turning lathe and fret saw, to turn back for lasting joy to handmade
work. We delight in the minor irregularities of a carving, for
instance, recognizing that behind that slip of the tool there was a man
at work; a man with a soul, striving for expression. The dreary,
methodical uniformity of machine-made decoration and furniture wearies
our new enlightened taste. Mathematical accuracy and "spirit" seem to
be mutually exclusive, and we have been taught by the modern AEsthetic
almost to regard amateurishness as a sure proof of sincerity. We cannot
associate the abandon and naive enthusiasm of the pre-Raphaelites with
the technical proficiency of the later Renascence, and Botticelli
stands, not only for the spirit dominating and shining through the
substance but, in a way, for the incompatibility of perfect idealization
with perfect execution. And yet this conflict troubles us. We feel
that the two should be wedded, so that the legitimate offspring might be
perfection; but when perfect technique is attained, as in a Japanese
carving, the result is almost as devoid of human feeling and warmth as a
machine-made product.
We feel this instinctive choice of irregularity wherever we
turn--wherever, that is, we have to do with humanity or human
achievement. We do not, it is true, delight in the flaw in the diamond,
but elsewhere we are in perpetual conflict with nature, whose sole
object seems to be the obliteration of extremes and the ultimate
establishment of a happy medium of uniformity. We find perfection cold
and lifeless in the human face. I doubt if a woman has ever been loved
for an absolute regularity of feature; but how many, like little
Celestine, who acknowledges herself that her nose is too crooked, her
eyes too hazel, and her mouth too large, are bewilderingly charming on
that very account! These features go to make up an expression, which,
if it is not perfect, is certainly not to be accounted for by merely
adding up the items. It is a case where the whole is greater than the
sum of all its parts. We admire the anatomy and poise of the Greek
statues, but they are not humanly interesting. Indeed, they were never
meant to be, for they are divinities, and the symbols of an inaccessible
perfection.
Still, while we speak of certain faults as being adorable (notably
feminine weaknesses), while we make the trite remark anent a man's "one
redeeming vice," while we shrink from natures too chaste, too aloof from
human temptation, too uncompromising, yet we must feel a pang of
conscience. We are not living up to our ideals. Is it the mere
reaction from the impositions of conventional morality? I think not.
It is a miscomprehension of the term perfection.
The Buddhist believes in a process of spiritual evolution that, tending
ever toward perfection, finally reaches the state of Nirvana, where the
individual soul is merged into the Infinite. How can it be
differentiated from the universal spirit if it has attained all the
attributes of divinity? And that idea seems to be the basis of our
mistaken worship of perfection--a Nirvana where each thing, being
absolutely perfect, loses every distinguishing mark of character. But
is not our Christian, or even the Pagan, ideal higher than this? For
even the Greek gods, cold and exquisite as they were, had each his
individuality, his character, his separate function. Our conception of
Heaven, if it is ever formulated nowadays, has this differentiation of
individuality strongly accented; though the most orthodox may insist
that the spirits of the blessed are sanctified with perfection, yet he
does not hold it as a necessary dogma that they are therefore all alike,
and recast in a common mould. He still dares believe in that infinite
variety which Nature has taught us persists throughout the universe.
This is the fundamental difference between the Oriental and the
Occidental point of view. We moderns stand for the supremacy of
character, an ineradicable distinction between human beings which
evolution and growth does not diminish, but develops. We believe, you
and I, that in a million aeons we shall be as different one from the
other as we are now; that faults may be eradicated, weaknesses lose
their hold, but that our best parts will increase in virtue, not
approaching some theoretical standard, but always and forever nearing
that standard which is set for ourselves.
We have grown out of our admiration for the "copper-plate hand" in
penmanship; we recognize the fact now, that we need not so much follow
the specimens in the copy-book as to make the best of what is
distinctive in our own style of writing. And this is a type of what our
conception of perfection, perhaps, should be. Everything should be
significant of character, should supplement it, translate it, explain
it. In the Japanese prints you will find almost every face with the
same meaningless expression, every feature calm, disguising every
symptom of individuality. It is the Oriental pose, the Oriental ideal
just mentioned. It is not considered proper to express either joy or
sorrow, and the perfection of poise is a sublime indifference.
And I have a final idea that may, to a more subtile student of
AEsthetic, seem suggestive. In the beautiful parabola described by the
mounting and descending sky-rocket the upward and downward path are not
quite parallel. The stick does not drop vertically, although it
continually approaches that direction. In other words, the curve,
constantly approaching a straight line, is beautiful despite, and,
indeed, perhaps _because_ it never quite attains that rectilinear
perfection and keeps its distinctive character to the end. It is
beautiful in its whole progress, for that path defines the curve of the
parabola.
*"The Play's the Thing"*
"Would you rather see a good play performed by poor actors, or a poor
play done by good actors?" asked Celestine.
As a professor of the romantic view of life and a "ghost-seer," there is
but one answer to the question. "The play's the thing!" Acting is at
best a secondary art--an art, that is, of interpretation, though we as
critics judge it of itself alone. But, to an idealist, no play ever is,
or can be, perfectly performed. As we accept the conventions of stage
carpentry, impossible cottages, flat trees, "property" rocks, misfit
costumes and tinsel ornament, so we must gloss over the imperfections of
the players, and accept their struttings and mouthings as the fantastic
accessories of stage-land. No actor that ever lived ever acted
throughout a whole drama as a sane human being would act. We are used
to thinking the contrary, but the compression of time and space prevents
verisimilitude. A play is not supposed to simulate life except by an
established convention. Every art has its medium and its limitation.
It is indeed a limitation that makes art possible. In the drama the
limitation is the use of the time element.
The play's the thing--we may read it from the book or have it recited
before the footlights, but the lasting delight is the charm of plot
that, with the frail assistance of the actor, finds its way to our
emotions. A good play done by poor actors, then, for me, if I must
choose between the two evils.
Fancy creates; imagination constructs. The child, sporting ingenuously
with both these powers, dwells in a world of his own, either induced by
his mastering fiat, or remodelled nearer to his heart's desire from the
rags and fragments at hand. In his toy theatre alone is the perfect
play produced, for there imagination is stage manager, and has the hosts
of Wonderland in his cast. The child is the only perfect romanticist.
He has the keen, fresh eye upon nature; all is play, and the critical
faculty is not yet aroused. So in a way, too, was all primitive drama.
The audience at Shakespearean plays heard but noble poesies, saw but a
virile dream made partly visible, like a ghost beckoning away their
thoughts. So, even today, is the Chinese theatre, with its hundreds of
arbitrary conventions, its lack of scenery, and its artificial
eloquence. The veriest coolie knows that a painted face (a white nose,
stripes and crosses on the cheeks) does but portray a masked intention,
as if the actor bore a placard writ with the word "Villain." Forthwith,
all the rest is faery. The player does but lightly guide the rein, and
Pegasus soars free.
So no play can be perfectly performed. We have created an artificial
standard of realism, and we say that Bernhardt, Duse and Coquelin
portray emotion with consummate art. It has been agreed by authorities
on AEsthetic that simulated passion surpasses in suggestive power real
emotion. The actor must not "lose himself in his part"--he must
maintain the objective relation. None the less, however, must we, as
audience, supply imagination to extend the play from art to life. From
a romantic point of view, such devotion to realism is unnecessary. We
are swayed by the wildest absurdities of melodrama, alike false to life
and false to art, and we accept the operas of Wagner, with all their
pasteboard dragons and bull-necked heroes belching forth technique, as
impressive stimuli to the imagination. Even through such crude means,
uplifted either by passionate brotherhood or upon the wings of song, we
are wafted far and fast. The play, oh! the play's the thing!
For see! If you prefer the bad play performed by the good actors, why
not go to life itself? What else, indeed, _is_ life? It was the old
Duke in Lewis Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno" who first pointed this out.
All the world's a stage where are performed the worst of badly
constructed plays--plays with neither unity nor sequence nor climax, but
performed with absolute perfection. Why waste your time cursing the
Adelphi, when, like the Duke, you can see the perfect art of the street?
The railway porter's dialect is still convincing. The fat woman with
her screaming children may enter at any minute, with her touches of
wonderful realism. If you go to the theatre for acting you go to the
wrong place! Watch the Font Neuf for the despairing suicide, lurk in
Whitechapel, visit in Mayfair, coquette with a Spaniard's sweetheart, or
rob a Jew, strike an Englishman, love an American girl, flirt with a
French countess, or watch a Samoan beauty at the salt pools catching
fish; but try not to find perfect acting behind a row of footlights!
But if, after all, the play's the thing, it is as much a mistake to look
for real drama upon the street. There everything is incomplete and, for
the satisfaction of our aesthetic sense, we require the threads to be
brought together, and the pattern developed, the knots tied. Our
contemplation of life is usually analytic; we delight in discovering
motives, elementary passions, traits of character and human nature. Our
joy in art, on the other hand, arises from synthesis; we love to see
effect follow cause, and events march logically, passions work
themselves out, the triumph of virtue and justice. Life, as we see it,
is a series of photographs. The drama presents these successively as in
a biograph, with all the insignificant intermediary glimpses removed.
We hunger for the finished story, the poem with the envoy. For this
reason we have the drama and the novel.
And now Celestine asks me, "Would you rather read a good story poorly
written than a poor story well written?"
The question is as fair as the other, though not quite in the same case.
We may agree that acting is a secondary art, but literature has more
dignified claims to considerations. Here we are contemplating a wedding
of two arts, not the employment of one by another. One might as well
say, then, "Would you rather see a good man married to a bad woman or
the reverse?" It is the critic who attempts always to divorce the two.
Yet, as in almost all marriage, where two arts work together one is
usually the more important. One may have one's preferences, but the
selection of that art which embodies an idea, rather than the one which
aims at an interpretation, marks the romanticist's point of view. One
art must be masculine, creative, and the other feminine and adorning.
The glory of the one is strength, of the other beauty. For me, then, the
manly choice. Give me the good story badly told, the fine song poorly
sung, the virile design clumsily carved, rather than the opposite cases.
The necessity of such a choice is not a mere whim of Celestine's; it is
a problem we are forced to confront every day. We must take sides. It
is not often, even from the Philistine's point of view, that we have the
good thing well done, while the poor thing badly done we have
everywhere. Between these limits of perfection and hopelessness, then,
lies our every-day world of art, and there continually we must make our
choice.
If we could deal with abstractions, there would be no question at all,
and undoubtedly we would all prefer to enjoy the disincarnate ideal
rather than any incomplete embodiment, no matter how praiseworthy the
presentment. But few of us are good enough musicians to hear the music
in our mind's ear when we look over the score of an opera; few of us can
dream whole romances like Dumas, without putting pen to paper; few,
even, can long remember the blended glories of a sunset. We must have
some tangible sign to lure back memory and imagination, and if we
recognize the fact that such symbols are symbols merely, conventions
without intrinsic value as art, then we have the eyes of the child and
the romantic view of life.
And lastly, Celestine leaned to me in her green kimono and said, "Would
you rather see a pretty girl in an ugly gown, or an ugly girl in a
pretty gown?" Ah, one does not need to hold the romantic view of life
to answer that question!
*Living Alone*
I have lived so long alone now, that it seems almost as if there were
two of me--one who goes out to see friends, transacts business and buys
things, and one who returns, dons more comfortable raiment, lights a
pipe, and dreams. One the world knows, the other no one knows but the
flies on the wall.
I keep no pets, since these would enforce my keeping regular hours; the
only familiars I have, therefore, are my clock, my fire and my candles,
and how companionable these may become one does not know who does not
live alone. They owe me the debt of life, and repay it each in its own
way, faithfully and apparently willingly. I have a lamp, too; but a
lamp is a dull thing, especially when half-filled, and this one bores
me. I might count my typewriter, also, but she is too strenuous, and
she makes me too impatient by her inability to spell. Besides, the
clock, fire and candles may, with no great stretch of the imagination,
be readily conceived to have volition, and, once started, they
contribute not a little to relieving the tedium of living alone.
My clock is always the same; it has no surprises. It may go a bit fast
or slow, but it has a maddeningly accurate conscience, and its fidelity
in ringing the eight-o'clock alarm proves it inhuman. Still, it lives
and moves, beating a sober accompaniment to my thoughts. Altogether, it
is not unlike a faithful, conscientious servant, never obtrusive, always
punctual and obedient, but with an unremitting devotion to orders that
is at times exasperating. Many a man has stood in fear and shame of his
valet, and so I look askance furtively with a suppressed curse when the
hands point to my bath, my luncheon, or my sortie into town. It would
be a relief, sometimes, if my clock stopped, were I not sure that it
would be my fault.
But my fire is more feminine, full of moods and whims, ardent, domestic
and inspiring. Now, a fire, like a woman, should be something besides
beautiful, though in many houses the hearth is a mere accessory. It
should have other uses than to provide mere warmth, though this is often
its sole reason for being. Nor should it be a mere culinary necessity,
though I have known open fires to be kindled for that alone, and treated
as domestic servants. In my house the fire has all these functions and
more, for it is my friend and has consoled many lonely moments. It is a
mistress, full of unexpected fancies and vagaries. It has, too, a more
sacred quality, for it is an altar where I burn the incense of memory
and sacrifice to the gods of the future. It is both human and divine, a
tool and symbol at once.
No one, I think, can know how much of all this a fire can be, who has
not himself laid, lighted and kindled and coaxed it, who has not
utilized its services and accepted its consolations. My fire is,
however, often a jealous mistress. She warms me and makes my heart
glad, but I dare not leave her side on a wintry day. I must keep well
within bounds, hold her hand or be chilled. I need but little urging!
I pull up my couch, take pencil and paper, and she twinkles and purrs by
my side, casting flickering glances at me as I work.
Not till the flames die down and the coals glow soberly red do I find
the more practical pleasures of friendship and housewifely service. Now
my fire plays the part of cook, and, in her proper sphere, outdoes every
stove or range ever lighted. A little duck laid gently across the
grate, the kettle whistling with steam, and the coffee-pot ready--what
bachelor was ever attended by more charming handmaiden than I by my
little open fire? She will heat an iron or shaving-water as gracefully,
too, waiting upon me with a jocund willingness. No servant could be so
companionable. Still, she must be humoured as one must always humour a
woman. Try to drive her, or make her feel that she is but a slave, and
you shall see how quickly she resents it. There is a psychological
moment for broiling on an open fire, and postponement is fatal. It
takes a world of petting and poking to sooth her caprice when she is in
a blazing temper, but remember her sex, and she melts in a glow like a
mollified child.
Kindling and lighting my fire is a ritual. I cannot go about it
thoughtlessly or without excitement. The birth of the first curling
flame inspires me, for the heart becomes an altar sacred to the
household gods. If the day offers the least plausible pretext for a
fire, I light one and sit down in worship. I resent a warm morning,
when economy struggles with desire. Luckily my studio is at the north
of the house, and, no matter if the sun is warm abroad, there is a cool
corner waiting where a fire needs no apology. The sun creeps in toward
noon and puts out the flames, but all the morning I enjoy the blaze.
In the evening the fire becomes absolutely necessary, and provides both
heat and light, giving a new life of its own to the darkness of the
room. Then I become a Parsee, put on my sacerdotal robes (for such
lonely priestcraft requires costume), and fall into a reverie. For my
sacrifices, old letters feed the flames. They say that coal, in
burning, gives back the stored sunlight of past ages. What lost fires
burn, then, when love-letters go up in smoke to illumine for one brief,
last instant the shadows of memory!
My candles partake of the nature of both clock and fire. They are to be
depended upon, when let alone, to burn just six hours, marking the time
like the ticking pendulum, but they give light and warmth, too, in their
own way, in gentle imitation of the fire. They also have moods--less
petulant than the fire's--but they require as little attention as the
clock. The fire seems immortal; though the coals fade into ashes, the
morning's resurrection seems to continue the same personality, and the
same flames seem to be incarnated--living again the same old life. But
the life of a candle seems visibly limited to a definite space of time,
and its end is clearly to be seen. In that aspect it seems more human
and lovable than the fire--a candle is more like a petted animal, whose
short life seems to lead to nothing beyond. We may put more coals on
the fire, and continue its existence indefinitely, but the candle is
doomed. Putting another one in the socket does not renew a previous
existence. But, if it is a short life, it is a merry one, and its
service is glad and generous. My little army of candles is constantly
being replenished. Like brave and loyal soldiers, they lay down their
lives gallantly in my cause, and new ones fill up the vacant ranks,
fighting the powers of darkness.
This is my bachelor reverie. But high noon approaches, and my
metamorphosis is at hand. Now the sun has struck the fire-place with a
lance of light, and I, that other I, must rise, dress and out into the
world!
*Cartomania*
With something of the excitement Alice felt when she crawled through the
looking-glass, I used to pore over my atlas. Geography was for me a
pastime rather than a study. There was one page in the book where the
huge bulging expanse of the United States lay, and there, on the extreme
left hand of the vari-coloured patchwork of States and territories, was
the abode of romance and adventure--a long and narrow patch tinted pink,
curving with the Pacific Ocean, and ribbed with the fuzzy haschures of
the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This was the Ultima Thule of my dreams,
beyond which my sober-minded hopes dared not stray.
Further on in the book I saw Europe, irregular with ragged peninsulas
and bays, Asia, vast and shapeless, with the great blue stretch of
Siberia atop, and the clumsy barren yellow triangle of Africa. But
these foreign countries were, to my young imagination, as inaccessible
as Fairyland; they did not properly come into the world of possibility.
They were as unreal as ghosts, remote as the Feudal Ages, and I put them
by with a sigh as hopeless. The world is a big place to the eyes of a
child, and all beyond his ken but names. How could I know that the end
of the century was even then whirling me toward wonders that even my
Arabian Magi would not have thought possible? But today, in this far
Western town, then but a semi-barbarous camp of gold miners, I have seen
an airship half-completed upon the stocks, and this morning, in my own
room, I rang up Celestine and talked with her over the wire a hundred
miles away!
Maps were my favourite playgrounds, and so real were they that it almost
seemed that, with a sufficiently powerful microscope, I might see the
very inhabitants living their strangely costumed customs. There was a
black dot on my fascinating pink patch marked San Francisco, and now,
that dream come true, I try to see this city with the eyes of my
childhood, and wonder that I am really here. To get the strangeness of
the chance I have to think back and back till I see that map stretched
out before the boy, and follow his finger across the tiers of States
that run from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Everyone who has not travelled much must feel the excitement that maps
give when intently studied. No one has been everywhere, and for each
some unvisited spot must charm him with its romantic possibilities. But
there are certain cities almost universally enticing to the
imagination--the world's great meeting-places, where, if one but waits
long enough, one can find anybody. London, Cairo, Bombay, Hongkong, San
Francisco, New York--these are the jewels upon the girdle that surrounds
the globe. To know these places is to have lived to the full limit of
Anglo-Saxon privilege.
But the true cartomaniac is not content with ready-made countries; he
must build his own lands. How many kingdoms and empires have I not
drawn from the tip of my pencil! Now, the achievement of a plausible
state is not so easy as it might appear. There is nothing so difficult
as to create, out of hand, an interesting coast line. Try and invent an
irregular shore that shall be convincing, and you will see how much more
cleverly Nature works than you. Here is where accident surpasses design.
Spill a puddle of coloured water on a sheet of paper and pound it with
your fist, and lo, an outline is produced which you could not excel in a
day's hard work with your pencil!
The establishment of a boundary line, too, requires much thought in
order that your frontier interlocks well with your neighbours'. Your
rivers must be well studied, your mountains planned, and your cities
located according to the requirements of the game. You must name your
places, you must calculate your distances, and you must erase and
correct many times before you can rival the picturesque possibilities of
such a land as India, for instance, which, from the point of view of the
sentimental cartographer, is one of the most interesting of states.
If such an effort is too difficult for the beginner, one might begin
with a country of which something is known, yet which never has been
charted. "Gulliver's Travels," for instance, contains information of
many lands that should be drawn to scale. Lilliput, Brobdingnag,
Laputa, and the land of horses would alone make a very interesting
atlas. The geography of Fairyland affords charming opportunities for
the draughtsman. For myself, I prefer the magical territory of the
Arthurian legends, and I have platted Sir Launcelot's Isle, with Joyous
Gard at the northern end, high over the sea. There is a pleasaunce, a
wood, a maze, and a wharf jutting out into a shallow, smiling water,
while the lists occupy a promontory to the south.