Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the
clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real
novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this;
the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are
not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what
we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for
a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we
see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel
or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that
pay. We keep in touch with the world--that is practical mysticism. We
rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is
very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily,
performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required.
Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent
agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that
they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day
each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel
furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would
have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't
noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the
real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even
if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher
workmanship. Romance--each has his idea of that. Each does his best by
that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very
well:
Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I
have had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the
world--to be with them _one at a time_. In the Rockies or in the
misty isles of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and
sense. _One_ will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels,
foamy bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell
of the hold of a ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and
the smell of black coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will
mean the sun betin desert--camels, and men stooping over a fire.
They are all my comrads.
Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down
and lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later
we would take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down.
They were wounderful days--those. I got right to the heart of Fred,
and he did to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me.
Those were the nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go
apart. He is in New York now, going to college, and I am here in
California. It does not seem right for me to be in this God blest
place in the Youneverse, and he in the slums of the world, going to
college. But it is the Plan, or it would not be this way.
The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot
last long--for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain
leaves, then all will be ready for the road and the great comrads,
horses and the road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great
future--all ahead--my comrads--all comrads--the world will be all
comrads!
* * * * *
All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so
much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there
are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means _not to stay_!
It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other
reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss
his train; one must not linger after curfew has sounded. There is no
grey confronting of misery--like that of meeting one's own commonness
catching up.
It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We
learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending
of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got
his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain....
There is something to do with _martyrdom_ in my dream of Romance in
later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word--a singing
about it. The name _Kuru t'ul Ayn_ comes to my mind in thoughts of
Romance--"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner
Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she
had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked
through the door of heaven in her eyes--some haunting mystery there of
beauty and bestowal--the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in
the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of
life, transcending every man-made institution.
One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door
to the dusk,--baby heads weaving under her hands--warm air coming up
from the valleys, but _his_ step not coming that night.... Here is a
suggestion from one of her letters:
Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow
big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for
the Stranger's dinner--tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over
and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to
fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it
not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the
soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look _back_ to see how sweet the
purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves
do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom--could there be
a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a
planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to
be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open
and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for
hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest
that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all
working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with
open arms out there. We all send white love to you--our waiting Mary!
* * * * *
Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the
passers-by--always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams
of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of
Romance follow, from the twelve-year period:
The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the
plough, in the peasant's body--dissatisfaction with self and
surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who
is content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His
soul stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much
simple blackness. It is just _that_, which gives him the power to
stand up against the ways he has known so long--to stand up for
himself--to push the new vague dreams through to life and light.
It is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The call that
would come to the peasant would be to the Town--to many men and
things, for that is just the opposite from his life. In a simple
way he would go to the depths of the worst he could find--to the
extreme.
The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness,
satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks,
until he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up
into the light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls
of the "white torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a
night that grows darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their
faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark
cloud that they are tearing themselves through.... Only the poor
fat ones! they fill you with sadness because you can not help them
and they are not trying to help themselves. They seem to sink
almost visibly, farther and farther down, as they laugh and smile,
and nod their heads to each other (only to each other). The light
around them is really not a light at all--just a colour, a cold,
grey-black colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh if they
had anything to do with you, any power over you--you could laugh at
them and tell them that you were laughing, but their helplessness
hurts you. _They_ can only hurt themselves. There is absolutely
no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. They are
all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign of
flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great
inner glowing--the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things
in people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also,
to laugh at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic
Ruffians--a Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious
song of stern compassion and deep love, filling all with their
questing for power and beauty.... I hear their laughter."
* * * * *
She paints the City Street a bit darker in this:
* * * * *
Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark
and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men--little men,
following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me
goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints
its pain upon our souls. And their women now--with faces wanting,
always wanting, everything in them _wanting_! I have been carried
away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me
with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten
babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass--little men following.
* * * * *
... The pain of utter isolation--somehow this means Romance to me, in
a deeper fold of being. Isolation--the hate of an undivided people--a
man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of
the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his
big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has
something to do with the coming of Saviours.
Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails
longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly
warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is
_martyrdom_.... I tell all this from time to time in tales--but only
the children seem to understand....
Romance--I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days
and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest.
I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing
that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and
pathetic to me--but under it all--the endless iteration of the Soul:
"Here is a _man_--as much me as myself!" A call in that--always a call
in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all.
I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle
and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet
wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted
to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag
of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the
world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes
of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years
afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment--and that's
why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in
the eyes of passing men. That is _Romance_.
There is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now....
I can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his
own life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country
that is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country
more dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him
taking his woman in his hands--half laughing, half crying, their faces
upturned--one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never
been in street or church, or state.... Romance in that.