THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED AND
THE FIRST BEMERTONIAN NUGGET
My first few days over Bemerton's were a dream of joy and liberty. I
am happy enough still (my nature is happy), but in those first few
days I was realising the desire of half a lifetime--I was in the
dovecote, so to speak, that all my thoughts had been homing to, day
and night, for years and years.
How often had I awakened and lain awake for hours, powerless to sleep
again with all London in my head--not only its sights and sounds but
the scents of it. Latterly, when the date of my release was fixed
and grew nearer, this small-hour excitement had so intensified that I
began to fear brain-fever, and indeed at the end nothing but drugs
had saved me; but the voyage put things right: once again the sea
washed away--as who says? is it not Lucretius?--the ills of man.
At my stepsister's I was in a kind of trance. It was all so strange
and unreal, and also there, even if subconsciously, I played the
voluptuary, the epicure, and postponed the true rapture to the last,
thinking that I would not begin to realise all the best anticipations
until my rooms were my own--until once again I was my own master, as
one never is in any one else's house. Dreams of London liberty that
were dreamed alone should be realised alone; and so, although Naomi
and I went everywhere, and I tasted many of the pleasures I had
meditated upon, there was, as it were, a veil between them and my
sensorium, not to be lifted until I was free once more and the
obligations of a grateful guest were removed. Dear Naomi, I think,
understood, and hastened accordingly in her search for rooms.
At first this perfect irresponsibility in my city of delight was
almost too much: I was in danger of another breakdown. Sleep I could
not. I roamed London from west to east, from south to north. I
drifted wherever the impulse took me. I was intoxicated with
humanity--bemused by people. I stood for hours on the bridges
watching the tugs and the barges. I stood for hours in Farringdon
Street at this barrow and that.
I had no method: I boarded buses for the docks, and never got beyond
the stalls of Butchers' Row. I set out in the morning for Highgate,
and by evening was still in the Charing Cross Road. I accepted
invitations to dinner, and what time the entrée was being served I
might be seen through the steam of sausage and mashed dining in a
small eating-house. I started to pay calls on old friends, and
wandered to the National Gallery. I read the advertisements of the
best plays, and found myself in the Middlesex. I meditated Hampstead
Heath, and instead inhaled invigorating draughts of naphtha in the
New Cut. I bought a ticket for Queen's Hall, and allowed a melodrama
in the Mile End Road to play fast and loose with my emotions.
But I had my disappointments too. It was too often not the London of
my dreams. My dreams had taken no account of change. The Piccadilly
I had visualised so long and so longingly was the Piccadilly of
1875--now different from this! My Strand was a Strand on which no
County Council had wreaked its zeal. One of my favourite haunts as a
youth had been Clare Market--that Hogarthian oasis--and Clare Market
has passed for ever; and who can lay his hand upon his heart and say
that the Charing Cross Road is any real substitute for the street of
Holy Well? That that area was insanitary and is better away has
nothing to do with it. The true Londoner cares no straw for
sanitation. He thrives on ill conditions.
I swear to you that through my heaven blow pungent clouds of
sulphurous metropolitan smoke--such as we breathed in perfection
years ago between Portland Road and King's Cross and between
Blackfriars and Charing Cross. Where are they now? The higher
slopes of Snowdon are hardly more free from grime than the ladylike
highway into which electricity has converted the underground.
London's other new means of rapid transit were a disappointment too.
We have motor cars in Buenos Ayres, but I was not prepared for such a
capture of the streets as I found. For how many nights before I came
away did coloured omnibuses in full sail fill my dreams in
irresistible onset! That was London. The motor bus has its onset
too, but it has none of the old rollick. It comes rigidly towards
you, immense and terrifying. It does not sway nor roll. It wears
the inflexible, pitiless air of progress. It is Juggernaut. How
human and genial was the bus!
But among all the London phantasmagoria that had flickered before my
sleeping and waking and dozing eyes the hansom cab was, I think, the
most constant. I used to hear the horse's bell.... I had never
forgotten my first hansom ride. Does any one forget it? My next--my
second first hansom ride, so to say--was to be as memorable. I
thought about it absurdly. I remembered the sense of comfort with
which one settled down into the seat and closed the flaps and then
composed oneself to watch London unfold.... But I found the motor
cab the master of the streets. The hansom was still there, but not
the hansom that I had known. The dashing driver was gone, the
knowing fellow with a straw in his mouth, and a coat with large
buttons, and a raffish tall hat on the side of his head. The hansom
driver to-day is more like the growler driver of the past: a beaten
man. I am sorry for him, and so long as I am not in a hurry I will
climb into his vehicle as of old--that is, until it disappears, as I
suppose it must. And what then? In my youth old hansoms when they
died went to Oxford. Where will they go to-day?
But, when all is said, the London that one most desired in such an
exile as mine was the London of winter. London on a fine November
evening at, say, six o'clock, after Christmas has been signalled,
when there is an edge on the air and an indigo mist in the streets
and the shops are all lighted. The return home to a bright fire
under these conditions, with the evening paper or a new book or
magazine! It was a simple ideal, but it carried extraordinary
comfort and satisfaction with it.
Slippers ...
I used to meditate on it for hours.
What a deal of pleasant undress repose must be missed by the
fashionable! How poor an exchange are dress boots for soft slippers,
a stall for an arm-chair, and (I myself would add) a play for a book!
That reminds me that I must tell you about my first Bemerton
purchase, the Chinese Biographical Dictionary. Mr. Bemerton was
right: it is a treasure. I only nibbled at it at first, opening at
random and reading a life here and there--there are 2,579 lives in it
altogether--and I was never disappointed. And then I began to take
it seriously, and now I know something of its merits and for awhile
am measuring mankind by a Chinese standard.
It is the model of biographical dictionaries. I have long possessed
our own _Dictionary of National Biography_, in how many weighty
volumes? Sixty-two, including the _Errata_; but after the dry,
epigrammatic conciseness of Dr. Giles it is unreadable. To this sage
appraiser of Chinese genius and address all meritorious men come
alike--whether statesmen, cynics, sorcerers, or saints. He never
questions: he merely puts on record in brief credulous sentences
their characters and deeds. When all is said, it is, I suppose,
their imperturbability and saturnine humour that are the most
engaging qualities of the Chinese. They could not have found a
better celebrant, or one more in tune with themselves, than Dr.
Giles. He sets down everything gravely, and is as kind to the
supernatural as to the natural. The sole qualification for admission
into the Gilesian Valhalla is merit.
The book's brevity is its great charm. It was Henri Taine, I think,
who said that there was no volume he could not compress into a
chapter, and no chapter that would not go into a sentence. Dr. Giles
has carried out Taine's thrasonical brag. There is no Chinese
lifetime, however crowded and illustrious, that he cannot pack into a
paragraph or a page. Nor does anything strike one as wanting. One
could do with more, of course, and yet who would have the olive
larger? There is no blemish on this work save its prohibitive weight
as a bed book, and that I have overcome by cutting it into four
pamphlets.
I find a disdain for worldly advantage among these pagan Celestial
philosophers that makes a more reasonable ideal for some of our
Western plutocrats to-day than many that are placed before them in
the professional pulpit. A few Englishmen have had a similar
whimsical unworldliness, but they are few and far between. I imagine
that J. K. Stephen had, for one, and the Shelley that emerges from
certain of Hogg's pages. A glittering example of the humorous
romantic detachment and carelessness of public opinion that I mean is
Chang Chih-ho, of the eighth century A.D., who spent his time in
angling, but used no bait, his object not being to catch fish. When
Lu asked him why he roamed about, Chang's answer was instant: "With
the Empyrean as my home, the bright moon my constant companion, and
the four seas my inseparable friends--what mean you by _roaming_?"
and when a friend offered him a comfortable home instead of his poor
boat, he replied, "I prefer to follow the gulls into cloud-land
rather than bury my ethereal self beneath the dust of the world."
Isn't that fine?
There should certainly be a Chang Chih-ho Society. The spread of
such roseate impracticableness would do no harm at all. Indeed, the
crying need for the moment in this country, as in America, is a
gospel of poverty to cope with the gospel of riches that is vitiating
society. Sufficient exemplars for preachers of this new evangel
could probably be found in Dr. Giles's pages alone, but if others
were needed there is always the wise and silent India in reserve.
Yang Ksiung, a poet of the first century B.C. (note the period),
would be one high among them. On the completion of Yang's most
famous work, "a wealthy merchant of the province was so struck by its
excellence that he offered to give 100,000 _cash_ if his name should
merely be mentioned in it. But Yang answered with scorn that a stag
in a pen or an ox in a cage would not be more out of place than the
name of a man with nothing but money to recommend him in the sacred
pages of a book."
Another recluse, Cháo Fu, who flourished B.C. 2,357, took to the
branches of the trees to be removed as far as possible from contact
with the world. "Yao offered him the throne, but he declined and
immediately went and washed his ears to free them from the defilement
of such worldly contamination," nor would he let his calves drink of
the water.
Not the least interesting and instructive thing about this work is
its record of virtue, genius, and fortitude of not only a
non-Christian people but to a large extent, as we understand it, a
non-civilised people.
Another eminent pagan was Chang Chēn-chou, of the seventh
century A.D., who, on being appointed Governor of Shu-chou,
"proceeded to his old home and spent ten days in feasting his
relatives and friends. Then calling them together, he gave to each a
present of money and silk, and took leave of them with tears in his
eyes, saying, 'We have had this pleasant time together as old
friends. To-morrow I take up my appointment as Governor; after that
we can meet no more.' The result was an impartial and successful
administration."
Of Chēn Shih, A.D. 104-187, who was also famous for his
probity, a pleasant story is told. On one occasion "when a thief had
hidden himself among the roof-beams, he quietly called together his
sons and grandsons, and after a short moral lecture pointed up at the
thief, saying, 'Do not imitate this gentleman on the beam.' The
latter was so touched that he came down and asked forgiveness,
promising to lead an honest life for the future, and departing
joyfully with a present of money."
Another sage was Sun Fang, of the twelfth century A.D., an Imperial
physician, who called himself the Hermit of the Four Stops. He
explained this to mean that when he had taken his fill of plain food,
he stopped; when he had put on enough plain clothes to keep himself
warm, he stopped; when he had realised a fair proportion of his
wishes, he stopped; and finally, after growing old, free from
covetousness or envy, he would also be prepared to stop.
With him may be coupled Ping Chi, who died B.C. 55, at the time that
our tight little island was being invaded by the Romans. "In 63 he
was ennobled as Marquis, and in 59 became Minister of State. The
following story is told of his acumen. One spring day he came upon a
crowd of brawlers, among whom were several killed and wounded; but he
took no notice of them and passed on. Soon afterwards he saw an ox
panting violently, and at once showed the greatest concern. 'For,'
as he explained, 'the brawlers can be left to those whose business it
is to deal with such matters; whereas an ox panting in spring means
that heat has come before its time, and that the seasons are out of
joint, thus opening a question of the deepest national interest.'"
Among the philosophers I like Yin Hao, who, when he failed to grapple
with the rebellion of Yao Hsiang, was impeached for incompetence and
cashiered. "He took his punishment without complaint, except that he
spent his days in writing with his finger in the air the four words
'Oh! oh! strange business!'" Sang Wei-han had philosophy of another
kind: "He was short of stature, with a long beard; but used to stand
before a mirror and say, 'One foot of face is worth seven of body.'
At the same time, he was so hideously ugly that the very sight of him
made people sweat, even in mid-winter."
Chinese thoroughness is also worth some attention in the West. Look
at Chi Cháng. Chi Cháng was an archer who arrived at proficiency by
painful measures. "He began by lying for three years under his
wife's loom, in order to learn not to blush. He then hung up a
louse, and gazed at it for three years, until at length it appeared
to him as big as a cart-wheel. After this, he is said to have been
able to pierce through the heart with an arrow." Another
conscientious model was Liu Hsün, who died A.D. 521, and "who read
all night, having a lighted twist of hemp arranged in such a way as
to burn his hair if he began to nod from drowsiness."
Chang I, who died B.C. 310, a political adventurer, and eventually
Prime Minister, had a certain dry humour. "It is recorded that in
his early life, after a banquet at the house of a Minister of Ch'u,
at which he had been present, he was wrongly accused of stealing some
valuable gem, and was very severely beaten. On his return home, he
said to his wife, 'Look and see if they have left me my tongue.' And
when his wife declared that it was safe and sound, he cried out, 'If
I still have my tongue, that is all I want.'"
Here is humour again: Tung-fang So, a censor in the first century
B.C., "on one occasion drank off some elixir of immortality which
belonged to the Emperor, and the latter in a rage ordered him to be
put to death. But Tung-fang So smiled and said, 'If the elixir was
genuine, your Majesty can do me no harm; if it was not, what harm
have I done?'"
Of Chao Kao, who died B.C. 207, a famous rebel, we have this sinister
variant of Andersen's story of the Emperor's new clothes: "Tradition
says that on one occasion, in order to discover which of the
officials at the Court of Hu Hai, the Second Emperor, would be likely
to defy him, he presented the Emperor with a stag, saying that it was
a horse. His Majesty, bewildered by the absurdity of the statement,
appealed to his surrounding courtiers. Those who were bold enough to
say that it was a stag were marked down by Chao Kao for destruction."
Are they not an interesting company? Let me end this taste by the
celebration of one of the most attractive of all--Ch'ēn Tsun.
Ch'ēn Tsun, who died A.D. 25, was distinguished as a
letter-writer, but still more famous for his love of good company.
That, however, is nothing: the characteristic that fills me with
pleasure is the following: "He used to keep his guests with him, even
against their will, by throwing the linch-pins of their carriages
into a well." What a delightful trait--or, rather, habit!