no such thing in life as absolute darkness; one's eyes revolt and hasten
to fill the vacuum by floating in sparks, dream-patterns, figures
whimsical and figures grotesque, shifting, clad in complimentary colors,
to appease the indignant cups and rods of the retina. And so my musical
ignorance is alive with a fey intelligence of its own. I have come at
last to an original conception of what is good and what is bad by its
mere psychological effect, as illogical as a woman's intuition, yet as
absolute and empirical as the test of acid and alkali by litmus.
It has come to this, that I know now I shall never hear good music
again. When I was young the phrase "classical music" was still extant
(I come of the middle classes, where one calls a spade a spade), and
that variety of sound, "the most expensive of noises," was as
incomprehensible as was the training for its appreciation arduous; so
that beauty for its own sake was unknown, or lurked behind the
horizontal mountains of Truth that shut in the New England landscape.
But as my knowledge and love of art grew, and I mingled with those that
spoke this foreign tongue of beauty, I had opportunity of hearing music,
the only music that was worth while to them, the music that endures and
lives, continually virile and creative. Curiously enough, and unhappily
for me, so long a stranger to such influences, I found that some
compositions spelled me with their subtlety, tranced me into revery,
while others awakened active feelings of amusement, surprise, or
scientific curiosity as to their construction; and so, ignorant of
technique and composition, harmony, and all the rules of the art, I have
gone back to the woman in me, and trust to her little ounce of instinct.
When the vibrant chords, the sobbing pulsations and the mystical nuances
grow faint and die away as my dream mounts on the wings of an invisible
melody, leaving the sawing bows, the brazen curly horns, the discs,
cylinders, strings, keys, triangles, curves and tubes, with which
paraphernalia the magicians of the orchestra have bewitched me, far,
far, far below where I soar aloft, naked and alone in the secret spaces
of my soul,--I know (not then, but afterward) that the talisman has been
at work, and as the rhythm dies and I drop, drop to the world again and
turn to the trembling, wide-eyed girl at my left, and am roused by the
brutal applause that surges around me,--I know that this was music. But
I have not heard it. Alas! Shall I never hear it?
*A Music-Box Recital*
Hid secretly in my heart, I long had a passion for music-boxes. While I
was innocent of the ways of the world, and thought that Art, as some
think that Manners, had a ritual to which one must conform in order to
be considered a gentleman, I hid this low-born taste from my friends and
talked daintily of Brahms, his frozen music, of the architectural
sonata, and other things I did not understand. How musicians and
artists must have laughed at me when they saw my hands--square,
constructive palms, wilful thumbs and mechanical fingers! Music-box
hands! But though I had long ceased cutting stencils of other people's
thoughts and frescoing my own vanity therewith, I dared not confess to
John this wretchedly vulgar _penchant_ for the music-box of
Commerce--the small, varnished, brass and cedar affair, which is the
only instrument I can play.
But at ten of the clock one night the yearning became so intense in me
that I burst the bonds of my discretion, and lo! at the first word John
fell heavily into my arms. He, too, cherished this unhallowed joy in
secret, and had long hidden this _tendresse_ behind a mask of propriety.
We dried our eyes, and were into overcoats and out on the street in a
single presto measure, set to a swift staccato march for the Bowery. We
must have a music-box apiece before we slept--we swore it in a great
forte oath! Prestissimo! but we were hungry for a good three-dollar
package of discord! It was none of these modern contrivances with
perforated discs and interchangeable tunes we were after; not the
penny-in-the-slot, beer saloon air-shaker nor the authropomorphic
Pianola; only the regulation old-fashioned Swiss instrument would serve,
the music-box of our youth, the wonderful, complicated little engine
with a cylinder bristling with pins that picked forth harmonies from the
soul of a steel comb, its melody limpid with treble accompaniments
lithely sustained at the small end, where the teeth are small and
active, with a picture of children skating on the cover top, and
beneath, under glass--oh! rapture!--the whirring wheels all in sight,
tempting the small, inquisitive finger of youth.
After an incredible amount of discussion as to the relative merits of
the repertoires, we came to a decision and fled home, to abandon
ourselves to the distractions of our tiny orchestras. The boxes were so
full of music! They have been trying to empty themselves ever since,
but the magic purse seems inexhaustible. One night, in my idyllic
youth, a German band played all night long under my window; but now I
could carry the divine gift of music in my overcoat pocket! I was like
that Persian monarch for whom was made the first pair of shoes. "Your
Majesty," said his vizier, "now at last for you, indeed, is the whole
world covered with leather, as thou hast demanded!" O Allah! Now for
me was the whole world patrolled with German bands! They played "Say Au
Revoir, but not Good-bye" under my pillow; they gave me "Honey, my
Honey" as I ate my breakfast.
Before the week was up we had learned every tune by heart, down to the
last grace-note in the accompaniment. We had learned, too, the sequence
of tunes, inevitable, unchanging as the laws of the Medes of old. Never
again shall I be able to hear "Sweet Marie" played without a shock that
it is not followed by the "Isabella Waltz!" Never again shall I hear
the end of "Honey, my Honey" without a tremble of nervous suspense till
comes the little _click!_ of the shooting cylinder, the apprehensive
pause, and then--hurrah! the first gay notes of "Sweet Marie!"
But we could not long endure the perfect simplicity of the airs, and the
old touch of supercivilization led us on to attempt to vary and improve
the performance of our songs. It was John who discovered the virtue of
a few pillows stuffed on top of the machine, and he achieved immense
_con expressione_ effects by waving the box wildly in the air. I
contented myself with changing the angle of the fan-wheel so as to make
it play _allegro_; then one got so very much music in such a very little
while--surely a pardonable gluttony! Had my box been larger I might
have heard seven complete operas in an hour, like the old Duke in
"Sylvie and Bruno!" Yet, after all, it was versatility of quality,
rather than mere quantity, that should be the greatest victory, and we
set out on experiments in _timbre_. At last we found, John and I, that
by inserting a little paper cylinder under the glass, so as to press on
the keys, we could give Sousa the grip, as one might say, and he would
cough and wheeze in a way to amply discredit the statement that there is
no such thing as humour in music. A greater thickness of paper gives the
effect of a _duo_ with mandolin and banjo, and this was by far the most
successful of our variations.
I should end as I began, I know, by a bit of maudlin philosophical
moralysis. I might, for instance, trace the resemblances in the musical
world and say that for me the conductor waving his baton is as one who
winds the key to a very human music-box, in which each tooth of the comb
is a living, vibrant human being. Or I might broach a flagon of
morality, forbye, and show how each one of us plays his little mental
tunes in a set routine, wound up by the Great Musician; what devils
stick their fingers into our works, and bid us play more fast or slow,
more loud, more low; what jests of Fate, who inserts her cacophonous
paper cylinder that we may wheeze through misfortunate obbligatos of
pain.
But no! My forelegs are stuck in the bog of realism, and I shall not
budge from the literal presentation, for my little kingdom of delight
suffered a revolution! It was John's fault, for John had been affecting
a musical countess who gave afternoon talks on the "art of listening,"
in a studio--dry molecular analyses of Kneisel Quartets and such like
verbiage. So he came home late one night, while a music-box was bowling
away merrily upon the couch with a one-pillow soft pedal. It was my
music-box, too!
"Bah!" he swore, "your box phrases so abominably. It is so cold, so
restrained, so colourless! Hear mine, now--isn't that an excellent
_pianissimo_? There's polished technique! There's _chiaro scuro_! Oh,
listen to that 'Cat Came Back!' My machine is an artist; yours is a
mere _virtuoso_. Mine is a Joachim, a d'Albert; yours is a Musin, a de
Kontski. Get onto the smooth, suave _legato_ of this wonderful box!
Hear its virile octaves! Hark to those scales, like strings of
white-hot pearls dropping upon velvet!" He was moaning and tossing as
he snored these parodies. It was a nightmare, both for him and for me.
At four o'clock, in the first pink grey of the morning, I could endure
it no longer. I arose haggardly and threw the two music-boxes into the
fire!
*A Plea for the Precious*
Now if a youth as mad-headed as I, without bookishness or literary
education of any sort, with neither much of anything to say, nor much
desire to say anything--if such a charlatan would have his wares bought
and his words read, he must be antic beyond his contemporains (a shorter
word than the English equivalent, whereby I go forward one step in
brevity and back two in translation). He must pique curiosity and tempt
the reader on; he must pay a contango, which is, by the same token, a
premium paid for the privilege of deferring interest. He must in short,
be "precious," a quality essentially self-conscious. This has been at
times a popular pose in Letters, and when successful it is a
sufficiently amusing one, as poses go; but I name no names for the sake
of the others who fall between the stools of purpose and pretence--who
tie, as one might say, two one-legged beggars together and think they
have made a whole man.
If I have lured you so far into the web of my vagary, pray come into my
parlour, too, and be hung for the whole sheep that you are, that I may
fleece you close with my sophistries before you go. I have but one toy
here to amuse you. I juggle idioms and balance phrases upon my pen, and
whether you laugh at me or with me, I care not, _moi_. But as seriously
as is possible (seriousness is not my present pose, I assure you), I
would I might wheedle some of your dogged, clogged, rugged, ragged,
fagged, foggy wits out of you, and constrain you to accept my pinchbeck
for true plate the while; for I have a little sense in my alloy, after
all, and you might go further and fare the worse than by my chatter. If
I dared I would jump boldly into my thesis, without apologies; but it so
happens that it is one that should be itself its own illustration. I
should convince you of its truth by its own garment of expression,
instead of depending upon my logical introductory presentation. But
this I fear to try. My pistols, I fear, are, as the Duchess of Malfi
might say, loaded with nothing but perfumes and kissing-comfits.
Now that you are well a-muddled, and like to turn to a saner page, let
me button-hole you with one clean statement while you stand, gasping.
Indeed I fear that a dozen have fled already from my gibbering, and I
speak to but one sullen survivor, determined to collect his promised
interest. We know, then, the joy of colour, taste, sound and odour as
mere sensual gratifications, undiluted with significance. But, since I
seldom read, I have never seen the apology for the sensual pleasures of
diction, pure and simple in its essence. Swinburne, I hear, has his
lilts and harmonies in poesy, and perhaps that is the nearest like,
except for the Purpose that drives his chariot; but I am for that
runaway mood that gallops gayly forth into Nowhere, unguided and
unrestrained. A twenty bookmen shall come up to me, no doubt, with
their index fingers set upon examples, but I am happier in my ignorance,
and I prefer to think it has not yet been done--or, at least, not
exactly as I mean. Indeed, you may depend upon me to evade proof with
some quibble.
Your didactic prose is a wain, pulled over the hard city street. Fiction
is the jaunting-car that paddles down the by-side lane. Poetry wallops
you along the bridle path with your mistress Muse on a pillion, and, but
very rarely, dares across country, over a low hedge or two (but always
after some fleeting hare of thought); but I--I am for the reckless run
over the moor and downs--the riderless random enthusiasm of nonsense!
So out of my way, gentlemen of the red coats, or I bowl you down!
Mazeppa might do for a figure, but his steed was hampered with the load;
his runaway had too savage an import, and it is my purpose to be only a
little mad. Pegasus is a forbidden metaphor nowadays. He is hackneyed
by the livery of vulgar stables. I prefer that Black Horse, vanned and
terrible, who flicked out the eyes of the Second Calender, as my mount
is like to serve me!
In the Sonata is an exemplification of my theory. There, now, is a
vehicle that carries no passengers, save what one's fancy lades it
with--it charges and soars with no visible rein to guide it, except when
a thread of melody steers it into some little course of delight. So
there is a secret rhythm in the best prose that is more subtile than the
metres of verse, and which is to the essay what the expression of the
face is to the talker. One may, indeed, use that same word, expression
or gesture, instead of the common term, style. But a common or house
observation shows us that there is some pleasure in the face whose lips
are dumb, and I dare say there is joy for the coxcomb and female fop in
the unworn gown, as it hangs on its lonely nail, or is draped on the lay
figure of meaningless, meaningful form. So it is to such hair-brains
and cockatoos I appeal. Come to my Masquerade and let us for a wild
half-hour wear the spangles and tights of palestric impropriety, hid by
a visor that shall not betray our thought. In this lesser pantomime one
may be irrelevant, inconsequent and immature, and sport the flower of
thought that has not yet fruited into purpose.
Can you find your way through this frivolity, mixed metaphor and tricksy
phrase, and see what a wanton a paragraph may become when one sends it
forth, free from the conventional moralities of licenced Literature? I
have been to many such debauch, and have got so drunk on adjectives that
I thought all my thoughts double. In this Harlequinade, too, there are
more games than my promised Sonata. I will mock you the "Mill in the
Forest," or any other descriptive piece, with coloured words, parodying
your orchestra with graphic nonsense. I will paint the charms of the
dance in seductive syllables; or no! better--the long forthright swing
of the skater, this way, that way, fast and faster, the Ice King's
master, the nibble of the cold, the brush of the rasping breeze, the
little rascally hubbies where the wind has pimpled the surface, and the
dark, blue-black slippery glare beyond, where--damn it! I shock you
with a raucous expletive, and you plunk into a dash of ice-cold
remonstrance up to your ears, and flounder, cold and dripping,
tooth-loose, and grey with fright!
So, at the expense of good taste and to the grief of the judicious, I
force my point upon you. _En garde, messieurs_, and answer me! I find
few enough who can play the game with me or for me. The age of Chivalry
is gone, in horsemanship as well as in feats of arms and sword-play.
Who knows the demi-volt, the caracole, the curvet, the capriole or the
rest of the Seven Movements? Who is elegant in the High Manege or
Raised Airs? Who prances for the sheer delight of gallant rhetoric, on
Litotes, Asteism or Onomatopoeia? Fain would I be bedevilled, but the
Magi are passed away. I must fall back on Dr. Johnson's pious flim-flam,
but the humours of his verbiage are in me, not in him.
Yet the New Century Carnival is proclaimed and, over the water, there
are, I hear, a few who are to revel with King Rex in the Empire of
Unreason. On this side the nearest we have got to it is a little
machine-made nonsense, ground out for the supposititious amusement of
babes. But what I mean is neither second childhood, nor bombast, nor
buffoonery, nor silliness, nor even insanity--though that is nearest the
mark--but a tipsy Hell-raising with this wine of our fine old English
speech. It has been too long corked up and cobwebbed by tradition,
sanctified to the Elect, and discreetly dispensed at decorous dinner
tables by respectable authors, and ladies-with-three-names who also
write. It has been too long sipped and tasted mincingly out of the
cut-glass goblets of the literary table. Gentlemen-inebriates all, I
wave you the red flag! A torch this way! What ho! Roysterers! Up
younglings, quodlings, dabchicks, devil-may-cares and mad-mannered
blades! To the devil with the tip-staves and tithing-men, constables,
beadles, vergers, deputy sheriffs and long-lipped parsons! A raid on
the wine-cellar to break flagons of good English, and drink, drink,
drink, till your heads spin! There is still joy and intoxication in the
jolly old bottles that Shakespeare and his giddy-phrased Buccaneering
crew of poets filled! "By Gad--slid! I scorn it, to be a consort for
every humdrum, hang them, scroyles!"
*Sub Rosa*
Perhaps I am as discreet, honourable and loyal as the ordinary man, but
I confess that at times I have a frantic desire to escape to the moon
and tell all I know, or to unburden myself of the weight of dynamic
confidences, pouring my revelations into the ears of some responsive
idiot. In the old days a corpse was fastened to the felon's back in
punishment of certain crimes, and to me a secret seems almost as deadly
a load. The temptation to vivify the tale and make it walk abroad on
its own legs is hard to deny.
There are secrets so dangerous that to possess them is foolhardy. It is
like storing dynamite in one's drawing-room; an explosion is always
imminent, and publication would mean disaster. I have known secrets
myself, so outrageous, so bulging with scandal, that, had I not promptly
forgotten them, they would have undone society twenty times over! There
is a titilating pleasure in the keeping of such terrific truths and it
increases one's inward pride to think that one knows of another what, if
told, would change the aspect of a life. The temptation to tell is like
being in church and suddenly seized with an almost irresistible impulse
to shriek aloud, or like standing at the verge of a cliff and being
impelled to throw one's self over. To give way to the perfidious
thought means moral death, and when one falls, one brings others down as
well.
Many of us, though we conceit ourselves to be worthy of trust, are, as
regards our secrets, in a state of unstable equilibrium. Women, seeing
and feeling things more personally and subjectively than men, are
especially hazardously poised. So long as the friendship with the
confidant is preserved, the secret is safe, but let estrangement come,
and suddenly the balance becomes top-heavy; one's morality falls and the
secret escapes in the crash of anger. I have known women who felt
themselves quite free to tell secrets when the proper owner of them
proved guilty of unfaithfulness. The difference in viewpoint of the
sexes seems to be this: men have a definite code of honour, certain
well-recognized laws of conduct acknowledged even by those who do not
always obey them. "The brand of the dog is upon him by whom is a secret
revealed." If a woman is honourable (in the man's sense of the term),
it is a test of her individual character, and not of conformity to any
feminine ethical system.
Most men, for instance, and some women (especially when influenced by
love or great friendship), will keep a confidence not only passively,
but actively. As Kipling's _Hafiz_ teaches:--
"If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can
clear,
Lie, while thy lips can move, or a man is alive to hear!"
It seems right, too, that in lesser cases one is justified in lying to
protect one's own secret, as in disavowing the authorship of an
anonymous book; for one surely need not be at the mercy of every
questioner. The true confidant is not a mere negative receptacle for
your story, but a positive ally.
On the other hand, there are those who hold that a singular and prime
friendship dissolves all other obligations whatsoever, and that secrets
betrayed are the greatest sacrifices possible upon the altar of love.
Montaigne says, "The secret I have sworn not to reveal to any other I
may, without perjury, communicate to him who is not another, but
myself." There are few friendships nowadays so close as his with
Estienne de la Boetie (who, himself, "would not so much as lie in
jest"); theirs was one of the great friendships of history; but there is
much casuistry used by those who would manifest their importance in
knowing mysterious things. They obey the letter of the law and tell
without really telling, letting the truth leak out in wise hints and
suggestions, or they tell part of a tale and hoodwink themselves into
thinking that they have violated no confidence. Yet nothing is so
dangerous as half a truth. It is like pulling one end of a bow-knot.
Sooner or later it is inevitable that the hearer will come across the
other side, and the cat will be out of the bag.
But some secrets have so great a fiction interest, or such sensational
psychology that one is quite unable to refrain from telling the tale,
without names, or localities, perhaps, merely for the story's sake. This
is, perhaps, permissible when one really tells for the study of human
nature rather than as gossip. It is dangerous always, but a clever
person can so distort certain details that the true characters can never
be traced. For myself, I would never demand absolute confidence, for I
would never tell anything to anybody whose discretion I could not
absolutely trust, and a friend can as often aid one by telling at the
proper time as by keeping silent.
Some secrets are told only for the purpose of being repeated. What one
cannot tell one's self one must get others to tell for one, and this
trick is the theme of many a farce. Women understand this perfectly; it
is their code, and men laugh at it, feeling themselves superior. The
three quickest ways of communication, cynics say, are telephone,
telegraph, and tell-a-woman. Women are notoriously fond of secrets; it
is their only chance for romance. No man who desires to obtain a
woman's affection should forget this. Not that it is necessary to
initiate her into your affairs, but you will, as soon as possible, see
that something happens which she may consider it wise not to tell.
Cement her interest with some lively secret that ties you to her
irrevocably, so that she cannot come across your photograph or your
letter without a knowing smile.
There are those, too, who hold that their own idea of a secret's
importance is the excuse for divulgence or defense, but a man of honour
will keep the secret of a child as closely as that of an intimate
friend. The ass who surrounds his every narration with mystery and
takes needless precautions, has his rights, and though you may hear the
tale at the next corner you are still bound to silence. Some respect
their own secrets but not those of others and have no compunctions
against wheedling out a confidence from a weak acquaintance, thereby
becoming accessory to the fact of his faithlessness. A secret
discovered should be held as sacred as a secret confided.
The desire to tell secrets is one of the most contagious of diseases,
and few of us are immune. Some vigorous moral constitutions never
succumb, but once an epidemic begins, it is hard work stopping it, and a
secret on the rampage is well nigh irresistible. Tell your secret, then,
broadcast, and let it have its way until it dies out, or else lock it in
your own heart. But above all confide it not to her who asserts that
she never has the slightest desire to tell, for there, like a seed sown
in fertile ground, it will germinate and flower long after you have
forgotten it, aye, and bring forth fruit you never planted.
* * * * * * * *