restrain myself, and perforce adopt the conventional procedure, as one
too proud to betray his ravening hunger! I must be calm, I must be
polite--and you shall know only by my forgetfulness of the salt and my
attention to the bones of thought, how the game interests me. In
speaking of love, I must let my head guard my heart, too, for it is in
the endeavour to misunderstand women that we pass our most delightful
moments. They will not permit men to be too sure of them, and what you
learn from one, you must hide carefully from the next. So I begin my
fencing with a great feint of awkwardness, like a master with a
beginner, knowing well enough how likely to get into trouble is any one
who pretends innocence.
For a long time I believed it all a conspiracy of the novelists, and
that love, so ideally depicted, was but a myth, kept alive by the craft,
to furnish a backbone for literary sensation. But there are undoubtedly
many bigoted believers in the theory of love. The women, however, who
admit that it is a lost art, complain piteously of the ineptitude of the
other sex. I confess that few men can satisfactorily acquit themselves
of the ordeal of courtship without some tuition, but, once having
acquired the rudiments of the profession, it seems inconsistent to taunt
them with the experiments of their apprenticeship. It is too much to
require a man to make a gallant wooing and then twit him with the
"promiscuousness" by which he won his facility. Yet, some, doubtless,
have learned also to defend themselves against this last accusation; it
is the test of the Passed Master. For the other, poor dolts, who never
see the opportunity for action, however adroitly presented, who speak
when they should hold tongue and leave undone all those things that they
ought to have done--the girls marry them, to be sure, but most of the
love-making is on the wrong side. There are more yawns than kisses; the
brutal question satisfies the yop, and he bungles through the
engagement, breaking doggedly through the crust of the acquaintance,
witless of the delightful perils of thin ice.
And yet I think the subject might be mastered in four lessons with a
good teacher, so that a man of ordinary capacity could make good way for
himself. This is by no means a new theory; it is the foundation of many
a comedy of errors, this of Love with a Tutor. But go not to school of a
maid, for she will fool you to the top of your bent, nor to a married
woman either, but to a man like my younger brother here, no Lothario,
but one who can keep two steps ahead of any affair he enters.
If a man be agile and daring, with sufficient ardour to assume the
offensive, having an audacious tongue and a wary eye with a fine sense
of congruity and tact, withal, if he can make love with a laugh and a
rhyme, as Cyrano fought, then 'tis a different matter, and he needs no
pilot to take his sweetheart over the bar and into the port. He must be
bold, but not too bold, carry a big spread of canvas, luff, reef and
tack her with no shuffling, cast the lead on the run, keeping in
soundings, and never lose headway when she comes about into a new mood.
He must bear a sensitive hand at the tiller, keep her close up to the
wind with no tremble in the leach of the sail, and gain advantage from
every tide and cross-current. Better dash against the reef than run
high and dry upon the shoal!
It is a pity, is it not, to dissect love in such a fashion? I should
have my hero quite at the mercy of the gale of passion, and be swept
forward, he knows not how and cares not where; he should lose his wits
and take a mad delight in the fury of the storm, seeing no spot upon his
horizon. And yet I dare not be warmer, for sometime I may decide to
fall in love myself, and I would not have my chances wrecked by any
genuine confession of faith, set in type, to which She might refer, with
a beautiful taunt. No! it is better to phrase and verbalize; the
subject is too dear, and near done to its death already. I would but
suggest the cross-references, and, under a mien of the most atrocious
conceit, throw my female readers off their guard, leaving my fellow men
to read between the lines.
For I hear that men do fall in love with women, and women fall in love
with loving. So be it. I have known girls, too, to take both vanilla
and strawberry in their soda-water, which proves them to be not
altogether simple in their tastes. The best of them will talk volubly
upon love in the abstract, while the average man (to which category I
hope I have the honour of not belonging) keeps his mouth closed on the
matter, with his tongue in his cheek, and his ideas, if he have any,
well hidden behind his words.
So, if I avail myself of the feminine franchise, it must be done
cautiously, for many are the difficulties of the young man who would
love a girl today, and only a precious few of the old school of beaux
would understand the twentieth century's subtleties, even if all could
be explained. Many are the misfortunes in the Lover's Litany, from
which the modern maiden sighs, "Good Lord, deliver us!" A man must take
her in earnest, but he must by no means take himself too seriously; it
is proper to treat your passion cavalierly--indeed, he jests at scars
who has felt the most amorous darts, nowadays--but he must never make
himself or her ridiculous. He may take whimsical amusement in his own
conquest, but must beware "the little broken laugh that spoils a kiss."
And above all, mind you the _mise-en-scene_,--the stage must be set so
and so; the sun must not see what the moon sees. Sometimes you must
have your heart in your mouth, and sometimes on your sleeve, and oftener
she must have it herself. 'Tis very perplexing!
The best a man can do, in this practical age, is to mean business, while
he is about it, and hold over as much for the next day as will not
interfere with his commerce elsewhere. The woman may take her romance
to bed, or keep it warm in the oven against his return, but he must be
out and down-town to earn his living as well as his loving, amongst
dollars and pounds and cent per cent, while she enjoys the traffic in
pure abstractions. And both must hide and manage as if it were a sin,
lest Mrs. Grundy undo them; they must snatch their kisses, as it were,
on horseback. Such are the victims of supercivilization!
There was a time, the poets tell, when it was not so difficult, and a
man might wear a lady's scarf on his sleeve, and be proud of the badge.
It takes much more complicated machinery than that simple love to make
the world go round, nowadays--perhaps because it goes so much faster.
There was a time when an elopement might be picturesque and not
necessarily followed by divorce; but where now shall I find the
hard-hearted parent who shall justify the adventure? The modern mother
is too easy. She is like Mrs. Brown in the _Bab Ballads_--"a foolish,
weak but amiable old thing." She reposes a trust in her daughter that
does more credit to her affection than to her knowledge of human nature.
But whoa! I believe I have forgotten my manners! I have insulted my
fellows, guyed the girls, and here I am on the high road to
disqualifying myself with the more respectable generation. So I shall
cease, but I will not apologize, for though I came to scoff, I shall not
remain to prey. I believe I am not more than half wrong after all.
There is love, and there is loving, and if you have followed me, you
know which is which. It was Rosalind who said, "Some Cupid kills with
arrows, some with traps!" How she would smile and sneer at this
verbiage! She knew a lover from a philanderer, she had her opinion of
the laggard and the butterfly rover, and she would no doubt say: "Cupid
hath clapped him on the shoulder, but I'll warrant him heart-whole!"
*Where is Bohemia?*
The name "Bohemian" was first used to describe the gypsies of that
nationality who appeared in France in the thirteenth century, but to us
the term has come to carry with it a wider significance than any
dependent upon that little kingdom in the north of Austria, and only a
few characteristic traits of those wandering vagabonds survive in those
who bear, whether in reproach or praise, the appellation "Bohemian."
To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the
best of the present moment--to laugh at Fortune alike whether she be
generous or unkind--to spend freely when one has money, and to hope
gaily when one has none--to fleet the time carelessly, living for love
and art--this is the temper and spirit of the modern Bohemian in his
outward and visible aspect. It is a light and graceful philosophy, but
it is the Gospel of the Moment, this exoteric phase of the Bohemian
religion; and if, in some noble natures, it rises to a bold simplicity
and naturalness, it may also lend its butterfly precepts to some very
pretty vices and lovable faults, for in Bohemia one may find almost
every sin save that of Hypocrisy.
Yet, if we were able without casuistry to divide misdeeds into two
categories, those subjective and objective in their direct
effects--separating those sins which hurt only the sinner from those
which act upon his fellows--the Bohemian would, perhaps, be found to
have fewer than most of this harsher, crueller sort. His faults are
more commonly those of self-indulgence, thoughtlessness, vanity and
procrastination, and these usually go hand-in-hand with generosity, love
and charity; for it is not enough to be one's self in Bohemia, one must
allow others to be themselves, as well.
So much for the common definition of this much-used name. But no
English word can stand for long in its primary meaning. It must change
insensibly, growing from day to day, till it embraces the spirit as well
as the letter of the fact it expresses. The word "gentleman" has thus
grown with a secondary, spiritual significance; so has the word "prayer"
by the interpretation of a more liberal, far-reaching thought. So with
the name "Bohemian"--it has ranged beyond the vagrom, inconstant,
happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, hand-to-mouth follower after pleasure,
and now under its banner may be found more serious enthusiasts who are
not afraid to offend smug respectability, and are in more or less open
revolt against convention, bigotry and prejudice. It is their bond that
they have forsworn allegiance to Mrs. Grundy. They dare be themselves
without pretentious, they make and keep their friends without
compromise.
What, then, is it that makes this mythical empire of Bohemia unique, and
what is the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no
roads in all Bohemia! One must choose and find one's own path, be one's
own self, live one's own life. Whether one makes for the larger freedom
of the hills, or loses one's self in the sacred stillness of the forest,
the way is open to endeavour wherever one wills. Yet, though there is
no beaten track, there are still signs in the wilderness showing where
master minds have passed. Here is a broken jug beneath the bough,
snowed under with drifting rose petals, where one frail-souled dreamer
loitered on the way, and, with his Beloved, filled the cup that clears
Today of past regrets and future fears, singing out his heart in lovely
plaint. And here, along a higher trail, a few blazings in the forest
mark where another great Bohemian in this life exempt from public haunt
found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones
and good in everything.
Within Bohemia are many lesser states, and these I have roughly charted
on my travels, so that, though I may have left some precincts
unexplored, I know at least that these territories lying on my map are
veritable provinces of this land of freedom and sincerity. On the shore
of the magic Sea of Dreams, beyond whose horizon dances the Adventurous
Main, lies the Pays de la Jeunesse, the country of Youth and Romance, a
joyous plaisaunce free from care or caution, whose green, wide fields
lie bathed in glamorous sunshine. To the eastward lie the pleasant
groves of Arcady, the dreamland, home of love and poetry. Here in this
Greek paradise of rustic simplicity and joyous innocence and hope, has
lived every poet who has ever sung the lyric note, and here have
visited, for some brief space, all who have dreamed, all who have
longed, all who have loved. Here is the old joy of life made manifest
and abundant; here Mother Nature speaks most clearly to her children.
For the most, however, it is but a holiday country, and they who
discover it often pass, never to return, forgetting its glories and its
mysteries as they forget that lost country of their youth, counting it
all illusion. Yet some few come back to the Port of Peace to lose the
world again, renewing the immemorial enchantment.
To the south, over the long procession of the hills, lies Vagabondia,
home of the gypsy and wanderer, who claims a wilder freedom beneath the
stars--outlawed or voluntary exile from all restraint. This country is
rocky and precipitate, full of dangers, a land of feverish unrest.
One other district lies hidden and remote, locked in the central
fastnesses of Bohemia. Here is the Forest of Arden, whose greenwood
holds a noble fellowship, bound in truth and human simplicity. It is a
little golden world apart, and though it is the most secret, it is the
most accessible of refugees, so that there are never too many there, and
never too few. Here is spoken a universal language, Nature's own
speech, the native dialect of the heart. Men come and go from this
bright country, but once having been free of the wood, you are of the
Brotherhood and recognize your fellows by instinct, and know them, as
they know you, for what you are.
Now, as Bohemia, unfortunately, is not an island, it has its neighbours
and its frontiers. To the west lies Philistia, arid, dry and flat, the
abode of shams, dogmas and sluggish creeds. Here stands Vanitas,
overlooking a great desert, walled in by custom, guarded by false pride.
It is but a step over the border, however, from Bohemia the true to that
false Debatable Ground whose affectations are more insincere even than
the shams of the real Philistia, and the youngster, questing the
hero-haunted country of his youth, chasing his phantoms, may go wide of
his reckoning, misled by the mockery of life made by these disguised
Philistines. In the City of Shams, hypocrites are content to assume the
virtues they have not, but here on the borders of Bohemia their vices
are all pretense as well!
On the further boundary of Bohemia, also, hangs an unsavoury neighbour.
Here is a madder and more terrible domain, the land of lust and cruelty,
lawless and loveless, dwelling in endless war. To this fierce country
Vagabondia lies perilously near, and many a wanderer has crossed the
frontier to find himself, before he knew, within that evil land, where
freedom has become licence, and tolerance grown into Anarchy.
Wide across all three empires stretch the Hills of Fame. In Philistia
men must be born great; there is no other distinction possible save that
of riches or inherited power. In Bohemia men achieve greatness, working
onward and upward, bringing their own great dreams to fulfillment; while
in Licentia, those only become great who have an infamous notoriety
thrust upon them by their own high crimes.
We cannot all mount those heights from whose crest one may look over the
Sea of Care, past the Isle of Idleness to the Adventurous Main, but
there is joy enough on the lowland. Happy indeed is he who, in his
journey of life, has escaped the perils of that false Bohemia, crouching
on the frontier, and has found his way to the happy forest, met his own
people and drunk of the Fountain of Immortal Youth; for there is the
warm, beating, human heart of the True Bohemia!
*The Bachelor's Advantage*
There are enough who think "a young man married is a young man marred"
to cause the bachelor to hesitate before renouncing his liberties, and
to fight shy of entanglement as long as possible. If he writes down the
"pros" and "cons," like Robinson Crusoe, he will find he has many
advantages in his single state that must inevitably be forfeited when he
weds.
It is not only that "when I was single my pockets would jingle, I would
I were single again"; it is not so much, either, that his play-day will
be over and he must "settle down," stop butterfly-lovering to and fro,
and gathering the roses as he goes, and have no haunting white face
sitting up for him at home to ask him why, and how, and where. This
licence, if he be a man of sentiment, he willingly foregoes for the
larger possibilities of satisfactory comradeship and sympathy. He can
pay double rent and taxes, too, without grumbling; take manfully the
shock of surprise when expenses jump with the new establishment; he may
be initiated in doctors' fees, and submit debonairly to a thousand
restrictions of time, place and opportunity. But more piquant than any
of these trials is the discovery that he has lost his old-time place and
privilege of welcome as a bachelor--that "come any time" hospitality of
his dearest friends. He is saddled with a secondary consideration.
Try as he may, no young man can marry to please his whole acquaintance.
The world, for the most part, still looks with patronizing approval upon
a girl's wedding so long as she chooses or is chosen by a man not
hopelessly impossible. She has embraced an opportunity and usually her
mother cultivates a grateful fondness for the son-in-law. If he has a
scarcity of amiable traits she will even manufacture them for him, and
put them on the market with display. Not so the mother of the groom.
She analyses the bride with incisive dissection, and it is hardly
possible that any woman shall be found quite worthy to mate with her
son. It takes a woman to read women, she says, and the little wife has
to make a fight for each step of the road from condescension through
complaisance to compliment.
The young man's friends, too, are exigent, and he soon finds that,
though the two have been made one in the sight of law and clergy,
society knows no such miraculous algebra. You may squeeze in an extra
chair at the dinner table for a desirable and "interesting young man,"
but to include another lady, and that his wife, requires a tiresome
rearrangement. He does not come alone ordinarily, nor would he if
asked, and so he drops out of his little world and must set about the
creation of a new one. He may have had latch-key privileges at a dozen
houses, free to come night or morning, the recipient of many sudden
invitations for theatre, supper or country--but that is all over. It is
his turn to do the inviting. The table has been well turned when he
sits down to meat!
Is it to be wondered at, then, that the bachelor is selfish? He escapes
lightly the lesson of compromise; his whole life is a training in
egoism, and he makes the most of his desirability, getting usually far
more than he gives. He is free to experiment in acquaintance though it
goes no farther than innocuous flirtation. He may make friendships for
himself and break them at will, lightly dodging the tie. There are
hundreds in every city who need go only where they wish, skipping even
"duty calls," sure of forgiveness. He may know men and women he cares
for, and, through the lack of experience in a life-long intimacy, he may
preserve many illusions as to women. If he has an income, or a
profession that demands no abode, he can wander "to and fro in the earth
and walk up and down in it" free as Satan. He travels the farthest who
travels alone.
Still, this cannot go on forever, and his franchise wanes. With the
first pang of middle age Nature asserts her imperious demand for
permanent companionship. The "cons" grow heavier, and the "pros" more
attractive. He sees maid after maid of his younger fancy pass out of
the game without regret, but the first sight of the new generation
strikes him to the heart. He is "uncled" by more and more adopted
nephews and nieces, and the sight of their fresh eyes awakens the
immemorial longing in him. And then, suddenly, another "pro" comes upon
the list, an undeniable item of importance, throwing its influence so
heavily upon the side of marriage that no number of his foolish little
"cons" can ever balance the account. He is in love, and there is but one
definition for that state. It is the immediate, ravenous, compelling
desire for a wife. There is nothing for it but to renounce allegiance
to his old friends and become naturalized into a new citizenship.
But though all over town the doors to which he cried "open sesame" bang
sullenly to shut him out, he does not notice it if that one portal lets
him in!
*The Confessions of an Ignoramus*
Musicians tell me that I am exceptionally fortunate. I know absolutely
nothing of music. It is not a bald, fathomless innocence, however. I
am not tone-deaf, for instance, and certain compositions please me; and,
knowing nothing, I have been treated with indulgent complaisance by the
profession, and amongst them I have the unique licence of being
privileged to like whatever I choose. It is no small distinction this,
nowadays, when one is nicely and strictly rated by his compliance to the
regnant mode, but I have to fight tooth and nail to defend my innocence.
I have determined that whatever happens, I will not be educated.
For a while, once on a time, I hazarded my franchise of free speech and
weakly accepted the tutelage of a master, that I might at least gain a
familiarity with the catch-words of the musical fraternity. It was the
more reprehensible and foolish because I had already lost my virginity
in art circles by the same servility. Long ago I learned to phrase and
gesticulate at the picture galleries, and try as I may, I cannot forget
the formulas. I learned to stand with eyes half closed before a
painting, and waving my hand, murmur, "I like _this_ part, in here!" I
caught that knowing waggle of the right thumb, and prated of "modelling,
tricky work, atmosphere, composition, values," and such humbuggery. I
could say, straight-faced, and with a vicious, explosive gesture, "Oh,
it's good in colour, but it just lacks _that_, you know!" By Jove! I
was in it up to the ears before I knew it, and now my critiques are
retailed to the semi-elect as coming from one of the Cognoscenti. I
have learned the terminology of the craft so well that my very
instructors have forgotten my novitiate; but an art exhibition is a
horror to me, for I go bound by the tenure of hypocrisy and dare not
walk freely, forced to rattle my chains as I limp through the forbidden
pastures of delight--the candy box pictures and chromos that my soul
loves with that fierce first love that never dies.
So I have learned to avoid the Pierian spring now, having escaped the
seductions of Euterpe by the merest chance. He is said to be a fool who
is caught twice by the same trick, and I write myself down a
worse-witted clown yet when I confess how far on the high-road to folly
I was before I jumped the fence of conventional parlance and broke for
the wide fields where lies my freedom.
I had been led astray by practicing the non-committal remark, "Oh, what
_is_ that?" as soon as the piano keys cooled off from the startling
massage of the furious performer. I was bold. I even dared to be the
first to speak, and I threw ambiguous meanings into that well-known
exclamation, for I was assured it was always safe, whether it followed a
Moskowski mazurka hot from the blunt fingers of a Kansas City poor
relation, or a somnolent Chopinian prelude hypnotized by the evening
star. I learned that the statute of Absorbed Attention had expired, and
that the lifted eyebrow, the semi-concealed shrug, the overt smile
behind the performer's back, and the _ex post facto_ rescindment of all
these in one mucilaginous compliment, were now good taste. Bah! I
sickened of it all soon enough, for I had been piously brought up, and
my Puritan blood was anti-toxic to the corruptions of the musical
microbe.
And so I have forgotten to speak of Grieg as a "mere sentimentalist" and
all the rest of the Pharisee's Phrase-book, thank God! I can hear the
"Mill in the Forest" and check up its verisimilitudes, item by item,
even as I have dared to renew my youth with Charles Dickens, and laugh,
cry, and grow hot and cold with Scott's marionettes.