this word "humour" has survived in modern medicine, to be applied only
to the vitreous fluid of the eye? For humour is the medium through
which all the phenomena of human intercourse may be witnessed, and for
those normal minds that possess it, tints this world with a rare
colour--like that of the mysterious ultra-violet rays of the spectrum.
And indeed, to push further into modern science and speculation, perhaps
this ray does not undulate, but shoots forth undeviating as Truth
itself, like that from the Cathode Pole. Or, does it not strike our
mental retina from some secret Fourth Direction?
But this is mere verbiage; similes, flattering to the elect, but
unconvincing to the uninitiate. Yet, as I am resolved that humour is
essentially a point of view, I would have a try at proselytizing for the
doctrine. For here is a religion ready made to my hand; I have but to
raise my voice and become its prophet. The seeds are all sown, the
Fraternity broods, hidden in hidden Chapters, guarding the Grand Hailing
Sign; who knows but that a spark might not touch off this seasoned fuel,
and the flame carry everything before it. O my readers, I give you the
Philosophy of Mirth, the Cult of Laughter! Yet it is an esoteric faith,
mind you, unattainable by the multitude. Not of the "Te-he! Papa's
dead!" school, nor of the giggling punster's are its devotees. No comic
weekly shall be its organ. It must be hymned not by the hoarse guffaw,
but in the quiet inward smile--and for its ritual, I submit the
invisible humour of the Commonplace. O Paradox!
Brethren, from this flimsy pulpit, I assert with sincerity, that
everything on two legs (and most on four) sleeping or awake, bow-legged
or knock-kneed, has its humorous aspect. The curtain never falls on the
diversion. You will tell me, no doubt, that here I ride too hard.
Adam, you will say with reason, set aside in the beginning certain
animals for our perpetual amusement--to wit: the goose, the monkey, the
ostrich, the kangaroo, and, as a sublime afterthought--symbol of the
Eternal Feminine--the hen. Civilization, you may admit, has added to
these the goat--but, save in rare moods of insanity, as when the puppy
pursues the mad orbit of his tail, the sight of only the aforesaid
beasts makes for risibility. The cat, you will say, is never
ridiculous. But here again we must hark back to the major premise,
unrecognized though it be by the science of AEsthetic, that humour lies
in the point of view. If I could prove it by mere iteration it would go
without further saying that it is essentially subjective rather than
objective. Surely there is no humour in insensate nature, as there is
little enough in Art and Music. The bees, the trees, the fountains and
the mountains take themselves seriously enough, and though, according to
the minor poets, the fields and the brooks are at times moved to
laughter, it is from a vegetable, pointless joy of life. Through the
human wit alone, and that too rarely, the rays of thought are refracted
in the angle of mirth, and split into whimsical rays of complementary
sensations and contrasts.
When we lay off the mantle of seriousness and relax the flexors and
extensors, if we are well fed, healthy, and of a peaceful mood and
capable of indolence, men and women, and even we ourselves, should
become to our view players on the stage of life. And what then is
comedy but tragedy seen backward or downside-up? It is the negative or
corollary of what is vital in this great game of life. The custom has
been, however, to give it a place apart and unrelated to the higher
unities, as the newspapers assign their witticisms to isolated columns.
Rather is it the subtle polarity induced by graver thought, the reading
between the lines of the page. And as, to the vigorous intellect, rest
does not come through inactivity so much as by a change of occupation,
the happy humourist is refreshed by the solace of impersonality.
For, to the initiate, his own inconsistencies and indiscretions are no
less diverting than those of his associates, and should frequently give
rise to emotions that impel him to hurry into a corner and scream aloud
with mirth. It is ever the situation that is absurd, and never the
victim; and in this lies the secret of his ability to appreciate a farce
of which he himself is the hero. He must disincarnate himself as the
whim blows, and hang in the air, a god for the time, gazing with
amusement at the play of his own ridiculous failures. In some such way,
perhaps, do the curious turn over the patterned fabric, to discover, on
the reverse, the threads and stitches that explain the construction of
the design.
This faculty, then, gives one the stamp of caste by which one may know
his brethren the world over, an Order of whose very existence many shall
never be aware, till, in some after life, some grinning god conducts
them to the verge of the heavens, and, leaning over a cloud, bids them
behold the spectacle of this little planet swarming with its absurdly
near-sighted denizens.
_Ohe la Renaissance!_ for this is to be the Age of Humour. We travail
for the blithe rebirth of joy into the world. The Decadence, with its
morbid personalities and accursed analysis of exotic emotion, is over,
please God; yet we may adopt its methods and refine the simplicity of
primary impulse, thus increasing the whole sum of pleasure with the
delicate nuances that amplify the waves of feeling. Hark, O my reader!
Do you not hear them, rising like overtones and turning the melody into
a divine harmony?
*The Game of Correspondence*
The receipt of a letter is no longer the event it was in the old
stage-coach days; railways and the penny postage have robbed it of all
excitement. One expects now one's little pile of white, blue and green
envelopes beside one's plate at breakfast, along with one's toast and
coffee, and one tastes its contents as one opens the matutinal egg. We
have forgotten how to write interesting letters as we have forgotten how
to fold and wafer a sheet of foolscap or sharpen a quill. Some of our
missives are not even worth a cursory glance, many by no means deserve
an answer, and most are speedily forgotten in the columns of the morning
journal.
Yet, at times, on red-letter days, we find one amongst the number which
demands epicurean perusal; it is not to be ripped open and devoured in
haste, it insists on privacy and attention. This has a flavour which the
salt of silence alone can bring out; a dash of interruption destroys its
exquisite delicacy. More than this, it must be answered while it is
still fresh and sparkling, after which, if it be of the true vintage, it
can afford still another sip to inspire your postscript.
To your room then with this, and lock the door, or else save it for a
more impregnable leisure. Open it daintily and entertain it with
distinction and respect; efface any previous mood and hold yourself
passive to its enchantment. It is no love message, and need depend upon
no excited interest in the writer for its reception, for it has an
intrinsic merit; it is the work of an artist; it is a fascinating move
on the chess-board of the most alluring, most accessible game in the
world.
Though the fire of such a letter need have neither the artificiality of
flirtation nor the intensity of love, yet it must both light and warm
the reader. It is not valuable for the news it brings, for if it be a
work of art the tidings it bears are not so important as the telling of
them. It must be sincere and alive, revealing and confessing, a letter
more from the writer than to the reader, as if it were written in face
of a mirror rather than before the photograph of the receiver; and yet
the communication must be spelled in the cypher of your friendship, to
which only you have the key. We have our separate languages, each with
the other, and there are emotions we cannot duplicate. This missive is
for you, and for you only, or it ranks with a business communication.
It is minted thought, invested, put out at loan for a time, bringing
back interest to stimulate new speculations. There are no superfluous
words, for the master strikes a clean sharp blow, forging his mood all
of a single piece, welding your whim to his, and, fusing his sentences,
there glows a spirit, a quality of style that bears no affectation; it
must not, of all things, become literary, it must be direct, not showing
signs of operose polish. It must be writ in the native dialect of the
heart.
If it be a risk to write frankly, it is one that gains interest in the
same proportion; it makes the game the better sport. But after all, how
many letters, so fearfully burned, so carefully hid away, but what, in
after years, would seem innocuous? You are seduced by the moment, and
your mood seems, and impulses seem, dangerous, incendiary. You grow
perfervid in your indiscretion, not knowing that the whole world is
stirred by the same recklessness, and that each one is profoundly bored
by all save his own yearnings. Not many of our epistles will bear the
test of print on their own merit, expurgate them as you will; you need
only fear, rather, that the letter will grow dull even before it reaches
its destination. The best of them, moreover, are written in sympathetic
ink, and unless your correspondent has the proper reagent at hand, the
sheets will be empty or incomprehensible even to him. Answer speedily
as you may, too, it will be hard to overtake your correspondent's mood;
he has overburdened his mind, precipitated the solution, and is off to
another experiment by the time his stamp is affixed. But you must do
your best in return; reflect enough of his ray to show him he has shot
straight, and then flash your own colour back.
There are virtues of omission and commission. It is not enough to
answer questions; one must not add the active annoyance of apology to
the passive offense of neglect. One must not hint at things untellable;
one must give the crisp satisfaction of confidences wholly shared. Who
has not received that dash of feminine inconsequence in the sentence, "I
have just written you two long letters, and have torn them both up"?
What letter could make up for such an exasperation? Your master
letter-writer does not fear to stop when he is done, either, and a blank
page at the end of the folio does not threaten his conscience.
If one has not the commonplace view of things, and escapes the obvious,
it matters little whether one uses the telescope or the microscope. One
may deal with the abstract or concrete, discuss philosophy and systems,
or gild homely little common things till they shine and twinkle with
joy. Indeed, the perfect letter-writer must do both, and change from
the intensely subjective to the intensely objective point of view. He
must, as it were, look you in the eye and hold you by the hand. Two
masters whose letters have recently been printed may illustrate these
two different phases of expression, though each could do both as well.
And this first, from Browning's love letters, describes what the perfect
letter should be:
"I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my
friend.... I kept the letter in my hand, and only read it with
those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so
much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of
what was inside. Not _all_, however, happily for me! or my
friend would have seen in my eyes what _they_ did not see."
To this, the twittering, delightful familiarities of Stevenson:
"Two Sundays ago the sad word was brought that the sow was out
again; this time she had brought another in her flight. Moors
and I and Fanny were strolling up to the garden, and there by
the waterside we saw the black sow looking guilty. It seemed to
me beyond words; but Fanny's _cri du coeur_ was delicious.
'G-r-r!' she cried; 'nobody loves you!'"
It was the same art in big and little, for each stripped off pretense
and boldly revealed his moment's personality.
And yet, and yet, a letter does not depend upon any artistic quality or
glib facility with words, for its interest. The one test of a letter is
that it must bring the writer close to your side. You must fasten your
mood on me, so that I shall be you for hours afterward. It sounds easy
enough, but it is the most difficult thing in the world, to be one's
self. "I long for you, I long for you so much that I thank God upon my
knees that you are not here!" There, now, is a letter that promises
well, but I dare not quote more of it, for the subject must be seen from
another side.
*The Caste of the Articulate*
Fair or unfair though it be, I have come to accept a letter as the final
test of the personality of a new acquaintance. Not of his or her
intellect or moral worth, perhaps, but the register of that rare power
which dominates all attributes--that peculiar aroma, flavour, _timbre_,
or colour which makes some of our friends eternally exceptional. "Who
dares classify him and label him, sins against the Holy Ghost; I, for
one, think I know him only inasmuch as I refuse to sum him up. I cannot
find his name in the dictionary; I cannot make a map of him; I cannot
write his epitaph." So writes Sonia of a friend with such a
personality, and you will see by this that Sonia herself is of the caste
of the Articulate.
We are influenced first by sight, then by sound, and, lastly, by the
written word. "She spoke, and lo! her loveliness methought she damaged
with her tongue!" is the description of many a woman who appeals to the
eye alone. And in something the same way many who fascinate us with
their glamour while face to face, shock us by the dreary commonplaceness
of their letters.
It would seem that an interesting person must inevitably write an
interesting letter,--indeed, that should be a part of the definition of
the term interesting. But many decent folk are gagged with constraint
and self-consciousness, and never seem to get free.
"I wonder," says Little Sister, "whether these wordless folk may not,
after all, really feel much more deeply than we who write?" That is a
troublesome question, and in its very nature unanswerable, since the
witnesses are dumb. No doubt they feel more simply and unquestioningly,
for as soon as a thing is once said its opposite and contradictory side,
as true and as necessary, reacts upon us. But it seems to me that
expression does not so much depend upon any spiritual insight, or even
upon especial training, as it does upon the capacity for being one's
self frankly and simply. That is the only thing necessary to make the
humblest person interesting, and yet nothing is so difficult as to be
one's self in this wild, whirling world.
Expression is but another name for revelation. Unless one is willing to
expose one's self like Lady Godiva, or protected only by such beauty and
sincerity as hers, one can go but a little way in the direction of
individuality. We must sacrifice ourselves at every turn, show good and
bad alike, and laugh at ourselves too. "Would that mine enemy might
write a book!" is no insignificant curse, and yet there are tepid,
colourless authors who might hazard it with safety; no one would ever
discover the element of personality.
"After our quarrel I felt as if I had a pebble in my shoe all day,"
Little Sister once wrote me. Let that be an example of the articulate
manner, for by such vivid and homely metaphors she strews her pages.
Did she reserve such phrases for her written words, I would feel bound
to claim for letter-writing the distinction of being an art of itself,
unrelated to any other faculty; but no, she talks in the same way--she
is herself every moment. "My temper is violent and sudden, but it soon
evaporates," she tells me; "it is like milk spilt on a hot stove."
The inspiration which impels one so to illustrate an abstract statement
with a concrete example, illuminating and convincing, is a spark of the
divine fire of personality. This is the _crux_ of the articulate caste.
An ounce of illustration is worth a pound of proof. Rob poetry of
metaphor and it would be but prose; a simile, in verse, is usually
merely ornament. The true purpose of tropes, however, is more virile
and sustaining; they should reinforce logic, not decorate it. See how
agilely Perilla can compress the whole history of a flirtation into six
lines, defying the old saying that "there is nothing so difficult to
relight as a dead love."
I thought I saw a stiffened form
A-lying in its shroud;
I looked again and saw it was
The love we once avowed.
"They told me you were dead!" I cried.
The corpse sat up and bowed!
When one has a few such acquaintances as these, books are superfluous.
Who would read a dead romance when one can have it warm and living,
vibrant, human, coming like instalments of a serial story, a perpetual
revelation of character! Many pride themselves upon their proficiency
in matter and many in manner,--there are those, even, who boast of mere
quantity, but your professional writer is usually cool and calm, if not
affected and pretentious. A letter, though, should be impregnate with
living fire--it should boil. It is a treat of exceptional human nature.
If the sentences be not spontaneous and unstudied the pleasure is lost.
One may write fiery nonsense, but one must mean it at the time. One's
mind must, as Sonia says, be hospitable, keep open house, and have the
knack of making one's friends at home, to throb with one's own delights
and despairs. One must give every mood open-handed, and mention nothing
one may not say outright with gusto. But it is not everyone who can
"bathe in rich, young feeling, and steep at day-dawning in green bedewed
grasses" like my little Sonia. If I were dead she could still strike
sparks out of me with her letters.
"Oh, if you could only see my new hat! I've been sitting in fetish
worship half the evening, and I'll never dare tell how much I paid for
it. You never need be good-looking under such a hat as that, for no one
will ever see you!" Does not this quotation bring Little Sister very
near to you, and make her very human and real? Ah, Little Sister is not
afraid to be herself! She knows that she can do nothing better. "It's
a terrible handy thing to have a smashing adjective in your pocket," she
confesses. Little Sister has a good aim, too; she always hits my heart.
And yet she acknowledges that "there are days when letters are blankly
impossible."
Such friends write the kind of letters that one keeps always, the kind
that can be re-read without skipping. It is their own talk, their own
lives, their own selves put up like fruit preserves of various flavours,
moods and colours, warranted not to turn or spoil.
And as for the gagged, wordless folk, it is my opinion that too much
sensibility has been accredited to them. To any rich exotic nature
expression must come as a demand not to be refused. It is feeling
bubbling over into words. Other souls are compressed and silent; they
have the possibilities of the bud--something warm and inspiring may at
any time make them expand and free them from the constraint--but there
is not much perfume until the flower blooms.
*The Tyranny of the Lares*
No, I have never been tainted with a mania for collecting. It has never
particularly interested me, because I already happened to have two of a
kind, to possess a third. I prefer things to be different rather than
alike, and the few things I really care for I like for themselves alone,
and not because they are one of a family, set or series.
But there are so few things to be envious of, even then! After one's
necessities are provided for, there are not many things worth
possessing, and fewer still worth the struggle of collecting.
Acquisition seems to rob most things of their intrinsic value, of the
extreme desirability they seemed to possess, and yet it does not follow
that the practice of collecting is not worth while. It is worth while
for itself, but not for the things collected. It is like hunting. The
enjoyment, to your true sportsman, does not depend entirely upon the
game that is bagged. If the hunter went out solely for the purpose of
obtaining food he would better go to the nearest poulterer.
We have a habit of associating the idea of pleasure with the possession
of certain objects, and we fancy such pleasure is permanent. But in
nine cases out of ten the enjoyment is effervescent, and the thing must
be gazed at, touched and admired while the charm is new. Then only can
one feel the sharp joy of possession, and, even though its value remain
as an object of art, we must after that enjoy it impersonally; its
delight must be shared with other spectators. As far as the
satisfaction of ownership is concerned the thing is dead for us, and
though we would not give it up, our greed gilds it but cheaply, after
all.
Of all things, pictures are most commonly regarded as giving pleasure.
A painting is universally regarded as a desirable possession of more or
less value, according to personal appreciation. In fact, most men would
say that a poor picture is better than none, since one of its recognized
functions is to fill a space on the wall. And yet how few pictures are
looked at once a day, or once a week. How many persons accept them only
as decoration, as spots on the wall, and pass them by, in their
familiarity, as unworthy of especial notice!
But the collection of a multitude of things is no great oppression if
one is permanently installed; they pad out the comforts of life, they
create "atmosphere"; they fill up spaces in the house as small talk
fills up spaces in conversation. The first prospect of moving, however,
brings this horde of stupid, useless, dead things to life, and they
appear in their proper guise to strike terror into the heart of the
owner. Pictures that have never been regarded, curiosities that are
only curious, books that no longer feed the brain, and the thousand
little knickknacks that accumulate in one's domicile and multiply like
parasites--all the flotsam and jetsam of housekeeping must be
individually attended to, and rejected or preserved piecemeal.
But that exciting decision! It is not till one has actually had the
courage to destroy some once prized possession that one feels the first
inspiring thrill of emancipation. Before, the Thing owned you; it had
to be protected in its useless life, kept intact with care and
attention. You were pledged to forestall dust, rust and pillage. If
you yourself selected it, it stood as a tangible evidence of your
culture, an ornament endorsed as art. The Thing forbade growth of taste
or judgment, it became a changeless reproach. If it were a gift, it
ruled you with a subtle tyranny, compelling your hypocrisy, enslaving
you by chains of your very good nature. But if you do not falter, in
one exquisite pang you are freed. The Thing is destroyed! Not given
away, not hidden or disguised, but murdered outright. It is your
sublime duty to yourself that demands the sacrifice.
These horrid monsters once put out of your life, and all necessity for
their care annulled, you have so much more space for the few things
whose quality remains permanent. You will guard the entrance to your
domicile and jealously examine the qualifications of every article
admitted. You will ask, "Is it absolutely necessary?" If so, then let
it be as beautiful as possible, putting into its perfection of design
the expense and care formerly bestowed on a dozen trifles. You will use
gold instead of silver, linen instead of cotton, ivory in the place of
celluloid; in short, whatever you use intimately and continually,
whatever has a definite plausible excuse for existence, should be so
beautiful that there is no need for objects which are merely ornamental.
It was so before machinery made everything possible, common and cheap;
it has been so with every primitive civilization. To the unspoiled
peasant, to all of sane and simple mind, ornaments have, in themselves,
no reason for being. Pictures are unnecessary, because the true
craftsman so elaborates and develops the constructive lines of his
architecture that the decoration is organic and inherent. The many
household utensils, vessels and implements of daily use were so
appropriately formed, so graceful and elegant in their simplicity, so
cunning of line, so quaint of form and pleasant of colour, that they
were objects of art, and there was no need for the extraneous display of
meaningless adornment.