gardenful at the back of a little house in Brussels. She was only a
child at the time, a weary, bored, depressed small person at that, in
the uncongenial surroundings of a detested private school. But one
Sunday morning, for some unremembered reason, she was taken after Mass
by the second mistress (an ugly, angry woman, inappropriately baptized
Estelle), and brought out of the dust of the scorching street into
this, to all appearance trivial, not to say sordid, little house.
“Would Mademoiselle like to look at my garden?” said its owner.
She was old and wizened and yellow-faced; but she had kind eyes, and it
was certainly a kindly thought.
The whole of that garden, some forty by twenty feet, was filled with
Madonna lilies, growing like grass in a field, with only a narrow path
whereby to walk round them.
“Consider the lilies how they grow.... Not Solomon in all his glory was
arrayed as one of these!”
The child that saw them was too unyeared and ignorant to apply these
wonderful words if she had ever heard them. She could not feel her
pleasure sharpened by the exquisite sensation of having the vision
phrased in language as beautiful as itself. But she has carried away
the memory, as sacredly as Wordsworth that of his daffodils--
“I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
“For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the Daffodils.”
Wordsworth, notably among poets, has the gift of expressing the
inexpressible, of clothing in language some fleeting sensation which
seems, of its exquisiteness and illusiveness, undefinable. There are
lines of his that follow one like a phrase of music.
“The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion.”
“The light that never was on sea or land.”
“... Old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.”
The first effect of any sight of surpassing beauty, indeed of any
strong emotion of admiration, is an instant desire of expression; then
comes the pain of inarticulateness to most of us--there is a swelling
of the soul and no outlet! That is why, when someone else may have
perfectly said what for us is inexpressible, there is a double joy in
discoveries.
To wander from our lilies to flowers of speech and description: the
perfect phrase has in itself a delight that almost equals that of the
perfect thought.
For those who, like ourselves, work in words, however humbly--poor
stone-breakers compared to such as make the marble live--the mere
art in the setting of the words themselves has a fascination of its
own. It is not only the idea--it is sometimes not even the idea that
enchants. There is a magic of cadence alone. Sometimes, indeed, just a
conjunction of two words seems to make a chord.
To go further, a single word may ring out like a note upon the mind.
The Italian _Amore_, for instance--who can deny that it echoes richly
and nobly? It is a sound of gravity and passion mixed. It is like
the first vibrating stroke of a master-hand on the ’cello. Did not
the resonance of the word itself go as far as the meaning to inspire
Jacopone with his ecstatic hymn wherein he plays upon it like a
musician upon a note which calls, insists, repeats itself, for ever
dominates or haunts the theme?--
“Amore, amore, che si m’hai ferito
Altro che amore non posso gridare:
Amore, amore, teco so unito....”
You could not take the word “love” and ring the changes in this way,
not even upon the kindred-sounding _Amour_, losing in its “ou” exactly
the tone of solemnity that makes the Italian equivalent so royal.
In a delightful series of musical sketches recently published, the
author remarks, speaking of Tschaikowski’s “Symphonie Pathétique”:
“For those who have the score there is an added joy in the titles,
‘Incalzando,’ ‘feroce,’ ‘affretando,’ ‘saltando,’ ‘con dolcezza e
flebile,’ ‘con tenerezza e devozione’; it makes most interesting
reading. But the most splendid title of all is that of the last
movement, ‘Adagio Lamentoso’--can’t you hear it? What a lot our
language misses by the clipped and oxytone ‘lament’! Even ‘lamentation’
is a mere shadow beside the full roll of the Latin tongues, the
ineffable melody that sounds in ‘lamentabile regnum.’”
We do not, however, agree with this pleasant writer on the subject of
“clipped and oxytone lament.” To us the English word is infinitely
keener reaching than any added vowel could make it! “Lamentable” we
grant to be pompous and middle Victorian. It is eloquent of the
conventional mourning of the funeral mute, while _lamentoso_ has to our
ear a horrible wobble like the howl of a lonely dog.
We defy the most poetical and profound scholar to render in any other
tongue the _guai_ of Dante. Who could give the value of the hopeless
cry of sorrow culminating in that line of which _guai_ is the central
wail!
“Cosi vid’ io venir, traendo guai
Ombre portate della detta briga.”
This is not to insist on the obvious that Italian is a musical language
and Dante a star apart. Every language that has served literature
will be found to hold its own words of magic. It is not the moment to
quote German, but we think _Trauer_ tolls across the senses like the
passing-bell, while the French _Glas_ falls upon the soul with a frozen
misery indescribable outside itself.
Those fortunate scholars who have mastered as much of the secrets of
Greek as the modern can master, tell us that it is impossible to convey
in any other tongue the richness, the value, the wide meaning and
exquisite shades of the ancient Greek language. We know that they had
words in each of which a whole picture could be set before the mind.
To read Gilbert Murray’s fascinating “Ancient Greek Literature” is,
however, to find a revelation which severer and more extensive writings
fail to convey. A poet, he alone has caught and interpreted the echo of
those lyres still ringing across the ages. And he, too, computes his
impressions in terms of music. “Many lovers of Pindar,” he says, “agree
that the things which stay in one’s mind, stay not as thoughts but as
music.”
Of course, the Greeks wedded words and music after a fashion unknown to
us, who merely set words to be sung to music in our operas and songs.
It is a lost art.
But it seems conceivable that there may be an actual music hidden in
language itself, something that the senses of the mind apprehend,
quite apart from the idea incorporated. The late Sir Henry Irving,
just before his famous production of Macbeth, discussing his intention
of introducing music at the moments of crisis, defended this much
criticized point by saying: “I mean to do it, because music carries the
soul beyond words, even beyond thought.”
We are not sure that he was right, except in so far as the appeal
to the gallery was concerned, which, after all, every actor-manager,
however artistic and perceptive, is bound to consider first of all. In
fact, we are quite certain that he was wrong. The music of Shakespeare
should not have been overlaid by any sound of violin or trumpet.
We can conceive no sorrow of muted strings which could intensify the
poignancy of Macduff’s cry: “All my pretty ones, did you say all?” A
cry, too, so spontaneous in its truth and simplicity that, according to
a current phrase in the theatrical profession, the part of Macduff acts
itself.
Who would want to add more melody to the following
“That strain again--it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing, and giving odour....”
Will anyone deny that there is music in these lines, that the singular
impression produced by them is due not only to the perfection of a
thought perfectly expressed, to the scent of violets exquisitely and
instantly evoked by the cunning of genius, but to the actual words?
The phrase rises and falls. Read or heard, it is the same, a strain of
melody.
To one of the writers the two words, “Scarlet Verbena,” have always
produced the impression as of a trumpet blast. Hoffmann used to say
that he never smelt a red carnation without hearing the winding of a
horn.
No doubt the senses are indefinably intermixed.
“Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro’ the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet”--
cries Tennyson to the nightingale.
Nevertheless, must one not believe that there are distinct senses of
the soul and mind which are called into action by the spoken or written
word? It is trite to say there are moments when one is gripped by the
throat by a mere phrase, not, mind you, because of its dramatic force,
but rather from some inherent spell of beauty or sorrow. There are
others when one seems to lay hold of a set of words; as it were, to be
able to touch and feel them as though they had been modelled.
And again, who has not felt an actual pain, as of a delicate blade
being thrust into the heart, by some phrase of scarcely analyzable
pathos. Heine had that weapon. The art of it, we suppose, is that of
extreme simplicity combined with selection, but the emotion is quite
incommensurate with the importance of the theme, the value of the
expressed idea.
To use another simile, it is like a wailing air on some primitive
instrument, which by its very artlessness pierces to the marrow of the
consciousness.
“Ces doux airs du pays, au doux rythme obsesseur,
Dont chaque note est comme une petite sœur,”
as Rostand has it.
Think of the effect in “Tristran” of the shepherd’s pipe at the
beginning of the last act.
It comes to this after all, that however one may study, however perfect
the technique of writing, however one may inspire oneself from the
springs of genius, it is artlessness, not art, that reaches home. It
might be truer to say that it takes a consummate art to touch the right
note of artlessness; yet we all know how curiously we can sometimes be
affected by the words that fall from childish lips.
A Belgian babe of two, a dimpled, radiant creature, seemingly untouched
by the storm which had flung her from her own luxurious nurseries into
a bare English lodging, was found, two days after her arrival in exile,
kissing and talking to the little crucifix which hung round her neck.
Her mother bent to listen.
“Dear Jesus,” the child was saying, “poor wounded soldier!”
The profound and mystic consolation of the link between the human agony
and the Divine had somehow dawned upon the infant mind, and found this
tender expression.
A little boy we knew said to his mother one evening as she tucked him
up in his cot:
“Oh, mammie, I die a little every night, I love you so.” Here, with an
exquisite directness, the inevitable pain of a deep tenderness is laid
bare by the lips of innocence.
* * * * *
It is this quality of simplicity and directness--yes, we are not afraid
to say it, of innocence--which makes the stories of our soldiers so
infinitely touching.
“Tell daddie and mammie,” said a dying Irish lad to the comrade who
bent over him to take his last message, “’twas against their will I
’listed; tell them I’m not sorry now I did it.”
No fine-sounding phrase, no stirring oration, could more piercingly set
forth the triumph of the ultimate sacrifice of patriotism. _Dulce et
decorum est pro patria mori._
Our men are like children in their gaiety--pleased with little things
as a child with a toy; joking, making believe, making a game out of
their very danger; unconscious of their own heroism, as the best kind
of boy, who risks his neck for a nest; blindly confident in their
leaders. If it had not been for this complete trust in what their
officers told them, could the retreat from Mons have ended in anything
but disaster? Yet we know that--like children--whole regiments burst
into tears when ordered to give up the positions they had won.
A war correspondent ends a terrible account of the further withdrawal
from Tournai by a description of a night in a barn where scatterers had
taken refuge.
“And all night long,” he says, “there were the sobs of a big corporal
of artillery, weeping for his horses.”
In the throes of the great struggle, this side of humanity--call it the
childish, if you will, we have Divine authority for believing that it
is akin to the spiritual--asserts itself, nay, becomes paramount. To be
more precise, the real man is stripped of his conventions, sophistries,
and pretences. Only the things that matter are the things that count.
When the Emperor Frederick was dying, his last message was this: “Let
my people return to their faith and simplicity of life.”
If he had been spared to his own land, it would be a different world
to-day. Under the dreadful test of war the German soldiery as a mass,
indeed the whole people, have sunk below the level of the brute. It is
the English who have come back to faith and simplicity.
The Rev. W. Forest, Catholic Chaplain of the Expeditionary Force,
writes: “It is true to say that the German Kaiser is fighting a
community of saints--converted, if you like--but with not a mortal sin
scarcely to be found among them.” The special correspondent of the
_Sunday Times_ has a touching testimony in a recent issue to men of all
denominations: “To be at the front,” he declares, “is to breathe the
air of heroes. The Church of England chaplains, in accordance with the
general wish among the men, are giving Early Communion Services. It is
a marvellous sight,” continues the journalist, “to see the throngs of
soldiers kneeling in the dawn, the light on their upturned faces. They
go forth strengthened, ready for anything, feeling that the presence of
Christ is amongst them.”
With our French Allies, too, the spirit of faith has reawakened. An
English officer writes to the _Evening Standard_: “The French soldiers
go into the trenches, each with his little medal of Our Lady hung round
his neck--they pray aloud in action, not in fear, but with a high
courage and a great trust.”
“On All Souls’ Day,” he adds, “I saw the village _curé_ come out
and bless the graves of our poor lads. The graves, mark, of rough
Protestant soldiers, decorated with chrysanthemums by the villagers.
These poor dead were blessed, and called the faithful departed, and
wept over and prayed for.”
“And thine own soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many hearts
thoughts may be revealed.”
If one may reverently paraphrase Simeon’s prophecy to the mother of the
Man of Sorrows, can one not say that the soul of the world is pierced
to-day, and the thoughts of the nations revealed?
A neutral diplomat, recently arrived in England from Vienna, via Paris,
has told us of the singular indifference of the Austrian capital to
the tragedy in which her own sons are taking part. “Vienna,” he says,
“has shown only one moment of emotion, and that was when the little
breakfast rolls were condemned. No one cares in Vienna. Life is--how
shall I say?--it is all one ‘Merry Widow.’ It is not that they have any
confidence in their own army. They shrug their shoulders and spread out
their hands, but in Germany--they have the faith of the hypnotized!
Nothing can happen to Germany, therefore Austria is safe.”
Recently an order was issued to have the cafés closed at one o’clock
in the morning. It was not agreeable to the public, but they have
contrived a substitute for their _petits pains_ which is some slight
compensation.
“I shall return,” he added pensively--“I shall return with how much
regret to the indecent carnival that is Vienna!”
His impression of France was very different. He could not sufficiently
express his astonishment at the change that had come over the country.
The dignity of France, the quiet strength of France, the spiritual
confidence of France! In the army was only one apprehension: lest
they should not be upheld by the civilians in their determination to
fight to the very end. The churches were crowded; men and women have
alike returned to the faith of their fathers. There was no unseemly
merrymaking there, no unworthy attempt in café or theatre to forget the
agonizing struggle.
At a recent entertainment in a very poor quarter a pretty girl dressed
as France appeared arm-in-arm with an actor got up like a British
soldier, and there was immense applause; but when she started the tango
with her companion she was hissed off the stage.
As for Paris: “Tenez,” said our friend, in conclusion, “I will give you
a little instance. I was walking down the Rue de la Paix, when I heard
a woman laugh out loud. Everyone in the street turned round to look at
her.”
Of the thoughts of Germany what can be said? They need no pointing
out. They are written in blood and fire from end to end of Belgium,
and in a long stretch of once smiling France; in Servia, carried out
by Hungarians and Austrians, under German orders; in Poland. They are
written in the German Press for all the world to read: blasphemy,
brag, bluster, hysterical hatred, insanity of futile threat, shameless
asseveration of self-evident falsehood. “Do nations go mad?” an
American paper has asked. Germany presents the appalling spectacle of
a nation run to evil. It is not only the war party, the soldiery, the
press, the learned professors. It is the very population itself. The
soul of Germany is revealing its thoughts.
* * * * *
The lily-garden in the little Brussels by-street on the way to the Bois
de la Cambre, if it is still in existence, must have ceased blooming
before the Germans entered Brussels. Otherwise it is not likely that
it should have escaped the fury of destruction which seizes them at the
sight of anything pure and noble and beautiful.
“Consider the lilies.”
We know how the Uhlan officers deliberately rode backwards and forwards
over the blooming flower-beds in the great _Place_ upon the day of
their entrance march.
We know how they stabled their horses in the world-famous conservatories
of the Palace of Laecken--a custom they have practised at nearly
every château in the country; how in that orgy which will for ever
disgrace the name of the Duke of Brunswick the portrait of the young
Queen of the Belgians, that royal flower of courage and devotion, was
unspeakably insulted.
We know how whole regiments have trampled over straggling children in
the village streets--these little flower blossoms, as the Japanese call
them.
And those humble lilies of the cloister that have fallen into
sacrilegious grasp, we know how they have been considered; how Rheims,
with its hawthorn porch, blossoming in stone flower of all the
Christian shrines of all the world, stately lily of the days of faith,
has fared at the hand of the German.
“_Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint_,” says the Spirit of Evil in
Goethe’s “Faust.”
It has always seemed a marvellous definition; the negation of good, the
spirit that ever denies. But the demon of present-day Germany comes
from a deeper pit than Goethe’s intellectual mocking devil. It is the
spirit that forever destroys.
The struggle has not brutalized but spiritualized our men. Through
the appalling conditions in which they fight they reach out to the
mystic side of things. When they speak of death they call it “going
west.” It is the old, old Celtic thought of the Isle beyond the Sunset.
They “talk of God a great deal,” as the soldiers’ letters tell us.
The Irish Guards fell on their knees at Compiègne before making their
famous attack up the hill. As they charged, “our men crossed the plain,
hurrahing and singing, while many of them had a look of absolute joy
on their faces.” They have their visions. A soldier lying wounded and
helpless on the field and gazing agonized on the breach in our line,
saw the Germans rush and then fall back; and beheld St. George standing
in his armour in the gap; then heard the Lancastrians cry, as they
dashed on: “St. George for England!”
What yet more august revelation did he have, that dying French
sergeant, who, looking profoundly upon the surgeon who was ministering
to him, replied to his encouragement:
“Mon Major, je suis déjà avec Dieu,” and instantly expired.
Every regiment must have its emblem; the minds of the men turn
naturally to the symbolic.
“I’d like to look at the colours,” said a mortally wounded gunner to
his Captain.
“Look at the guns, my man, those are the gunners’ colours!”
And the boy was uplifted to look, till his eye glazed.
We do not take the colours into action now, but we know what the
Standard means to our Allies. It seems a pity that political revolution
should have displaced the ancient lilies of France. There is something
so grand in tradition. Dignity of noble ancestry is not confined to
man alone. Houses possess it, and lands, and surely nations. Are not
our soldiers to-day the heirs of the yeomen and bowmen of Agincourt?
“O God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts!” is the prayer on the
lips of all of us; and we feel through all, even as Harry the King,
the same proud confidence in the good blood that cannot lie. Shall not
those who stay at home “hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks”
of Mons, or Ypres, or--of those glories yet to come?
Thus, in a way, it seems to us that if France fights in her body under
the Tricolour, in her soul she is fighting under the Lilies. It is
the old France again, the France of the days of faith. In one of Joan
of Arc’s visions she saw Charlemagne and St. Louis kneeling before
the throne, pleading for the land they had loved and served. She who
carried the Oriflamme may now form the third in that shining company
and look down, perhaps, considering the lilies growing out of the
field of blood. Perhaps she may say: “Not Solomon in all his glory was
arrayed as one of these.”
V
DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN
“O Saul, it shall be
A face like my face that receives thee, a man like to me
Thou shalt love and be loved by for ever! A hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ
stand.”
ROBERT BROWNING.
_March._--We bought the small place on the Surrey highlands and
furnished it out of Rome; and set statues and cypresses and vases
overflowing with flowers about the quaint terraces that run down to
the valley; and we have a bit of Italy between pine-woods and wild
moorland. We have called it the Villino.
The idea started as a week-end cottage. Gradually, however, we came to
pay the flying visits to the London house and spend the most of our
time in the country. Since the war began we have settled altogether on
the span of earth which has become so endeared to us. Never was any
home established in such a spirit of lightheartedness.
The new property has been our toy; something to laugh at while we enjoy
it. It is absurd and apart and beloved and attractive; and though the
great shadow that rose in August overcast the brightness of the Villino
garden and all its prospects, we could yet look out upon the peace
and the fairness and take comfort therefrom; turn with relief to the
growing things and all the innocent interests that surround and centre
in a country life.
It never dawned upon us that the garden itself could become a point
of tragedy; that every pushing spike of bulb and every well-pruned
rose-tree would have their special pang for our hearts, yet so it is.
Never again shall we be able to look with the eyes of pure enjoyment on
terrace and border, rose-arch and woodland.
Adam, the kindly gardener of our special plot of earth, has been struck
down; hurled, by an inscrutable decree of Providence in the zenith of
his activities, from life to death.
He was as much a part of the Villino as we ourselves; a just and kindly
man, not yet forty; one of the handsomest of God’s creatures, and the
most gentle-hearted. We cannot see the meaning of such a blow; we can
only bow the head.
“Doesn’t it seem hard,” cried the daughter of the Villino, “that in
these days there should be one unnecessary widow!”
The last time the Signora saw him alive was about a week before the
tragedy. He had come into the funny little Roman drawing-room--all
faint gay tints and flamboyant Italian gilt carved wood--carrying a
large pot of arum lilies. He scarcely looked like an Englishman with
his dark, rich colouring and raven hair prematurely grey; though he was
so all-English, of England’s best, in his heart and mind.