Transcriber’s Note: The Table of Contents and the list of
illustrations were added by the transcriber.
[Illustration: Sincerely yours
Frank R. Stockton]
MCCLURE’s MAGAZINE.
VOL. I. NOVEMBER, 1893. No. 6.
Copyright, 1893, by S. S. MCCLURE, Limited. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
PAGE
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANK R. STOCKTON AND EDITH M. THOMAS. 467
“INCURABLE.” A GHETTO TRAGEDY. 478
“HUMAN DOCUMENTS.” 487
THE PERSONAL FORCE OF CLEVELAND. By E. Jay Edwards. 493
PATTI AT CRAIG-Y-NOS. By Arthur Warren. 501
ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER. By “Q.” 515
SONG. By Thomas Lovell Beddoes. 523
AN INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR JAMES DEWAR. By Henry J. W. Dam. 524
THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH. By Gilbert Parker. 533
STRANGER THAN FICTION. By Doctor William Wright. 535
THE HYPNOTIC EXPERIMENTS OF DOCTOR LUYS. By R. H. Sherard. 547
THE SURGEON’S MIRACLE. By Joseph Kirkland. 555
Illustrations
PAGE
FRONTISPIECE 466
MISS EDITH M. THOMAS. 467
A CORNER OF THE DRAWING-ROOM. 472
THE DINING-ROOM. 476
VIEW FROM A WINDOW IN THE TOWER. 477
A. CONAN DOYLE. 488
R. E. PEARY, C. E., U. S. N. 489
CAMILLE FLAMMARION. 491
F. HOPKINSON SMITH. 492
GROVER CLEVELAND. 494
CRAIG-Y-NOS. 502
CRAIG-Y-NOS AND TERRACES FROM THE RIVER. 503
MADAME PATTI’S FATHER. 504
MADAME PATTI AT EIGHTEEN. 504
MADAME PATTI IN 1869 AND IN 1877. 505
THE DINING-ROOM. 506
THE CONSERVATORY. 507
MADAME’S BOUDOIR. 508
THE SITTING-ROOM. 509
THE FRENCH BILLIARD-ROOM. 510
THE ENGLISH BILLIARD-ROOM. 511
SIGNOR NICOLINI. 512
A BIT IN THE PARK. THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE. 513
THE PROSCENIUM OF CRAIG-Y-NOS THEATER. 514
THE LABORATORY OF DAVY AND FARADAY AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 525
PROFESSOR DEWAR IN THE LABORATORY OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 527
THE LECTURE-ROOM OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 528
PROFESSOR DEWAR’S LECTURE-TABLE. 529
EARLY AND LATEST FORMS OF VESSELS FOR HOLDING LIQUEFIED OXYGEN. 530
THE “COMPRESSORS.” 531
DOCTOR LUYS. 547
PLEASING EFFECT OF THE NORTH POLE OF A MAGNET. 548
REPULSIVE EFFECT OF THE SOUTH POLE OF A MAGNET. 549
ESTHER, DOCTOR LUYS’ SUBJECT. 550
ESTHER IN THE LETHARGIC STATE. 551
ATTRACTION OF THE HAND IN THE LETHARGIC STATE. 551
THE ACTION OF WATER. 552
PLEASURE CAUSED BY PEPPER PRESENTED TO THE LEFT SIDE. 552
ANXIETY CAUSED BY PEPPER PRESENTED TO THE RIGHT SIDE. 553
PLEASURE CAUSED BY FENNEL PRESENTED TO THE RIGHT EYE. 553
ANXIETY CAUSED BY HELIOTROPE. 554
THE EFFECT OF THYME. 554
FRIGHT PRODUCED BY SULPHATE OF SPARTEINE. 554
TERROR CAUSED BY FRANKINCENSE. 554
ABE WAS FOLLOWING THE PLOUGH. 555
AND EPHE HE WAS TICKLED. 556
AND SHE PITCHED IN. 556
FIRST SPIRT OF BLOOD. 557
“DO YOU KNOW ME?” 558
REAL CONVERSATIONS.--III.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANK R. STOCKTON AND EDITH M. THOMAS.
RECORDED BY MISS THOMAS.
_Nature provides no lovelier mise-en-scène for a story, a poem or, a
“conversation” than is to be found in the sylvan and pastoral world
that looks out upon the gradual crescendo of the Blue Ridge mountains
in northern New Jersey._
_“Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,_
_Tall oaks----”_
_Tall beeches, hickories, chestnuts, and maples, too, rise on all sides
to clothe fertile slope or wilder acclivity. Those who have never
experimentally proved what riches the landscape-loving eye counts for
its own in this portion of the State may still hold to the calumnious
tradition that all Jersey is flat and unprofitable to the searcher for
the beautiful in pictorial nature. There is no hilltop of this gracious
country that does not rise to salute some yet more sightly hill; no
sunny hollow or winding dell that does not seem the key to some Happy
Valley beyond, where a Rasselas might be content to abide forever; no
woodland glade that would not satisfy Leigh Hunt’s description,_
_“Places of nestling green, for poets made.”_
[Illustration: MISS EDITH M. THOMAS.]
_Yet it would hardly be judicious for a poet to live here, lest he
should be diverted altogether from thoughts of work, and, like the bees
in Florida, lend himself to present enjoyment, without forecast of the
morrow._
_“Give me health and a day,” says Emerson, “and I will make the pomp
of emperors ridiculous.” While we venture no such reduction of royal
heads, we are rich in the sense of privilege and of immunity from all
the troubled voices of the world, given such a scene, such a fair
September morning._
_The Holt, the wooded hill on which stands Mr. Stockton’s home, rises
on three sides--gently, leisurely; nothing abrupt, but as befits the
site for an ideal homestead. Even were no houses made with hands
erected in this place, the noble grove, comprising the whole congress
of good trees and true, that yield fuel and timber for man’s use, would
enclose and tapestry around a sort of spacious woodland chamber for the
abode of contemplation and comfort. In truth, close beside the ample
piazza, a group of stately pines, joined in brotherly love, securely
roof over a little parlor where the gentle shower would scarce admonish
a loiterer in a rustic seat._
_Down this easy slope the trees descend to make a green, dream-lighted
dell, through which we see the winding course of a wood-path, where the
pilgrim of a day may saunter. So sauntering, or tarrying, the pilgrim
proceeds leisurely along; at last, a little climb and a deft turn of
the path deliver us into a sweetly secluded nook christened “Studio
Bluff.”_
_And now to return to the sheltering eaves of the “Holt” and repair to
the study. Yonder is the great desk, as full, it may be, of hives and
honey as were the pockets of the Bee Man of Orn!_
_There is the bookcase, containing, among its volumes of reference
and service, sundry eccentricities of literature: “Mr. Salmon,” for
instance, with his exhaustive “Geographical and Historical Grammar,”
sandwiching between its useful rules and tables tidbits of valuable
information, including such subjects as “Cleopatra’s Asp;” adding also
“a few paradoxes,” otherwise childish riddles, wherewith the simple
olden time was wont to amuse itself. Here, on the walls hangs the
sampler of one of the ladies Stockton, long since skilled with the
“fine needle and nice thread.” Close beside this notable needlework
hangs a parchment, the will of one of the forefathers of the house, who
held it no “baseness to write fair,” if this scarcely faded engrossing
bespeaks the writer’s creed in penmanship. Here, a grim, gaunt
candlestick does picket duty all by itself: it is a bayonet taken from
the last battlefield of the South--a bayonet inverted, the point thrust
into a standard, the stock serving as socket for the candle. In this
rapid survey of the room, the lines of old Turberville attract the eye,
where they appear inscribed over the mantel:_
_“Yee that frequent the hilles and highest holtes of all,_
_Assist mee with your skilful quilles, and listen when I call.”_
[Illustration]
_On the mantel reposes a wickedly crooked dirk, sheathed and quiescent
now. It is the weapon that slew the redoubted Po Money, a Dacoit chief,
of whom the missionary who consigned it to the present owner naïvely
observes, on his card of presentation, “Since he would never repent, it
seemed best that he should be out of the world.”_
_By this window are flowers, a few; by choice a vase for each; for
here the individuality of a flower is prized, and the crowded and
discomfited loveliness of flowers in the mass is not tolerated. So
a day-lily, or an early dahlia, may have its place, by itself, in
undisputed queendom. A branch of vari-colored “foliage plant” completes
the decorative floral company. But who is this--coming as in dyed
garments from Bozrah--that reposes among these pied leaves, beneath
their “protective coloring”? A cramped prisoner but a few hours before,
in the world, but not of it. The bright creature rests in the sunny
window until its wings gain strength to lift and bear it away._
* * * * *
_Guest._ And so you will give me the fancy of packing the butterfly
back into his case?
_Host._ Yes, I give up all claim upon it. It is yours to have and to
hold--only see that the poor fellow isn’t hurt in packing him up.
_Guest._ That deserves caution. This is the second lucky suggestion
that has come in my way to-day. Both are too good to be lost. The muse
learns thrift and treasures up all suggestions.
_Host._ How does your muse ordinarily get her suggestions?
_Guest._ Oh, in all sorts of ways; from reading, from some one’s mere
chance expression; sometimes from the particular insistence of some
object in nature to be seen or heard; as though it had been waiting for
its historian to come along. Usually, with the object is associated
some slight touch of pathos. Dreams, too, offer suggestions. These
suggestions, of course, are fantastic. They often have a touch of
absurdity which the muse wisely omits, generally taking them for their
allegorical face value. I dreamed once of seeing a rich cluster of
purple blossoms, heavy with dew. The name, I learned was “honey-trope,”
and so I transplanted the flower, root and branch, into a small garden
plot of verses. I would think some of your whimsical situations and
characters might come in this way.
[Illustration]
_Host._ No, I don’t remember deriving suggestions from actual dreams;
but I owe a great many to day-dreams. I used to entertain myself in
this way constantly when a schoolboy. In walking home from school I
would take up the thread of a plot and carry it on from day to day
until the thing became a serial story. The habit was continued for
years, simply because I enjoyed it--especially when walking. If anybody
had known or asked me about it I should have confessed that I thought
it a dreadful waste of time.
_Guest._ But it proved, I dare say, a sort of peripatetic
training-school of fiction.
_Host._ Perhaps it might be called so. At any rate, years after, I
used to go back to these stories for motives, especially in tales
written for children. But there was another way in which, in later
years, I have made use of day-dreams. I often woke very early in the
morning--too early to think of rising, even if I had been thriftily
inclined--and after some experimenting I found that the best way to put
myself to sleep again was to construct some regular story.
_Guest._ (Stockton stories do not have that effect in the experience of
readers!)
_Host._ Some regular story carried through to the end. I would begin
a story one morning, continue it the next, and the next, until it ran
into the serial. Some of these stories lasted for a long time; one ran
through a whole year, I know. I got it all the way from America to
Africa.
_Guest._ Perhaps you anticipated reality. For a friend of mine who
reads every book of travels in Africa which she can lay hands on,
firmly believes that the Dark Continent will be opened up as a pleasure
and health resort for the whole world! But what became of the story?
_Host._ Well, a long time after, a portion of it came to light again
in “The Great War Syndicate.” The idea of “Negative Gravity” was
taken from another day-dream, the hero of which invented all sorts of
applications of negative gravity, and from these I made a selection for
the printed story.
_Guest._ Delightful--for we may hear from this hero again. I hope he is
inexhaustible. How fortunate to have a treasure-house of characters and
exploits. You have only to open the door and whatever you want comes
out! You don’t have to go to any “Anatomy of Melancholy” or Lemprière,
or Old Play, where somebody else is going, too, and will anticipate
you--the hard luck of some of the rhyming fraternity!
_Host._ Of course, some suggestions are wholly involuntary. You do not
know how or whence they come. I think of a good illustration of this
involuntary action of the mind in conjuring up suggestion for a story.
Some time ago, as I was lying in a hammock under the trees, I happened
to look up through the branches and saw a great patch of blue sky
absolutely clear. I said to myself: “Suppose I saw a little black spot
appear in that blue sky.” I kept on thinking. Gradually the idea came
of a man who _did_ see such a little spot in the clear sky. And now I
am working up this notion in a story I call “As One Woman to Another.”
_Guest._ You literally had given you less than the conditions given for
describing a circle, for you had but a simple point to start with. One
might conclude, all that is necessary is to fix upon some central idea,
no matter how slight, and then the rest will come, drawn by a kind of
mysterious attraction toward the centre.
[Illustration]
_Host._ Ah, but it will not do for the professional writer to depend
upon any such luck or chance, for if you wait for suggestions to come
from the ether or anywhere else, you _may_ wait in vain. You must begin
something. If the mind has been well stored with incident and anecdote,
these will furnish useful material, but not the plot. It is often
necessary to get one’s self into a proper condition for the reception
of impressions, and then to expose the mind, thus prepared, to the
influence of the ideal atmosphere. If the proper fancy floats along it
is instantly absorbed by the sensitive surface of the mind, where it
speedily grows into an available thought, and from that anything can
come.
_Guest._ But with the maker of verse such a resolution sometimes so
offends the muse that she turns upon her votary with the most inhuman
cruelty. Once I resolved, yes, deliberately resolved, to write some
verses about the American Indian--to the effect that he must soon bid
good-by and take his place with all broken and departed dynasties of
the world--the goal to be some far western region of mournful and dying
splendors. The first result of this resolution was rather encouraging.
It was:
“Now, get thee on, beyond the sunset----”
There inspiration stopped short, limping for lack of half a foot! Each
morning, on first waking up, I tried to fill out the line. At last, one
morning it was done, presto!--quite taken out of my hands. The result
was totally involuntary, I may say.
_Host._ Well, how did the lines run?
_Guest._
“Now get thee on beyond the sunset--git!”
_Host._ Yes, that was cruel! I suppose you could never finish the poem
after that. But poets must have to do a great deal more waiting than
any other class of literary workers, for they have to wait not only
for ideas but for words, which, in poetry, have so much to do with the
mechanism of the verse as well as the expression of the idea.
[Illustration]
_Guest._ What the _Dii Majores_ may do, or may have done, I could not
presume to say; but with us verse-makers, sometimes it is only the
_words_ that do come, at first. The sense, import, and whole motive
sometimes arrive much later. This ought to be kept a secret, for it
is not to our credit. But I remember once, some one used the phrase,
“For the time being.” It was immediately invested with a subtle extra
value which seemed left to me to discover and define. Any maker of
verse, I should guess, would in the same way be followed up continually
by refrains and catch-words--the mere gossip of Parnassus, one might
say. You have the fragments of a puzzle; they are scattered; some are
missing. They must be hunted up and fitted together. Sometimes the
last will be first and the first will be last, when the metrical whole
is completed. For example of how detached and meaningless these first
suggestions may be, take this line and a half:
“In the dim meadows flecked with asphodel,
I shall remember!”
It was months after this suggestion came to me that I found the context
and motive of the verse. I had to wait for the rest, and take whatever
came.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
_Host._ This subject of suggestions, and how they come, is an
interesting one. It reminds me of what the astronomers tell us of
certain methods they employ. For instance, they expose, by means of
telescopic action, a sensitive photographic plate to the action of
light from portions of the heavens where nothing is seen. After a long
exposure they look at the plate, and something may be seen that was
never seen before--star, nebulæ, or perhaps a comet--something which
the telescope will not reveal to the eye. As an instance of my use
of this exposure plan I will mention this: some years ago I read a
great deal about shipwrecks--a subject which always interests me--some
accounts in the daily papers and some sea stories, such as those of
Clark Russell, who is my favorite marine author, and the question
came into my mind: “Is it possible that there should be any kind of
shipwreck which has not been already discovered?” For days and days I
exposed my mind to the influence of ideas about shipwrecks. At last a
novel notion floated in upon me, and I wrote “The Remarkable Wreck of
the Thomas Hyke.” I have since had another idea of an out-of-the-way
shipwreck, which I think is another example of a wreck that has never
occurred; but this is a variation and amplification of a wreck about
which I read.
_Guest._ Has it ever happened that any of your fancies turned out to be
actual fact? Truth is said to be stranger than fiction.
_Host._ In some instances just that thing has happened. In one story
I had a character whose occupation was that of an analyzer of lava,
specimens being sent to him from all parts of the world. In this
connection a foreigner inquired of him if there were any volcanoes near
Boston, to which city he was on his way. This preposterous idea was, of
course, quickly dismissed in the story. But I received a letter from a
scientific man in New England who thought I would like to know that,
not far from Boston, but in a spot now covered by the ocean, there
existed in prehistoric times an active volcano. As to the practical
application of some of my fanciful inventions, I may say that two
young ladies on Cape Cod imitated the example of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs.
Aleshine, and having put on life preservers, and each taking an oar,
found no difficulty in sweeping themselves through the water, after the
fashion of the two good women in the story. I will also say that the
Negative Gravity machine is nothing but a condensed balloon. As soon
as a man can make a balloon which can bear his weight and can also be
put in a money belt, he can do all the things that the man in the story
did. I may also say that naval men have written to me stating that it
is not impossible that some of the contrivances mentioned in “The Great
War Syndicate” may some day be used in marine warfare. I myself have
no doubt of this, for there is no reason why a turtle-backed little
ironclad, almost submerged, should not steam under the stern of a great
man-of-war like the “Camperdown,” and having disabled her propeller
blades, tow her _nolens volens_ into an American port, where she could
be detained until peace should be declared.
_Guest._ I would not like to live in the port in whose harbor the
captive vessel was detained.
_Host._ It might be disagreeable; perhaps it would be better to keep
the captured vessel continually on the tow-path through unfrequented
waters.
[Illustration]
_Guest._ But we were speaking of the necessity of having a definite
purpose at the outset of a piece of work.
_Host._ It amounts to a necessity, almost. For instance, if I am about
to write a fairy tale, I must get my mind in an entirely different
condition from what it would be were I planning a story of country life
of the present day. With me the proper condition often requires hard
work. The fairy tale will come when the other kind is wanted. But the
ideas of one class must be kept back and those of the other encouraged
until at last the proper condition exists and the story begins. But I
suppose you poets do not set out in this way.
_Guest._ It would be a revelation to the public to be let into the
secret of some of our “motives,” and the various ways we have of
mingling “poetic-honey” and “trade-wax,” as Tom Hood calls it. The
spur of necessity, real or fancied, is often a capital provocation
to eloquence. I know a woman who writes verses, who is not only
unnecessarily neglectful of worldly interests, but is careless in
detail, and self-indulgent and absent-minded. On one occasion, losing
quite a sum of money from her pocket-book, and wishing to give herself
a lesson to be remembered, she set herself the task of writing
certain verses to defray the expenses of her carelessness, as it
were. Involuntarily, and yet with a kind of grim fitness in things,
the subject that came to hand was, “Losses.” The poem was written and
disposed of, and the writer was square with her conscience once more;
and the poem was not manifestly worse for having a prosaic prompting
behind it. It is well, I think, that the public doesn’t always fathom
these little hidden sequences in our logic.
[Illustration]
_Host._ Speaking of “hidden sequences in logic,” as you call them,
reminds me of a story a little girl told me. There was a nest in a
tree, and the nest was full of young birds. One very forward one always
would sit on the edge of the nest, and had several falls in this way.
The old birds picked it up repeatedly, and told it that it would most
certainly be caught by cats. After they found that it would not reform,
the mother-bird took it by one wing and the father-bird took it by the
other, and together they carried it to London, where they left it. I
could not imagine why they carried it to London; but a day or two later
I discovered that the little girl had been reading the story of Dick
Whittington, which was founded on the fact that there were no cats in
London.
_Guest._ I am constantly surprised at the adroitness children manifest
in their little stories. Where does it vanish when they grow older?
If almost any child kept up the promise of its story-telling infancy,
every grown person would be a clever novelist. But there was a question
I had in mind to ask you while we were on the subject of suggestion and
plot. Do you ever receive any available ideas from other people?
_Host._ Yes, a great many excellent suggestions have come to me from
others. But the better they are the less I like to use them, for a good
idea deserves hard work, and when the work were done I would not feel
that the story were really mine. In a few cases I have used suggestions
from other people. For instance, there have been publishers who desired
a story written upon a certain incident or idea.
_Guest._ The sense of ideal property is strong. One feels an honest
indignation at taking what belongs to another, even though but a
thought, and that of no account to the thinker, in his own opinion of
it. Nevertheless, you feel how easily this ideal property of his might
be “realized” with just a touch of art. Somehow, that touch of art,
contributed by you, you feel would not quite make the material yours.
_Host._ I have been thinking why it is that very often the work of
an author of fiction is not as true as the work of an artist, and I
have concluded that the artist has one great advantage over the author
of fiction, and over the poet, even. The artist has his models for
his characters--models which he selects to come as near as possible
to what his creations are going to be. The unfortunate author has no
such models. He must rely entirely upon the characters he has casually
seen, upon reading, upon imagination. How I envy my friend Frost! Last
summer, when he wished to sketch a winter scene in Canada, he had
a model sitting with two overcoats on, and the day was hot. Now, I
couldn’t have any such models. I should have to describe my cold man
just by thinking of him.
[Illustration]
_Guest._ Or learn to shiver, yourself, like the boy in “Grimm’s
Tales”--and describe that!
_Host._ But it is a serious matter. The best artists have live models
to work from. But your writer of fiction--how, for instance, can he see
a love scene enacted? He must describe it as best he can, and, although
he may remember some of his own, he will never describe those.
_Guest._ Goethe was able to overcome such objections, I believe; and
Heine tells us that,
“Out of my own great woes
I make my little songs.”
But please go on.
_Host._ I think the beautiful young heroine of fiction generally
gives the author of love stories a great deal of trouble. Such
ladies exist, and their appearances may be described; but it is very
difficult to find out what they would do under certain conditions
necessary to the story, and therefore the author is obliged to rely
upon his imagination, or upon the few examples he has met with in
his reading, where men or women have delivered love-clinics at their
own bedsides, or have had the rare opportunities of describing them
at the bedsides of others. For this reason people who are not in
love, and whose actions are open to the observations of others, are
often better treated by the novelist than are his lovers. I have
sometimes thought that a new profession might be created--that of
Literary Model. Of course we would have none but the very highest
order of dramatic performers, but such assistance as they might
be able to give would be invaluable. Suppose the writer wanted to
portray the behavior of a woman who has just received the tidings of
the sudden death of her rejected lover. How does a writer, who has
never heard such intelligence delivered, know what expressions of
face, or what gestures, to give to his heroine in this situation? How
would the intense, high-strung, nervous woman conduct herself? How
would the fair-haired, phlegmatic type of women receive the news? The
professional literary model might be enormously useful in delineating
the various phases assumed by one’s hero or heroine.
_Guest._ The idea is certainly novel. But I’m afraid the professional
literary model, if a woman, would never be content with “well enough.”
She would want to excel herself; and, if you didn’t employ her
constantly, would be devising new rôles for herself to fill. She would
be super-serviceable.
_Host._ Perhaps. But such zeal could easily be restrained. It might be
a good idea for a novel-writer to have a study near the greenroom of
a theatre, and then between the acts he might send for this or that
performer to give him a living picture of a certain character in a
certain situation. It might not take a minute to do this. By the way,
the writer’s model would have a better time than one who sat for an
artist, for the sittings would generally be very short.
_Guest._ All the world’s a stage, and a thoroughly good actor might
make a good literary model. But all sorts of people must help as
models, by simply going on with their own little dramas of life, before
the eyes of the sagacious author.
_Host._ That is true enough, so far as the comedy scenes of the play
are concerned. But, as I said before, who is going to set the author
the copy for tragedy or love scenes? Occasionally you get oblique
views--mere intimations of such scenes. I wish I had had the good
fortune to see what a lady of my acquaintance saw a while ago. She
is one of the very few who have ever seen a proposal of love and its
acceptance, carried on before spectators, exactly as if the contracting
parties were alone. The scene took place in a street car between two
young persons of foreign tongue, one of whom was about to take a
steamer; and the man knew that what he had to say must be said then or
never said at all. With the total oblivion of the presence of others
these two opened their hearts to each other, the affair proceeded
through all its stages, and the compact was sealed. This would have
been a rare opportunity for a literary artist.
[Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.]
_Guest._ How perverse fate is in this respect! It seems as if there
were a conspiracy to show up the most dramatic scenes either just
before we come into the audience or just after we have left. But, take
it all in all, I suppose the material we are best fitted to make use
of is the kind that sooner or later comes in our way. We only take
what we can easiest assimilate; the novelist his own proper food, the
essayist another sort, the writer of verse the “cud of sweet and bitter
fancies,” most likely. Have I asked a great many questions? I want to
ask just one more--have you ever written any poetry? It is a pet theory
of mine that everybody has, at some time or other, made verses because
he couldn’t help it--it’s instinctive! Now for a clean confession.
_Host._ Let me see. Yes, now I remember one such effort. I devised a
poem, and two lines at the beginning of it and two lines at the end of
it came readily into my mind. But I had only written two or three lines
when a breeze came up and blew my paper away.
_Guest._ Lost, like the Sibylline books! Do you remember what the lines
were?
_Host._ Only the first two and the last two, which had been in my mind
for some time. Those I put on paper are entirely gone.
_Guest._ Can you give me the lines and the intervening argument?
_Host._ The poem began thus:
“We walked in a garden of roses,
Miss Jane, Sir Cupid, and I.”
The story then proceeded to the effect that Sir Cupid and I walked
through the narrow alleys side by side, while Miss Jane always flitted
some distance in front, and would never stop that I might overtake her.
I entreated her to wait for me, but she always laughed, and declined,
hurrying on, sometimes picking a white rose, sometimes a red, and
always answering, when she spoke at all, that the paths were not wide
enough for three. After a good deal of this fruitless chase I became
disheartened, and, with my companion, Sir Cupid, left the garden. The
poem concluded thus:
“The next time I looked into the garden
The rascal was walking with her.”
Now, will you not take these lines and these ideas and finish the
poem?[1] I shall never be able to do it.
_Guest._ Ah! Those Sibylline leaves should have blown into the hands of
a Dobson. But we’ll try at restoring the lost passages.
_Host._ The experiment may lead to great things. I almost think I see
a new volume, with the title, “Collaborative Verses,” etc. And now
choose whether you will go for a drive to Green Village or to the Black
Meadows.
_A Gentle Voice of Deprecation._ Oh! don’t take her to Green Village!
There isn’t anything remarkable there. She will like the Black Meadows
much more.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM A WINDOW IN THE TOWER.]
_Guest._ Yes, there might be adventures in such a region. And I want
to put in a plea to be taken to that sylvan road where you saw the
original sign of the Squirrel Inn.
_Host._ Well, it shall be to the Black Meadows, and so, on!
* * * * *
[1] MISS JANE, SIR CUPID, AND I.
_A Collaborative Poem by E. M. T. and F. R. S._
We walked in a garden of roses,
Miss Jane, Sir Cupid, and I--
Nay, rather, she walked by herself,
And never would answer me why.
The more I besought her, still farther
And farther she flitted ahead,
Laughing and scattering roses--
Roses, the white and the red.
At last she gave me her “reason;”
Surely I “ought to have known”--
“Sir Cupid”--and--“Three are too many,”
She’d walk with me, if alone!
So, lost in the maze of the roses,
Forever she flitted before;
And I said, with a sigh, to Sir Cupid:
“I’ll follow the truant no more!”
The next time I drew near to the roses,
I listened; I heard a faint stir,
And when I looked into the garden
The rascal was walking with her!
Then softly I crept in, and caught her;
She blushed, but would not be free.
By keeping Sir Cupid between us
There was room in those alleys for three.
“INCURABLE”
A GHETTO TRAGEDY
BY I. ZANGWILL,
Author of “Children of the Ghetto.”
[Illustration]
“Cast off among the dead, like the slain that lie in the
grave. Whom thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off
from thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in dark
places, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou
hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Thou hast put mine
acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto
them; I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. Mine eye wasteth
away by reason of affliction. I have called daily upon thee, O
Lord, I have spread forth my hands unto thee.”--_Eighty-eighth
Psalm._
There was a restless air about the Refuge. In a few minutes the friends
of the patients would be admitted. The incurables would hear the
latest gossip of the Ghetto, for the world was still very much with
these abortive lives, avid of sensations, Jewish to the end. It was an
unpretentious institution--two corner houses knocked together--near the
east lung of London; supported mainly by the poor at a penny a week,
and scarcely recognized by the rich, so that paraplegia and vertigo
and rachitis and a dozen other hopeless diseases knocked hopelessly
at its narrow portals. But it was a model institution all the same,
and the patients lacked for nothing except freedom from pain. There
was even a miniature synagogue for their spiritual needs, with the
women’s compartment religiously railed off from the men’s, as if these
grotesque ruins of sex might still distract each other’s devotions.
Yet the rabbis knew human nature. The sprightly hydrocephalous
paralytic, Leah, had had the chair she inhabited carried down into
the men’s sitting-room to beguile the moments, and was smiling
fascinatingly upon the deaf blind man who had the Braille Bible at
his fingers’ ends, and read on as stolidly as St. Anthony. Mad Mo had
strolled vacuously into the ladies’ ward, and, indifferent to the
pretty, white-aproned Christian nurses, was loitering by the side of a
weird, hatchet-faced cripple, with a stiletto-shaped nose supporting
big spectacles. Like most of the patients, she was up and dressed. Only
a few of the white pallets ranged along the walls were occupied.
“Leah says she’d be quite happy if she could walk like you,” said Mad
Mo, in complimentary tones. “She always says Milly walks so beautiful.
She says you can walk the whole length of the garden.” Milly, huddled
in her chair, smiled miserably.
“You’re crying again, Rachel,” protested a dark-eyed, bright-faced
dwarf, in excellent English, as she touched her friend’s withered hand.
“You are in the blues again. Why, that page is all blistered.”
“No, I feel so nice,” said the sad-eyed Russian in her quaint, musical
accent, “You sall not tink I cry because I am not happy. When I read
sad tings--like my life--den only I am happy.”
The dwarf gave a short laugh that made her pendant earrings oscillate.
“I thought you were brooding over your love affairs,” she said.
“Me!” cried Rachel. “I lost too young my leg to be in love. No, it is
Psalm lxxxviii that I brood over. ‘I am afflicted and ready to die from
my youth up.’ Yes, I was only a girl when I had to go to Königsberg to
find a doctor to cut off my leg. ‘Lover and friend hast thou put far
from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.’”
Her face shone ecstatic.
“Hush!” whispered the dwarf, with a warning nudge and a slight nod
in the direction of a neighboring waterbed, on which a pale, rigid,
middle-aged woman lay with shut, sleepless eyes.
“Se cannot understand Englis,” said the Russian girl, proudly.
“Don’t be so sure. Look how the nurses here have picked up Yiddish!”
Rachel shook her head incredulously. “Sarah is a Polis’ woman,” she
said. “For years dey are in England and dey learn noding.”
“_Ich bin krank! Krank! Krank!_” suddenly moaned a shrivelled Polish
grandmother, as if to corroborate the girl’s contention. She was
squatting monkey-like on her bed, every now and again murmuring her
querulous burden of sickness, and jabbering at the nurses to shut all
the windows. Fresh air she objected to as vehemently as if it were
butter or some other heterodox dainty.
[Illustration]
Hard upon her crooning came blood-curdling screams from the room
above, sounds that reminded the visitor he was not in a Barnum show,
that the monstrosities were genuine. Pretty Sister Margaret--not yet
indurated--thrilled with pity, as before her inner vision rose the
ashen, perspiring face of the palsied sufferer, who sat quivering all
the long day in an easy-chair, her swollen, jelly-like hands resting
on cotton-wool pads, an air pillow between her knees, her whole frame
racked at frequent intervals by fierce spasms of pain, her only
diversion faint, blurred reflections of episodes of the street in the
glass of a framed picture: yet morbidly suspicious of slow poison in
her drink, and cursed with an incurable vitality.
Meantime Sarah lay silent, bitter thoughts moving beneath her white,
impassive face like salt tides below a frozen surface. It was a strong,
stern face, telling of a present of pain and faintly hinting of a past
of prettiness. She seemed alone in the populated ward, and, indeed,
the world was bare for her. Most of her life had been spent in the
Warsaw Ghetto, where she was married at sixteen, nineteen years before.
Her only surviving son--a youth whom the English atmosphere had not
improved--had sailed away to trade with the Kafirs. And her husband had
not been to see her for a fortnight.
When the visitors began to arrive her torpor vanished. She eagerly
raised the half of her that was not paralyzed, partially sitting up.
But gradually expectation died out of her large gray eyes. There was a
buzz of talk in the room--the hydrocephalous girl was the gay centre of
a group; the Polish grandmother who cursed her grandchildren when they
didn’t come, and when they did, was denouncing their neglect of her to
their faces; everybody had somebody to kiss or quarrel with. One or
two acquaintances approached the bed-ridden wife, too, but she would
speak no word, too proud to ask after her husband, and wincing under
the significant glances occasionally cast in her direction. By and by
she had the red screen placed round her bed, which gave her artificial
walls and a quasi-privacy. Her husband would know where to look for her.
“Woe is me!” wailed her octogenarian countrywoman, rocking to and fro.
“What sin have I committed to get such grandchildren? You only come to
see if the old grandmother isn’t dead yet. So sick! So sick! So sick!”
Twilight filled the wards. The white beds looked ghostly in the
darkness. The last visitor departed. Sarah’s husband had not yet come.
“He is not well, Mrs. Kretznow,” Sister Margaret ventured to say in her
best Yiddish. “Or he is busy working. Work is not so slack any more.”
Alone in the institution she shared Sarah’s ignorance of the Kretznow
scandal. Talk of it died before her youth and sweetness.
“He would have written,” said Sarah, sternly. “He is wearied of me. I
have lain here a year. Job’s curse is on me.”
“Shall I to him,” Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the word,
“write?”
“No. He hears me knocking at his heart.”
They had flashes of strange savage poetry, these crude yet complex
souls. Sister Margaret, who was still liable to be startled, murmured
feebly, “But----”
“Leave me in peace!” with a cry like that of a wounded animal.
The matron gently touched the novice’s arm, and drew her away. “I will
write to him,” she whispered.
Night fell, but sleep fell only for some. Sarah Kretznow tossed in
a hell of loneliness. Ah, surely her husband had not forgotten her;
surely she would not lie thus till death--that far-off death her strong
religious instinct would forbid her hastening! She had gone into the
Refuge to save him the constant sight of her helplessness and the cost
of her keep. Was she now to be cut off forever from the sight of his
strength?
The next day he came by special invitation. His face was sallow, rimmed
with swarthy hair; his under lip was sensuous. He hung his head, half
veiling the shifty eyes.
Sister Margaret ran to tell his wife. Sarah’s face sparkled.
“Put up the screen!” she murmured, and in its shelter drew her
husband’s head to her bosom and pressed her lips to his hair.
But he, surprised into indiscretion, murmured: “I thought thou wast
dying.”
A beautiful light came into the gray eyes.
“Thy heart told thee right, Herzel, my life, I was dying for a sight of
thee.”
“But the matron wrote to me pressingly,” he blurted out.
He felt her breast heave convulsively under his face; with her hands
she thrust him away.
“God’s fool that I am--I should have known; to-day is not visiting day.
They have compassion on me--they see my sorrows--it is public talk.”
His pulse seemed to stop. “They have talked to thee of me,” he faltered.
“I did not ask their pity. But they saw how I suffered--one cannot hide
one’s heart.”
“They have no right to talk,” he muttered, in sulky trepidation.
“They have every right,” she rejoined, sharply. “If thou hadst come to
see me even once--why hast thou not?”
“I--I--have been travelling in the country with cheap jewelry. The
tailoring is so slack.”
“Look me in the eyes! The law of Moses? No; it is a lie. God shall
forgive thee. Why hast thou not come?”
“I have told thee.”
“Tell that to the Sabbath fire-woman! Why hast thou not come? Is it so
very much to spare me an hour or two a week? If I could go out like
some of the patients, I would come to thee. But I have tired thee out
utterly----”
“No, no, Sarah,” he murmured uneasily.
“Then why----”
He was covered with shame and confusion. His face was turned away. “I
did not like to come,” he said desperately.
“Why not?” Crimson patches came and went on the white cheeks; her heart
beat madly.
“Surely thou canst understand?”
“Understand what? I speak of green and thou answerest of blue.”
“I answer as thou askest.”
“Thou answerest not at all.”
“No answer is also an answer,” he snarled, driven to bay. “Thou
understandest well enough. Thyself saidst it was public talk.”
“Ah-h-h!” in a stifled shriek of despair. Her intuition divined
everything. The shadowy, sinister suggestions she had so long beat back
by force of will took form and substance. Her head fell back on the
pillow, the eyes closed.
He stayed on, bending awkwardly over her.
“So sick! So sick! So sick!” moaned the grandmother.
“Thou sayest they have compassion on thee in their talk,” he murmured
at last, half deprecatingly, half resentfully. “Have they none on me?”
Her silence chilled him. “But thou hast compassion, Sarah,” he urged.
“Thou understandest.”
Presently she reopened her eyes.
“Thou art not gone?” she murmured.
“No; thou seest I am not tired of thee, Sarah, my life. Only----”
“Wilt thou wash my skin and not make me wet?” she interrupted bitterly.
“Go home. Go home to her!”
“I will not go home.”
“Then go under like Korah.”
He shuffled out. That night her lonely hell was made lonelier by the
opening of a peephole into paradise--a paradise of Adam and Eve and
forbidden fruit. For days she preserved a stony silence toward the
sympathy of the inmates. Of what avail words against the flames of
jealousy in which she writhed?
He lingered about the passage on the next visiting day, vaguely
remorseful; but she would not see him. So he went away sulkily
indignant, and his new housemate comforted him, and he came no more.
When you lie on your back all day and all night, you have time to
think, especially if you do not sleep. A situation presents itself in
many lights from dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn. One such light
flashed on the paradise and showed it to her as but the portico of
purgatory. Her husband would be damned in the next world, even as she
was in this. His soul would be cut off from among its people.
On this thought she brooded till it loomed horribly in her darkness.
And at last she dictated a letter to the matron, asking Herzel to come
and see her.
He obeyed, and stood shame-faced at her side, fidgeting with his peaked
cap. Her hard face softened momentarily at the sight of him, her bosom
heaved, suppressed sobs swelled her throat.
[Illustration]
“Thou hast sent for me?” he murmured.
“Yes; perhaps thou didst again imagine I was on my deathbed?” she
replied, with bitter irony.
“It is not so, Sarah. I would have come of myself, only thou wouldst
not see my face.”
“I have seen it for twenty years--it is another’s turn now.”
He was silent.
“It is true all the same. I am on my deathbed.”
He started. A pang shot through his breast. He darted an agitated
glance at her face.
“Is it not so? In this bed I shall die. But God knows how many years I
shall lie in it.”
Her calm gave him an uncanny shudder.
“And till the Holy One, blessed be He, takes me, thou wilt live a daily
sinner.”
“I am not to blame. God has stricken me. I am a young man.”
“Thou art to blame!” Her eyes flashed fire. “Blasphemer! Life is sweet
to thee, yet perhaps thou wilt die first.”
His face grew livid.
“I am a young man,” he repeated tremulously.
“Thou dost forget what Rabbi Eliezer said: ‘Repent one day before thy
death’--that is to-day, for who knows?”
“What wouldst thou have me do?”
“Give up----”
“No, no,” he interrupted. “It is useless. I cannot. I am so lonely.”
“Give up,” she repeated inexorably, “thy wife.”
“What sayest thou? My wife! But she is not my wife. Thou art my wife.”
“Even so. Give me up. Give me Gett [divorce].”
His breath failed, his heart thumped at the suggestion.
“Give thee Gett!” he whispered.
“Yes. Why didst thou not send me a bill of divorcement when I left thy
home for this?”
He averted his face. “I thought of it,” he stammered. “And then----”
“And then?” He seemed to see a sardonic glitter in the gray eyes.
“I--I was afraid.”
“Afraid!” She laughed in grim mirthlessness. “Afraid of a bed-ridden
woman!”
“I was afraid it would make thee unhappy.” The sardonic gleam melted
into softness, then became more terrible than before.
“And so thou hast made me happy instead!”
“Stab me not more than I merit. I did not think people would be cruel
enough to tell thee.”
“Thine own lips told me.”
“Nay, by my soul,” he cried, startled.
“Thine eyes told me, then.”
“I feared so,” he said, turning them away. “When she--came into my
house, I--I dared not go to see thee--that was why I did not come,
though I always meant to, Sarah, my life. I feared to look thee in the
eyes. I foresaw they would read the secret in mine--so I was afraid.”
“Afraid!” she repeated, bitterly. “Afraid I would scratch them out!
Nay, they are good eyes. Have they not seen my heart? For twenty years
they have been my light. Those eyes and mine have seen our children
die.”
Spasmodic sobs came thickly now. Swallowing them down, she said: “And
she--did she not ask thee to give me Gett?”
“Nay; she was willing to go without. She said thou wast as one
dead--look not thus at me. It is the will of God. It was for thy sake,
too, Sarah, that she did not become my wife by law. She, too, would
have spared thee the knowledge of her.”
“Yes, ye have both tender hearts! She is a mother in Israel, and thou
art a spark of our father Abraham.”
“Thou dost not believe what I say?”
“I can disbelieve it and still remain a Jewess.” Then, satire
boiling over into passion, she cried, vehemently: “We are threshing
empty ears. Thinkst thou I am not aware of the judgments--I, the
granddaughter of Reb Shloumi? Thinkst thou I am ignorant thou couldst
not obtain a Gett against me--me, who have borne thee children,
who have wrought no evil? I speak not of the Beth-Din, for in this
impious country they are loath to follow the judgments, and from the
English Beth-Din thou wouldst find it impossible to obtain the Gett
in any case, even though thou didst not marry me in this country,
nor according to its laws. I speak of our own Rabbonim--thou knowest
even the Maggid would not give thee Gett merely because thy wife is
bed-ridden. That--that is what thou wast afraid of.”
“But if thou art willing,” he replied, eagerly, ignoring her scornful
scepticism.
His readiness to accept the sacrifice was salt upon her wounds.
“Thou deservest I should let thee burn in the lowest Gehenna,” she
cried.
“The Almighty is more merciful than thou,” he answered. “It is He that
hath ordained it is not good for man to live alone; and yet men shun
me--people talk--and she--she may leave me to my loneliness again.”
His voice faltered with self-pity. “Here thou hast friends, nurses,
visitors. I--I have nothing. True, thou didst bear me children, but
they withered as by the evil eye. My only son is across the ocean; he
hath no love for me or you.”
The recital of their common griefs softened her toward him.
“Go,” she whispered. “Go and send me the Gett. Go to the Maggid; he
knew my grandfather. He is the man to arrange it for thee with his
friends. Tell him it is my wish.”
“God shall reward thee. How can I thank thee for giving thy consent?”
“What else have I to give thee, my Herzel, I, who eat the bread of
strangers? Truly says the proverb: ‘When one begs of a beggar, the Herr
God laughs!’”
“I will send thee the Gett as soon as possible.”
[Illustration]
“Thou art right, I am a thorn in thine eye. Pluck me out quickly.”
“Thou wilt not refuse the Gett when it comes?” he replied,
apprehensively.