have one glimpse into the future. Supposing some good genius could say,
"If you proceed as you are now doing, your position in your fortieth
year will be this!" what a horror would strike through many among us,
and how desperately each would strive to take advantage of that kindly
"If." But there is no uplifting of the veil; and we must all be guided
by the experience of the past and not by knowledge of the future. I
observe that those who score the greatest number of lost days on the
world's calendar always do so under the impression that they are
enjoying pleasure. An acute observer whose soul is not vitiated by
cynicism may find a kind of melancholy pastime in observing the hopeless
attempts of these poor son's to persuade themselves that they are making
the best of existence. I would not for worlds seem for a moment to
disparage pleasure, because I hold that a human being who lives without
joy must either become bad, mad, or wretched. But I speak of those who
cheat themselves into thinking that every hour which passes swiftly to
eternity is wisely spent. Observe the parties of young men who play at
cards even in the railway-train morning after morning and evening after
evening. The time of the journey might be spent in useful and happy
thought; it is passed in rapid and feverish speculation. There is no
question of reviving the brain; it is not recreation that is gained, but
distraction, and the brain, instead of being ready to concentrate its
power upon work, is enfeebled and rendered vague and flighty. Supposing
a youth spends but one hour per day in handling pieces of pasteboard and
trying to win his neighbour's money, then in four weeks he has wasted
twenty-four hours, and in one year he wastes thirteen days. Is there
any gain--mental, muscular, or nervous--from this unhappy pursuit? Not
one jot or tittle. Supposing that a weary man of science leaves his
laboratory in the evening, and wends his way homeward, the very thought
of the game of whist which awaits him is a kind of recuperative agency.
Whist is the true recreation of the man of science; and the astronomer
or mathematician or biologist goes calmly to rest with his mind at ease
after he has enjoyed his rubber. The most industrious of living
novelists and the most prolific of all modern writers was asked--so he
tells us in his autobiography--"How is it that your thirtieth book is
fresher than your first?" He made answer, "I eat very well, keep regular
hours, sleep ten hours a day, and never miss my three hours a day at
whist." These men of great brain derive benefit from their harmless
contests; the young men in the railway-carriages only waste brain-tissue
which they do nothing-to repair. A very beautiful writer who was an
extremely lazy man pictures his own lost days as arising before him and
saying, "I am thy Self; say, what didst thou to me?" That question may
well be asked by all the host of murdered days, but especially may it be
asked of those foolish beings who try to gain distinction by recklessly
losing money on the Turf or in gambling-saloons. A heart of stone might
be moved by seeing the precious time that is hurled to the limbo of lost
days in the vulgar pandemonium by the racecourse. A nice lad comes out
into the world after attaining his majority, and plunges into that
vortex of Hades. Reckon up the good he gets there. Does he gain health?
Alas, think of the crowd, the rank odours, the straining heart-beats!
Does he hear any wisdom? Listen to the hideous badinage, the wild bursts
of foul language from the betting-men, the mean, cunning drivel of the
gamblers, the shrill laughter of the horsey and unsexed women? Does the
youth make friends? Ah, yes! He makes friends who will cheat him at
betting, cheat him at horse-dealing, cheat him at gambling when the
orgies of the course are over, borrow money as long as he will lend, and
throw him over when he has parted with his last penny and his last rag
of self-respect. Those who can carry their minds back for twenty years
must remember the foolish young nobleman who sold a splendid estate to
pay the yelling vulgarians of the betting-ring. They cheered him when he
all but beggared himself; they hissed him when he failed once to pay.
With lost health, lost patrimony, lost hopes, lost self-respect, he sank
amid the rough billows of life's sea, and only one human creature was
there to aid him when the great last wave swept over him. Lost
days--lost days! Youths who are going to ruin now amid the plaudits of
those who live upon them might surely take warning: but they do not, and
their bones will soon bleach on the mound whereon those of all other
wasters of days have been thrown. When I think of the lost days and the
lost lives of which I have cognizance, then it seems as though I were
gazing on some vast charnel-house, some ghoul-haunted place of skulls.
Memories of those who trifled with life come to me, and their very faces
flash past with looks of tragic significance. By their own fault they
were ruined; they were shut out of the garden of their gifts; their city
of hope was ploughed and salted. The past cannot be retrieved, let
canting optimists talk as they choose; what has been has been, and the
effects will last and spread until the earth shall pass away. Our acts
our angels are, or good or ill; our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
The thing done lasts for eternity; the lightest act of man or woman has
incalculably vast results. So it is madness to say that the lost days
can be retrieved. They cannot! But by timely wisdom we may save the days
and make them beneficent and fruitful in the future. Watch those wild
lads who are sowing in wine what they reap in headache and degradation.
Night after night they laugh with senseless glee, night after night
inanities which pass for wit are poured forth; and daily the nerve and
strength of each carouser grow weaker. Can you retrieve those nights?
Never! But you may take the most shattered of the crew and assure him
that all is not irretrievably lost; his weakened nerve may be steadied,
his deranged gastric functions may gradually grow more healthy, his
distorted views of life may pass away. So far, so good; but never try to
persuade any one that the past may be repaired, for that delusion is the
very source and spring of the foul stream of lost days. Once impress
upon any teachable creature the stern fact that a lost day is lost for
ever, once make that belief part of his being, and then he will strive
to cheat death. Perhaps it may be thought that I take sombre views of
life. No; I see that the world may be made a place of pleasure, but only
by learning and obeying the inexorable laws which govern all things,
from the fall of a seed of grass to the moving of the miraculous brain
of man.
_April, 1888._
_MIDSUMMER DAYS AND MIDSUMMER NIGHTS._
Soon, with pomp of golden days and silver nights, the dying Summer will
wave the world farewell; but the precious time is still with us, and we
cherish the glad moments gleefully. When the dawn swirls up in the
splendid sky, it is as though one gladsome procession of hours had begun
to move. The breeze sighs cool and low, the trees rustle with vast
whisperings, and the conquering sun shoots his level volleys from rim to
rim of the world. The birds are very, very busy, and they take no
thought of the grim time coming, when the iron ground will be swept by
chill winds and the sad trees will quiver mournfully in the biting air.
A riot of life is in progress, and it seems as if the sense of pure joy
banished the very thought of pain and foreboding from all living things.
The sleepy afternoons glide away, the sun droops, and the quiet,
coloured evening falls solemnly. Then comes the hush of the huge and
thoughtful night; the wan stars wash the dust with silver, and the brave
day is over. Alas, for those who are pent in populous cities throughout
this glorious time! We who are out in the free air may cast a kindly
thought on the fate of those to whom "holiday" must be as a word in an
unknown tongue. Some of us are happy amid the shade of mighty hills:
some of us fare toward the Land of the Midnight Sun, where the golden
light steeps all the air by night as well as day; some of us rest beside
the sea, where the loud wind, large and free, blows the long surges out
in sounding bars and thrills us with fresh fierce pleasure; some of us
are able to wander in glowing lanes where the tender roses star the
hedges and the murmur of innumerable bees falls softly on the senses.
Let us thankfully take the good that is vouchsafed to us, and let those
of us who can lend a helping hand do something towards giving the poor
and needy a brief taste of the happiness that we freely enjoy.
I do not want to dwell on ugly thoughts; and yet it seems selfish to
refrain from speaking of the fate of the poor who are packed in crowded
quarters during this bright holiday season. For them the midsummer days
and midsummer nights are a term of tribulation. The hot street reeks
with pungent odours, the faint airs that wander in the scorching alleys
at noonday strike on the fevered face like wafts from some furnace, and
the cruel nights are hard to endure save when a cool shower has fallen.
If you wander in London byways, you find that the people are fairly
driven from their houses after a blistering summer day, and they sit in
the streets till early morning. They are not at all depressed; on the
contrary, the dark hours are passed in reckless merriment, and I have
often known the men to rest quite contentedly on the pavement till the
dawn came and the time of departure for labour was near. Even the young
children remain out of doors, and their shrill treble mingles with the
coarse rattle of noisy choruses. Some of those cheery youngsters have
an outing in the hopping season, and they come back bronzed and healthy;
but most of them have to be satisfied with one day at the most amid the
fields and trees. I have spoken of London; but the case of those who
dwell in the black manufacturing cities is even worse. What is Oldham
like on a blistering midsummer day? What are Hanley and St. Helen's and
the lower parts of Manchester like? The air is charged with dust, and
the acrid, rasping fumes from the chimneys seem to acquire a malignant
power over men and brain. Toil goes steadily on, and the working-folk
certainly have the advantage of starting in the bright morning hours,
before the air has become befouled; but, as the sun gains strength, and
the close air of the unlovely streets is heated, then the torment to be
endured is severe. In Oldham and many other Lancashire towns a most
admirable custom prevails. Large numbers of people club their money
during the year and establish a holiday-fund; they migrate wholesale in
the summertime, and have a merry holiday far away from the crush of the
pavements and the dreary lines of ugly houses. A wise and beneficent
custom is this, and the man who first devised it deserves a monument. I
congratulate the troops of toilers who share my own pleasure; but, alas,
how many honest folk in those awful Midland places will pant and sweat
and suffer amid grime and heat while the glad months are passing! Good
men who might be happy even in the free spaces of the Far West, fair
women who need only rest and pure air to enable them to bloom in beauty,
little children who peak and pine, are all crammed within the odious
precincts of the towns which Cobbett hated; and the merry stretches of
the sea, the billowy roll of the downs, the peace of soft days, are not
for them. Only last year I looked on a stretch of interminable brown
sand, hard and smooth and broad, with the ocean perpetually rolling in
upon it with slow-measured sweep, with rustle and hiss and foam, and
many a thump as of low bass drums. There before me was Whitman's very
vision, and in the keen mystic joy of the moment I could not help
thinking sadly of one dreadful alley where lately I had been. It seemed
so sad that the folk of the alley could not share my pleasure; and the
murmur of vain regrets came to the soul even amid the triumphant clamour
of the free wind. Poor cramped townsfolk, hard is your fate! It is hard;
but I can see no good in repining over their fortune if we aid them as
far as we can; rather let us speak of the bright time that comes for the
toilers who are able to escape from the burning streets.
The mathematicians and such-like dry personages confine midsummer to one
day in June; but we who are untrammelled by science know a great deal
better. For us midsummer lasts till August is half over, and we utterly
refuse to trouble ourselves about equinoxes and solstices and
trivialities of that kind. For us it is midsummer while the sun is warm,
while the trees hold their green, while the dancing waves fling their
blossoms of foam under the darting rays that dazzle us, while the sacred
night is soft and warm and the cool airs are wafted like sounds of
blessings spoken in the scented darkness. For us the solstice is
abolished, and we sturdily refuse to give up our midsummer till the
first gleam of yellow comes on the leaves. We are not all lucky enough
to see the leagues upon leagues of overpowering colour as the sun comes
up on the Alps; we cannot all rest in the glittering seclusion of
Norwegian fiords; but most of us, in our modest way, can enjoy our
extravagantly prolonged midsummer beside the shore of our British
waters. Spring is the time for hope; our midsummer is the time for
ripened joy, for healthful rest; and we are satisfied with the beaches
and cliffs that are hallowed by many memories--we are satisfied with
simple copses and level fields. They say that spring is the poet's
season; but we know better. Spring is all very well for those who have
constant leisure; it is good to watch the gradual bursting of early
buds; it is good to hear the thrush chant his even-song of love; it is
good to rest the eye on the glorious clouds of bloom that seem to float
in the orchards. But the midsummer, the gallant midsummer, pranked in
manifold splendours, is the true season of poetry for the toilers. The
birds of passage who are now crowding out of the towns have had little
pleasure in the spring, and their blissful days are only now beginning.
What is it to them that the seaside landlady crouches awaiting her prey?
What is it to them that 'Arry is preparing to make night hideous? They
are bound for their rest, and the surcease of toil is the only thing
that suggests poetry to them. Spring the season for poets! We wipe away
that treasonable suggestion just as we have wiped out the solstice. We
holiday makers are not going to be tyrannized over by literary and
scientific persons, and we insist on taking our own way. Our blood beats
fully only at this season, and not even the extortioners' bills can
daunt us. Let us break into poetry and flout the maudlin enthusiasts who
prate of spring.
With a ripple of leaves and a twinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
The dusks grow vast in a purple haze,
While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise--
Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
* * * * *
The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly way,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers, murmurous, linger and gaze--
Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
* * * * *
There's a swagger of bells from the trampling teams,
Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,
The rich ripe rose as with incense steams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
A soul from the honeysuckle strays,
And the nightingale, as from prophet heights,
Speaks to the Earth of her million Mays--
Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
And it's oh for my Dear and the charm that stays--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
And it's oh for my Love and the dark that plights--
Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
There is a burst for you! And we will let the poets of spring, with
their lambkins and their catkins and the rest, match this poem of
William Henley's if they can. The royal months are ours, and we love the
reign of the rose.
When the burnished tints of bronze shine on the brackens, and the
night-wind blows with a chilly moan from the fields of darkness, we
shall have precious days to remember, and, ah, when the nights are long,
and the churlish Winter lays his fell finger on stream and grass and
tree, we shall be haunted by jolly memories! Will the memories be wholly
pleasant? Perchance, when the curtains are drawn and the lamp burns
softly, we may read of bright and beautiful things. Out of doors the war
of the winter fills the roaring darkness. It may be that
Hoarsely across the iron ground
The icy wind goes roaring past,
The powdery wreaths go whirling round
Dancing a measure to the blast.
The hideous sky droops darkly down
In brooding swathes of misty gloom,
And seems to wrap the fated town
In shadows of remorseless doom.
Then some of us may find a magic phrase of Keats's, or Thomas Hardy's,
or Black's, or Dickens's, that recalls the lovely past from the dead.
Many times I have had that experience. Once, after spending the long and
glorious summer amid the weird subdued beauty of a wide heath, I
returned to the great city. It had been a pleasant sojourn, though I had
had no company save a collie and one or two terriers. At evening the
dogs liked their ramble, and we all loved to stay out until the pouring
light of the moon shone on billowy mists and heath-clad knolls. The
faint rustling of the heath grew to a wide murmur, the little bells
seemed to chime with notes heard only by the innermost spirit, and the
gliding dogs were like strange creatures from some shadowy underworld.
At times a pheasant would rise and whirl like a rocket from hillock to
hollow, and about midnight a rapturous concert began. On one line of
trees a colony of nightingales had established themselves near the heart
of the waste. First came the low inquiry from the leader; then two or
three low twittering answers; then the one long note that lays hold of
the nerves and makes the whole being quiver; and then--ah, the passion,
the pain, the unutterable delight of the heavenly jargoning when the
whole of the little choir begin their magnificent rivalry! The thought
of death is gone, the wild and poignant issues of life are softened, and
the pulses beat thickly amid the blinding sweetness of the music. He who
has not heard the nightingale has not lived. Far off the sea called low
through the mist, and the long path of the moon ran toward the bright
horizon; the ships stole in shadow and shine over the glossy ripples,
and swung away to north and south till they faded in wreaths of delicate
darkness. Dominating the whole scene of beauty, there was the vast and
subtle mystery of the heath that awed the soul even when the rapture was
at its keenest. Time passed away, and on one savage night I read Thomas
Hardy's unparalleled description of the majestic waste in "The Return of
the Native." That superb piece of English is above praise--indeed
praise, as applied to it, is half an impertinence; it is great as
Shakespeare, great almost as Nature--one of the finest poems in our
language. As I read with awe the quiet inevitable sentences, the vision
of my own heath rose, and the memory filled me with a sudden joy.
I know that the hour of darkness ever dogs our delight, and the shadow
of approaching darkness and toil might affront me even now, if I were
ungrateful; but I live for the present only. Let grave persons talk
about the grand achievements and discoveries that have made this age or
that age illustrious; I hold that holidays are the noblest invention of
the human mind, and, if any philosopher wants to argue the matter, I
flee from his presence, and luxuriate on the yellow sands or amid the
keen kisses of the salty waves. I own that Newton's discoveries were
meritorious, and I willingly applaud Mr. George Stephenson, through
whose ingenuity we are now whisked to our places of rest with the
swiftness of an eagle's flight. Nevertheless I contend that holidays are
the crowning device of modern thought, and I hold that no thesis can be
so easily proven as mine. How did our grandfathers take holiday? Alas,
the luxury was reserved for the great lords who scoured over the
Continent, and for the pursy cits who crawled down to Brighthelmstone!
The ordinary Londoner was obliged to endure agonies on board a stuffy
Margate hoy, while the people in Northern towns never thought of taking
a holiday at all. The marvellous cures wrought by Doctor Ozone were not
then known, and the science of holiday-making was in its infancy. The
wisdom of our ancestors was decidedly at fault in this matter, and the
gout and dyspepsia from which they suffered served them right. Read
volumes of old memoirs, and you will find that our forefathers, who are
supposed to have been so merry and healthy, suffered from all the ills
which grumblers ascribe to struggling civilization. They did not know
how to extract pleasure from their midsummer days and midsummer nights;
we do, and we are all the better for the grand modern discovery.
Seriously, it is a good thing that we have learned the value of leisure,
and, for my own part, I regard the rushing yearly exodus from London,
Liverpool, Birmingham, with serene satisfaction. It is a pity that so
many English folk persist in leaving their own most lovely land when our
scenery and climate are at their best. In too many cases they wear
themselves with miserable and harassing journeys when they might be
placidly rejoicing in the sweet midsummer days at home. Snarling
aesthetes may say what they choose, but England is not half explored
yet, and anybody who takes the trouble may find out languorous nooks
where life seems always dreamy, and where the tired nerves and brain are
unhurt by a single disturbing influence. There are tiny villages dotted
here and there on the coast where the flaunting tourist never intrudes,
and where the British cad cares not to show his unlovable face. Still,
if people like the stuffy Continental hotel and the unspeakable devices
of the wily Swiss, they must take their choice. I prefer beloved
England; but I wish all joy to those who go far afield.
_June, 1886._
_DANDIES_.
Perhaps there is no individual of all our race who is quite insensible
to the pleasures of what children call "dressing-up." Even the cynic,
the man who defiantly wears old and queer clothes, is merely suffering
from a perversion of that animal instinct which causes the peacock to
swagger in the sun and flaunt the splendour of his train, the instinct
that makes the tiger-moth show the magnificence of his damask wing, and
also makes the lion erect the horrors of his cloudy mane and paw proudly
before his tawny mate. We are all alike in essentials, and Diogenes with
his dirty clouts was only a perverted brother of Prince Florizel with
his peach-coloured coat and snowy ruffles. I intend to handle the
subject of dandies and their nature from a deeply philosophic
starting-point, for, like Carlyle, I recognize the vast significance of
the questions involved in the philosophy of clothes. Let no flippant
individual venture on a jeer, for I am in dead earnest. A mocking critic
may point to the Bond Street lounger and ask, "What are the net use and
purport of that being's existence? Look at his suffering frame! His
linen stock almost decapitates him, his boots appear to hail from the
chambers of the Inquisition, every garment tends to confine his muscles
and dwarf his bodily powers; yet he chooses to smile in his torments
and pretends to luxuriate in life. Again, what are the net use and
purport of his existence?" I can only deprecate our critic's wrath by
going gravely to first principles. O savage and critical one, that
suffering youth of Bond Street is but exhibiting in flaunting action a
law that has influenced the breed of men since our forefathers dwelt in
caves or trees! Observe the conduct of the innocent and primitive beings
who dwell in sunny archipelagos far away to the South; they suffer in
the cause of fashion as the youth of the city promenade suffers. The
chief longing of the judicious savage is to shave, but the paucity of
metals and sharp instruments prevents him from indulging his longing
very frequently. When the joyous chance does come, the son of the forest
promptly rises to the occasion. No elderly gentleman whose feet are
studded with corns could bear the agony of patent leather boots in a
heated ballroom with grander stoicism than that exhibited by our savage
when he compasses the means of indulging in a thorough uncompromising
shave. The elderly man of the ballroom sees the rosy-fingered dawn
touching the sky into golden fretwork; he thinks of his cool white bed,
and then, by contrast, he thinks of his hot throbbing feet. Shooting
fires dart through his unhappy extremities, yet he smiles on and bears
his pain for his daughters' sake. But the elderly hero cannot be
compared with the ambitious exquisite of the Southern Seas, and we shall
prove this hypothesis. The careless voyager throws a beer-bottle
overboard, and that bottle drifts to the glad shore of a glittering
isle; the overjoyed savage bounds on the prize, and proceeds to announce
his good fortune to his bosom friend. Then the pleased cronies decide
that they will have a good, wholesome, thorough shave, and they will
turn all rivals green with unavailing envy. Solemnly those children of
nature go to a quiet place, and savage number one lies down while his
friend sits on his head; then with a shred of the broken bottle the
operator proceeds to rasp away. It is a great and grave function, and no
savage worthy the name of warrior would fulfil it in a slovenly way.
When the last scrape is given, and the stubbly irregular crop of
bristles stands up from a field of gore, then the operating brave lies
down, and his scarified friend sits on _his_ head. These sweet and
satisfying idyllic scenes are enacted whenever a bottle comes ashore,
and the broken pieces of the receptacles that lately held foaming Bass
or glistening Hochheimer are used until their edge gives way, to the
great contentment of true untutored dandies. The Bond Street man is at
one end of the scale, the uncompromising heathen barber at the other;
but the same principles actuate both.
The Maori is even more courageous in his attempts to secure a true
decorative exterior, for he carves the surface of his manly frame into
deep meandering channels until he resembles a walking advertisement of
crochet-patterns for ladies. Dire is his suffering, long is the time of
healing; but, when he can appear among his friends with a staring blue
serpent coiled round his body from the neck to the ankle, when the rude
figure of the bounding wallaby ornaments his noble chest, he feels that
all his pain was worth enduring and that life is indeed worth living.
The primitive dandy of Central Africa submits himself to the magician of
the tribe, and has his front teeth knocked out with joy; the Ashantee
or the Masai has his teeth filed to sharp points--and each painful
process enables the victim to pose as a leader of fashion in the tribe.
As the race rises higher, the refinements of dandyism become more and
more complex, but the ruling motive remains the same, and the Macaroni,
the Corinthian, the Incroyable, the swell, the dude--nay, even the
common toff--are all mysteriously stirred by the same instinct which
prompts the festive Papuan to bore holes in his innocent nose. Who then
shall sneer at the dandy? Does he not fulfil a law of our nature? Let us
rather regard him with toleration, or even with some slight modicum of
reverence. Solemn historians affect to smile at the gaudy knights of the
second Richard's Court, who wore the points of their shoes tied round
their waists; they even ridicule the tight, choking, padded coats worn
by George IV., that pattern father of his people; but I see in the
stumbling courtier and the half-asphyxiated wearer of the padded
Petersham coat two beings who act under the demands of inexorable law.
Our great modern sage brooded in loneliness for some six years over the
moving problem of dandyism, and we have the results of his meditations
in "Sartor Resartus." We have an uneasy sense that he may be making fun
of us--in fact, we are almost sure that he is; for, if you look at his
summary of the doctrines put forth in "Pelham," you can hardly fail to
detect a kind of sub-acid sneer. Instead of being impressed by the
dainty musings of the learned Bulwer, that grim vulturine sage chose to
curl his fierce lips and turn the whole thing to a laughing-stock. We
must at once get to that summary of what the great Thomas calls
"Dandiacal doctrine," and then just thinkers may draw their own
conclusions.
Articles of Faith.--1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about
them; at the same time wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. 2.
The collar is a very important point; it should be low behind, and
slightly rolled. 3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate
taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. 4. There is
safety in a swallowtail. 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere
more finely developed than in his rings. 6. It is permitted to mankind,
under certain restrictions, to wear white waistcoats. 7. The trousers
must be exceedingly tight across the hips.
Then the sage observes, "All which propositions I for the present
content myself with modestly, but peremptorily and irrevocably,
denying." Wicked Scotchman, rugged chip of the Hartz rock, your seven
articles of the Whole Duty of the Dandy are evidently solemn fooling!
You despised Lytton in your heart, and you thought that because you wore
a ragged duffel coat in gay Hyde Park you had a right to despise the
human ephemera who appeared in inspiriting splendour. I have often
laughed at your solemn enumeration of childish maxims, but I am not
quite sure that you were altogether right in sneering.