[Illustration]
Another day, going evening foremost this time. Leaning above her baby in
the carriage was Nettie Vogelman, grown heavier since we knew her in the
sixth grade twenty-five years before and balancing great masses of
prehistoric knowledge on her head in the shape of a purple ostrichplume
hat.
But where is romance in all this--with the great-coat she was wearing
hanging from the bulge of her paps to the sidewalk? Romance! When
knighthood was in flower. Rome. Eliogabalus in a skirt married his man
servant.
We struggle to comprehend an obscure evolution--opposed by the true and
static church--when the compensatory involution so plainly marked
escapes our notice. Living we fail to live but insist on impaling
ourselves on fossil horns. But the church balanced like a glass ball
where the jets of evolution and involution meet has always, in its
prosperous periods, patronised the arts. What else could it do? Religion
is the shell of beauty.
The fad of evolution is swept aside. It was only mildly interesting at
the best. I'll give you a dollar my son for each of these books you
read: Descent of Man and Origin of Species, reprinted by Dombie and
Sons, Noodle Lane, Ken. W. London; England 1890.
Who will write the natural history of involution beginning with the
stone razor age in Cornwall to the stone razor age in Papua? Oh China,
China teach us! Ottoman, Magyar, Moor, teach us. Norse Eric the
Discoverer teach us. Cœur de Lion, teach us. Great Catherine teach us.
Phryne, Thaïs, Cleopatra, Brunehilde, Lucretia Borgia teach us. What
was it, Demosthenes, that she said to you? Come again?
Borne on the foamy crest of involution, like Venus on her wave, stript
as she but of all consequence--since it is the return: See they return!
From savages in quest of a bear we are come upon rifles, cannon. From
Chaldeans solving the stars we have fallen into the bellies of the
telescopes. From great runners we have evolved into speeches sent over a
wire.
But our spirits, our spirits have prospered! Boom, boom. Oh yes, our
spirits have grown--
The corrosive of pity, Baroja says, giving up medicine to be a baker.
Marriage is of the church because it is the intersection of _loci_ by
which alone there is place for a church to stand. Beauty is an arrow.
Diana launched her shaft into the air and where the deer and the arrow
met a church was founded and there beauty had died.
So youth and youth meet and die and there the church sets up its
ceremony.
Who will write the natural history of involution?
I have forgotten something important that I wanted to say. Thus having
forgotten and remembered that it was important the folly of all thought
is revealed.
The deer lay panting on the leaves while Diana leaned over it to stab it
in the neck with her dagger.
I have forgotten what I wanted to say.
Venus and Adonis.
The second time I saw her it was in a room of a hotel in the city.