"We saw neither sun nor moon,
But we heard the roaring of the sea."
This eternal "swowing of a flode" was the sound made by the circling
stream of Oceanus, as he turns on his bed, washing the base of the White
Rock, and the sands of the region of dreams. So we fleeted onwards till
we came to marvellous lofty gates of black adamant, that rose before us
like the steep side of a hill. On the left side of the gates we beheld a
fountain flowing from beneath the roots of a white cypress-tree, and to
this fountain my guide forbade me to draw near. "There is another
yonder," he said, pointing to the right hand, "a stream of still water
that issues from the Lake of Memory, and there are guards who keep that
stream from the lips of the profane. Go to them and speak thus: 'I am
the child of earth and of the starry sky, yet heavenly is my lineage, and
this yourselves know right well. But I am perishing with thirst, so give
me speedily of that still water which floweth forth of the mere of
Memory.' And they will give thee to drink of that spring divine, and
then shalt thou dwell with the heroes and the blessed." So I did as he
said, and went before the guardians of the water. Now they were veiled,
and their voices, when they answered me, seemed to come from far away.
"Thou comest to the pure, from the pure," they said, "and thou art a
suppliant of holy Persephone. Happy and most blessed art thou, advance
to the reward of the crown desirable, and be no longer mortal, but
divine." Then a darkness fell upon me, and lifted again like mist on the
hills, and we found ourselves in the most beautiful place that can be
conceived, a meadow of that short grass which grows on some shores beside
the sea. There were large spaces of fine and solid turf, but, where the
little streams flowed from the delicate-tinted distant mountains, there
were narrow valleys full of all the flowers of a southern spring. Here
grew narcissus and hyacinths, violets and creeping thyme, and crocus and
the crimson rose, as they blossomed on the day when the milk-white bull
carried off Europa. Beyond the level land beside the sea, between these
coasts and the far-off hills, was a steep lonely rock, on which were set
the shining temples of the Grecian faith. The blue seas that begirt the
coasts were narrow, and ran like rivers between many islands not less
fair than the country to which we were come, while other isles, each with
its crest of clear-cut hills, lay westward, far away, and receding into
the place of the sunset. Then I recognized the Fortunate Islands spoken
of by Pindar, and the paradise of the Greeks. "Round these the ocean
breezes blow and golden flowers are glowing, some from the land on trees
of splendour, and some the water feedeth, with wreaths whereof they
entwine their hands." {124} And, as Pindar says again, "for them shineth
below the strength of the sun, while in our world it is night, and the
space of crimson-flowered meadows before their city is full of the shade
of frankincense-trees and of fruits of gold. And some in horses and in
bodily feats, and some in dice, and some in harp-playing have delight,
and among them thriveth all fair flowering bliss; and fragrance ever
streameth through the lovely land as they mingle incense of every kind
upon the altars of the gods." In this beautiful country I took great
delight, now watching the young men leaping and running (and they were
marvellously good over a short distance of ground), now sitting in a
chariot whereto were harnessed steeds swifter than the wind, like those
that, Homer says, "the gods gave, glorious gifts, to Peleus." And the
people, young and old, received me kindly, welcoming me in their Greek
speech, which was like the sound of music. And because I had ever been a
lover of them and of their tongue, my ears were opened to understand
them, though they spoke not Greek as we read it. Now when I had beheld
many of the marvels of the Fortunate Islands, and had sat at meat with
those kind hosts (though I only made semblance to eat of what they placed
before me), and had seen the face of Rhadamanthus of the golden hair, who
is the lord of that country, my friends told me that there was come among
them one of my own nation who seemed most sad and sorrowful, and they
could make him no mirth. Then they carried me to a house in a grove, and
all around it a fair garden, and a well in the midst.
Now stooping over the well, that he might have sight of his own face, was
a most wretched man. He was pale and very meagre; he had black rings
under his eyes, and his hair was long, limp, and greasy, falling over his
shoulders. He was clad somewhat after the manner of the old Greeks, but
his raiment was wofully ill-made and ill-girt upon him, nor did he ever
seem at his ease. As soon as I beheld his sallow face I knew him for one
I had seen and mocked at in the world of the living. He was a certain
Figgins, and he had been honestly apprenticed to a photographer; but,
being a weak and vain young fellow, he had picked up modern notions about
art, the nude, plasticity, and the like, in the photographer's workroom,
whereby he became a weariness to the photographer and to them that sat
unto him. Being dismissed from his honest employment, this chitterling
must needs become a model to some painters that were near as ignorant as
himself. They talked to him about the Greeks, about the antique, about
Paganism, about the Renaissance, till they made him as much the child of
folly as themselves. And they painted him as Antinous, as Eros, as
Sleep, and I know not what, but whatever name they called him he was
always the same lank-haired, dowdy, effeminate, pasty-faced
photographer's young man. Then he must needs take to writing poems all
about Greece, and the free ways of the old Greeks, and Lais, and Phryne,
and therein he made "Aeolus" rhyme to "control us." For of Greek this
fellow knew not a word, and any Greek that met him had called him a
[Greek text], and bidden him begone to the crows for a cursed fellow, and
one that made false quantities in every Greek name he uttered. But his
little poems were much liked by young men of his own sort, and by some of
the young women. Now death had come to Figgins, and here he was in the
Fortunate Islands, the very paradise of those Greeks about whom he had
always been prating while he was alive. And yet he was not happy. A
little lyre lay beside him in the grass, and now and again he twanged on
it dolorously, and he tried to weave himself garlands from the flowers
that grew around him; but he knew not the art, and ever and anon he felt
for his button-hole, wherein to stick a lily or the like. But he had no
button-hole. Then he would look at himself in the well, and yawn and
wish himself back in his friends' studios in London. I almost pitied the
wretch, and, going up to him, I asked him how he did. He said he had
never been more wretched. "Why," I asked, "was your mouth not always
full of the 'Greek spirit,' and did you not mock the Christians and their
religion? And, as to their heaven, did you not say that it was a tedious
place, full of pious old ladies and Philistines? And are you not got to
the paradise of the Greeks? What, then, ails you with your lot?" "Sir,"
said he, "to be plain with you, I do not understand a word these fellows
about me say, and I feel as I did the first time I went to Paris, before
I knew enough French to read the Master's poems. {128} Again, every one
here is mirthful and gay, and there is no man with a divinely passionate
potentiality of pain. When I first came here they were always asking me
to run with them or jump against them, and one fellow insisted I should
box with him, and hurt me very much. My potentiality of pain is
considerable. Or they would have me drive with them in these dangerous
open chariots,--me, that never rode in a hansom cab without feeling
nervous. And after dinner they sing songs of which I do not catch the
meaning of one syllable, and the music is like nothing I ever heard in my
life. And they are all abominably active and healthy. And such of their
poets as I admired--in Bohn's cribs, of course--the poets of the
Anthology, are not here at all, and the poets who are here are tremendous
proud toffs" (here Figgins relapsed into his natural style as it was
before he became a Neopagan poet), "and won't say a word to a cove. And
I'm sick of the Greeks, and the Fortunate Islands are a blooming fraud,
and oh, for paradise, give me Pentonville." With these words, perhaps
the only unaffected expression of genuine sentiment poor Figgins had ever
uttered, he relapsed into a gloomy silence. I advised him to cultivate
the society of the authors whose selected works are in the Greek
Delectus, and to try to make friends with Xenophon, whose Greek is about
as easy as that of any ancient. But I fear that Figgins, like the Rev.
Peter McSnadden, is really suffering a kind of punishment in the disguise
of a reward, and all through having accidentally found his way into what
he foolishly thought would be the right paradise for him.
Now I might have stayed long in the Fortunate Islands, yet, beautiful as
they were, I ever felt like Odysseus in the island of fair Circe. The
country was lovely and the land desirable, but the Christian souls were
not there without whom heaven itself were no paradise to me. And it
chanced that as we sat at the feast a maiden came to me with a
pomegranate on a plate of silver, and said, "Sir, thou hast now been here
for the course of a whole moon, yet hast neither eaten nor drunk of what
is set before thee. Now it is commanded that thou must taste if it were
but a seed of this pomegranate, or depart from among us." Then, making
such excuses as I might, I was constrained to refuse to eat, for no soul
can leave a paradise wherein it has tasted food. And as I spoke the
walls of the fair hall wherein we sat, which were painted with the
effigies of them that fell at Thermopylae and in Arcadion, wavered and
grew dim, and darkness came upon me.
The first of my senses which returned to me was that of smell, and I
seemed almost drowned in the spicy perfumes of Araby. Then my eyes
became aware of a green soft fluttering, as of the leaves of a great
forest, but quickly I perceived that the fluttering was caused by the
green scarfs of a countless multitude of women. They were "fine women"
in the popular sense of the term, and were of the school of beauty
admired by the Faithful of Islam, and known to Mr. Bailey, in "Martin
Chuzzlewit," as "crumby." These fond attendant nymphs carried me into
gardens twain, in each two gushing springs, in each fruit, and palms, and
pomegranates. There were the blessed reclining, precisely as the Prophet
has declared, "on beds the linings whereof are brocade, and the fruit of
the two gardens within reach to cull." There also were the "maids of
modest glances," previously indifferent to the wooing "of man or ginn."
"Bright and large-eyed maids kept in their tents, reclining on green
cushions and beautiful carpets. About the golden couches went eternal
youths with goblets and ewers, and a cup of flowing wine. No headache
shall they feel therefrom," says the compassionate Prophet, "nor shall
their wits be dimmed." And all that land is misty and fragrant with the
perfume of the softest Latakia, and the gardens are musical with the
bubbling of countless narghiles; and I must say that to the Christian
soul which enters that paradise the whole place has, certainly, a rather
curious air, as of a highly transcendental Cremorne. There could be no
doubt, however, that the Faithful were enjoying themselves
amazingly--"right lucky fellows," as we read in the new translation of
the Koran. Yet even here all was not peace and pleasantness, for I heard
my name called by a small voice, in a tone of patient subdued
querulousness. Looking hastily round, I with some difficulty recognized,
in a green turban and silk gown to match, my old college tutor and
professor of Arabic. Poor old Jones had been the best and the most shy
of university men. As there was never any undergraduate in his time (it
is different now) who wished to learn Arabic, his place had been a
sinecure, and he had chiefly devoted his leisure to "drawing" pupils who
were too late for college chapel. The sight of a lady of his
acquaintance in the streets had at all times been alarming enough to
drive him into a shop or up a lane, and he had not survived the creation
of the first batch of married fellows. How he had got into this
thoroughly wrong paradise was a mystery which he made no attempt to
explain. "A nice place this, eh?" he said to me. "Nice gardens; remind
me of Magdalene a good deal. It seems, however, to be decidedly rather
gay just now; don't you think so? Commemoration week, perhaps. A great
many young ladies up, certainly; a good deal of cup drunk in the gardens
too. I always did prefer to go down in Commemoration week, myself; never
was a dancing man. There is a great deal of dancing here, but the young
ladies dance alone, rather like what is called the ballet, I believe, at
the opera. I must say the young persons are a little forward; a little
embarrassing it is to be alone here, especially as I have forgotten a
good deal of my Arabic. Don't you think, my dear fellow, you and I could
manage to give them the slip? Run away from them, eh?" He uttered a
timid little chuckle, and at that moment an innumerable host of houris
began a ballet d'action illustrative of a series of events in the career
of the Prophet. It was obvious that my poor uncomplaining old friend was
really very miserable. The "thornless loto trees" were all thorny to
him, and the "tal'h trees with piles of fruit, the outspread shade, and
water outpoured" could not comfort him in his really very natural
shyness. A happy thought occurred to me. In early and credulous youth I
had studied the works of Cornelius Agrippa and Petrus de Abano. Their
lessons, which had not hitherto been of much practical service, recurred
to my mind. Stooping down, I drew a circle round myself and my old
friend in the fragrant white blossoms which were strewn so thick that
they quite hid the grass. This circle I fortified by the usual signs
employed, as Benvenuto Cellini tells us, in the conjuration of evil
spirits. I then proceeded to utter one of the common forms of exorcism.
Instantly the myriad houris assumed the forms of irritated demons; the
smoke from the uncounted narghiles burned thick and black; the cries of
the frustrated ginns, who were no better than they should be, rang wildly
in our ears; the palm-trees shook beneath a mighty wind; the distant
summits of the minarets rocked and wavered, and, with a tremendous crash,
the paradise of the Faithful disappeared.
* * * * *
As I rang the bell, and requested the club-waiter to carry away the
smoking fragments of the moderator-lamp which I had accidentally knocked
over in awaking from my nightmare, I reflected on the vanity of men and
the unsubstantial character of the future homes that their fancy has
fashioned. The ideal heavens of modern poets and novelists, and of
ancient priests, come no nearer than the drugged dreams of the angekok
and the biraark of Greenland and Queensland to that rest and peace
whereof it has not entered into the mind of man to conceive. To the
wrong man each of our pictured heavens would be a hell, and even to the
appropriate devotee each would become a tedious purgatory.