German to my mother, and soon began to talk to me, and then said, "When
you go back to England, you can tell your friends that you have seen
Heinrich Heine." I replied, "And who is Heinrich Heine?" He laughed
heartily and took no offence at my ignorance; and we used to lounge on
the end of the pier together, where he told me stories in which fish,
mermaids, water-sprites and a very funny old French fiddler with a poodle
were mixed up in the most fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, and very
often pathetic, especially when the water-sprites brought him greetings
from the "Nord See." He was . . . so kind to me and so sarcastic to
every one else.' Twenty years afterwards the little girl whose 'braune
Augen' Heine had celebrated in his charming poem Wenn ich an deinem
Hause, used to go and see the dying poet in Paris. 'It does one good,'
he said to her, 'to see a woman who does not carry about a broken heart,
to be mended by all sorts of men, like the women here, who do not see
that a total want of heart is their real failing.' On another occasion
he said to her: 'I have now made peace with the whole world, and at last
also with God, who sends thee to me as a beautiful angel of death: I
shall certainly soon die.' Lady Duff Gordon said to him: 'Poor Poet, do
you still retain such splendid illusions, that you transform a travelling
Englishwoman into Azrael? That used not to be the case, for you always
disliked us.' He answered: 'Yes, I do not know what possessed me to
dislike the English, . . . it really was only petulance; I never hated
them, indeed, I never knew them. I was only once in England, but knew no
one, and found London very dreary, and the people and the streets odious.
But England has revenged herself well; she has sent me most excellent
friends--thyself and Milnes, that good Milnes.'
There are delightful letters from Dicky Doyle here, with the most amusing
drawings, one of the present Sir Robert Peel as he made his maiden speech
in the House being excellent; and the various descriptions of Hassan's
performances are extremely amusing. Hassan was a black boy, who had been
turned away by his master because he was going blind, and was found by
Lady Duff Gordon one night sitting on her doorstep. She took care of
him, and had him cured, and he seems to have been a constant source of
delight to every one. On one occasion, 'when Prince Louis Napoleon (the
late Emperor of the French) came in unexpectedly, he gravely said:
"Please, my Lady, I ran out and bought twopenny worth of sprats for the
Prince, and for the honour of the house."' Here is an amusing letter
from Mrs. Norton:
MY DEAR LUCIE,--We have never thanked you for the red Pots, which no
early Christian should be without, and which add that finishing stroke
to the splendour of our demesne, which was supposed to depend on a
roc's egg, in less intelligent times. We have now a warm Pompeian
appearance, and the constant contemplation of these classical objects
favours the beauty of the facial line; for what can be deduced from
the great fact, apparent in all the states of antiquity, that
_straight noses_ were the ancient custom, but the logical assumption
that the constant habit of turning up the nose at unsightly
objects--such as the National Gallery and other offensive and
obtrusive things--has produced the modern divergence from the true and
proper line of profile? I rejoice to think that we ourselves are
exempt. I attribute this to our love of Pompeian Pots (on account of
the beauty and distinction of this Pot's shape I spell it with a big
P), which has kept us straight in a world of crookedness. The pursuit
of profiles under difficulties--how much more rare than a pursuit of
knowledge! Talk of setting good examples before our children! Bah!
let us set good Pompeian Pots before our children, and when they grow
up they will not depart from them.
Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from the Cape, and her brilliant translation
of The Amber Witch, are, of course, well known. The latter book was,
with Lady Wilde's translation of Sidonia the Sorceress, my favourite
romantic reading when a boy. Her letters from Egypt are wonderfully
vivid and picturesque. Here is an interesting bit of art criticism:
Sheykh Yoosuf laughed so heartily over a print in an illustrated paper
from a picture of Hilton's of Rebekah at the well, with the old
'wekeel' of 'Sidi Ibraheem' (Abraham's chief servant) _kneeling_
before the girl he was sent to fetch, like an old fool without his
turban, and Rebekah and the other girls in queer fancy dresses, and
the camels with snouts like pigs. 'If the painter could not go into
"Es Sham" to see how the Arab really look,' said Sheykh Yoosuf, 'why
did he not paint a well in England, with girls like English
peasants--at least it would have looked natural to English people? and
the wekeel would not seem so like a madman if he had taken off a hat!'
I cordially agree with Yoosuf's art criticism. _Fancy_ pictures of
Eastern things are hopelessly absurd.
Mrs. Ross has certainly produced a most fascinating volume, and her book
is one of the books of the season. It is edited with tact and judgment.
* * * * *
Caroline, by Lady Lindsay, is certainly Lady Lindsay's best work. It is
written in a very clever modern style, and is as full of esprit and wit
as it is of subtle psychological insight. Caroline is an heiress, who,
coming downstairs at a Continental hotel, falls into the arms of a
charming, penniless young man. The hero of the novel is the young man's
friend, Lord Lexamont, who makes the 'great renunciation,' and succeeds
in being fine without being priggish, and Quixotic without being
ridiculous. Miss Ffoulkes, the elderly spinster, is a capital character,
and, indeed, the whole book is cleverly written. It has also the
advantage of being in only one volume. The influence of Mudie on
literature, the baneful influence of the circulating library, is clearly
on the wane. The gain to literature is incalculable. English novels
were becoming very tedious with their three volumes of padding--at least,
the second volume was always padding--and extremely indigestible. A
reckless punster once remarked to me, apropos of English novels, that
'the proof of the padding is in the eating,' and certainly English
fiction has been very heavy--heavy with the best intentions. Lady
Lindsay's book is a sign that better things are in store for us. She is
brief and bright.
* * * * *
What are the best books to give as Christmas presents to good girls who
are always pretty, or to pretty girls who are occasionally good? People
are so fond of giving away what they do not want themselves, that charity
is largely on the increase. But with this kind of charity I have not
much sympathy. If one gives away a book, it should be a charming book--so
charming, that one regrets having given it, and would not take it back.
Looking over the Christmas books sent to me by various publishers, I find
that these are the best and the most pleasing: Gleanings from the
'Graphic,' by Randolph Caldecott, a most fascinating volume full of
sketches that have real wit and humour of line, and are not simply
dependent on what the French call the legende, the literary explanation;
Meg's Friend, by Alice Corkran, one of our most delicate and graceful
prose-writers in the sphere of fiction, and one whose work has the rare
artistic qualities of refinement and simplicity; Under False Colours, by
Sarah Doudney, an excellent story; The Fisherman's Daughter, by Florence
Montgomery, the author of Misunderstood, a tale with real charm of idea
and treatment; Under a Cloud, by the author of The Atelier du Lys, and
quite worthy of its author; The Third Miss St. Quentin, by Mrs.
Molesworth, and A Christmas Posy from the same fascinating pen, and with
delightful illustrations by Walter Crane. Miss Rosa Mulholland's
Giannetta and Miss Agnes Giberne's Ralph Hardcastle's Will are also
admirable books for presents, and the bound volume of Atalanta has much
that is delightful both in art and in literature.
The prettiest, indeed the most beautiful, book from an artistic point of
view is undoubtedly Mr. Walter Crane's Flora's Feast. It is an
imaginative Masque of Flowers, and as lovely in colour as it is exquisite
in design. It shows us the whole pomp and pageant of the year, the
Snowdrops like white-crested knights, the little naked Crocus kneeling to
catch the sunlight in his golden chalice, the Daffodils blowing their
trumpets like young hunters, the Anemones with their wind-blown raiment,
the green-kirtled Marsh-marigolds, and the 'Lady-smocks all
silver-white,' tripping over the meadows like Arcadian milk-maids.
Buttercups are here, and the white-plumed Thorn in spiky armour, and the
Crown-imperial borne in stately procession, and red-bannered Tulips, and
Hyacinths with their spring bells, and Chaucer's Daisy--
small and sweet,
Si douce est la Marguerite.
Gorgeous Peonies, and Columbines 'that drew the car of Venus,' and the
Rose with her lover, and the stately white-vestured Lilies, and wide
staring Ox-eyes, and scarlet Poppies pass before us. There are Primroses
and Corncockles, Chrysanthemums in robes of rich brocade, Sunflowers and
tall Hollyhocks, and pale Christmas Roses. The designs for the
Daffodils, the wild Roses, the Convolvulus, and the Hollyhock are
admirable, and would be beautiful in embroidery or in any precious
material. Indeed, any one who wishes to find beautiful designs cannot do
better than get the book. It is, in its way, a little masterpiece, and
its grace and fancy, and beauty of line and colour, cannot be
over-estimated. The Greeks gave human form to wood and stream, and saw
Nature best in Naiad or in Dryad. Mr. Crane, with something of Gothic
fantasy, has caught the Greek feeling, the love of personification, the
passion for representing things under the conditions of the human form.
The flowers are to him so many knights and ladies, page-boys or shepherd-
boys, divine nymphs or simple girls, and in their fair bodies or fanciful
raiment one can see the flower's very form and absolute essence, so that
one loves their artistic truth no less than their artistic beauty. This
book contains some of the best work Mr. Crane has ever done. His art is
never so successful as when it is entirely remote from life. The
slightest touch of actuality seems to kill it. It lives, or should live,
in a world of its own fashioning. It is decorative in its complete
subordination of fact to beauty of effect, in the grandeur of its curves
and lines, in its entirely imaginative treatment. Almost every page of
this book gives a suggestion for some rich tapestry, some fine screen,
some painted cassone, some carving in wood or ivory.
* * * * *
From Messrs. Hildesheimer and Faulkner I have received a large collection
of Christmas cards and illustrated books. One of the latter, an edition
de luxe of Sheridan's Here's to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen, is very
cleverly illustrated by Miss Alice Havers and Mr. Ernest Wilson. It
seems to me, however, that there is a danger of modern illustration
becoming too pictorial. What we need is good book-ornament, decorative
ornament that will go with type and printing, and give to each page a
harmony and unity of effect. Merely dotting a page with reproductions of
water-colour drawings will not do. It is true that Japanese art, which
is essentially decorative, is pictorial also. But the Japanese have the
most wonderful delicacy of touch, and with a science so subtle that it
gives the effect of exquisite accident, they can by mere placing make an
undecorated space decorative. There is also an intimate connection
between their art and their handwriting or printed characters. They both
go together, and show the same feeling for form and line. Our aim should
be to discover some mode of illustration that will harmonise with the
shapes of our letters. At present there is a discord between our
pictorial illustrations and our unpictorial type. The former are too
essentially imitative in character, and often disturb a page instead of
decorating it. However, I suppose we must regard most of these Christmas
books merely as books of pictures, with a running accompaniment of
explanatory text. As the text, as a rule, consists of poetry, this is
putting the poet in a very subordinate position; but the poetry in the
books of this kind is not, as a rule, of a very high order of excellence.
(1) Three Generations of English Women. Memoirs and Correspondence of
Susannah Taylor, Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon. By Janet Ross,
Author of Italian Sketches, Land of Manfred, etc. (Fisher Unwin.)
(2) Caroline. By Lady Lindsay. (Bentley and Son.)
(3) Gleanings from the 'Graphic.' By Randolph Caldecott. (Routledge and
Sons.)
(4) Meg's Friend. By Alice Corkran. (Blackie and Sons.)
(5) Under False Colours. By Sarah Doudney. (Blackie and Sons.)
(6) The Fisherman's Daughter. By Florence Montgomery. (Hatchards.)
(7) Under a Cloud. By the Author of The Atelier du Lys. (Hatchards.)
(8) The Third Miss St. Quentin. By Mrs. Molesworth. (Hatchards.)
(9) A Christmas Posy. By Mrs. Molesworth. Illustrated by Walter Crane.
(Hatchards.)
(10) Giannetta. A Girl's Story of Herself. By Rosa Mulholland. (Blackie
and Sons.)
(11) Ralph Hardcastle's Will. By Agnes Giberne. (Hatchards.)
(12) Flora's Feast. A Masque of Flowers. Penned and Pictured by Walter
Crane. (Cassell and Co.)
(13) Here's to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen. By Richard Brinsley
Sheridan. Illustrated by Alice Havers and Ernest Wilson. (Hildesheimer
and Faulkner.)
POETRY AND PRISON
(Pall Mall Gazette, January 3, 1889.)
Prison has had an admirable effect on Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as a poet. The
Love Sonnets of Proteus, in spite of their clever Musset-like modernities
and their swift brilliant wit, were but affected or fantastic at best.
They were simply the records of passing moods and moments, of which some
were sad and others sweet, and not a few shameful. Their subject was not
of high or serious import. They contained much that was wilful and weak.
In Vinculis, upon the other hand, is a book that stirs one by its fine
sincerity of purpose, its lofty and impassioned thought, its depth and
ardour of intense feeling. 'Imprisonment,' says Mr. Blunt in his
preface, 'is a reality of discipline most useful to the modern soul,
lapped as it is in physical sloth and self-indulgence. Like a sickness
or a spiritual retreat it purifies and ennobles; and the soul emerges
from it stronger and more self-contained.' To him, certainly, it has
been a mode of purification. The opening sonnets, composed in the bleak
cell of Galway Gaol, and written down on the fly-leaves of the prisoner's
prayer-book, are full of things nobly conceived and nobly uttered, and
show that though Mr. Balfour may enforce 'plain living' by his prison
regulations, he cannot prevent 'high thinking' or in any way limit or
constrain the freedom of a man's soul. They are, of course, intensely
personal in expression. They could not fail to be so. But the
personality that they reveal has nothing petty or ignoble about it. The
petulant cry of the shallow egoist which was the chief characteristic of
the Love Sonnets of Proteus is not to be found here. In its place we
have wild grief and terrible scorn, fierce rage and flame-like passion.
Such a sonnet as the following comes out of the very fire of heart and
brain:
God knows, 'twas not with a fore-reasoned plan
I left the easeful dwellings of my peace,
And sought this combat with ungodly Man,
And ceaseless still through years that do not cease
Have warred with Powers and Principalities.
My natural soul, ere yet these strifes began,
Was as a sister diligent to please
And loving all, and most the human clan.
God knows it. And He knows how the world's tears
Touched me. And He is witness of my wrath,
How it was kindled against murderers
Who slew for gold, and how upon their path
I met them. Since which day the World in arms
Strikes at my life with angers and alarms.
And this sonnet has all the strange strength of that despair which is but
the prelude to a larger hope:
I thought to do a deed of chivalry,
An act of worth, which haply in her sight
Who was my mistress should recorded be
And of the nations. And, when thus the fight
Faltered and men once bold with faces white
Turned this and that way in excuse to flee,
I only stood, and by the foeman's might
Was overborne and mangled cruelly.
Then crawled I to her feet, in whose dear cause
I made this venture, and 'Behold,' I said,
'How I am wounded for thee in these wars.'
But she, 'Poor cripple, would'st thou I should wed
A limbless trunk?' and laughing turned from me.
Yet she was fair, and her name 'Liberty.'
The sonnet beginning
A prison is a convent without God--
Poverty, Chastity, Obedience
Its precepts are:
is very fine; and this, written just after entering the gaol, is
powerful:
Naked I came into the world of pleasure,
And naked come I to this house of pain.
Here at the gate I lay down my life's treasure,
My pride, my garments and my name with men.
The world and I henceforth shall be as twain,
No sound of me shall pierce for good or ill
These walls of grief. Nor shall I hear the vain
Laughter and tears of those who love me still.
Within, what new life waits me! Little ease,
Cold lying, hunger, nights of wakefulness,
Harsh orders given, no voice to soothe or please,
Poor thieves for friends, for books rules meaningless;
This is the grave--nay, hell. Yet, Lord of Might,
Still in Thy light my spirit shall see light.
But, indeed, all the sonnets are worth reading, and The Canon of Aughrim,
the longest poem in the book, is a most masterly and dramatic description
of the tragic life of the Irish peasant. Literature is not much indebted
to Mr. Balfour for his sophistical Defence of Philosophic Doubt which is
one of the dullest books we know, but it must be admitted that by sending
Mr. Blunt to gaol he has converted a clever rhymer into an earnest and
deep-thinking poet. The narrow confines of the prison cell seem to suit
the 'sonnet's scanty plot of ground,' and an unjust imprisonment for a
noble cause strengthens as well as deepens the nature.
In Vinculis. By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Author of The Wind and the
Whirlwind, The Love Sonnets of Proteus, etc. etc. (Kegan Paul.)
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WALT WHITMAN
(Pall Mall Gazette, January 25, 1889.)
'No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
performance . . . or as aiming mainly toward art and aestheticism.'
'Leaves of Grass . . . has mainly been the outcropping of my own
emotional and other personal nature--an attempt, from first to last, to
put _a Person_, a human being (myself, in the latter half of the
Nineteenth Century in America,) freely, fully and truly on record. I
could not find any similar personal record in current literature that
satisfied me.' In these words Walt Whitman gives us the true attitude we
should adopt towards his work, having, indeed, a much saner view of the
value and meaning of that work than either his eloquent admirers or noisy
detractors can boast of possessing. His last book, November Boughs, as
he calls it, published in the winter of the old man's life, reveals to
us, not indeed a soul's tragedy, for its last note is one of joy and
hope, and noble and unshaken faith in all that is fine and worthy of such
faith, but certainly the drama of a human soul, and puts on record with a
simplicity that has in it both sweetness and strength the record of his
spiritual development, and of the aim and motive both of the manner and
the matter of his work. His strange mode of expression is shown in these
pages to have been the result of deliberate and self-conscious choice.
The 'barbaric yawp' which he sent over 'the roofs of the world' so many
years ago, and which wrung from Mr. Swinburne's lip such lofty panegyric
in song and such loud clamorous censure in prose, appears here in what
will be to many an entirely new light. For in his very rejection of art
Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by
certain means and he succeeded. There is much method in what many have
termed his madness, too much method, indeed, some may be tempted to
fancy.
In the story of his life, as he tells it to us, we find him at the age of
sixteen beginning a definite and philosophical study of literature:
Summers and falls, I used to go off, sometimes for a week at a
stretch, down in the country, or to Long Island's seashores--there, in
the presence of outdoor influences, I went over thoroughly the Old and
New Testaments, and absorb'd (probably to better advantage for me than
in any library or indoor room--it makes such difference _where_ you
read) Shakspere, Ossian, the best translated versions I could get of
Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, the old German Nibelungen, the ancient
Hindoo poems, and one or two other masterpieces, Dante's among them.
As it happened, I read the latter mostly in an old wood. The Iliad
. . . I read first thoroughly on the peninsula of Orient, northeast end
of Long Island, in a sheltered hollow of rock and sand, with the sea
on each side. (I have wonder'd since why I was not overwhelmed by
those mighty masters. Likely because I read them, as described, in
the full presence of Nature, under the sun, with the far-spreading
landscape and vistas, or the sea rolling in.)
Edgar Allan Poe's amusing bit of dogmatism that, for our occasions and
our day, 'there can be no such thing as a long poem,' fascinated him.
'The same thought had been haunting my mind before,' he said, 'but Poe's
argument . . . work'd the sum out, and proved it to me,' and the English
translation of the Bible seems to have suggested to him the possibility
of a poetic form which, while retaining the spirit of poetry, would still
be free from the trammels of rhyme and of a definite metrical system.
Having thus, to a certain degree, settled upon what one might call the
'technique' of Whitmanism, he began to brood upon the nature of that
spirit which was to give life to the strange form. The central point of
the poetry of the future seemed to him to be necessarily 'an identical
body and soul, a personality,' in fact, which personality, he tells us
frankly, 'after many considerations and ponderings I deliberately settled
should be myself.' However, for the true creation and revealing of this
personality, at first only dimly felt, a new stimulus was needed. This
came from the Civil War. After describing the many dreams and passions
of his boyhood and early manhood, he goes on to say:
These, however, and much more might have gone on and come to naught
(almost positively would have come to naught,) if a sudden, vast,
terrible, direct and indirect stimulus for new and national
declamatory expression had not been given to me. It is certain, I
say, that although I had made a start before, only from the occurrence
of the Secession War, and what it show'd me as by flashes of
lightning, with the emotional depths it sounded and arous'd (of
course, I don't mean in my own heart only, I saw it just as plainly in
others, in millions)--that only from the strong flare and provocation
of that war's sights and scenes the final reasons-for-being of an
autochthonic and passionate song definitely came forth.
I went down to the war fields of Virginia . . . lived thenceforward in
camp--saw great battles and the days and nights afterward--partook of
all the fluctuations, gloom, despair, hopes again arous'd, courage
evoked--death readily risk'd--_the cause_, too--along and filling
those agonistic and lurid following years . . . the real parturition
years . . . of this henceforth homogeneous Union. Without those three
or four years and the experiences they gave, Leaves of Grass would not
now be existing.
Having thus obtained the necessary stimulus for the quickening and
awakening of the personal self, some day to be endowed with universality,
he sought to find new notes of song, and, passing beyond the mere passion
for expression, he aimed at 'Suggestiveness' first.
I round and finish little, if anything; and could not, consistently
with my scheme. The reader will have his or her part to do, just as
much as I have had mine. I seek less to state or display any theme or
thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
theme or thought--there to pursue your own flight.
Another 'impetus-word' is Comradeship, and other 'word-signs' are Good
Cheer, Content and Hope. Individuality, especially, he sought for:
I have allowed the stress of my poems from beginning to end to bear
upon American individuality and assist it--not only because that is a
great lesson in Nature, amid all her generalising laws, but as
counterpoise to the leveling tendencies of Democracy--and for other
reasons. Defiant of ostensible literary and other conventions, I
avowedly chant 'the great pride of man in himself,' and permit it to
be more or less a motif of nearly all my verse. I think this pride
indispensable to an American. I think it not inconsistent with
obedience, humility, deference, and self-questioning.
A new theme also was to be found in the relation of the sexes, conceived
in a natural, simple and healthy form, and he protests against poor Mr.
William Rossetti's attempt to Bowdlerise and expurgate his song.