FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
SOME men of unbalanced minds have lately proposed deliberately and
completely to obliterate all the artistic work of past generations of
man in order, as they openly profess, that they themselves and their
own productions may obtain consideration. Even were they able to make
such a clearance, it may be doubted whether the consideration given to
their own performances would be favourable. These obscure individuals
have immodestly dubbed themselves "futurists," and the name has been
at once adopted as a mystification and advertisement by a variety
of art-posers--probably unknown to the originators of the word--who
have ventured into one or other of the fields of art without even
the smallest gift, either of conception or of expression, or even of
imitation. They receive undeserved attention from a section of the
public ready to dabble in every newly-made puddle. I am led to refer
to them because the abolition of the supremely beautiful things slowly
evolved by Nature in the long course of ages, and the substitution for
them of man's fancy breeds and races and garden paths, is not merely a
parallel piece of folly, but is due to a mental defect identical with
that of the genuine "futurist," namely, an intellectual incapacity
which renders its victim insensible to the charm of historical and
evolutional complexity.
The modern man who nourishes a real love for undistorted nature--that
is to say, who is a true "naturalist"--has one or two resources even in
these British Islands. There are ways of access to Nature unadorned by
man which are open even to the town-dweller. The chief of these is the
seashore. Even from London, in the course of a few hours, one may be
transported to territory where there are no traces of man's operations.
The region of rock and pool, sand-flat, and shell-bank, exposed by
the sea as it retreats, is a real "nature-reserve"--effectually so is
that deepest area only exposed at spring-tides. The locality chosen
by the naturalist must be at a distance from any great harbour or
estuary polluted by the cities seated on its banks, and should also
be out of the way of the modern steam-driven fish trawlers, which
have caused havoc in some sweet bays of our southern coast by pouring
out tons of dead, unsaleable fish. The rejected offal has become the
gathering-ground of carnivorous marine creatures, and the balance of
Nature has been upset by the nourishment thus thoughtlessly thrown by
man into new relations.
Some favoured spot on the south or west coast may be known to our
city-dwelling nature-lover, and thither he will hasten to spend
week-ends, and, when he can, longer spells in the supreme delight of
undisturbed communion with the things of Nature, apart from human
"enterprise." In some cottage near the sea marsh, where an unpolluted
stream joins the salt water, he has his accustomed lodging; his host, a
cheery long-shore fisherman and handy boatman. Close by is the rising
headland and rocky cliff facing the sea. The shore is strewn with
rocks, and as the tide goes down long "reefs" are exposed, clothed
with brown and green seaweeds. Here no man has intruded! When the
water recedes still farther, pools and miniature caverns appear,
edged with delicate feathery red-coloured seaweeds. Many small fishes,
shrimps of various kinds, sometimes pale rainbow-tinted "squids"
(one of the more delicate cuttle-fishes), are seen darting about the
pools, changing their colour with lightning rapidity. The overhanging
sides of the rock-pools give protection to gorgeously-coloured
"sea-anemones" adhering to them. Here, also, are those exquisite
ascidians--ill-described by the rough name "sea-squirt"--hanging from
the rocks like drops of purest crystal in their transparency--for which
naturalists use the prettier title "Clavellina." The nature-lover now
turns one of the large flat slabs of rock lying in such a pool--well
knowing what loveliness its under-side will reveal to his eyes. That
under-side is studded with a dozen or two of the most exquisite gems of
green and peach colour, ruby and yellow (Corynactis by name!), which,
if the slab of stone is left beneath the water, expand and display each
its circlet of brilliant little tentacles. They are sea-anemones no
bigger than the precious stone in a signet-ring. Among them a bright
salmon-coloured worm hastens with serpentine movement and the rippling
strokes of a hundred feathery feet to escape from the unaccustomed
light. A deep blood-red coloured prawn (Alpheus) darts from concealment
and hastily buries itself in the sandy bottom of the pool, snapping
its pincerlike claw with a sharp cracking sound. A couple of bivalved
shells (Lima hians) which were concealed beneath the slab swim lazily
round the pool by opening and closing their delicate white "valves"--an
unusual kind of activity in such mussels, oysters, and clams--whilst
a fringe of long orange-red tentacles trails in the water from each
of them. The lifting of another rock may dislodge an "octopus"--or a
huge brilliantly-coloured star-fish--or one of the rarer kinds of
crab eager to avoid the observation of the octopus, of which it is the
regular food. A spade pushed into the neighbouring sandbanks reveals
heart-urchins, gorgeous sea-worms, and burrowing shell-fish and perhaps
sand-eels. The human visitor--bending over these scenes of wonderment
and perhaps venturing to transfer one or two only of the less familiar
animals to a glass jar filled with sea-water so that he may see them
more clearly--at last stands up and straightens his back, gazing over
the sun-bathed scene from the tumbled weed-grown rocks, encrusted
with crowds of purple-blue mussels, to the patches of golden sand,
clear pools, and the blue sea beyond. Then he may note (as I have) a
curious rhythmical sound if he is among rocks covered with seaweeds--a
quiet but incessant "hiss-hiss," which is heard above the deeper-toned
lapping of the little waves among the big stones. This is the sound
made by the rasp-like tongues of the periwinkles feeding on the
abundant weed, over which they crawl, leaving the water and "browsing"
on the surface exposed to the air by the fall of the tide. The browsing
sound of these little snails is to the seashore what the humming of
bees is to inland meadows.
Day after day and at various seasons of the year the nature-lover will
visit this sanctuary, and, whilst contemplating the lovely forms,
colour, and movement of its denizens, will learn the secrets of
their life, of their comings and goings, and the mysteries of their
reproduction, their birth, and their childhood. Each day he finds
something unknown to his brother naturalists. He will examine it with
his lens, paint it in all its beauty, and tell of it in due course in
printed page and coloured portraiture; but he is no mere seeker for
novelty, nor is the credit of discovery the motive of his devotion.
Beyond and greater than any such gains are the incomparable delight,
the never-failing happiness which personal intimacy with the secret
things of natural beauty bring to him.
He has yet another chance of such enjoyment, if he be a microscopist,
and familiar with the inhabitants of fresh-water ponds. A pond is,
in many cases, an oasis in the waste of civilization, a miniature
nature-reserve, rarely, if ever, affected by human proceedings until
haply it is abolished altogether. A fairly deep, stagnant pond under
trees in some secluded park is one of the most favourable kind, but all
sorts deserve inquiry (even the rain pools on the roofs of old houses
in Paris have rewarded the faithful seeker), and may prove, for a time
at least, havens of refuge for a wonderful assemblage of animalcules
and minute microscopic plants, which for the most part perish as did
the bison of the American plains by the mere disturbance caused by
the propinquity of civilized man. I knew such a pond--it is now built
over--near Hampstead. As one lay on the bank and peered into the depths
of the pond the transparent, glass-like larvæ of the "plume fly"
(Corethra) could be seen swimming in the clear water, driving before
it troops of minute pink-coloured water-fleas (Daphnia) and other
crustaceans.
In other parts the water was made bluish-green by crowds of the little
floating spherical animalcules called "Volvox globator." The mud
contained many curious worms allied to the earth-worm, whilst coiled
round fallen twigs were the small snake-like worms known as "Nais
serpentina." Desmids, Diatoms, and animalcules of endless variety
abounded. A muslin net set on a ring on the end of a stick enabled one
to procure samples of the floating life of the water and also to skim
the surface of the mud, and these spoils were brought home in bottles
and searched for hours drop by drop with the microscope. The world of
active, graceful, bustling life thus revealed as one gazes for hours
through the magic tube of the microscope, is as remote from human
civilization as that uncovered at low tide on the seashore. Many a
worried City man, amongst them a great political writer on the staff of
a London daily, now passed from among us, has found in this microscopic
world--so readily accessible even at his own study table--a release
from care, a refreshing contact with unadulterated natural things of
life and beauty. My friend, Iwan Müller, the writer referred to, was as
discriminating a judge of the shapes of wheel-animalcules as he was of
the faces of the politicians of Europe and South Africa!
There is another and much more difficult escape from the grip and taint
of civilization, which is that effected by the explorer who penetrates
into sparsely inhabited wilds such as those of the Australian
continent. Man is there, but in such small number (one to every 450
square miles!), and in so primitive and childlike a state, that he is
not a disturbing element, but simply one of the "fauna"--one of the
curious animals living there under the domination of Nature--not yet
"Nature's rebel," but submissive, unconscious, and a more fascinating
study for us than any other of her products. He shows us what manner
of men were our own remote ancestors. The hunters who have left their
flint implements in the earlier river gravels of Western Europe were
such men as these Australian natives now are. Naked, using only sticks
and chipped stones as implements and weapons, destitute of crops or
herds or habitations, wandering from place to place in keen search of
food--small animals, birds, lizards, and grubs--these Australians have
none of the arts of the most primitive among other races, excepting
that they can make fire and construct a canoe of the bark of trees.
They have not even the bow and arrow, but make use of spears and the
wonderful "boomerang" in hunting and fighting. They daub themselves
with a sort of white paint, and decorate their bodies with great
scars made by cutting gashes in the flesh with sharp stones, and
they dress their heads and faces and ceremonial wands with wool and
feathers, which they fix by the aid of an adhesive fluid always ready
to hand--namely, their own blood. I recently was present at a lecture
given to the Anthropological Institute in London by Professor Baldwin
Spencer, of Melbourne, with whom I was closely associated when he was
a student at Oxford thirty years ago. He has devoted many years to the
study of the Australian natives, and ten years ago published a most
valuable work describing his experiences amongst them, to which he has
recently added a further volume. He has lived with them in friendship
and intimacy in the remote wilderness of the Australian bush, and has
been admitted as a member of one of their mysterious clans, of which
the "totem," or supposed spirit-ancestor, is "the witchety grub"--a
kind of caterpillar. He has been freely admitted to their secret
ceremonies as well as to their more public "corroborees" or dances,
and has been able (as no one else has been), without annoyance or
offence to them, to take a great number of cinema-films of them in
their various dances or when cooking in camp or paddling and upsetting
their canoes, and climbing back again from the river. Many of these he
exhibited to us, and we found ourselves among moving crowds of these
slim-legged, beautifully-shaped wild men. The film presented some of
their strange elaborate dances, which soon will be danced no more.
These wild men die out when civilized man comes near them. It appears
that they really spend most of their time in dancing when not looking
for food or chipping stone implements, and that their dances are
essentially plays (like those of little children in Europe), the acting
of traditional stories relating the history of their venerated animal
"totem," which often last for three weeks at a time! Whilst dancing and
gesticulating they are chanting and singing without cessation, often
repeating the same words over and over again. Here, indeed, we have
the primitive human art, the emotional expression from which, in more
advanced races, music, drama, dancing, and decorative handicraft have
developed as separate "arts."
The most remarkable and impressive result was obtained when Professor
Baldwin Spencer turned on his phonograph records whilst the wild men
danced in the film picture. Then we heard the actual voices of these
survivors of prehistoric days--shouting at us in weird cadences,
imitating the cry of birds, and accompanied by the booming of the
bull-roarer (a piece of wood attached to a string, and swung rapidly
round by the performer). A defect, and at the same time a special
merit, of the cinema show of the present day is the deadly silence of
both the performers and the spectators. Screams and oaths are delivered
in silence; pistols are fired without a sound. One can concentrate
one's observation on the facial expression and movements of the actors
with undivided attention and with no fear of startling detonations.
And very bad they almost invariably are, except in films made by the
great French producers. On the other hand, I was astonished at the
intensity of the impression produced by hearing the actual voices of
those Australian wild men as they danced in rhythm with their songs.
To hear is a greater means of revelation than to see. One feels even
closer to those Australian natives as their strange words and songs
issue from imprisonment in the phonograph, than when one sees them
in the film pictures actually beating time with feet and hands and
imitating the movements of animals. To receive, as one sits in a London
lecture-room, the veritable appeal of these remote and inaccessible
things to both the eye and the ear simultaneously, is indeed the most
thrilling experience I can remember. With a feeling of awe, almost of
terror, we recognize as we gaze at and listen to the records brought
home by Professor Baldwin Spencer that we are intruding into a vast and
primitive Nature-reserve where even humanity itself is still in the
state of childhood--submissive to the great mother, without the desire
to destroy her control or the power to substitute man's handiwork for
hers.