem was written must

have convinced those innocent persons who 'saw nought' in our Israelitish

compatriots. I never heard before that Prince Bismarck or Mozart was of

Jewish extraction!

Mrs. Farrer was, of course, an evangelical, somewhat old-fashioned for so

late a date; and fairly early in her volume she warns us of what we may

expect. She is anxious to damp any undue optimism as to the lightness of

her muse. When worldly, foolish people like Whistler and Pater were

talking 'art for art's sake,' she could strike a decisive didactic blow:--

My voice like thunder may appear,

Yet oft-times I have shed a tear

Behind the peal, like rain in storm,

To moisten those I would reform.

Then pardon if my stormy mood,

Instead of blighting, does some good.

Sooner a thunder-clap, think me,

Than sunstroke sent in wrath on thee.

With a splendid Calvinism, too rare at that time, she would not argue

beyond a _certain_ limit; there was an edge, she realised, to every

platform; an ounce of assertion is worth pounds of proof. Religious

discussion after a time becomes barren:--

Then hundredfolds to sinners

Must be repaid in Hell.

If you think such men winners,

We disagree. Farewell.

But to the person who _is_ right (and Mrs. Farrer was never in a moment's

doubt, though her prosody is influenced sometimes by the sceptical

Matthew Arnold) there is no mean reward:--

I sparkle resplendent,

A star in His crown,

And glitter for ever,

A gem of renown.

From internal evidence we can gauge her social position, while her views

of caste appear in these radical days a trifle _demode_. Her metaphors

of sin are all derived from the life of paupers:--

Paupers through their sinful folly

Are workers of iniquity,

Living on Jehovah's bounty,

Wasting in abject poverty.

A pauper's funeral their end,

No angels waft their souls on high;

Rich they were thought on earth, perhaps,

Yet far from wealth accursed they lie.

Who are the rich? God's Word declares,

The men whose treasure is above--

Those humble working _gentlefolk_

Whose life flows on in deeds of love.

Despised in life I may remain,

Misunderstood by rich and poor;

An entrance yet I hope to gain

To wealthy plains on endless shore.

No paupers in that heavenly land,

The sons of God are rich indeed;

His daughters all His treasures share;

It will their highest hopes exceed.

Those paupers who are 'saved' are rewarded by material comforts such as

graced the earthly home of Georgiana herself, one of the 'humble working

_gentlefolk_.' She enjoys her own fireside with an almost Pecksniffian

relish, and she profoundly observes, as she sits beside her hearth:--

Like forest trees men rise and grow:

Good timber some will prove,

Others decayed as fuel piled,

Prepared are for that stove

That burns for ever, Tophet called,

Heated by jealous heat,

Adapted to destroy all chaff,

And leaves unscorched the wheat.

Excellent Georgiana! She could not stand very much chaff of any kind, I

suspect.

The alarming progress of ritualism in the 'eighties disturbed her

considerably, though it inspired some of her more weighty verses. They

should be favourites with Dr. Clifford and Canon Hensley Henson:--

Some men in our days cover over

A body deformed with their sin:

A cross worked in various colours,

Forgetting that God looks within.

Alas! in our churches at present

Simplicity seems quite despised;

To represent things far above us

Are heathenish customs revived.

This evil is spreading among us,

And where will it end, can you tell?

Join not with the misled around us,

Take warning, my readers . . .

The veneration of the Blessed Virgin goaded her into composition of

stanzas unparalleled in the whole literature of Protestantism:--

My readers, can you nowhere see

A parallel to Israel's sin?

The House of God, at home, abroad:

_Idols are there_--that house within.

Who incense burns? are strange cakes made?

What woman's chapel, decked with gold,

Stands full of unchecked worshippers

Like those idolaters of old?

The Blessed Virgin--blest she is

That does not make her Heaven's Queen!

Yet some are taught to worship her;

What else does all this teaching mean?

What she denied to the Mother of God she accorded (rather daringly, I

opine) to one Harriet, whose death and future are recorded in the

following lines:--

Declining like the setting sun

After a course divinely run,

I saw a maiden passing fair

Reposing on an easy chair.

A Bridegroom of celestial mien

Came forth and claimed her for His Queen;

One with His Father on His throne

She lives entirely His own.

Harrietolatry, I thought, was confined to the members of the defunct

Shelley Society. But every reader will feel the poignant truth of Mrs.

Farrer's view of the Church of England--truer to-day than it could have

been in the 'eighties:--

The Church of England--grand old ship--

Toss'd is on a troubled sea!

Her sails are rent, her decks are foul'd,

Mutiny on board must be.

The winds of discord howl around,

Wild disputers throw up foam,

From high to low she's beat about;

Frighten'd some who love her roam.

I do not know if the last word is intended for a pun, but I scarcely

think it is likely.

I would like to reconstruct Mrs. Farrer's home, with its stiff Victorian

chairs, its threaded antimacassars, its pictorial paper-weights, its wax

flowers under glass shades, and the charming household porcelain from the

Derby and Worcester furnaces. There must have been a sabbatic air of

comfort about the dining-room which was soothing. I can see the

engravings after Landseer: 'The Stag at Bay,' 'Dignity and Impudence'; or

those after Martin: 'The Plains of Heaven,' and 'The Great Day of His

Wrath'; and 'Blucher meeting Wellington,' after Maclise. I can see on

each side of the mirror examples of the art of Daguerre, which have

already begun to produce in us the same sentiment that we get from the

early Tuscans; and on the mantelpiece a photograph of Harriet in a plush

frame, the one touch of modernity in a room which was otherwise severely

1845. Then, on a bookshelf which hung above the old tea-caddy and cut-

glass sugar-bowl, Georgiana's library--'Line upon Line,' 'Precept upon

Precept,' 'Jane the Cottager,' 'Pinnock's Scripture History,' and a few

costly works bound in the style of the Albert Memorial. The

drawing-room, just a trifle damp, must have contained Mr. Hunt's 'Light

of the World,' which Mrs. Farrer never quite learned to love, though it

was a present from a missionary, and rendered fire and artificial light

unnecessary during the winter months. Would that Mrs. Farrer's home-life

had come under the magic lens of Mr. Edmund Gosse, for it would now be

classic, like the household of Sir Thomas More.

Whatever its attractions, Mrs. Farrer was at times induced to go abroad,

visiting, I imagine, only the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. She

stayed, however, in Paris, which she apostrophises with Sibyllic

candour:--

O city of pleasure, what did I see

When passing through or staying in thee.

Bright shone the sun above, blue was the sky,

Everywhere music heard, none seemed to sigh.

Beautiful carriages in Champs Elysee

Filled with fair maidens on cushions easy.

Such was the outer side; what was within?

Most I was often told revelled in sin.

Sad its fate since I left, sadder 'twill be

If they go on in sin as seen by me.

Let us hope, ere too late, warned by the past,

They may seek pleasures more likely to last,

Or, like to Babylon, it must decline,

And o'er its ruins its lovers repine.

But London hardly fares much better, in spite of Mrs. Farrer's own

residence, at Campden Hill, if I may hazard the locality:--

To the tomb they must go,

Rich and poor all in woe,

Strange motley throng.

Wealth in its splendour weeps,

Poverty silence keeps;

None last here long. . . .

So much for thee, London.

Except in a spiritual sense, her existence was not an eventful one. It

was, I think, the loss of some neighbour's child which suggested:--

Nellarina, forced exotic,

Born to bloom in region fair,

Thou wert to me a narcotic,

Hope I did thy lot to share.

Any near personal sorrow she does not seem to have experienced, I am glad

to say, else she might have regarded it as a grievance the consequences

of which one dares not contemplate; you feel that _Some One_ would have

heard of it in no measured terms. Certainty and content are, indeed, the

dominating notes of her poetry rather than mere commonplace hope:--

I am bound for the land of Beulah,

There all the guests sing Hallelujah.

No longer time here let us squander,

But on the good things promised ponder.

It would be futile to discuss the exact position on Parnassus of a lady

whose throne was secured on a more celestial mountain, even more

difficult of access. But I think we may claim for her an honourable

place in that new Oxford school of poetry of which Professor Mackail

officially knows little, and of which Dr. Warren (the President of

Magdalen) is the distinguished living protagonist. With all her acrid

Evangelicalism she was a good soul, for she was fond of animals and

children, and kind to them both in her own way; so I am sure some of her

dreams have been realised, even if there has reached her nostrils just a

whiff of those tolerating purgatorial fires which, spelt differently, she

believed to be _permanently_ prepared for the vast majority of her

contemporaries.

_To_ MRS. CAREW.

GOING UP TOP.

During the closing years of the last century certain critics contracted a

rather depressing habit of numbering men of letters, especially poets, as

though they were overcoats in a cloak-room, or boys competing in an

examination set by themselves. 'It requires very little discernment,'

wrote the late Churton Collins, A.D. 1891, 'to foresee that among the

English poets of the present century the first place will _ultimately_ be

assigned to Wordsworth, the second to Byron, and the third to Shelley.'

Matthew Arnold, I fear, was the first to make these unsafe Zadkielian

prognostications. He, if I remember correctly, gave Byron the first

place and Wordsworth the second; but Swinburne, with his usual

discernment, observed that English taste in that eventuality would be in

the same state as it was at the end of the seventeenth century, which

firmly believed that Fletcher and Jonson were the best of its poets.

But when is Ultimately? Obviously not the present moment. Byron does

not hold the rank awarded him by the distinguished critic in 1891. The

cruel test of the auctioneer's hammer has recently shown that Keats and

Shelley are regarded as far more important by those unprejudiced judges,

the book-dealers. Wordsworth, of course, is still one of the poets'

poets, and the _Spectator_, that Mrs. Micawber of literature, will, of

course, never desert him; but I doubt very much whether he has yet

reached the harbour of Ultimately. His repellent personality has blinded

a good many of us to his exquisite qualities; on the Greek Kalends of

criticism, however, may I be there to see. I shall certainly vote for

him if I am one of the examiners--or one of the cloak-room attendants.

It was against such kind of criticism that Whistler hurled his impatient

epigram about pigeon-holes. And if it is absurd in regard to painting,

how much more absurd is it in regard to the more various and less friable

substances of literature. By the old ten-o'clock rule (I do not refer to

Whistler's lecture), once observed in Board schools, no scripture could

be taught after that hour. Once a teacher asked his class who was the

wisest man. 'Solomon,' said a little boy. 'Right; go up top,' said the

teacher. But there was a small pedant who, while never paying much

attention to the lessons, and being usually at the bottom of the form in

consequence, knew the regulations by heart. He interrupted with a shrill

voice (for the clock had passed the hour), 'No, sir, please, sir; past

ten o'clock, sir . . . Solon.' Thus it is, I fear, with critics of every

generation, though they try very hard to make the time pass as slowly as

possible.

But if invidious distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome,

I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great

man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we

have been his contemporaries. The caution of obituary notices seems to

me cowardly, and the reviews of books are cowardly too. We have become

Laodiceans. We are even fearful of exposing imposture in current

literature lest we get into hot water with a publisher.

During a New Year week I was invited by Lord and Lady Lyonesse to a very

diverting house-party. This peer, it will be remembered, is the well-

known radical philanthropist who owed his title to a lifelong interest in

the submerged tenth. Their house, Ivanhoe, is an exquisite gothic

structure not unjustly regarded as the masterpiece of the late Sir

Gilbert Scott: it overlooks the Ouse. Including our hosts we numbered

forty persons, and the personnel, including valets, chauffeurs, and

ladies'-maids brought by the guests, numbered sixty. In all, we were a

hundred souls, assuming immortality for the chauffeurs and the five

Scotch gardeners. On January 2nd somebody produced after dinner a copy

of the _Petit Parisien_ relating the plebiscite for the greatest

Frenchman of the nineteenth century; another guest capped him with the

_Evening News_ list. The famous _Pall Mall Gazette_ Academy of Forty was

recalled with indifferent accuracy. Conversation was flagging; our

hostess looked relieved; very soon we were all playing a variation of

that most charming game, _suck-pencil_.

At first we decided to ignore the nineteenth century. The ten greatest

living Englishmen were to be named by our votes. Bridge and billiard

players were dragged to the polling-station in the green drawing-room.

Lord Lyonesse and myself were the tellers. I shivered with excitement.

One of the Ultimatelies of Churton Collins seemed to have arrived: it was

Gotterdammerung--the Twilight of the Idols. And here is the result of

the ballot, which I think every one will admit possesses extraordinary

interest:

Hall Caine.

Marie Corelli.

Rudyard Kipling.

Lord Northcliffe.

Sir Thomas Lipton.

Hichens.

Chamberlain.

Barrie.

George Alexander.

Beerbohm Tree.

I ought to add, of course, that the guests were unusually intellectual.

There were our host and hostess, their three sons--one is a scholar of

King's College, Cambridge, another is at Balliol, and a third is a

stockbroker; there were five M.P.'s with their wives (two Liberal

Imperialists, two Liberal Unionists, and one real Radical), a Scotch peer

with his wife and an Irish peer without one; a publisher and his wife;

three Academicians; four journalists; an Irish poet, a horse-dealer, a

picture-dealer, another stockbroker, an artist, two lady novelists, a

baronet and his wife, three musicians; and Myself. I think the only

point on which the sincerity of the voting might be doubted, is the

ominous absence of any soldier's name on the list. Lord Lyonesse,

however, is a firm upholder of the Hague Conference: like myself, he is a

pro-Boer, but he will not allow any reference to military affairs, and I

suspect that it was out of deference to his wishes that the guests all

abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals. Lord

Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian

De Wet; but on discovery of documents he was ruled out, in spite of my

pleading for him on imperialistic grounds. I thought it rather insular,

too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to

me because they are American subjects. My own final list, as pasted in

the Album at Ivanhoe, along with others, was as follows:

H. G. Wells.

C. H. Shannon.

Bernard Shaw.

Thomas Hardy.

Lord Northcliffe.

Edmund Gosse.

Andrew Lang.

Oliver Lodge.

Dom Gasquet.

Reginald Turner.

Mine, of course, is the choice of a recluse: a scholar without

scholarship, one who lives remote from politics, newspapers, society, and

the merry-go-round of modern life. Its two chief interests lie in

showing, first how far off I was from getting the prize (a vellum copy of

poems, by our hostess), and secondly, that one name only, that of Lord

Northcliffe, should have touched both the popular and the private

imagination! I regret to say that none of the guests knew the names of

Dom Gasquet or Sir Oliver Lodge. Every one, except the artist, thought

C. H. Shannon was J. J. Shannon, and some of the voters were hardly

convinced that Mr. Lang was still an ornament to contemporary literature.

The prize was awarded to a lady whose list most nearly corresponded to

the result of the general plebiscite. I need not say she was the wife of

the publisher. After some suitable expressions from Lord Lyonesse, it

was suggested that we should poll the servants' hall. Pencils and paper

were provided and the butler was sent for. An hour was given for the

election, and at half-past eleven the ballot papers were brought in on a

massive silver tray discreetly covered with a red silk

pocket-handkerchief, and here is the result:

Frank Richardson.

Marie Corelli.

John Roberts.

C. B. Fry.

Eustace Miles.

Robert Hichens.

T. P. O'Connor.

Lord Lyonesse.

Dr. Williams (Pink Pills for Pale People).

Hall Caine.

The prize (and this is another odd coincidence) was won by the butler

himself, to whom, very generously, the publisher's wife resigned the

vellum copy of our hostess's poems. From a literary point of view, it is

interesting to note that Mr. Frank Richardson is the only master of

_belles lettres_ who is appreciated in the servants' hall! The other

names we associate, rightly or wrongly, with something other than

literature.

The following evening I suggested choosing the greatest English names in

the nineteenth century (twentieth-century life being strictly excluded).

Every one by this time had caught the _suck-pencil_ fever. By general

consent the suffrage was extended to the domestics: the electorate being

thus one hundred. And what, you will ask, came of it all? I suggest

that readers should guess. Any one interested should fill up, cut out,

and send this coupon to my own publisher on April the first.

_I think the Ten Greatest Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century were_:

1 . . . . . . . . . .

2 . . . . . . . . . .

3 . . . . . . . . . .

4 . . . . . . . . . .

5 . . . . . . . . . .

6 . . . . . . . . . .

7 . . . . . . . . . .

8 . . . . . . . . . .

9 . . . . . . . . . .

10 . . . . . . . . . .

A prize, consisting of a copy of _Books of To-Day and Books of

To-Morrow_, will be awarded for the best shot.

MR. BENSON'S 'PATER.'

In no other country has mediocrity such a chance as in England. The

second-rate writer, the second-rate painter meets with an almost

universal and immediate recognition. When good mediocrities die, if they

do not go straight to heaven (from a country where the existence of

Purgatory is denied by Act of Parliament), at least they run a very fair

chance of burial in Westminster Abbey. 'De mortuis nil nisi _bonus_,' in

the shape of royalties, is the real test by which we estimate the authors

who have just passed away. A few of our great writers--Ruskin and

Tennyson, for example--have enjoyed the applause accorded to senility by

a people usually timid of brilliancy and strength, when it is

contemporary. The ruins of mental faculties touch our imagination,

owing, perhaps, to that tenderness for antiquity which has preserved for

us the remains of Tintern Abbey. Seldom, however, does a great writer

live to find himself, in the prime of his literary existence, a component

part of English literature. Yet there are happy exceptions, and not the

least of these was Walter Pater.

His inclusion in the _English Men of Letters_ series, so soon after his

death, somewhat dazzled the reviewers. Mr. Benson was complimented on a

daring which, if grudgingly endorsed, is treated as just the sort of

innovation you would expect from the brother of the author of _Dodo_. 'To

a small soul the age which has borne it can appear only an age of small

souls,' says Swinburne, and the presence of Pater, which rose so

strangely beside our waters, seemed to many of his contemporaries only

the last sob of a literature which they sincerely believed came to an end

with Lord Macaulay.

It was a fortunate chance by which Mr. A. C. Benson, one of our more

discerning critics, himself master of no mean style, should have been

chosen as commentator of Pater. Among the plutarchracy of the present

day a not very pretty habit prevails of holding a sort of inquest on

deceased writers--a reaction against misplaced eulogy--tearing them and

their works to pieces, and leaving nothing for reviewers or posterity to

dissipate. From the author of the _Upton Letters_ we expect sympathy and

critical acumen. It is needless to say we are never disappointed. His

book is not merely about a literary man: it is a work of literature

itself. So it is charming to disagree with Mr. Benson sometimes, and a

triumph to find him tripping. You experience the pleasure of the

University Extension lecturer pointing out the mistakes in Shakespeare's

geography, the joy of the schoolboy when the master has made a false

quantity. In marking the modern discoveries which have shattered, not

the value of Pater's criticisms, but the authenticity of pictures round

which he wove his aureoles of prose, Mr. Benson says: 'In the essay on

Botticelli he is on firmer ground.' But among the first masterpieces

winged by the sportsmen of the new criticism was the Hamilton Palace

'Assumption of the Virgin' (now proved to be by Botticini), to which

Pater makes one of his elusive and delightful allusions. While the

'_School of Giorgione_,' which Mr. Benson thinks a little _passe_ in the

light of modern research is now in the movement. The latest bulletins of

Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly

satisfactory. Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are

being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook. A curious and

perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice. Referring to

the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma

fui--his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads _fuit_. But

perhaps the _t_ was added by the Italian Government out of Reference to

the English residents in Florence, and the word read _fui_ in 1871.

_Troja fuit_ might be written all over Florence.

Then some of the architecture at Vezelay 'typical of Cluniac sculpture'

is pure Viollet-le-Duc, I am assured by a competent authority. A more

serious error of Pater's, for it is adjectival, not a fact, occurs in

_Apollo in Picardy_--'_rebellious_ masses of black hair.' This is the

only instance in the _parfait prosateur_, as Bourget called him, of a

cliche worthy of the 'Spectator.' Then it is possible to differ from Mr.

Benson in his criticism of the _Imaginary Portraits_ (the four fair ovals

in one volume), surely Pater's most exquisite achievement after the

_Renaissance_. _Gaston_ is the failure Pater thought it was, and

_Emerald Uthwart_ is frankly very silly, though Mr. Benson has a curious

tenderness for it. One sentence he abandons as absolute folly. The

grave psychological error in the story occurs where the surgeon expresses

compunction at making the autopsy on Uthwart because of his perfect

anatomy. Surely this would have been a source of technical pleasure and

interest to a surgeon, much as a butterfly-collector is pleased when he

has murdered an unusually fine species of lepidoptera. Speaking myself

as a vivisector of some experience, I can confidently affirm that a well-

bred golden collie is far more interesting to operate upon than a mongrel

sheep-dog. Nor can I comprehend Mr. Benson's blame of _Denys

l'Auxerrois_ as too extravagant and even unwholesome, when the last

quality, so obvious in _Uthwart_, he seems to condone.

Again, _Marius the Epicurean_ is a failure by Pater's own high standard:

you would have imagined it seemed so to Mr. Benson.

Dulness is by no means its least fault. In scheme it is not unlike _John

Inglesant_; but how lifeless are the characters compared with those of

Shorthouse. Both books deal with philosophic ideas and sensations; the

incidents are merely illustrative and there is hardly a pretence of

sequence. In the historical panorama which moves behind _Inglesant_,

there are at least 'tactile' values, and seventeenth-century England is

conjured up in a wonderful way; how accurately I do not know. In

_Marius_ the background is merely a backcloth for mental _poses

plastiques_. You wonder, not how still the performers are, but why they

move at all. Marcus Aurelius, the delightful Lucian, even Flavian, and

the rest, are busts from the Capitoline and Naples museums. Their bodies

are make-believe, or straw from the loft at 'White Nights.' Cornelius,

Mr. Benson sorrowfully admits, is a Christian prig, but Marius is only a

pagan chip from the same block. John Inglesant is a prig too, but there

is blood in his veins, and you get, at all events, a Vandyck, not a

plaster cast. The magnificent passages of prose which vest this image

make it resemble the _ex voto_ Madonnas of continental churches--a shrine

in literature but not a lighthouse.

I sometimes wonder what Pater would have become had he been a Cambridge

man, and if the more strenuous University might have _forced_ him into

greater sympathy with modernity; or if he had been born in America, as he

nearly was, and Harvard acted as the benign stepmother of his days. Such

speculations are not beyond all conjecture, as Sir Thomas Browne said. I

think he would have been exactly the same.

On the occasion of Pater's lecture on Prosper Merimee, his friends

gathered round the platform to congratulate him; he expressed a hope that

the audience was able to hear what he said. 'We overheard you,' said

Oscar Wilde. 'Ah, you have a phrase for everything,' replied the

lecturer, the only contemporary who ever influenced himself, Wilde

declared. How admirable both of the criticisms! Pater is an aside in

literature, and that is why he was sometimes overlooked, and may be so

again in ages to come. Though he is the greatest master of style the

century produced, he can never be regarded as part of the structure of

English prose. He is, rather, one of the ornaments, which often last,

long after a structure has perished. His place will be shifted, as

fashions change. Like some exquisite piece of eighteenth-century

furniture perchance he may be forgotten in the attics of literature

awhile, only to be rediscovered. And as Fuseli said of Blake, 'he is

damned good to steal from.' If he uses words as though they were

pigments, and sentences like vestments at the Mass, it is not merely the

ritualistic cadence of his harmonies which makes his works imperishable,

but the ideas which they symbolise and evoke. Pater thinks beautifully

always, about things which some people do not think altogether beautiful,

perhaps; and sometimes he thinks aloud. We overhear him, and feel almost

the shame of the eavesdropper.

Mr. Benson has approached Walter Pater, the man, with almost sacerdotal

deference. He suggests ingeniously where you can find the

self-revelation in _Gaston_ and _The Child in the House_. This is far

more illuminating than the recollections of personal friends whose

reminiscences are modelled on those of Captain Sumph. Mr. Humphry Ward

remembers Pater only once being angry--it was in the Common Room--it was

with X, an elderly man! The subject of the difference was 'modern

lectures.' 'Relations between them were afterwards strained.' Mr.

Arthur Symons remembers that he intended to bring out a new volume of

_Imaginary Portraits_. Fancy that! Really, when friends begin to tell

stories of that kind, I begin to suspect they are trying to conceal

something. Perhaps we have no right to know everything or anything about

the amazing personalities of literature; but Henleys and Purcells lurk

and leak out even at Oxford; and that is not the way to silence them.

Just when the aureole is ready to be fitted on, some horrid graduate

(Litterae _in_humaniores) inks the statue. Anticipating something of the

kind, Mr. Benson is careful to insist on the divergence between Rossetti

and Pater, and on page eighty-six says something which is ludicrously

untrue. If self-revelation can be traced in _Gaston_, it can be found

elsewhere. There are sentences in _Hippolytus Veiled_, the _Age of the

Athletic_ _Prizemen_, and _Apollo in Picardy_, which not only explode Mr.

Benson's suggestions, but illustrate the objections he urges against

_Denys l'Auxerrois_. They are passages where Pater thinks aloud. If

Rossetti wore his heart on the sleeve, Pater's was just above the cuff,

like a bangle; though it slips down occasionally in spite of the alb

which drapes the hieratic writer not always discreetly.

(1906.)

SIMEON SOLOMON.

A good many years ago, before the Rhodes scholars invaded Oxford, there

lingered in that home of lost causes and unpopular names, the afterglow

of the aesthetic sunset. It was not a very brilliant period. Professor

Mackail and Mr. Bowyer Nichols had left Balliol. Nothing was expected of

either the late Sir Clinton Dawkins or Canon Beeching; and the

authorities of Merton could form no idea where Mr. Beerbohm would

complete his education. Names are more suggestive than dates and give

less pain. Then, as now, there were 'cultured' undergraduates, and those

who were very cultured indeed, read Shelley and burned incense, would

always have a few photographs after Simeon Solomon on their walls--little

notes of illicit sentiment to vary the monotony of Burne-Jones and

Botticelli. When uncles and aunts came up for Gaudys and Commem., while

'Temperantia' and the 'Primavera' were left in their places, 'Love dying

from the breath of Lust,' 'Antinous,' and other drawings by Solomon with

titles from the Latin Vulgate, were taken down for the occasion. Views

of the sister University, Cambridge took their places, being more

appropriate to Uncle Parker's and Aunt Jane's tastes. More advanced

undergraduates, who 'knew what things were,' possessed even originals.

Now the unfortunate artist is dead his career can be mentioned without

prejudice.

Simeon Solomon was born in 1841. He was the third son of Michael

Solomon, a manufacturer of Leghorn hats, and the first Jew ever admitted

to the Freedom of London. The elder brother, Abraham, became a

successful painter of popular subjects ('Waiting for the Verdict' and

'First and Third Class'), and died on the day of his election to the

Academy! Rebecca a sister who was also a painter, copied with success

some of Millais's pictures. At the age of sixteen Simeon exhibited at

the Academy, though beyond a short training at Leigh's Art School in

Newman Street he was almost self-taught. He was an early and intimate

friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, with whose art he had much in common,

though it is only for convenience that he is included in the school. Like

Whistler, he was profoundly affected by the genius of Rossetti. Racial

and other causes removed him from any real affinity to the archaistic

moralatarianism of Mr. Holman Hunt. For obvious reasons the

Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are silent about him, but Burne-Jones was said to

have maintained, in after years, 'that he was the greatest artist of us

all.' Throughout the sixties Solomon was one of those black-and-white

draughtsmen whose contributions to the magazines have made the period

famous in English art. He found ready purchasers for his pictures and

drawings, not only among the well-to-do Hebrew community, such as Dr.

Ernest Hart, his brother's brother-in-law, but with well-known Christian

collectors like Mr. Leathart. He was on intimate terms with Walter

Pater, of whom he executed one of the only two known portraits; and in

the _Greek Studies_ will be found a graceful reference to the 'young

Hebrew painter' whose 'Bacchus' at the Academy obviously contributed to

the 'gem-like' flame of which we have heard so much.

In a short-lived magazine, the _Dark Blue_, of July 1871, may be found a

characteristic review by Swinburne of Solomon's strange rhapsody, _A

Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_, his only literary work, now a great

rarity. This is the longest, and with one exception the most

interesting, tribute to Solomon ever published. 'Since the first years

of his early and brilliant celebrity as a young artist of high

imagination, power, and promise,' Swinburne says, 'he has been at work

long enough to enable us to define at least certain salient and dominant

points of his genius . . . I have heard him likened to Heine as a kindred

Hellenist of the Hebrews; Grecian form and beauty divide the allegiance

of his spirit with Hebrew shadow and majesty.' It would be difficult to

add anything further, in praise of the unfortunate artist, to the poet's

eloquent eulogy of his friend's talents. An interesting piece of

autobiography is afforded in the same article, where Swinburne tells us

that his own poem of 'Erotion,' in the first series of _Poems and

Ballads_, was written for a drawing by Simeon Solomon; and in another

number of the same magazine there appeared 'The End of the Month,' to

accompany a new design of Solomon's, the poem appearing later in the

second series of _Poems and Ballads_. Very few English artists--not even

Millais--began life with fairer prospects. Thackeray wrote in one of the

'Roundabout Papers' for 1860: 'For example, one of the pictures I admired

most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my

knowledge, set eyes. The picture is (346) "Moses," by S. Solomon. I

thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly represented to my mind

the dark children of the Egyptian bondage. . . . My newspaper says: "Two

ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing

object," and so good-bye, Mr. S. S.' This beautiful picture, painted

when the artist was only nineteen, is now in the collection of Mr. W. G.

Rawlinson, and was seen quite recently at the Franco-British Exhibition,

where those familiar with his work considered it one of Solomon's

masterpieces. Very few students of Thackeray realised, however, that the

painter thus singled out for praise formed the subject of a sordid

inquest reported in the _Times_ of August 18th, 1905.

That Solomon's pictures were at first better known to the public than

those of his now more famous associates is shown by Robert Buchanan

confessing that he had scarcely seen any of their works except those of

Solomon, which he proceeded to attack in the famous _The Fleshly School

of Poetry_. As a sort of justification of the criticism, in the early

seventies, the extraordinary artist had become a pariah. He was

imprisoned for a short while, and on his release was placed in a private

asylum by his friends. Scandal having subsided, since he showed no

further signs of eccentricity, he was, by arrangement, sent out to post a

letter in order that he might have a chance of quietly escaping and

returning to the practice of his art. He returned to the asylum in half

an hour!--a proceeding which was almost an evidence of insanity. He was

subsequently officially dismissed, and from this time went steadily

downhill, adding to his other vices that of intemperance. Every effort

was made by friends and relatives to reclaim him. Studios were taken for

him, commissions were given him, clothes were bought for him. He spent

his week-ends in the lock-up. Several picture-dealers tried giving him

an allowance, but he turned up intoxicated to demand advances, and the

police had to be called in. He was found selling matches in the Mile End

Road and tried his hand at pavement decoration without much success. The

companion of Walter Pater and Swinburne became the associate of thieves

and blackmailers. A story is told that one afternoon he called for

assistance at the house of a well-known artist, a former friend, from

whom he received a generous dole. Observing that the remote

neighbourhood of the place lent itself favourably to burgling operations,

Solomon visited his benefactor the same evening in company with a

housebreaker. They were studying the dining-room silver when they were

disturbed; both were in liquor, and the noise they made roused the

sleepers above. The unwilling host good-naturedly dismissed them!

Though a very delightful book might be made of his life by some one who

would not shirk the difficulties of the subject, it is unnecessary here

to dwell further on a career which belongs to the history of morbid

psychology rather than of painting. After drifting from the stream of

social existence into a Bohemian backwater, he found himself in the main

sewer. This he thoroughly enjoyed in his own particular way, and

rejected fiercely all attempts at rescue or reform. To his other old

friends, such as Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, there must have been

something very tragic in the contemplation of his wasted talents, for few

young painters were more successful. Any one curious enough to study his

pictures will regret that he was lost to art by allowing an ill-regulated

life to prey upon his genius. He had not sufficient strength to keep the

two things separate, as Shakespeare, Verlaine, and Leonardo succeeded in

doing. At the same time, it is a consolation to think that he enjoyed

himself in his own sordid way. When I had the pleasure of seeing him

last, so lately as 1893, he was extremely cheerful and not aggressively

alcoholic. Unlike most spoilt wastrels with the artistic temperament, he

seemed to have no grievances, and had no bitter stories or complaints

about former friends, no scandalous tales about contemporaries who had

remained reputable; no indignant feeling towards those who assisted him.

This was an amiable, inartistic trait in his character, though it may be

a trifle negative; and for a positive virtue, as I say, he enjoyed his

drink, his overpowering dirt, and his vicious life. He was full of

delightful and racy stories about poets and painters, policemen and

prisons, of which he had wide experience. He might have written a far

more diverting book of memoirs than the average Pre-Raphaelite volume to

which we look forward every year, though it is usually silent about poor

Simeon Solomon. Physically he was a small, red man, with keen, laughing

eyes.

By 1887 he entirely ceased to produce work of any value. He poured out a

quantity of pastels at a guinea apiece. They are repulsive and

ill-drawn, with the added horror of being the shadows of once splendid

achievements. Long after his name could be ever mentioned except in

whispers, Mr. Hollyer issued a series of photographs of some of the fine

early sanguine, Indian ink, and pencil drawings. The originals are

unique of their kind. It is very easy to detect the unwholesome element

which has inspired many of them, even the titles being indicative:

'Sappho,' 'Antinous,' 'Amor Sacramentum.' One of the finest, 'Love dying

from the breath of Lust,' of which also he painted a picture, became

quite popular in reproduction owing to the moral which was screwed out of

it. Another, of 'Dante meeting Beatrice at a Child's Party,' is

particularly fascinating. To the present generation his work is perhaps

too 'literary,' and his technique is by no means faultless; but the

slightest drawing is informed by an idea, nearly always a beautiful one,

however exotic. The faceless head and the headless body of shivering

models dear to modern art students were absent from Solomon's designs.

His pigments, both in water-colour and oils, are always harmonious, pure

in tone, and rich without being garish. We need not try to frighten

ourselves by searching too curiously for hidden meanings. His whole art

is, of course, unwholesome and morbid, to employ two very favourite

adjectives. His work has always appealed to musicians and men of letters

rather than collectors--to those who ask that a drawing or a picture

should suggest an idea rather than the art of the artist. Subject with

him triumphs over drawing. He is sometimes hopelessly crude; but during

the sixties, when, as some one said, 'every one was a great artist,' he

showed considerable promise of draughtsmanship. His pictures are less

fantastic than the drawings, and aim at probability, even when they are

allegorical, or, as is too often the case, _odd_ in sentiment. He is

apparently never concerned with what are called 'problems,' the

articulation of forms, or any fidelity to nature beyond the human frame.

Unlike many of the Pre-Raphaelites, he showed a feeling for the medium of

oil. His friends and contemporaries, with the exception of Millais, and

Rossetti occasionally, were always more at ease with water-colour or

gouache, and you feel that most of their pictures ought to have been

painted in _tempera_, the technique of which was not then understood.

Since Millais was of French extraction, Rossetti of Italian, and Solomon

of Hebrew, I fear this does not get us very much further away from the

old French criticism that the English had forgotten or never learnt how

to paint in oil. It must be remembered that Whistler, who in the sixties

achieved some of his masterpieces, was an American.

It is strange that Solomon did not allow a sordid existence to alter the

trend of his subjects, for these are always derived from poetry and the

Bible, or from Catholic, Jewish, or Greek Orthodox ritual--a strange

contrast to the respectable, impeccable painter, M. Degas, the doyen of

European art, nationalist and anti-Semite, who finds beauty only in

brasseries, in the vulgar circus, and in the ghastly wings of the opera.

How far removed from his surroundings are the inspirations of the artist!

I believe J. F. Millet would have painted peasants if he had been born

and spent his days in the centre of New York. With the life-long friend

of M. Degas--Gustave Moreau--Solomon had much in common, but the colour

of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous.

I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective

art, especially at the present day. There is hardly room for an inverted

Watts. At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot

take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a

little overpowering, may care to explore an interesting byway of art. For

poor Solomon there was no place in life. Casting reality aside, he

stepped back into the riotous pages of Petronius. Perhaps on the Paris

boulevards, with Verlaine and Bibi la Puree, he might have enjoyed a

distinct artistic individuality. Expeditions conducted by Mr. Arthur

Symons might have been organized in order to view him at some popular

cafe. Mr. George Moore might have written about him. But in respectable

London he was quite impossible. In the temple of Art, which is less

Calvinistic than artists would have us suppose, he will always have his

niche. To the future English Vasari he will be a real gold-mine.

(1905.)

AUBREY BEARDSLEY.

Middle-aged, middle-class people, with a predilection for mediaeval art,

still believe that subject is an important factor in a picture or

drawing. I am one of the number. The subject need not be literary or

historical. After you have discussed in the latest studio jargon its

carpentry, valued the tones and toned the values, motive or theme must

affect your appreciation of a picture, your desire, or the contrary, to

possess it. That the artist is able to endow the unattractive, and woo

you to surrender, I admit. Unless, however, you are a pro-Boer in art

matters, and hold that Rembrandt and the Boer school (the greatest

technicians who ever lived) are finer artists than Titian, you will find

yourself preferring Gainsborough to Degas, and the unskilful Whistler to

the more accomplished Edouard Manet. Long ago French critics invented an

aesthetic formula to conceal that poverty of imagination which sometimes

stares from their perfectly executed pictures, and this was eagerly

accepted by certain Englishmen, both painters and writers. Yet, when an

artist frankly deals with forbidden subjects, the canons regular of

English art begin to thunder; the critics forget their French accent; the

old Robert Adam, which is in all of us, asserts himself; we fly for the

fig-leaves.

I am led to these reflections by the memory of Aubrey Beardsley, and the

reception which his work received, not from the British public, but from

the inner circle of advanced intellectuals. Too much occupied with the

obstetrics of art, his superfluity of naughtiness has tarnished his niche

in the temple of fame. 'A wish to _epater le bourgeois_,' says Mr.

Arthur Symons, 'is a natural one.' I do not think so; at least, in an

artist. Now much of Beardsley's work shows the _eblouissement_ of the

burgess on arriving at Montmartre for the first time--a weakness he

shared with some of his contemporaries. This must be conceded in

praising a great artist for a line which he never drew, after you have

taken the immortal Zero's advice and divested yourself of the scruples.

'I would rather be an Academician than an artist,' said Aubrey Beardsley

to me one day. 'It takes thirty-nine men to make an Academician, and

only one to make an artist.' In that sneer lay all his weakness and his

strength. Grave friends (in those days it was the fashion) talked to him

of 'Dame Nature.' '_Damn Nature_!' retorted Aubrey Beardsley, and pulled

down the blinds and worked by gaslight on the finest days. But he was a

real Englishman, who from his glass-house peppered the English public. No

Latin could have contrived his arabesque. The grotesques of Jerome Bosch

are positively pleasant company beside many of Beardsley's inventions.

Even in his odd little landscapes, with their twisted promontories

sloping seaward, he suggested mocking laughter; and the flowers of 'Under

the Hill' are cackling in the grass.

An essay, which Mr. Arthur Symons published in 1897, has always been

recognised as far the most sympathetic and introspective account of this

strange artist's work. It has been reissued, with additional

illustrations, by Messrs. Dent. Those who welcome it as one of the most

inspiring criticisms from an always inspired critic, will regret that

eight of the illustrations belong to the worst period of Beardsley's art.

Kelmscott dyspepsia following on a surfeit of Burne-Jones, belongs to the

pathology of style; it is a phase that should be produced by the

prosecution, not by the eloquent advocate for the defence. Moreover, I

do not believe Mr. Arthur Symons admires them any more than I do; he

never mentions them in his text. 'Le Debris d'un Poete,' the 'Coiffing,'

'Chopin's Third Ballad,' and those for _Salome_ would have sufficed. With

these omissions the monograph might have been smaller; but it would have

been more truly representative of Beardsley's genius and Mr. Arthur

Symons's taste.

At one time or another every one has been brilliant about Beardsley.

'Born Puck, he died Pierrot,' said Mr. MacColl in one of the superb

phrases with which he gibbets into posterity an art or an artist he

rather dislikes. 'The Fra Angelico of Satanism,' wrote Mr. Roger Fry of

an exhibition of the drawings. There seems hardly anything left even for

Mr. Arthur Symons to write. Long anterior to these particular fireworks,

however, his criticism is just as fresh as it was twelve years ago. I

believe it will always remain the terminal essay.

The preface has been revised, and I could have wished for some further

revision. Why is the name of Leonard Smithers--here simply called _a_

publisher--omitted, when the other Capulets and Montagus are faithfully

recorded? When no one would publish Beardsley's work, Smithers stepped

into the breach. I do not know that the _Savoy_ exactly healed the

breach between Beardsley and the public, but it gave the artist another

opportunity; and Mr. Arthur Symons an occasion for song. Leonard

Smithers, too, was the most delightful and irresponsible publisher I ever

knew. Who remembers without a kindly feeling the little shop in the

Royal Arcade with its tempting shelves; its limited editions of _5000_

copies; the shy, infrequent purchaser; the upstairs room where the roar

of respectable Bond Street came faintly through the tightly-closed

windows; the genial proprietor? In the closing years of the nineteenth

century his silhouette reels (my metaphor is drawn from a Terpsichorean

and Caledonian exercise) across an artistic horizon of which the _Savoy_

was the afterglow. Again, why is Mr. Arthur Symons so precise about

forgetting the date of Beardsley's expulsion from the _Yellow Book_? It

was in April 1895, April 10th. A number of poets and writers blackmailed

Mr. Lane by threatening to withdraw their own publications unless the

Beardsley Body was severed from the Bodley Head. I am glad to have this

opportunity, not only of paying a tribute to the courage of my late

friend Smithers, but of defending my other good friend, Mr. John Lane,

from the absurd criticism of which he was too long the victim. He could

hardly be expected to wreck a valuable business in the cause of unpopular

art. Quite wrongly Beardsley's designs had come to be regarded as the

pictorial and sympathetic expression of a decadent tendency in English

literature. But if there was any relation thereto, it was that of

Juvenal towards Roman Society. Never was mordant satire more evident. If

Beardsley is carried away in spite of himself by the superb invention of

_Salome_, he never forgets his hatred of its author. It is

characteristic that he hammered beauty from the gold he would have

battered into caricature. _Salome_ has survived other criticism and

other caricature. And Mr. Lane once informed an American interviewer

that since that April Fool's Day poetry has ceased to sell altogether.

The bards unconsciously committed suicide; and the _Yellow Book_ perished

in the odour of sanctity.

Recommending the perusal of some letters (written by Beardsley to an

unnamed friend) published some years ago, Mr. Arthur Symons says: 'Here,

too, we are in the presence of the real thing.' I venture to doubt this.

I do not doubt Beardsley's sincerity in the religion he embraced, but his

expression of it in the letters. At least, I hope it was insincere. The

letters left on some of us a disagreeable impression, at least of the

recipient. You wonder if this pietistic friend received a copy of the

_Lysistrata_ along with the eulogy of St. Alfonso Liguori and Aphra Behn.

A fescennine temperament is too often allied with religiosity. It

certainly was in Beardsley's case, but I think the other and stronger

side of his character should, in justice to his genius, be insisted upon,

as Mr. Arthur Symons insisted upon it. If we knew that the ill-advised

and unnamed friend was the author of certain pseudo-scientific and

pornographic works issued in Paris, we should be better able to gauge the

unimportance of these letters. Far more interesting would have been

those written to Mr. Joseph Pennell, one of the saner influences; or

those to Aubrey Beardsley's mother and sister.

'It was at Arques,' says Mr. Arthur Symons . . . 'that I had the only

serious, almost solemn conversation I ever had with Beardsley.' You can

scarcely believe that any of the conversations between the two were other

than serious and solemn, because he approaches Beardsley as he would John

Bunyan or Aquinas. Art, literature and life, are all to this engaging

writer a scholiast's pilgrim's progress. Beside him, Walter Pater, from

whom he derives, seems almost flippant--and to have dallied too long in

the streets of Vanity Fair.

(1906.)

ENGLISH AESTHETICS.

The law reports in newspapers contain perhaps the only real history of

England that has any relation to truth. Here, too, may be found

indications of current thought, more pregnant than the observations of

historians. They still afford material for the future short or longer

history of the English people by the John Richard Greens of posterity.

This was brought home to me by perusing two cases reported in the

_Morning Post_, that of Mrs. Rita Marsh and the disputed will of Miss

Browne. I yield to no one in my ignorance of English law, but I have

seldom read judgments which seemed so conspicuously unfair, so

characteristic of the precise minimum of aesthetic perception in the

English people.

The hostelries of Great Britain are famous for their high charges, their

badly-kept rooms, and loathsome cooking; let me add, their warm welcome.

In the reign of Edward III. there was legislation on the subject. The

colder and cheaper hospitality of the Continent strikes a chill, I am

sometimes told by those familiar with both. The hotel selected by a

certain Mrs. Rita Marsh was no exception to the ordinary English

caravanserai. It was 'replete with every comfort.' The garden contained

an _oubliette_, down which Mrs. Marsh, while walking in the evening,

inadvertently fell. On the Continent the _oubliettes_ are inside the

house, and you are ostentatiously warned of their immediate

neighbourhood. These things are managed better in France, if I may say

so without offending Tariff Reformers.

The accident disfigured Mrs. Marsh for life; and for the loss of unusual

personal attractions an English jury awarded her only 500_l_. The judge

made a joke about it. Mr. Gill was very playful about her photograph,

and every one, except, I imagine, Mrs. Marsh, seems to have been

satisfied that ample justice was done. The hotel proprietors did not

press their counter-claim for a bill of 191_l_.! Chivalrous fellows!

Still, I can safely say that in France Mrs. Marsh would have been awarded

at least four times that amount; though if she had been murdered the

proprietors would have only been fined forty francs. But beauty to its

fortunate possessors is more valuable than life itself, and the story is

to me one of the most pathetic I have ever heard. To the English mind

there is something irresistibly comic when any one falls, morally or

physically. It is the basis of English Farce. Jokes made about those

who have never fallen, 'too great to appease, too high to appal,' are

voted bad taste. Caricaturists of the mildest order are considered

irreligious and vulgar if they burlesque, say, the Archbishop of

Canterbury for example; or unpatriotic if they hint that Lord Roberts did

not really finish the Boer War when he professed to have done so. After

Parnell came to grief I remember the Drury Lane pantomime was full of

fire-escapes, and every allusion to the _cause celebre_ produced roars of

laughter. Mr. Justice Bigham was only a thorough Englishman when he

gently rallied the jury for awarding, as he obviously thought, excessive

damages. So little is beauty esteemed in England.

The case of Miss Browne was also singular. She left a trust fund 'for

the erection of an ornamental structure of Gothic design, such as a

market cross, tall clock, street lamp-stand, or all combined, in a

central part of London, the plan whereof shall be offered for open

competition, and ultimately decided upon by the Royal Institute of

British Architects.' The President of the Probate Division said _he was

satisfied that Miss Browne was not of sound mind, and pronounced against

the will_, with costs out of the estate. I wonder what the Royal

Institute thinks of this legal testimonial. It seems almost a pity that

some one did not dispute Sir Francis Chantrey's will years ago on similar

grounds. I suggest to Mr. MacColl that it might still be upset. That

would settle once and for all the question whether the administration of

the bequest has evinced evidence of insanity or not. A recent Royal

Commission left the matter undecided. I do not, however, wish to

criticise trustees, but to defend the memory of Miss Browne (who may have

been eccentric in private life) from such a charge, because her

testamentary dispositions were a trifle aesthetic. The will was

un-English in one respect: '_no inscription of my name shall be placed on

such erection_.' Was that the clause which proved her hopelessly mad?

The erection was to be Gothic. I know Gothic is out of fashion just now.

Ruskin is quite over; the Seven Lamps exploded long ago; but Miss Browne

seems to have attended before her death Mr. MacColl's lectures, knew all

about 'masses' and 'tones' in architecture, and wished particular stress

to be laid on 'the general outline as seen from a good distance.' This

is greeted by some of the papers as particularly side-splitting and

eccentric. Looking at the unlovely streets of London, never one of the

more beautiful cities of Europe, where each new building seems contrived

to go one better in sheer _uglitude_ (especially since builders of Tube

stations have ventured into the Vitruvian arena), you can easily suppose

that poor Miss Browne, with her views about 'general outlines seen from a

good distance,' must have appeared hopelessly insane. The decision of

the court is not likely to encourage any further public bequests of this

kind. I have cut the British Museum and the National Gallery out of my

own will already. And I understand why Mr. MacColl, with his passionate

pleading for a living national architecture, for official recognition of

past and present English art, is thought by many good people quite odd.

How he managed to attract the notice of any but the Lunacy Commissioners

I cannot conceive. Valued critic, admired artist, model keeper, I only

hope he will attract no further attention.

Since it is clear that the law assists in blackening reputations even in

the grave, I claim that other Miss Brownes who take advantage of life,

and time by the forelock to put up monuments in the sufficiently hideous

thoroughfares should be pronounced _non compos mentis_. The perpetrators

of the erection in High Street, Kensington, hard by St. Mary Abbots, may

serve as an example. Inconvenient, vulgar, inapposite, this should debar

even the subscribers from obtaining probate for their wills. I invoke

posthumous revenge, and claim that at least 500_l_. damages should be

paid as compensation to the nearest hospital for the _indignant_ blind,

as my friend Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan calls them in one of his delightful

stories.

(1906.)

NON ANGELI SED ANGLI.

I wish that the Rokeby Velasquez now firmly secured for the British

nation could have been allowed to remain in Bond Street for a short

while; not to tantalise the foreign countries who so eagerly competed for

its acquisition, nor to emphasise the patriotism of its former owners,

but as a contrast to 'Some Examples of the Independent Art of To-day,'

held at Messrs. Agnew's. Perhaps not as a contrast even, but as a

complement. I do not mean to place all the examples on the same level

with the 'Venus,' though with some I should have preferred to live; yet

the juxtaposition would have asserted the tradition of the younger

painters and the modernity of the older master. 'We are all going

to--Agnew's, and Velasquez will be of the company,' or something like

Gainsborough's dying words would have occurred sooner or later. I am

persuaded that we look at the ancient pictures with frosted magnifying-

glasses, and stare at the younger men from the wrong end of the

binoculars. It was ever thus; it always will be so. Most of us suspect

our contemporaries or juniors. And they--_les jeunes feroces_--are

impatient of their immediate predecessors. _Nos peres out toujours

tort_. Though grandpapa is sometimes quite picturesque; his waistcoat

and old buttons suit us very well. 'Your Raphael is not even divine,'

said Velasquez when he left Rome and that wonderful _p.p.c_. card on the

Doria. 'Your Academicians are not even academic,' some of the younger

painters and their champions are saying to-day.

I found, moreover, the epithet 'independent,' to qualify an entertaining

and significant exhibition, misleading. For many of the items could only

be so classified in the sense that they were independent of Messrs. Agnew

and the Royal Academy. Mr. Tonks and Professor Brown are official

instructors at the Slade School in London; Mr. C. J. Holmes is Keeper of

the National Portrait Gallery. Mr. Gerard Chowne was a professor at

Liverpool. Mr. Fry is now an official at New York; and the majority of

the painters belonged to two distinctive and _dependent_ groups--the

Glasgow School and the New English Art Club. Intense individualism is

not incompatible with militant collectivism. The only independent

artists, if you except Mr. Nicholson, were Mr. C. H. Shannon and Mr.

Charles Ricketts, who have always stood apart, being neither for the

Royal Academy nor its enemies; their choice is in their pictures.

I feel it difficult to write of painters for some of whom I acted showman

so long at the Carfax Gallery. I confess that when I heard they were

going to Bond Street my pangs were akin to those of the owner of a small

country circus on learning that his troupe of performing dogs had been

engaged by Mr. Imre Kiralfy or the Hippodrome. A quondam dealer in

ultramontanes, I became an Othello of the trade. And in their grander

quarters (I grieve to say) they looked better than ever, though I would

have chosen another background, something less expensive and more severe.

Yes, they all went through their hoops gracefully. With one exception, I

never saw finer Wilson Steers; the 'Sunset' might well be hung beside the

new Turners, when the gulf between ancient and modern art would be almost

imperceptible. The 'Aliens' of Mr. Rothenstein in the cosmopolitan

society of a public picture gallery would hardly appear foreigners,

because they belong to a country where the inhabitants are racy of every

one else's soil. When time has given an added dignity (if that were

possible) to this work, I can realise how our descendants will laugh at

our lachrymose observations on the decadence of art. The background

against which the stately Hebrew figures are silhouetted is in itself a

liberal education for the aged and those who ask their friends what these

modern fellows mean.

When the inhabitants of the unceltiferous portion of these islands employ

the adjective _un-English_ you may be sure there is something serious on

the carpet. It is valedictory, expressive of sorrow and contempt rather

than anger. All the other old favourites of vituperative must have

missed fire before this almost sacred, disqualifying Podsnappianism is

applied to the objectionable person, picture, book, behaviour, or

movement. And when the epithet is brought into action, in nine cases out

of ten it is aimed at some characteristic essentially, often blatantly,

Anglo-Saxon. Throughout the nineteenth century all exponents of art and

literature not conforming to Fleet Street ideals were voted un-English;

Byron, Shelley, Keats, Swinburne, the Pre-Raphaelites, and, in course of

good time, those artists who formed the New English Art Club. There was

some ground for suspicion of foreign intrigue. They regarded Mr.

Whistler, an American, who flirted with French impressionism, as a

pioneer. Some of their names suggest the magic Orient or the romantic

scenery of the Rhine. But it is not extravagant to assert that if Mr.

Rothenstein had chosen to be born in France or Germany, instead of in

Bradford, his art would have come to us in another form. In his strength

and his weakness he is more English than the English. Art may have

cosmopolitan relations (it is usually a hybrid), but it must take on the

features of the country and people where it grows; or it may change them,

or change the vision of the people of its adoption. Yet Ruth must not

look too foreign in the alien corn, or her values will get wrong. When

an English artist airs his foreign accent and his smattering of French

pigment his work has no permanent significance. Even Professor Legros

unconsciously assimilated British subjectivity: his Latin rein has been

slackened; his experiments are often literary.

It is an error however to regard the exhibitions of the New English Art

Club as a homogeneous movement, such as that of Barbizon and the

Pre-Raphaelite--inspired by a single idea or similar group of ideas. The

members have not even the cohesion of Glasgow or defunct Newlyn. The

only thing they have in common, in common originally with Glasgow, was a

distaste for the tenets and ideals of Burlington House. The serpent (or

was it the animated rod?) of the Academy soon swallowed the

sentimentalities of Newlyn, just as the International boa-constrictor

made short work of Glasgow. And the forbidden fruit of an official Eden

has tempted many members of the Club. Others have resigned from time to

time, but with no ill result--to the Club. Now, the reason for this is

that the members have no dependence on each other, except for the

executive organization of Mr. Francis Bate. It may be doubted if in

their heart of hearts they admire each other's works. They are intense

individualists (personal friends, maybe, in private life) artistically

speaking, on terms of cutting acquaintance at the Slade.

The mannerism of Professor Legros is still, of course, a common

denominator for the older men, and the younger artists evince a

familiarity with drawing unusual in England, due to the admirable

training of Professor Brown and Mr. Henry Tonks. The Spartan Mr. Tonks

may not be able to make geniuses, but he has the faculty of turning out

efficient workmen. Whether they become members of the Club or drift into

the haven of Burlington House, at all events they _can_ fly and wear

their aureoles with propriety. A society, however, which contains such

distinctive and assertive personalities as Mr. Wilson Steer, Mr. Henry

Tonks, Mr. Augustus John, Mr. William Orpen, Mr. Von Glehn, Mr. MacColl,

and Professor Holmes, cannot possess even such unity of purpose as

inspired Mr. Holman Hunt and his associates of the 'fifties. The New

English Art Club is simply an admirably administered association whose

members have rather less in common than is shared by the members of an

ordinary political club. The exhibitions are for this reason intensely

interesting. They cannot be waved aside like mobs, and no comprehensive

epigram can do them even an injustice.

I never knew any painter worthy of the name who paid the smallest

attention to what a critic says, even in conversation. He will retort;

but he will not change his style or regulate his motives to suit a

critic's palate. So may I now mention their faults? What painter is

without fault? Their faults are shared by _nearly_ all of them; their

virtues are their own. I see among them an absence of any _desire_ for

beauty--for physical beauty. If the artists have fulfilled a mission in

abolishing 'the sweetly pretty Christmas supplement kind of work,' I

think they dwell too long on the trivial and the ignoble. They put a not

very interesting domesticity into their frames. Rossetti, of course,

wheeled about the marriage couch, but his was itself an interesting

object of _virtu_. Modern art ceased to express the better aspirations

and thoughts of the day when modern artists refused to become the

servants of the commune, but asserted themselves as a component part of

an intellectual republic. That is why people only commission portraits,

and prefer to buy old masters who anticipate those better aspirations.

Burne-Jones, however, expressed in paint that longing to be out of the

nineteenth century which was so widespread. Now we are well out of it,

the rising generation does not esteem his works with the same enthusiasm

as the elders. It reads Mr. Wells on the future, and looks into the

convex mirror of Mr. Bernard Shaw; but it does not buy Dubedats to the

extent that it ought to do. The members of the New English Art Club

could, I think, preserve their aesthetic conscience and yet paint

beautiful things and beautiful people. Mr. Steer has now given them a

lead. I wonder what Mr. Winter's opinion would be? He is the best

salesman in London.

Among dealers, the ancient firm of Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi, of which

Thackeray writes, is the _doyen_. That of Messrs. Agnew is the _douane_.

Here it is that the official seal must be set before modern paintings can

pass onwards to the Midlands and the middle classes. Well, I felicitate

the august officials on removing a tariff of prejudice; I felicitate the

young artists who, released from the bondage of the Egyptian Hall, can

now enjoy the lighter air, the larger day, the pasturage and patronage of

Palestine. I compliment the fearless collectors, such as Mr. C. K.

Butler, Mr. Herbert Trench, Mr. Daniel, His Honour Judge Evans, the

Leylands and the Leathearts of a latter day, for ignoring contemporary

ridicule and anticipating the verdict, not of passing fashion but of

posterity. As the servant spoke well of his master while wearing his

clothes which were far too big for him, let me congratulate the

Chrysostom of critics, the Origen who has scourged our heresies, Mr. D.

S. MacColl; because the Greeks have entered Troy or the barbarians the

senate-house. _Dissolve frigus ligna super foco large reponens_, and let

us mix our metaphors. What was Mr. MacColl's Waterloo was a Canossa for

Messrs. Agnew.

(1906.)

MR. HOLMAN HUNT AT THE LEICESTER GALLERIES.

An enterprising American syndicate was once formed for manufacturing

Stilton cheeses on a large scale; like the pirated Cheddars from similar

sources, enjoyed by members of most London clubs. Various farms

celebrated for their Stiltons were visited, sums of money being offered

for old family recipes. The simple peasants of the district willingly

parted with copies of their heirlooms, for a consideration, to the

different American agents, who, filled with joy, repaired to their London

offices in order to compare notes, and fully persuaded that England was a

greener country than ever Constable painted it. What was their

mortification on discovering that all the recipes were entirely

different; they could not be reconciled even by machinery. So it is with

Pre-Raphaelitism; every critic believes that he knows the great secret,

and can always quote from one of the brotherhood something in support of

his view. At the beginning the brothers meekly accepted Ruskin's

explanation of their existence; his, indeed, was a very convenient,

though not entirely accurate, exposition of their collective view, if

they can be said to have possessed one. How far Ruskin was out of

sympathy with them, indiscreet memoirs have revealed. An artistic idea,

or a group of ideas, must always be broken gently to the English people,

because the acceptance of them necessitates the swallowing of words. When

the golden ladders are let down from heaven by poets, artists, or critics

even; or new spirits are hovering in the intellectual empyrean, the

patriarch public snoring on its stone pillow wakes up; but he will not

wrestle with the angel. He mistakes the ladders for scaffolding, or some

temporary embarrassment in the street traffic; he orders their instant

removal; he writes angry letters to the papers and invokes the police.

After some time Ruskin's definition of Pre-Raphaelitism was generally

accepted, and then the death of Rossetti produced other recipes for the

Stilton cheese, Mr. Hall Caine being among the grocers. Whatever the

correct definition may be, ungracious and ungrateful though it is to

praise the dead at the expense of the living, it has to be recognised

that among the remarkable group of painters in which even the minor men

were little masters, the greatest artist of them all was Dante Gabriel

Rossetti. 'By critic I mean finding fault,' says Sir William Richmond;

so let us follow his advice, and avoid technical discussion along with

the popular jargon of art criticism. 'After staying two or three hours

in the always-delightful Leicester Galleries, let us walk home and think

a little of what we have seen.' For the essence of beauty there is

nothing of Mr. Holman Hunt's to compare with Rossetti's 'Beloved' or the

'Blue Bower;' and you could name twenty of the poet's water-colours

which, for design, invention, devious symbolism, and religious impulse,

surpass the finest of Mr. Hunt's most elaborate works. Even in the

painter's own special field--the symbolised illustration of Holy Writ--he

is overwhelmed by Millais with the superb 'Carpenter's Shop.' In

Millais, it was well said by Mr. Charles Whibley, 'we were cheated out of

a Rubens.' Millais was the strong man, the great oil-painter of the

group, as Rossetti was the supreme artist. In Mr. Holman Hunt we lost

another Archdeacon Farrar. Then, in the sublimation of uglitude, Madox-

Brown, step-father of the Pre-Raphaelites (my information is derived from

a P.R.B. aunt), was an infinitely greater conjurer. Look at the radiant

painting of 'Washing of the Feet' in the Tate Gallery; is there anything

to equal that masterpiece from the brush of Mr. Holman Hunt? The

'Hireling Shepherd' comes nearest, but the preacher, following his own

sheep, has strayed into alien corn, and on cliffs from which is ebbing a

tide of nonconformist conscience. Like his own hireling shepherd, too,

he has mistaken a phenomenon of nature for a sermon.

One of the great little pictures, 'Claudio and Isabella,' proves,

however, that _once_ he determined to be a painter. In the 'Lady of

Shalott' he showed himself a designer with unusual powers akin to those

of William Blake. Still, examined at a distance or close at hand, among

his canvases do we find a single piece of decoration or a picture in the

ordinary sense of the word? My definition of a religious picture is a

painted object in two dimensions destined or suitable for the decoration

of an altar or other site in a church, or room devoted to religious

purposes; if it fails to satisfy the required conditions, it fails as a

work of art. Where is the work of this so-called religious painter which

would satisfy the not exacting conditions of a nonconformist or Anglican

place of worship? You are not surprised to learn that Keble College

mistook the 'Light of the World' for a patent fuel, or that the

background of the 'Innocents' was painted in 'the Philistine plain.' Who

could live even in cold weather with the 'Miracle of the Sacred Fire?'

Give me rather the 'Derby Day' of Mr. Frith--admirable and underrated

master. What are they if we cannot place them in the category of

pictures? They are pietistic ejaculations--tickled-up maxims in pigment

of extraordinary durability--counsels of perfection in colour and

conduct. Of all the Pre-Raphaelites, Mr. Hunt will remain the most

popular. He is artistically the scapegoat of that great movement which

gave a new impulse to English art, a scapegoat sent out to wander by the

dead seas of popularity. I once knew a learned German who regretted that

none of his countrymen could paint 'Alpine scenery' as Mr. Hunt has done

in the 'Scapegoat'! Yes, he has a message for every one, for my German

friend, for Sir William Richmond, and myself. He is a missing link

between art and popularity. He symbolises the evangelical attitude of

those who would go to German Reed's and the Egyptian Hall, but would not

attend a theatre. After all, it was a gracious attitude, because it is

that of mothers who aged more beautifully, I think, than the ladies of a

later generation which admired Whistler or Burne-Jones and regularly

attended the Lyceum. When modern art, the brilliant art of the 'sixties,

was strictly excluded from English homes except in black and white

magazines, engravings from the 'Finding of Christ in the Temple' and the

'Light of the World' were allowed to grace the parlour along with 'Bolton

Abbey,' the 'Stag at Bay,' and 'Blucher meeting Wellington.' You see

them now only in Pimlico and St. John's Wood. A friend of mine said he

could never look at the picture of 'Blucher meeting Wellington' without

blushing. . . . Like a good knight and true, Sir William Richmond,

another Bedivere, has brandished Excalibur in the form of a catalogue for

Mr. Hunt's pictures. He offers the jewels for our inspection; they make

a brave show; they are genuine; they are intrinsic, but you remember

others of finer water, Bronzino-like portraits of Mr. Andrew Lang and

Bismarck and many others. Now, you should never recollect anything

during the enjoyment of a complete work of art.

Every one knows the view from Richmond, I should say _of_ Richmond; it is

almost my own . . . Far off Sir Bedivere sees Lyonesse submerged; Camelot-

at-Sea has capitulated after a second siege to stronger forces. The new

Moonet is high in the heaven and a dim Turner-like haze has begun to

obscure the landscape and soften the outlines. Under cover of the mist

the hosts of Mordred MacColl, _en-Tate_ with victory, are hunting the

steer in the New English Forest. Far off the enchanter Burne-Jones is

sleeping quietly in Broceliande (I cannot bear to call it Rottingdean).

Hark, the hunt, (not the Holman Hunt) is up in Caledon (Glasgow); they

have started the shy wilson steer: they have wound the hornel; the lords

of the International, who love not Mordred overmuch, are galloping nearer

and nearer. Sir Bedivere can see their insolent pencils waving black and

white flags: and the game-keepers and beaters (critics) chant in low

vulgar tones:

When we came out of Glasgow town

There was really nothing at all to see

Except Legros and Professor Brown,

But _now_ there is Guthrie and Lavery.

Undaunted Sir Bedivere drags his burden to a hermitage near Coniston; but

he finds it ruined; he bars the door in order to administer refreshment

to the wounded Pre-Raphaelite; there is a knocking at the wicket-gate; is

it the younger generation? No, he can hear the tread of the royal

sargent-at-arms; his spurs and sword are clanking on the pavement. Sir

Bedivere feels his palette parched; his tongue cleaves to the roof of St.

Paul's; but he is undaunted. 'We are surely betrayed if that is really

Sargent,' he says. Through the broken tracery of the Italian Gothic

window a breeze or draught comes softly and fans his strong academic

arms; he feels a twinge. Some Merlin told him he would suffer from

ricketts with shannon complications. Seizing Excalibur, he opens the

door cautiously. 'Draw, caitiffs,' he cries; 'draw.' 'Perhaps they

cannot draw; perhaps they are impressionists,' said a raven on the hill;

and he flew away.

(1906.)

_To_ SIR WILLIAM BLAKE RICHMOND, R.A., K.C.B.

THE ECLECTIC AT LARGE.

In _The Education of an Artist_, Mr. Lewis Hind invented a new kind of

art criticism--a pleasing blend of the Morelli narrative (minus the

scientific method) and _Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour_. He contrives a

young man, ignorant like the Russian, Lermoliev, who receives certain

artistic impressions, faithfully recorded by Mr. Hind and visualised for

the reader in a series of engaging half-tone illustrations. The hero's

name is itself suggestive--Claude Williamson Shaw. By the end of the

book he is nearly as learned as Mr. Claude Phillips: he might edit a

series of art-books with all the skill of Dr. Williamson, and his power

of racy criticism rivals that of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. You can hardly

escape the belief that these three immortals came from the north and

south, gathered as unto strife, breathed upon his mouth and filled his

body--with ideas: Mr. Hind supplying the life. But this is not so: the

ideas are all Mr. Hind's and the godfathers only supplied the name. What

a name it is to be sure! It recalls one of Ibsen's plays: 'Claude

Williamson Shaw was a miner's son--a Cornish miner's son, as you know; or

perhaps you didn't know. He was always wanting _plein-air_.' Some one

ought to say that in the book, but I must say it instead. At all events,

Mr. Hind nearly always refers to him by his three names, and every one

must think of him in the same way, otherwise side issues will intrude

themselves--thoughts of other things and people. 'O Captain Shaw, type

of true love kept under,' is not inapposite, because Claude Williamson

Shaw fell in love with a lady who in a tantalising manner became a

religious in one of the strictest Orders, the rules of which were duly

set forth in old three-volume novels; that is the only conventional

incident in the book. C. W. S., although he trains for painting, is

admitted by Mr. Hind to be quite a bad artist. Apart, therefore, from

the admirable criticism which is the main feature of the book, it shows

great courage on the part of the inventor, great sacrifice, to admit that

C. W. S. _was_ a failure as an artist. Bad artists, however, are always

nice people. I do not say that the reverse is true; indeed, I know many

good and even great artists who are charming; but I never met a

thoroughly inferior painter (without any promise of either a future or a

past) who was not irresistible socially. This accounts for some of the

elections at the Royal Academy, I believe, and for the pictures on the

walls of your friends whose taste you know to be impeccable. There is

more hearty recognition of bad art in England than the Tate Gallery gives

us any idea of.

I know that the Chantrey Trustees were deprived of the only possible

excuse for their purchases by the finding of Lord Lytton's Commission;

but I, for one, shall always think of them as kindly men with a fellow-

feeling for incompetence, who would have bought a work by Claude

Williamson Shaw if the opportunity presented itself. I have sometimes

tried to imagine what the pictures of _invented_ artists in fiction or

drama were really like--I fear they were all dreadful performances. I

used to imagine that Oswald Avling was a sort of Segantini, but something

he says in the play convinced me that he was merely another Verboekhoven.

Then Thackeray's Ridley must have been a terrible Philistine--a sort of

Sir John Gilbert. Poor Basil Hallward's death was no great loss to art,

I surmise: his portrait of 'Dorian Grey, Esq.', from all accounts,

resembled the miraculous picture exhibited in Bond Street a short while

ago. I am not surprised that its owner, whose taste improved, I suspect,

with advancing years, destroyed it in the ordinary course after reading

something by Mr. D. S. MacColl. It is distinctly stated that Dorian read

the _Saturday Review_! Frenhofer, Hippolite Schimier, and Leon de Lora

were probably chocolate-box painters of the regular second-empire type.

Theobald, we know from Mr. Henry James, was a man of ideas who could not

carry out his intentions. It must have been an exquisite memory of

Theobald's failures which made Pater, when he wished to contrive an

imaginary artistic personality, take Watteau as being some one in whose

achievements you can believe. No literary artist can persuade us into

admiring pictures which never existed; though an artist can reconstruct

from literature a picture which has perished we know, from the 'Calumny

of Apelles' by Botticelli. It was, therefore, wise to make Claude

Williamson Shaw a failure as a painter. In accordance with my rule he

was an excellent fellow, nearly as charming as his author, and better

company in a picture-gallery it would be difficult to find--and you

cannot visit picture-galleries with every friend: you require a

sympathetic personality. It is the Claude--the Claude Phillips in him

which I like best: the Dr. Williamson I rather suspect. I mean that when

he was at Messrs. Chepstow, the publishers, he must have mugged up some

of the real Dr. Williamson's art publications. Whether in the Louvre, or

National Gallery, or in Italian towns, he always goes for the right

thing; sometimes you wish he would make a mistake. Bad artists, of

course, are often excellent judges of old pictures and make excellent

dealers, and I am not denying the instinct of C. W. S.; but I cannot

think it all came so naturally as Mr. Hind would indicate.

The reason why Claude Williamson Shaw discovered 'that he would not find

a true expression of his temperament' in painting readers of this

ingenious book will discover for themselves. Assuming that he had any

innate talent, I do not think he went about the right way to cultivate

it. His friend Lund gave him the very worst advice; though we are the

gainers. It is quite unnecessary to go out of England and gaze at a lot

of pictures of entirely different schools in order to become a painter.

Gainsborough and our great Norwich artists evolved themselves without any

foreign study. There was no National Gallery in their days. A second-

rate Wynants and a doubtful Hobbema seem to have been enough to give them

hints. It would be tedious to mention other examples. The fortunate

meeting of Zuccarelli and Wilson at Venice is the only instance I know in

which foreign travel benefited any English landscape painter. Foreign

travel is all very well when the artist has grown up. Paris has been the

tomb of many English art students. M. Bordeaux, who gave Mr. Hind's hero

tips in the atelier, seems to have been as 'convincing' as the famous

barrel of the same name. Far better will the English student be under

Mr. Tonks at the Slade; or even at the Royal Academy, where, owing to the

doctrine of contraries, out of sheer rebellion he may become an artist.

In Paris you learn perfect carpentry, but not art, unless you are a born

artist; but in that case you will be one in spite of Paris, not because

of it. But if C. W. Shaw had been a real painter he would have seen at

Venice certain Tiepolos which seem to have escaped him, and in other

parts of Italy certain Caravaggios. Yes, and Correggios and Guido Renis,

too hastily passed by. He was doomed to be a connoisseur.

(1906.)

EGO ET MAX MEUS.

'How very delightful Max's drawings are. For all their mad perspective

and crude colour, they have, indeed, the sentiment of style, and they

reveal with rarer delicacy than does any other record the spirit of Lloyd-

George's day.' This sentence is not quite original: it is adapted from

an eminent author because the words sum up so completely the

inexpressible satisfaction following an inspection of Mr. Beerbohm's

caricatures. To-day essentially belongs to the Minister who once

presided at the Board of Trade. Several attempts indeed have been made

to describe the literature, art and drama of the present as 'Edwardian,'

from a very proper and loyal spirit, to which I should be the last to

object. We were even promised a few years ago a new style of furniture

to inaugurate the reign--something to supplant that Louis Dix-neuvieme

_decor_ which is merely a compromise with the past. But somehow the

whole thing has fallen through; in this democratic aeon the adjective

'Edwardian' trips on the tongue; our real dramatists are all Socialists

or Radicals; our poets and writers Anarchists. Our artists are the only

conservatives of intellect. Our foreign policy alone can be called

'Edwardian,' so personal is it to the King. Everything else is a

compromise; so our time must therefore be known--at least ten years of

it--as the Lloyd-Georgian period. I can imagine collectors of the future

struggling for an _alleged_ genuine work of art belonging to this brief

renaissance, and the disappointment of the dealer on finding that it

dated a year before the Budget, thereby reducing its value by some

thousands.

Just as we go to Kneller and Lely for speaking portraits of the men who

made their age, so I believe our descendants will turn to Max for

listening likenesses of the present generation. Of all modern artists,

he alone follows Hamlet's advice. If the mirror is a convex one, that is

merely the accident of genius, and reflects the malady of the century.

Other artists have too much eye on the Uffizi and the National Gallery

(the more modest of them only painting up to the Tate). In Max we have

one who never harks forward to the future, and is therefore more

characteristic, more Lloyd-Georgian than any of his peers. Set for one

moment beside some Rubens' goddess a portrait by Mr. Sargent, and how

would she be troubled by its beauty? Not in the slightest degree;

because they are both similar but differing expressions of the same

genius of painting. The centuries which separate them are historical

conventions; and in Art, history does not count; aesthetically, time is

of no consequence. But in the more objective art of caricature, history

is of some import, and (as Mr. Beerbohm himself admitted about

photographs) the man limned is of paramount importance. Actual

resemblance, truthfulness of presentation, criticism of the model become

legitimate subjects for consideration. Generally speaking, artists long

since wisely resigned all attempts at catching a likeness, leaving to

photography an inglorious victory. Mr. Beerbohm, realising this fact,

seized caricature as a substitute--the consolation, it may be, for a lost

or neglected talent. It is as though Watts (painter of the soul's prism,

if ever there was one) had pushed away Ward and Downey from the camera,

to insert a subtler lens, a more sensitive negative.

* * * *

If, reader, you have ever been to a West-end picture shop, you will have

suffered some annoyance on looking too attentively at any item in the

exhibition, by the approach of an officious attendant, who presses you to

purchase it. He begins by flattery; he felicitates you on your choice of

the _best_ picture in the room--the one that has been 'universally

admired by critics and collectors.'

The fact of its not being sold is due (he naively confesses) to its

rather high price; several offers have been submitted, and if not sold at

the catalogued amount the artist has promised to consider them; but it is

very unlikely that the drawing will remain long without a red ticket,

'_as people come back to town to-morrow_.' There is the stab, the stab

in the back while you were drinking honey; the tragedy of Corfe Castle

repeated. _People with_ a capital _P_ in picture-dealing circles does

not mean what they call the _Hoypolloy_; it means the great ones of the

earth, the _monde_, the Capulets and Montagues with wealth or rank. You

have been measured by the revolting attendant. He does not count you

with them, or you would not be in town to-day; something has escaped you

in the _Morning Post_, some function to which you were not invited, or of

which you knew nothing. If you happen to be a Capulet you feel mildly

amused, and in order to correct the wrong impression and let the

underling know your name and address you purchase the drawing; for the

greatest have their weak side. But, if not, and you have simply risen

from the 'purple of commerce,' you are determined not to lag behind stuck-

up Society; you will revenge yourself for the thousand injuries of

Fortunatus; you will deprive him of his prerogative to buy the _best_.

The purchase is concluded. You go home with your nerves slightly shaken

from the gloved contest--you go home to face your wife and children,

wearing a look of wistful inquiry on their irregular upturned faces, as

when snow lies upon the ground, they scent Christmas, and you look up

with surprise at the whiteness of the ceiling. Though in private life a

contributor to the press, in public I used to be one of those importunate

salesmen.

It was my duty, my pleasurable duty, so to act for Mr. Beerbohm's

caricatures when exhibited at a fashionable West-end gallery where among

the visitors I recognised many of his models. I observe that when Mr.

Beerbohm is a friend of his victim he is generally at his best; that he

is always excellent and often superb if he is in sympathy with the

personality of that victim, however brutally he may render it. His

failures are due to lack of sympathy, and they are often, oddly enough,

the mildest as caricatures. Fortunately, Mr. Beerbohm selects chiefly

celebrities who are either personal friends or those for whom he must

have great admiration and sympathy. By a divine palmistry he estimates

them with exquisite perception. I noted that those who were annoyed with

their own caricature either did not know Mr. Beerbohm or disliked his

incomparable writings; and, curiously enough, he misses the likeness in

people he either does not know personally or whom you suspect he

dislikes. I am glad now of the opportunity of being sincere, because it

was part of my function as salesman to agree with what every one said,

whether in praise or in blame.

And let me reproduce a conversation with one of the visitors. It is

illustrative:--

[SCENE: _The Carfax Gallery; rather empty; early morning: Caricatures by

Max Beerbohm; entrance one shilling. Enter_ DISTINGUISHED CLIENT, _takes

catalogue, but does not consult it. No celebrity ever consults a

catalogue in a modern picture-gallery. This does not apply to ladies,

however distinguished, who conscientiously begin at number one and read

out from the catalogue the title of each picture_. SHOPMAN _in

attendance_.]

D. C. (_glancing round_). Yes; how very clever they are.

SHOPMAN. Yes; they are very amusing.

D. C. I suppose you have had heaps of People. What a pity Max cannot

draw!

SHOPMAN. Yes; it _is_ a great pity.

D. C. (_examines drawing; after a pause_). But he _can_ draw. Look at

that one of Althorp.

SHOPMAN (_trying to look intelligent_): Yes; that certainly is well

drawn.

D. C. (_pointing to photograph of Paris inserted in Mr. Claude Lowther's

caricature_). And how extraordinary that is. It is like one of Muirhead

Bone's street scenes. He does street scenes, doesn't he?

SHOPMAN. Yes; or one of Mr. Joseph Pennell's.

D. C. (_after a pause_). What a pity he never gets the likeness. That's

very bad of Arthur Balfour.

SHOPMAN. Yes; it is a great pity. No; that's not at all a good one of

Mr. Balfour.

D. C. (_pointing to Mr. Shaw's photograph inserted in caricature_). But

he _has_ got the likeness there. By Jove! it's nearly as good as a

photograph.

SHOPMAN (_examining photograph as if he had never seen it;

enthusiastically_). It's _almost_ as good as a photograph.

D. C. (_pointing with umbrella to Lord Weardale_). Of course, that's

Rosebery?

SHOPMAN (_nervously_): Y-e-s. (_Brightly changing subject_.) What do

you think of Mr. Sargent's?

D. C. (_now worked up_). Oh! that's very good. Yes; that's the best of

all. I see it's sold. I should have bought that one if it hadn't been

sold. I wish Max would do a caricature of (_describes a possible

caricature_). Tell him I suggested it; he knows me quite well (_glancing

round_). He really is tremendous. Are they going to be published?

SHOPMAN. Yes; by Methuen & Co. (_Hastily going over to new-comer_.)

Yes, madam, that is Mr. Arthur Balfour; it's considered the _best_

caricature in the exhibition--the likeness is so particularly striking;

and as a pure piece of draughtsmanship it is certainly the finest drawing

in the room. No; that's not so good of Lord Althorp, though it _was_ the

first to sell. (_Turning to another client_.) Yes, sir; he is Mr.

Beerbohm Tree's half-brother.

(1907.)

_To_ MRS. BEERBOHM.

THE ETHICS OF REVIEWING.

The 'Acropolis,' a review of literature, science, art, politics, society,

and the drama, is, as every one knows, our leading literary weekly. Its

original promoters decided on its rather eccentric title with a symbolism

now outmoded. The 'Acropolis' was to be impregnable to outside

contributors, and the editor was always to be invisible. All the vile

and secret arts of reclame and puffery were to find no place in its

immaculate pages. One afternoon some time ago a number of gentlemen,

more or less responsible for the production of the 'Acropolis,' were

seated round the fire in the smoking-room of a certain club. For the

last hour they had been discussing with some warmth the merits of signed

or unsigned articles and the reviewing of books. A tall, good-looking

man, who pretended to be unpopular, was advocating the anonymous. 'There

is something so cowardly about a signed article,' he was saying. 'It is

nearly as bad as insulting a man in public, when there is no redress

except to call for the police. And that is ridiculous. If I am slated

by an anonymous writer, it is always in my power to pay no attention,

whereas if the slate is signed, I am obliged to take notice of some kind.

I must either deny the statements, often at a great sacrifice of truth,

or if I assault the writer there is always the risk of his being

physically stronger than I am. No; anonymous attack is the only weapon

for gentlemen.'

'To leave for a moment the subject of anonymity,' said an eminent

novelist, 'I think the great curse of all criticism is that of slating

any book at all. Think of the unfortunate young man or woman first

entering the paths of literature, and the great pain it causes them. You

should encourage them, and not damp their enthusiasm.'

'My dear fellow,' said North, 'I encourage no one, and writers should

never have any feelings at all. They can't have any, or they would not

bore the public by writing.'

The discussion was getting heated when the editor, Rivers, interfered.

'My dear North,' he began, addressing the first speaker, 'your eloquent

advocacy of the anonymous reminds me of a curious incident that occurred

many years ago when I was assistant-editor of the "Acropolis." The facts

were never known to the public, and my old chief, Curtis, met with much

misplaced abuse in consequence. There were reasons for which he could

never break silence; but it happened so long ago that I cannot be

betraying any confidence. All of you have heard of, and some of you have

seen, Quentin Burrage, whose articles practically made the "Acropolis"

what it now is. His opinion on all subjects was looked forward to by the

public each week. Young poetasters would tremble when their time should

come to be pulverised by the scathing epigrams which fell from his

anonymous pen. Essayists, novelists, statesmen were pale for weeks until

a review appeared that would make or mar their fame. In the various

literary coteries of London no one knew that Quentin Burrage was the

slater who thrilled, irritated, or amused them, though he was of course

recognised as an occasional contributor. The secret was well kept. He

was practically critical censor of London for ten years. A whole school

of novelists ceased to exist after three of his notices in the

"Acropolis." The names of painters famous before his time you will not

find in the largest dictionaries now. Four journalists committed suicide

after he had burlesqued their syntax, and two statesmen resigned office

owing to his masterly examination of their policy. We were all much

shocked when a popular actor set fire to his theatre on a first night

because Curtis and his dramatic critic refused to take champagne and

chicken between the acts. This may give you some idea of Burrage's power

in London for a decade of the last century.

'One day a curious change came over him. It was Monday when he and I

were in the office receiving our instructions. Curtis, after going over

some books, handed to Quentin a vellum-covered volume of poems, saying

with a grim smile: "There are some more laurels for you to hash."

'An expression of pain spread over Quentin's serene features.

'"I'll see what I can do," he said wearily. But his curious manner

struck both Curtis and myself. The book was a collection of very

indifferent verse which already enjoyed a wide popularity. I cannot tell

you the title, for that is a secret not my own. It was early work of one

of our most esteemed poets who for some time was regarded by _his

friends_ as the natural successor to Mr. Alfred Austin. The "Acropolis"

had not spoken. We were sometimes behindhand in our reviews. The public

waited to learn if the new poet was really worth anything. You may

imagine the general surprise when a week afterwards there appeared a

flamingly favourable review of the poems. It made a perfect sensation

and was quoted largely. The public became quite conceited with its

foresight. The reputation of the poet was assured. "Snarley-ow must be

dead," some one remarked in my hearing at the club, and members tried to

pump me. One day a telegram came from Curtis asking me to go down to his

house at once. A request from him was a command. I found him in a state

of some excitement, his manner a little artificial. "My dear Rivers, I

suppose you think me mad. The geese have got into the Capitol at last."

Without correcting his classical allusion, I said: "Where is Burrage?"

"He is coming here presently. Of course, I glanced at the thing in

proof, and thought it a splendid joke, but reading it this morning, I

have come to the conclusion that something is wrong with Burrage. You

remember his agitated manner the other day?" I was about to reply, when

Burrage was announced. His haggard and pale appearance startled both of

us. "My dear Burrage, what _is_ the matter with you?" we exclaimed

simultaneously. He gave a sickly nervous smile. "Of course you have

sent to ask me about that review. Well, I have changed my opinions, I

have altered. I think we should praise everything or ignore everything.

To slate a book, good or bad, is taking the bread out of a fellow's

mouth. I have been the chief sinner in this way, and I am going to be

the first reformer." "Not in my paper," said Curtis, angrily.

'Then we all fell to discussing that old question with all the warmth

that North and the rest of you were doing just now. We lost our tempers

and Curtis ended the matter by saying: "I tell you what it is, Burrage,

if you ever bring out a book yourself I'll send it to you to review. You

can praise it as much as you like. But don't let this occur again, with

any one else's work." Burrage turned quite white, I thought, and Curtis,

noticing the effect of his words, went up and taking him by the hand,

added more kindly, "My poor Burrage, are you quite well? I never saw you

in so morbid a state before. All this is mere sentimentality--so

different from your usual manly spirit. Go away for a change, to

Brighton or Eastbourne, and you must come back with that wholesome

contempt for your contemporaries that characterises most of your

writings. I'll look over the matter this time, and we'll say no more

about it." And here Curtis was so overcome that he dashed a tear from

his eye. A few hours later I saw Burrage off to the sea. He was very

strange in his manner. "I'll never be quite the same again. If I only

dared to tell you," he said. And the train rolled out of the station.

'Some weeks later I was again in the editorial room and Curtis showed me

a curiously bound book, printed on hand-made paper, entitled

_Prejudices_. I had already seen it. "That book," Curtis remarked,

"ought to have been noticed long ago. I was keeping it for Burrage when

he gets better. Shall I send it to him?"

'_Prejudices_ for some weeks had been the talk of London. It was a

series of very ineffectual essays on different subjects. Sight, Colour,

Sound, Art, Letters, and Religion were all dealt with in that highly

glowing and original manner now termed _Style_. It was delightfully

unwholesome and extraordinarily silly. Young persons had already begun

to get foolish over it, and leaving the more stimulating pages of Mr.

Pater they hailed the work as an earnest of the English Renaissance.

Instead of stroking _Marius the Epicurean_ they fondled a copy of

_Prejudices_. I prophesied that Burrage would vindicate himself over it

and that the public would hear very little of _Prejudices_ in a year's

time. The book was sent; and the first part of my prophecy was

fulfilled, Burrage spared neither the author nor his admirers. The

pedantry, the affected style, the cheap hedonism were all pitilessly

exposed. London, rocked with laughter. Some of the admirers, with the

generosity of youth, nobly came to the rescue. They made a paper war and

talked of "The cruelty and cowardice of the attack," "The stab in the

dark," "Journalistic marauding," "Disappointed author turned critic." The

slate was one that I am bound to say was _killing_ in both senses of the

word. A book less worthless could never have lived under it. It was one

of those decisive reviews of all ages. _Prejudices_ was withdrawn by the

publisher fearful of damaging his prestige. Yet it was never looked on

as a rarity, and fell at book auctions for a shilling, for some time

after, amidst general tittering. The daily papers meanwhile devoted

columns to the discussion. I telegraphed to Burrage in cipher and

congratulated him, knowing that secrets leak out sometimes through the

post office. I was surprised to get no reply for some weeks, but Curtis

said he was lying low while the excitement lasted. One day I got a

letter simply saying, "For God's sake come. I am very ill." I went at

once. How shall I describe to you the pitiful condition I found him in?

The doctor told me he was suffering from incipient tuberculosis due to

cerebral excitement and mental trouble. When I went in to see him he was

lying in bed, pale and emaciated as a corpse, surrounded by friends and

relations. He asked every one to go out of the room; he had something of

importance to say to me. I then learned what you have divined already.

The anonymous author of _Prejudices_ was no other than Quentin Burrage

himself. Or rather not himself, but the other self of which neither I

nor Curtis knew anything. He had been living a double existence. As a

writer of trashy essays and verse, an incomplete sentimentalist

surrounded by an admiring band of young ladies and gentlemen, he was not

recognised as the able critic and the anonymous slater of the

"Acropolis."

'When he first received his own book for review he recalled the words of

Curtis. He must be honest, impartial, and just. No one knew better the

faults of _Prejudices_. As he began to write, the old spirit of the

slater came over him. His better self conquered. He forgot for the

moment that he was the author. He hardly realised the sting of his own

sarcasms even when he saw them in proof. It was not until it appeared,

and the papers were full of the controversy, that the _cruelty_ and

_unfairness_ of the attack dawned on him. I was much shocked at the

confession, and the extraordinary duplicity of Burrage, who had been

living a lie for the last ten years. His denunciation of poor Curtis

pained me. I would have upbraided him, but his tortured face and hacking

cough made me relent. I need not prolong the painful story. Burrage

never recovered. He sank into galloping consumption, only aggravated by

a broken heart. I saw him on his deathbed at Rome. He was attended by

Strange, and died in his arms. His last words to me were, "Rivers, tell

Curtis I forgive him."

'We buried in the Protestant cemetery near Keats and Shelley one whose

name was written in hot water. His sad death provoked a good deal of

comment, as you may suppose. Strange has often promised to write his

life. But he could never get through _Prejudices_, and I pointed out to

him that you can hardly write an author's life without reading one of his

works, even though he did die in your arms. That is the worst of

literary martyrs with a few brilliant exceptions: their works are

generally dull.'

'Is that all?' asked North.

'That is all, and I hope you understand the moral.'

'Perfectly; but your reminiscences have too much construction, my dear

Rivers.'

'The story is perfectly true for all that,' remarked the Editor, drily.

A LITTLE DOCTORED FAUST. A PROLOGUE.

'The version of _Faust_ which Mr. Stephen Phillips is contemplating will,

it is interesting to learn from the author, be a "compact drama," of

which the spectacular embellishment will form no part. In Mr. Phillips's

view the story is in itself so strong and so rich in all the elements

that make for dramatic effectiveness that to treat the subject as one for

elaborate scenic display would be to diminish the direct appeal of a

great tragedy. "First let me say," said Mr. Stephen Phillips, "how

gladly I approach a task which will bring me again into association with

Mr. George Alexander, whose admirable treatment of _Paolo and Francesco_,

you will no doubt remember. In the version of _Faust_ which I am going

to prepare there will be nothing spectacular, nothing to overshadow or

intrude upon an immortal theme. As to how I shall treat the story, and

as to the form in which it will be written, I am not yet sure--it may be

a play in blank verse, or in prose with lyrics . . ." Mr. Phillips added

that he had also in view a play on the subject of _Harold_."--_The

Tribune_.

_Scene: The British Museum_.

SIDNEY COLVIN. Ah! my dear Stephen, when they told me Phillips

Was waiting in my study, I imagined

That it was Claude, whom I have been expecting.

I have arranged that you shall have this room

All to yourself and friends. Now I must leave you.

I have to go and speak to Campbell Dodgson

About some prints we've recently acquired.

STEPHEN PHILLIPS. How can I ever thank you? Love to Binyon!

[COLVIN _goes out_.

_Enter_ Mr. GEORGE ALEXANDER, GOETHE, MARLOWE, GOUNOD.

ALEXANDER (_from force of habit_). I always told you he was reasonable.

GOETHE. Well, I consent. Mein Gott! how colossal

You English are! 'Tis nigh impossible

For poets to refuse you anything,

And German thought beneath some English shade--

_Unter den Linden_, as we say at home--

Sounds really quite as well on British soil.

Our good friend Marlowe hardly seems so pleased.

MARLOWE. Oh, Goethe! cease these frivolous remarks.

Think you that I, who knew Elizabeth,

And tasted all the joys of literature

And played the dawn to Shakespeare's larger day,

And heralded a mighty line of verse

With half-a-dozen mighty lines my own,

Am feeling well?

GOUNOD (_brightening_). Ah! Monsieur Wells,

Auteur d'une histoire fine et romanesque

Traduit par Davray; il a des idees

C'est une chose rare la-bas . . .

STEPHEN PHILLIPS. He does not speak of Huysmans; 'tis myself.

I thank you, gentlemen, with all my heart;

I thank you, gentlemen, with all my soul;

I thank you, sirs, with all my soul and strength.

So for your leave much thanks. You know my weakness:

I love to be at peace with all the past.

The present and the future I can manage;

The stirrup of posterity may dangle

Against the heaving flanks of Pegasus.

I feel my spurs against the saucy mare

And Alexander turned Bucephalus.

MARLOWE. Neigh! Neigh! though you have told us what you are,

And we have witnessed Nero several times,

You do not tell us of this wretched Faustus,

Who must be damned in any case, I fear.

S. P. Of course, I treat you as material

On which to work; but then I simplify

And purify the story for our stage.

The English stage is nothing if not pure.

For instance, we will not allow _Salome_.

So in Act II. of _Faust_ I represent

The marriage feast of beauteous Margaret;

Act I. I get from Goethe, III. from Marlowe,

And Gounod's music fills the gaps in mine.

Margaret, of course, will never come to grief.

She only gets a separation order.

By the advice of Plowden magistrate,

She undertakes to wean Euphorion,

Who in his bounding habit symbolises

The future glories of the English empire.

As the production must not cost too much,

Harker, Hawes Craven, Hann are relegated

To a back place. It is a compact drama,

Of which spectacular embellishment

Will form no part. The story is so strong,

So rich in all the elements that make

A drama suitable for Alexander,

That scenery, if necessary to Tree,

Shall not intrude on this immortal theme.

GOETHE. Pyramidal! My friend, but you are splendid.

Now, have you shown the manuscript to Colvin?

MARLOWE. He is a scholar, and a ripe and good one,

And far too tolerant of modern poets.

ALEXANDER. One of your lines strike my familiar spirit.

Surely, that does not come from Stephen Phillips.

MARLOWE. No matter; I may quote from whom I will.

Shakespeare himself was not immaculate,

And borrowed freely from a barren past.

GOETHE. What thinks Herr Sidney Colvin of your work?

S. P. That he will tell you when he sees it played.