unconcerned Moon.
NEWS-ITEMS
In spite of the delicacy of my moral feelings, and my unrelaxed
solicitude for the maintenance of the right principles of conduct, I
find I can read without tears of the retired Colonels who forge cheques,
and the ladies of unexceptionable position who are caught pilfering furs
in shops. Somehow the sudden lapses of respected people, odd indecorums,
backbitings, bigamies, embezzlements, and attempted chastities--the
surprising leaps they make now and then out of propriety into the
police-courts--somehow news-items of this kind do not altogether--how
shall I put it?--well, they don't absolutely blacken the sunshine for
me.
And Clergymen? If a Clergyman slips up, do not, I pray you, gentle
Reader, grieve on my account too much.
JOY
Sometimes at breakfast, sometimes in a train or empty bus, or on the
moving stairs at Charing Cross, I am happy; the earth turns to gold, and
life becomes a magical adventure. Only yesterday, travelling alone to
Sussex, I became light-headed with this sudden joy. The train seemed to
rush to its adorable destination through a world new-born in splendour,
bathed in a beautiful element, fresh and clear as on the morning of
Creation. Even the coloured photographs of South Coast watering-places
in the railway carriage shone with the light of Paradise upon them.
Brighton faced me; next to it divine Southsea beckoned; then I saw the
beach at Sidmouth, the Tilly Whim caves near Swanage--was it in those
unhaunted caves, or amid the tumult of life which hums about the
Worthing bandstand, that I should find Bliss in its quintessence?
Or on the pier at St Peter Port, perhaps, in the Channel Islands, amid
that crowd who watch in eternal ecstasy the ever-arriving
never-disembarking Weymouth steamer?
IN ARCADY
When I retire from London to my rural solitudes, and taste once more, as
always, those pure delights of Nature which the Poets celebrate--walks
in the unambitious meadows, and the ever-satisfying companionship of
vegetables and flowers--I am nevertheless haunted now and then (but tell
it not to Shelley's Skylark, nor whisper to Wordsworth's Daffodils, the
disconcerting secret)--I am incongruously beset by longings of which the
Lake Poets never sang. Echoes and images of the abandoned City
discompose my arcadisings: I hear, in the babbling of brooks, the
delicious sound of London gossip, and newsboys' voices in the cries of
birds. Sometimes the gold-splashed distance of a country lane seems to
gleam at sunset with the posters of the evening papers; I dream at dawn
of dinner-invitations, when, like a telephone-call, I hear the
Greenfinch trill his electric bell.
WORRIES
In the woods about my garden and familiar precincts lurk the fears of
life; all threaten me, some I may escape, of others I am the destined
and devoted victim. Sooner or later--and yet in any case how soon!--I
shall fall, as I have seen others fall, touched by an unseen hand.
But I do not think of these Terrors often, though I seem to hear them
sometimes moving in the thickets. It is the little transitory worries
that bite and annoy me, querulous insects, born of the moment, and
perishing with the day.
THINGS TO WRITE
What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is
full of gleaming thoughts; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like
meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. They
would make my fortune if I could catch them; but always the rarest,
those freaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my
reach.
The childish and ever-baffled chase of these filmy nothings often seems,
for one of sober years in a sad world, a trifling occupation. But have I
not read of the great Kings of Persia who used to ride out to hawk for
butterflies, nor deemed this pastime beneath their royal dignity?
PROPERTY
I should be very reluctant to think that there was anything fishy or
fraudulent about the time-honoured institution of Private Property. It
is endorsed by Society, defended by the Church, maintained by the Law;
and the slightest tampering with it is severely punished by Judges in
large horsehair wigs. Oh, certainly it must be all right; I have a
feeling that it is all right; and one of these days I will get some one
to explain why the world keeps on putting adequate sums of its currency
into my pocket.
But of course it's all right--
IN A FIX
To go, or not to go? Did I want or not want to bicycle over to tea with
the Hanbury-Belchers at Pokemore? Wouldn't it be pleasanter to stay at
home?
I liked the Hanbury-Belchers--
Or did I really like them?
Still, it might be pleasant?
But how beforehand can one ever tell? Experience? I was still, I felt,
as ignorant of life as a new-born infant; experience has taught me
nothing; what I needed was some definite, a priori principle, some deep
conception of the meaning of existence, in the light of which problems
of this kind would solve themselves at once.
I leant my bicycle against the gate, and sat down to think the matter
out. Calling to mind the moral debates of the old philosophers, I
meditated on that _Summum Bonum_, or Sovereign Felicity of which they
argued; but from their disputes and cogitations what came back most
vividly--what seemed to fall upon one almost in a hush of terror--was
that paralysis or dread balance of desire they imagined; the predicament
in fact of that philosophic quadruped, who, because he found in each of
them precisely the same attraction, stood, unable to move, between two
bundles of hay, until he perished of hunger.
VERTIGO
No! I don't like it; I can't approve of it; I have always thought it
most regrettable that serious and ethical Thinkers like ourselves should
go scuttling through space in this undignified manner. Is it seemly that
I, at my age, should be hurled, with my books of reference, and
bed-clothes, and hot-water bottle, across the sky at the unthinkable
rate of nineteen miles a second? As I say, I don't at all like it. This
universe of astronomical whirligigs makes me a little giddy.
That God should spend His eternity--which might be so much better
employed--in spinning countless Solar Systems, and skylarking, like a
great child, with tops and teetotums--is not this a serious scandal? I
wonder what all our circumgyrating Monotheists really do think of it?
THE EVIL EYE
Drawn by the unfelt wind in my little sail over the shallow estuary, I
lay in my boat, lost in a dream of mere existence. The cool water glided
through my trailing fingers; and leaning over, I watched the sands that
slid beneath me, the weeds that languidly swayed with the boat's motion.
I was the cool water, I was the gliding sand and the swaying weeds, I
was the sea and sky and sun, I was the whole vast Universe.
Then between my eyes and the sandy bottom a mirrored face looked up at
me, floating on the smooth film of water over which I glided. At one
look from that too familiar, and yet how sinister and goblin a face, my
immeasurable soul collapsed like a wrecked balloon; I shrank sadly back
into my named personality, and sat there, shabby, hot, and very much
bored with myself in my little boat.
THE EPITHET
'Occult, night-wandering, enormous, honey-pale--'
The morning paper lay there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the
news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the
Moon--the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find
or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts
of this negligible earth?
THE GARDEN PARTY
'Yes, I suppose it is rather a dull Garden Party,' I agreed, though my
local pride was a little hurt by the disdain of that visiting young
woman for our rural society. 'Still we have some interesting neighbours,
when you get to know them. Now that fat lady over there in purple--do
you see her? Mrs. Turnbull--she believes in Hell, believes in Eternal
Torment. And that old gentleman with whiskers and white spats is
convinced that England is tottering on the very brink of the abyss. The
pie-faced lady he is talking to was, she asserts, Mary Queen of Scots in
a previous existence. And our Curate--we're proud of our Curate--he's a
great cricketer, and a kind of saint as well. They say he goes out in
Winter at three o'clock in the morning, and stands up to his neck in a
pond, praying for sinners.'
WELTSCHMERZ
'How depressed you look! What on earth's the matter?'
'Central Europe,' I said, 'and the chaos in China is something awful.
There's a threatened shortage, too, of beer in Copenhagen.'
'But why should that worry you?'
'It doesn't. It's what I said to Mrs. Rumbal--I do say such idiotic
things! She asked me to come to see them. "I shall be delighted," I
said, "as delighted--"
'But it's your fault for lending me that book of Siamese
translations!--"as delighted," I said, "Mrs. Rumbal, as a royal
flamingo, when he alights upon a cluster of lotuses."'
BOGEYS
I remember how charmed I was with these new acquaintances, to whose
house I had been taken that afternoon to call. I remember the gardens
through which we sauntered, with peaches ripening on the sunny walls; I
remember the mellow light on the old portraits in the drawing-room, the
friendly atmosphere and tranquil voices; and how, as the quiet stream of
talk flowed on, one subject after another was pleasantly mirrored on its
surface--till, at a chance remark, there was a sudden change and
darkening, an angry swirl, as if a monster were raising its head above
the waters.
What was it about, the dreadful disputation into which we were plunged,
in spite of desperate efforts to clutch at other subjects? Was it Tariff
Reform or Table-rapping,--Bacon and Shakespeare, Disestablishment,
perhaps--or Anti-Vivisection? What did any of us know or really care
about it? What force, what fury drove us into saying the stupid,
intolerant, denunciatory things we said; that made us feel we would
rather die than not say them? How could a group of humane, polite and
intelligent people be so suddenly transformed into barking animals?
Why do we let these Abstractions and implacable Dogmatisms take
possession of us, glare at each other through our eyes, and fight their
frenzied conflicts in our persons? Life without the rancours and
ever-recurring battles of these Bogeys might be so simple, friendly,
affectionate and pleasant!
LIFE-ENHANCEMENT
I was simply telling them at tea the details of my journey--how late the
train had been in starting, how crowded the railway carriage, how I had
mislaid my umbrella, and nearly lost my Gladstone bag.
But how I enjoyed making them listen, what a sense of enhanced existence
I found it gave me (and to think that I have pitied bores!) to force my
doings, my interests, my universe, with my bag and umbrella, down their
throats!
ECLIPSE
A mild radiance and the scent of flowers filled the drawing-room, whose
windows stood open to the summer night. I thought our talk delightful;
the topic was one of my favourite topics; I had much that was
illuminating to say about it, and I was a little put out when we were
called to the window to look at the planet Jupiter, which was shining in
the sky just then, we were told, with great brilliance.
In turns through a telescope we gazed at that planet: I thought the
spectacle over-rated, but said nothing. Not for the world, not for any
number of worlds would I have wished them to guess why I was displeased
with that glittering star.
THE PYRAMID
'To read Gibbon,' I said as we paced that terrace in the sunshine, 'to
peruse his metallic, melancholy pages, and then forget them; to re-read
and re-forget the _Decline and Fall_; to fill the mind with that great,
sad, meaningless panorama of History, and then to watch it fade from the
memory as it has faded from the glass of time--'
As she turned to me with a glance full of enthusiasm, 'What is so
enchanting,' I asked myself, 'as the dawn of an acquaintance with a
lovely woman with whom one can share one's thoughts?'
But those dawns are too often false dawns.
It was her remark about History, how she believed the builders of the
Great Pyramid had foreseen and foretold many events of Modern History,
which made a gigantic shadow, a darkness, as of Egypt, loom between us
on that terrace.
THE FULL MOON
Suddenly one night, low above the trees, we saw the great, amorous,
unabashed face of the full Moon. It was an exhibition that made me
blush, feel that I had no right to be there. 'After all these millions
of years, she ought to be ashamed of herself!' I cried.
LUTON
In a field of that distant, half-neglected farm, I found an avenue of
great elms leading to nothing. But I could see where the wheat-bearing
earth had been levelled into a terrace; and in one corner there were
broken, overgrown, garden gateposts, almost hid among great straggling
trees of yew.
This, then, was the place I had come to see. Here had stood the great
palladian house or palace, with its terraces, and gardens, and
artificial waters; this field had once been the favourite resort of
Eighteenth-Century Fashion; the Duchesses and Beauties had driven hither
in their gilt coaches, and the Beaux and Wits of that golden age of
English Society. And although the house had long since vanished, and the
plough had gone over its pleasant places, yet for a moment I seemed to
see this fine company under the green and gold of that great avenue;
seemed to hear their gossiping voices as they passed on into the
shadows.
THE DANGER OF GOING TO CHURCH
As I came away from the Evening Service, walking home from that Sabbath
adventure, some neighbours of mine passed me in their motor, laughing.
Were they laughing at me? I wondered uneasily; and as I sauntered across
the fields I vaguely cursed those misbelievers. Yes, yes, their eyes
should be darkened, and their lying lips put to silence. They should be
smitten with the botch of Egypt, and a sore botch in the legs that
cannot be healed. All the teeth should be broken in the mouths of those
bloody men and daughters of back-sliding; their faces should become as
flames, and their heads be made utterly bald. Their little ones should
be dashed to pieces before their eyes, and brimstone scattered upon
their habitations. They should be led away with their buttocks
uncovered; they should stagger to and fro as a drunken man staggereth in
his vomit.
But as for the Godly Man who kept his Sabbaths, his should be the
blessings of those who walk in the right way. 'These blessings'--the
words came back to me from the Evening Lesson--'these blessings shall
come upon thee, and overtake thee.' And suddenly, in the mild summer
air, it seemed as if, like a swarm of bees inadvertently wakened, the
blessings of the Bible were actually rushing after me. From the hot,
remote, passionate past of Hebrew history, out of the Oriental climate
and unctuous lives of that infuriate people, gross good things were
coming to overwhelm me with benedictions for which I had not bargained.
Great oxen and camels and concubines were panting close behind me,
he-goats and she-goats and rams of the breed of Bashan. My barns should
burst their doors with plenty, and all my paths drop fatness. My face
should be smeared with the oil of rejoicing; all my household and the
beasts of my household should beget and bear increase; and as for the
fruit of my own loins, it should be for multitude as the sands of the
sea and as the stars of heaven. My little ones should be as olive plants
around my table; sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters to the
third and fourth generation, should rise up and call me blessed. My feet
should be dipped in butter, and my eyes stand out with fatness; I should
flourish as the Cedar of Lebanon that bringeth forth fruit in old age.
THE SONNET
It came back to me this rainy afternoon for no reason, the memory of
another afternoon long ago in the country, when, at the end of an autumn
day, I had stood at the rain-dashed window and gazed out at the dim
landscape; and as I watched the yellowing leaves blown about the garden,
I had seen a flock of birds rise above the half-denuded poplars and
wheel in the darkening sky. I had felt there was a mysterious meaning in
that moment, and in that flight of dim-seen birds an augury of ill-omen
for my life. It was a mood of Autumnal, minor-poet melancholy, a mood
with which, it had occurred to me, I might fill out the rhymes of a
lugubrious sonnet.
But my Sonnet about those birds--those Starlings, or whatever they
were--will, I fear, never be written now. For how can I now recapture
the sadness, the self-pity of youth?
Alas! What do the compensations of age after all amount to? What joy can
the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they take away?
WELTANSCHAUUNG
When, now and then, on a calm night I look up at the Stars, I reflect on
the wonders of Creation, the unimportance of this Planet, and the
possible existence of other worlds like ours. Sometimes it is the
self-poised and passionless shining of those serene orbs which I think
of; sometimes Kant's phrase comes into my mind about the majesty of the
Starry Heavens and the Moral Law; or I remember Xenophanes gazing at the
broad firmament, and crying, 'All is One!' and thus, in that sublime
exclamation, enunciating for the first time the great doctrine of the
Unity of Being.
But these Thoughts are not my thoughts; they eddy through my mind like
scraps of old paper, or withered leaves in the wind. What I really feel
is the survival of a much more primitive mood--a view of the world which
dates indeed from before the invention of language. It has never been
put into literature; no poet has sung of it, no historian of human
thought has so much as alluded to it; astronomers in their glazed
observatories, with their eyes glued to the ends of telescopes, seem to
have had no notion of it.
But sometimes, far off at night, I have heard a dog howling it at the
Moon.
THE ALIEN
The older I grow, the more of an alien I find myself in the world; I
cannot get used to it, cannot believe that it is real. I think I must
have been made to live on some other Star. Or perhaps I am subject to
hallucinations and hear voices; perhaps what I seem to see is delusion
and doesn't happen; perhaps people don't really say the things I think I
hear them saying.
Ah, some one ought to have told me when I was young, I should certainly
have been told of the horrible songs that are sung in drawing-rooms;
they ought to have warned me about the great fat women who suddenly get
up and bellow out incredible recitations.
HYPOTHESES
I got up with Stoic fortitude of mind in the cold this morning; but
afterwards, in my hot bath, I joined the school of Epicurus. I was a
Materialist at breakfast; after it an Idealist, as I smoked my first
cigarette and turned the world to transcendental vapour. But when I
began to read the _Times_ I had no doubt of the existence of an external
world.
So all the morning and all the afternoon opinions kept flowing into and
out of the receptacle of my mind; till, by the time the enormous day was
over, it had been filled by most of the widely-known Theories of
Existence, and then emptied of them.
THE ARGUMENT
This long speculation of life, this thinking and syllogising that always
goes on inside me, this running over and over of hypothesis and surmise
and supposition--one day this infinite Argument will have ended, the
debate will be forever over, I shall have come to an indisputable
conclusion, and my brain will be at rest.