For some months my friends had been benumbing the membranes of my two
ears with praises of the then newest literary pet, who exulted in a
name disagreeably suggestive of Death on a Pale Horse, Mr. H. Rider
Haggard, and I meekly assented to his greatness. They had insisted that
I read him, but this monstrous demand I had hitherto had the strength
to resist. But we all have our moments of weakness, so I squandered
twenty-five cents on the “Seaside” edition of the great man’s greatest
work, _King Solomon’s Mines_. On page 84 I found something that
interested me, something astronomical, showing how keenly the famous
author observes the commonest phenomena of nature. Turning down a leaf
and bearing the matter in mind, I read on. At page 97 I turned down
another leaf, and at page 112 a third. On these three pages are related
astronomical events occurring in Africa on the evening of June 2, the
evening of June 3, and at about midday June 4, respectively. Let us
summarize them by quotation: June 2 (p. 84): “The sun sunk and the
world was wreathed in shadows. But not for long, for see, in the east
there is a glow, then a bent edge of silver light, and at last the full
bow of the crescent moon peeps above the plain.”
June 3 (p. 97): “About 10 the full moon came up in splendor.”
June 4 (p. 112): “I glanced up at the sun and to my intense joy saw
that we had made no mistake. On the edge of its brilliant surface was a
faint rim of shadow.” Which grows to a total eclipse.
What else ensues I am unable to say. A writer who believes that the new
moon can rise in the east soon after sunset and the full moon at 10
o’clock; who thinks the second of these remarkable phenomena can occur
twenty-four hours after the first, and itself be followed some fourteen
hours later by an eclipse of the sun—such a man may be a gifted writer,
but I am not a gifted reader. I wash my mind of him, and sentence him
to the good opinion of his admirers.
Another sinner on my list of authors ignorant in respect of the moon’s
movements and phases is William Black. In the third chapter of his
_Princess of Thule_ is the following sentence: “Was Sheila about
to sing in this clear strange twilight while they sat there and watched
the yellow moon come up behind the Southern hills?” The spectacle
of the moon rising in the south is one which Heaven has denied to
all except the characters in Black’s novels. It is not surprising
that Sheila “was about to sing”: she must have felt something of the
exultation which swells the bosom of that favored child of Destiny, the
small boy who has crept in under the canvas when the menagerie people
are painting the tiger.
It may be borne in mind that Black’s south-rising moon came up during
the twilight—that is to say, shortly after sunset. It would be,
therefore, nearly “half-full” to the eye of the terrestrial observer;
but referring to a later hour of the same evening Black says: “There
into the beautiful dome rose the golden _crescent_ of the moon,
warm in color as though it still retained the last rays of the sunset.”
Concerning the last clause of this astonishing sentence it may be asked
from what source Black supposed the moon’s light to be derived, or if
he regarded her as self-luminous. The truth probably is that he had no
definite ideas about the matter at all. He was in the same comfortable
mental state as the worthy countryman who, being asked what he thought
of total depravity, promptly replied that if it was in the Bible he was
in favor of it.
In dismissing Black I can not forbear to add that even if the moon
could rise in the south; even if rising in the south it should continue
rising into the dome when it should be setting; even if rising in
the south soon after sunset a half-moon, as it would necessarily be,
and continuing to rise into the dome when it should be setting, it
could dwindle to a crescent, it could not be of a warm color. The
crescent moon is as cold in color as a new dime—almost as cold as a
quarter-dollar. In a bench-show of astronomers I doubt if Black would
have been awarded a blue ribbon.
I have been reading a story by Mr. Edgar Saltus: “A Maid of Athens”—a
story which, like a forgotten candle, burns on well enough to the end
and then dies in its own grease. But that is not the point; I find this
passage:
“Beneath descending night, the sky was gold-barred and green. In the
east the moon glittered like a sickle of tin.”
I shall have to add Mr. Saltus to my company of authors with private
systems of astronomy. The imagination robust enough to conceive a
crescent moon in the east at nightfall might even claim a place in a
dime museum.
Spielhagan has his full moon on the horizon at midnight by the castle
clock.
But the novelists are not alone in their ignorance of what is before
their eyes all their blessed lives: the poets know no more than they.
In her _Songs of the Night-Watches_ Jean Ingelow compels “a
slender moon” to “float up from behind” a person looking at the sunset
sky, and afterward makes the full moon “behind some ruined roof swim
up” at daybreak. To rout out the moon so early and make it get up, when
it must have been up all night attending to its duty as a full moon of
orderly habits, is a trifle heartless. In “Daylight and Moonlight,”
Longfellow, who seems imperfectly to have known how the latter was
produced, tells of a time when at midday he saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white
As a schoolboy’s paper kite.
Now if it was sailing high at noon it must have been, as seen from
earth, nearly on a line with the sun—that is to say, but little more
than “new”—that is to say, invisible in the daytime. But that is not
the worst of this business. A new moon is not only invisible at noon,
but sets soon after sunset, and would give but little light if it did
not. Yet this unearthly observer after relating how night came on adds:
Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.
It is mournful to think that this popular poet lived out his long
serene life without anybody suspecting his condition, nor offering him
the comforts of an asylum.
I have found similar blunders in the poems of Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Schiller, Moore, Shelley, Tennyson and Bayard Taylor. Of course a poet
is entitled to any kind of universe that may best suit his purpose, and
if he could give us better poetry by making the moon rise “full-orbed”
in the northwest and set like a “tin sickle” in the zenith I should
go in for letting him have his fling. But I do not discern any gain
in “sweetness and light” from these despotic readjustments of the
relations among sun, earth and moon, and must set it all down to the
account of ignorance, which, in any degree and however excusable, is
not a thing to be admired. Concerning nothing is it more general, more
deep, more dark, more invincible, nor withal, more needless, than it is
with regard to movements and visible aspects of our satellite. How one
can have eyes and not know the pranks of the several heavenly bodies
is possibly obvious to Omniscience, but a finite mind cannot rightly
understand it.
We will suppose that our planet is without a satellite. The nights
are brilliant or starless, as the clouds may determine, but in all
the measureless reaches of space is no world having a visible disk,
with vicissitudes of light and shadow. One day a famous man of science
announces in the public prints a startling discovery. He has found an
orb, smaller than the earth but of considerable magnitude, moving in
such a direction and at such a rate of speed that at a stated time the
next year it will have approached our sphere so closely as to be caught
by its attractive power and held, a prisoner, wheeling round and round
in a vain endeavor to escape. He goes on to explain that the invisible
tether will be, astronomically speaking, but a stone’s throw in length:
the captive world will have in fact the astonishing propinquity of
only a quarter of a million miles! We shall be able to see, even with
unassisted eyes, the very mountains and valleys upon its surface,
while a glass of moderate power will show, not only these mountains
(many times higher than those of our own orb) with perfect definition,
their long black shadows projected upon the plains, but will reveal
the details of extinct craters wide enough to engulf a terrestrial
province, and how deep Heaven knows. Upon this strange new world, the
great man goes on to say, we shall be able to observe the mutations of
its day and night, tracing the lines of its dawn and sunset exactly as,
if we were there, we could observe the more rapid changes upon the body
of our own planet; and surely it would be worth something to stand away
from our spinning orb and take in all its visible vicissitudes in one
comprehensive view.
It is easy to see the effect of such an announcement, verified by
the apparition of the orb at the calculated place and time. All the
civilized nations would be in a ferment. The newspapers would be full
of the subject. Journalism would be conducted by the astronomers and
nothing but the coming orb would be talked of; many would go mad from
excitement. And when the celestial monster, moving aimless through
space, should swim into the earth’s attraction and go whirling in
its new orbit how we should study it, attentive to its every visible
aspect, alertly sensible to its changes and profoundly moved by the
desolate sublimity of its stupendous scenery. For a half of every lunar
month the churches, lyceums, theaters—all the places of instruction or
amusement where people now assemble by artificial light would close
at sunset and the whole population would take to the hills. Colleges,
societies and clubs would be founded for the new knowledge; every human
being, with opportunity and capacity, would become a specialist in
selenography and selenology—a lunar expert, devoted to his science.
Not to know all about the moon would be considered as discreditable as
illiteracy is considered now. Well, the moon we have always with us,
and not one man in a thousand nor one author in a hundred knows any
more about it than that it is frequently invisible and commonly not
round. On other subjects there is less ignorance: at least three in a
thousand know that the stars are not the same as the planets, though
two of the three are unable to say what is a planet and what is a star.
That immortal ass, “the average man,” sees with nothing but his eyes.
To him a planet or a star is only a point of light—a bright dot, a
golden fly-speck on “the sky.” He does not see it as a prodigious globe
swimming through the unthinkable depths of space. With only the heavens
for company the poor devil is bored. When out alone on a clear night
he wants to get himself home to his female and young and—unfailing
expedient of intellectual vacuity—go to bed. The glories and splendors
of the firmament are no more to him than a primrose was to Peter Bell.
Let us leave him snoring pigly in his blankets and turn to other
themes, not forgetting that he is our lawful ruler, nor permitted to
forget the insupportable effects of his ferocious rule.
1903.