_A well-furnished comfortable room in_ Lucy Rimmerton's _house. She is
seated in front of the fire, in an easy-chair, reading. The door opens,
without her noticing it, and_ Agnes _comes in, closes the door gently,
crosses the room, and bends over her_.
_Agnes._ A happy New Year to you, Aunt Luce.
_Lucy._ What! Agnes, is that you? I never heard you come in. I really
think I must be getting deaf.
_Agnes._ What nonsense! I didn't intend you should hear me. I wanted to
wish you a happy New Year first.
_Lucy._ So as to make your Aunt play second fiddle. The same to you,
dear.
_Agnes._ Thank you. [_Warms her hands at the fire._] Oh, it _is_ cold;
not here I mean, but out of doors; the thermometer is down I don't know
how many degrees below freezing.
_Lucy._ It seems to agree with you, at all events. You look as bright
and rosy as though you were the New Year itself come to visit me.
_Agnes._ [_Laughs merrily._] So I ought to. I ran nearly all the way,
except when I slid, to the great horror of an old gentleman who was
busily engaged lecturing some little boys on the enormity of their sins
in making a beautifully long slide in the middle of the pavement.
_Lucy._ And what brought you out so early?
_Agnes._ To see you, of course. Besides, the morning is so lovely it
seemed a sin to remain indoors. I do hope the frost continues all the
holidays.
_Lucy._ It is all very well for you, but it must be terribly trying for
many people--the poor, for instance.
_Agnes._ Yes. [_A pause._] Auntie, you don't know anything, do you,
about how--how poor people live?
_Lucy._ Not so much as I ought to.
_Agnes._ I didn't mean _very_ poor people, not working people. I meant a
person poor like--like I am poor.
_Lucy._ [_Smiling._] Don't you know how you live yourself?
_Agnes._ Of course I do, but--I was thinking of--of a friend of mine, a
governess like myself, who has just got engaged; and I--I was wondering
on how much, or, rather, how little, they could live. But you don't know
of course. You are rich, and----
_Lucy._ But I wasn't always rich. Thirty years ago when I was your
age----
_Agnes._ When you were my age! I like that! why you are not fifty.
_Lucy._ Little flatterer. Fifty-two last birthday.
_Agnes._ Fifty-two! Well, you don't look it, at all events.
_Lucy._ Gross flatterer. When I was your age I was poor and a governess
as you are.
_Agnes._ But I thought that your Aunt Emily left you all her money.
_Lucy._ So she did, or nearly all; but that was afterwards. It isn't
quite thirty years yet since she came back from India, a widow, just
after she had lost her husband and only child. I was very ill at the
time--I almost died; and she, good woman as she was, came and nursed me.
_Agnes._ Of course, I know. I have heard father talk about it. And then
she was taken ill, wasn't she?
_Lucy._ Yes, almost before I was well. It was very unfair that she
should leave everything to me; your father was her nephew, just as I was
her niece, but he wouldn't hear of my sharing it with----
_Agnes._ I should think not indeed! I should be very sorry to think that
my father would ever allow such a thing. Although, at the same time, it
is all very well for you to imagine that you don't share it, but you
_do_. Who pays for Lillie's and May's and George's schooling? Who sent
Alfred to Cambridge, and Frank to----
_Lucy._ Don't, please. What a huge family you are, to be sure.
_Agnes._ And last, but not least, who gave me a chance of going to
Girton? Oh, we are not supposed to know anything about it, I know, but
you see we do. You thought you had arranged it all so beautifully, and
kept everyone of us entirely in the dark, but you haven't one little
bit.
_Lucy._ Nonsense, Agnes, you----
_Agnes._ Oh, you are a huge big fraud, you know you are; I am quite
ashamed of you. [Lucy _is going to speak_.] You are not to be thanked, I
know; and you needn't be afraid, I am not going to do so; but if you
could only hear us when we are talking quietly together, you would find
that a certain person, who shall be nameless, is simply worship----
_Lucy._ Hush! you silly little girl. You don't know what you are saying.
You have nothing to thank me for whatsoever.
_Agnes._ Haven't we just? I know better.
_Lucy._ Young people always do. So you see I do know something of how
"the poor" live.
_Agnes._ Yes, but you were never married.
_Lucy._ No, dear.
_Agnes._ That is what I want to----Why weren't you married? Oh, I know
I have no business to ask such a question: it is fearfully rude I know,
but I have wondered so often. You are lovely now, and you must have been
beautiful when you were a girl.
_Lucy._ No, I wasn't--I was barely pretty.
_Agnes._ I can't believe that.
_Lucy._ And I am not going to accept your description of me now as a
true one; although I confess I am vain enough--even in my present old
age--to look in the glass occasionally, and say to myself: "You are
better-looking now than you ever were."
_Agnes._ Well, at all events you were always an angel.
_Lucy._ And men don't like angels; besides--I was poor.
_Agnes._ You were not poor when you got Aunt Emily's money.
_Lucy._ No, but then it was too----I mean I then had no wish to marry.
_Agnes._ You mean you determined to sacrifice yourself for us, that is
what you mean.
_Lucy._ I must have possessed a very prophetic soul then, or been gifted
with second sight, as none of you, except Reginald, were born. But to
come back to your friend, Agnes; has she no money?
_Agnes._ No, none.
_Lucy._ Nor he?
_Agnes._ Not a penny.
_Lucy._ And they want to get married?
_Agnes._ Yes.
_Lucy._ And are afraid they haven't enough.
_Agnes._ They certainly haven't.
_Lucy._ Then why don't they apply to some friend or relative who has
more than enough; say, to--an aunt, for instance.
_Agnes._ Auntie!
_Lucy._ And what is his name?
_Agnes._ Geo----Mr. Reddell.
_Lucy._ And hers is?
_Agnes._ Oh, I never intended to tell you. I didn't mean to say a word.
_Lucy._ When did it happen?
_Agnes._ Three days ago. That is to say, he proposed to me then, but of
course it has been going on for a long time. I could see that he--at
least I thought I could see. But I can hardly realise it yet. It seems
all so strange. And I _did_ intend telling you, I felt I _must_ tell
somebody, although George doesn't want it known yet, because, as I told
you, he--and so I haven't said a word to father yet; but I must
soon--and you won't say anything, will you? and--and oh, I am silly.
_Lucy._ There, have your cry out, it will do you good. Now tell me about
Mr. Reddell. What is he?
_Agnes._ He is a writer--an author. Don't you remember I showed you a
story of his a little time ago?
_Lucy._ I thought I knew the name.
_Agnes._ And you said you liked it; I was so pleased.
_Lucy._ Yes, I did. I thought it clever and----
_Agnes._ He _is_ clever; and I do so want you to know him. He wants to
know you, too. You will try to like him, won't you, for my sake?
_Lucy._ I have no doubt I shall.
_Agnes._ He is just bringing out a book. Some of the stories have been
published before; the one you read was one, and if that proves a success
then it will be all right; we shall be able to get married and----
_Lucy._ Wait a minute, Agnes. How long have you known him?
_Agnes._ Over a year--nearly two years.
_Lucy._ And do you really know him well? Are you quite certain you can
trust him?
_Agnes._ What a question! How can you doubt it? You wouldn't for a
minute if you knew him.
_Lucy._ I ought not to, knowing you, you mean. And supposing this book
is a success. May it not spoil him--make him conceited?
_Agnes._ All the better if it does. He is not conceited enough, and so I
always tell him.
_Lucy._ But may it not make him worldly? May he not, after a time,
regret his proposal to you if he sees a chance of making a more
advantageous----
_Agnes._ Impossible. What a dreadful opinion you must have of mankind.
You don't think it really, I know. I have never heard you say or hint
anything nasty about anybody before.
_Lucy._ I only do it for your own good, my dear. I once knew a man--just
such another as you describe Mr. Reddell to be. He was an author, too,
and--and when I knew him his first book was also just about to appear.
He was engaged to be married to--to quite a nice girl too, although she
was never so pretty as you are.
_Agnes._ Who is the flatterer now?
_Lucy._ The book was published. It was a great success. He became quite
the lion of the season--it is many years ago now. The wedding-day was
definitely fixed. Two months before the date he suggested a
postponement--for six months.
_Agnes._ How horrible!
_Lucy._ And just about the time originally fixed upon for the wedding
she received a letter from him--he was abroad at the time--suggesting
that their engagement had better be broken off.
_Agnes._ Oh, the brute! the big brute! But she didn't consent, did she?
_Lucy._ Of course. The man she had loved was dead. The new person she
was indifferent to.
_Agnes._ But how--but you don't suggest that Mr. Reddell could behave
like that? he couldn't. He wouldn't, I feel certain. But there must
surely have been something else; I can't believe that any man would
behave so utterly unfeelingly--so brutally. They say there are always
two sides to every story. Mayn't there have been some reason that you
knew nothing about? Mayn't she have done something? She must have been a
little bit to blame, too, and this side of the story you never heard.
_Lucy._ Yes--it is possible.
_Agnes._ I can't think that any man would deliberately behave so like a
cad as you say he did.
_Lucy._ It may have been her fault. I used to think it might be--just a
little, as you say.
_Agnes._ Well, it sha'n't be mine at all events. I won't give any
cause--besides even if I did----Oh, no, it is utterly impossible to
imagine such a thing!
_Lucy._ I hope it is, for your sake.
_Agnes._ Of course it is; of that I am quite certain. And you don't
think it is very wrong of me to--to----
_Lucy._ To say Yes to a man you love. No, my dear, that can never be
wrong, although it may be foolish.
_Agnes._ From a worldly point of view, perhaps; but I should never have
thought that you----
_Lucy._ I didn't mean that. But love seems to grow so quickly when you
once allow it to do so, that it is sometimes wiser to----but never mind,
bring him to see me, and--and may you be happy. [_A long pause._]
_Agnes._ You are crying now, Auntie! You have nothing----
_Lucy._ Haven't I? What, not at the chance of losing you? So this is
what brought you out so early this morning and occasioned your bright,
rosy cheeks? You didn't only come to see me.
_Agnes._ To see you and talk to you, yes, that was all. No, by-the-by,
it wasn't all. Have you seen a paper this morning? No? I thought it
would interest you so I brought it round. It is bad news, not good news;
your favourite author is dead.
_Lucy._ I am afraid my favourite authors have been dead very many years.
_Agnes._ I should say the author of your favourite book.
_Lucy._ You mean----
_Agnes._ Sir Harold Sekbourne. [Lucy _leans back in her chair_.] He died
last night. Here it is; here is the paragraph. [_Reads._] "We regret to
announce the death of Sir Harold Sekbourne, the well-known novelist,
which occurred at his town house, in Prince's Gate, late last evening."
Shall I read it to you?
_Lucy._ No--no, give me the paper. And--and, Agnes, do you mind going
down to Franklin's room, and telling her that receipt you promised her?
_Agnes._ For the Japanese custard? Of course I will; I quite forgot all
about it. There it is. [_Gives her the paper, indicating the paragraph
with her finger, then goes out._]
_Lucy._ [_Sits staring at the paper for a few seconds, then reads
slowly._] "Sir Harold had been slightly indisposed for some weeks, but
no anxiety was felt until two days ago, when a change for the worse set
in, and despite all the care, attention, and skill of Drs. Thornton and
Douglas, who hardly left his bedside, he never rallied, and passed
peacefully away, at the early age of fifty-eight, at the time above
mentioned. It is now thirty years ago since the deceased baronet
published his first book, 'Grace: a Sketch,' which had such an immediate
and great success. This was followed nearly a year afterwards by 'Alain
Treven,' the scene of which is laid in Brittany; and from that time
until his death his pen was never idle. His last work, 'The Incoming
Tide,' has just been published in book form, it having appeared in the
pages of _The Illustrated Courier_ during the last year. Despite the
rare power of his later works, disclosing thoroughly, as they do, his
scholarly knowledge, his masterly construction, vivid imagination, and
his keen insight into character and details of every-day life, they none
of them can, for exquisite freshness and rare delicacy of execution,
compare with his first publication, 'Grace: a Sketch.' We have before
us, as we write, a first edition of this delightful story, with its
curiously sentimental dedication 'To my Lady Luce,' which in the
subsequent editions was omitted. A baronetcy was conferred on Sir Harold
by her Majesty two years ago, at the personal instigation, it is said,
of the Prime Minister, who is one of his greatest admirers, but the
title is now extinct, as Sir Harold leaves no son. He married in June,
1866, a daughter of the late Sir Humphrey Mockton, who survives him. His
two daughters are both married--one to Lord Duncan, eldest son of the
Earl of Andstar; the other to Sir Reginald de Laver. His loss will be
greatly felt, not only in the literary world, but wherever the English
tongue is spoken and read."
[Lucy _goes to the bookcase, takes out a book, and opens it_. Agnes
_comes in_.]
_Agnes._ Franklin is silly. I had to repeat the directions three times,
and even now I doubt if she understands them properly. [_Comes behind_
Lucy _and looks over her shoulder_.] Why, I never knew you had a first
edition. [Lucy _starts and closes the book, then opens it again_.] May I
look at it? But this is written; the ink is quite faded. "To my Lady
Luce. Harold Sekbourne, 3rd November, 1863." What a strong handwriting
it is! Luce! how strange that the name should be the same as---- [_Looks
suddenly at_ Lucy.] Oh, Auntie, forgive me. I never dreamt----I am so
sorry.
The Head of Minos
By J. T. Nettleship
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: The Head of Minos]
A Lost Masterpiece
A City Mood, Aug. '93
By George Egerton
I regret it, but what am I to do? It was not my fault--I can only regret
it. It was thus it happened to me.
I had come to town straight from a hillside cottage in a lonely
ploughland, with the smell of the turf in my nostrils, and the swish of
the scythes in my ears; the scythes that flashed in the meadows where
the upland hay, drought-parched, stretched thirstily up to the clouds
that mustered upon the mountain-tops, and marched mockingly away, and
held no rain.
The desire to mix with the crowd, to lay my ear once more to the heart
of the world and listen to its life-throbs, had grown too strong for me;
and so I had come back--but the sights and sounds of my late life clung
to me--it is singular how the most opposite things often fill one with
associative memory.
That _gamin_ of the bird-tribe, the Cockney sparrow, recalled the
swallows that built in the tumble-down shed; and I could almost see the
gleam of their white bellies, as they circled in ever narrowing sweeps
and clove the air with forked wings, uttering a shrill note, with a
querulous grace-note in front of it.
The freshness of the country still lurked in me, unconsciously
influencing my attitude towards the city.
One forenoon business drove me citywards, and following an inclination
that always impels me to water-ways rather than roadways, I elected to
go by river steamer.
I left home in a glad mood, disposed to view the whole world with kindly
eyes. I was filled with a happy-go-lucky _insouciance_ that made walking
the pavements a loafing in Elysian fields. The coarser touches of
street-life, the oddities of accent, the idiosyncrasies of that most
eccentric of city-dwellers, the Londoner, did not jar as at other
times--rather added a zest to enjoyment; impressions crowded in too
quickly to admit of analysis, I was simply an interested spectator of a
varied panorama.
I was conscious, too, of a peculiar dual action of brain and senses,
for, though keenly alive to every unimportant detail of the life about
me, I was yet able to follow a process by which delicate inner threads
were being spun into a fanciful web that had nothing to do with my outer
self.
At Chelsea I boarded a river steamer bound for London Bridge. The river
was wrapped in a delicate grey haze with a golden subtone, like a
beautiful bright thought struggling for utterance through a mist of
obscure words. It glowed through the turbid waters under the arches, so
that I feared to see a face or a hand wave through its dull amber--for I
always think of drowned creatures washing wearily in its murky
depths--it lit up the great warehouses, and warmed the brickwork of the
monster chimneys in the background. No detail escaped my outer eyes--not
the hideous green of the velveteen in the sleeves of the woman on my
left, nor the supercilious giggle of the young ladies on my right, who
made audible remarks about my personal appearance.
But what cared I? Was I not happy, absurdly happy?--because all the
while my inner eyes saw undercurrents of beauty and pathos, quaint
contrasts, whimsical details that tickled my sense of humour
deliciously. The elf that lurks in some inner cell was very busy, now
throwing out tender mimosa-like threads of creative fancy, now recording
fleeting impressions with delicate sure brushwork for future use;
touching a hundred vagrant things with the magic of imagination, making
a running comment on the scenes we passed.
The warehouses told a tale of an up-to-date Soll und Haben, one of my
very own, one that would thrust old Freytag out of the book-mart. The
tall chimneys ceased to be giraffic throats belching soot and smoke over
the blackening city. They were obelisks rearing granite heads
heavenwards! Joints in the bricks, weather-stains? You are mistaken;
they were hieroglyphics, setting down for posterity a tragic epic of man
the conqueror, and fire his slave; and how they strangled beauty in the
grip of gain. A theme for a Whitman!
And so it talks and I listen with my inner ear--and yet nothing outward
escapes me--the slackening of the boat--the stepping on and off of
folk--the lowering of the funnel--the name "Stanley" on the little tug,
with its self-sufficient puff-puff, fussing by with a line of grimy
barges in tow; freight-laden, for the water washes over them--and on the
last a woman sits suckling her baby, and a terrier with badly cropped
ears yaps at us as we pass....
And as this English river scene flashes by, lines of association form
angles in my brain; and the point of each is a dot of light that expands
into a background for forgotten canal scenes, with green-grey water, and
leaning balconies, and strange crafts--Canaletti and Guardi seen long
ago in picture galleries....
A delicate featured youth with gold-laced cap, scrapes a prelude on a
thin-toned violin, and his companion thrums an accompaniment on a harp.
I don't know what they play, some tuneful thing with an undernote of
sadness and sentiment running through its commonplace--likely a
music-hall ditty; for a lad with a cheap silk hat, and the hateful
expression of knowingness that makes him a type of his kind, grins
appreciatively and hums the words.
I turn from him to the harp. It is the wreck of a handsome instrument,
its gold is tarnished, its white is smirched, its stucco rose-wreaths
sadly battered. It has the air of an antique beauty in dirty ball
finery; and is it fancy, or does not a shamed wail lurk in the tone of
its strings?
The whimsical idea occurs to me that it has once belonged to a lady with
drooping ringlets and an embroidered spencer; and that she touched its
chords to the words of a song by Thomas Haynes Baily, and that Miss La
Creevy transferred them both to ivory.
The youth played mechanically, without a trace of emotion; whilst the
harpist, whose nose is a study in purples and whose bloodshot eyes have
the glassy brightness of drink, felt every touch of beauty in the poor
little tune, and drew it tenderly forth.
They added the musical note to my joyous mood; the poetry of the city
dovetailed harmoniously with country scenes too recent to be treated as
memories--and I stepped off the boat with the melody vibrating through
the city sounds.
I swung from place to place in happy, lightsome mood, glad as a fairy
prince in quest of adventures. The air of the city was exhilarating
ether--and all mankind my brethren--in fact I felt effusively
affectionate.
I smiled at a pretty anaemic city girl, and only remembered that she was
a stranger when she flashed back an indignant look of affected affront.
But what cared I? Not a jot! I could afford to say pityingly: "Go thy
way, little city maid, get thee to thy typing."
And all the while that these outward insignificant things occupied me, I
knew that a precious little pearl of a thought was evolving slowly out
of the inner chaos.
It was such an unique little gem, with the lustre of a tear, and the
light of moonlight and streamlight and love smiles reflected in its pure
sheen--and, best of all, it was all my own--a priceless possession, not
to be bartered for the Jagersfontein diamond--a city childling with the
prepotency of the country working in it--and I revelled in its fresh
charm and dainty strength; it seemed original, it was so frankly
natural.
And as I dodged through the great waggons laden with wares from outer
continents, I listened and watched it forming inside, until my soul
became filled with the light of its brightness; and a wild elation
possessed me at the thought of this darling brain-child, this offspring
of my fancy, this rare little creation, perhaps embryo of genius that
was my very own.
I smiled benevolently at the passers-by, with their harassed business
faces, and shiny black bags bulging with the weight of common every-day
documents, as I thought of the treat I would give them later on; the
delicate feast I held in store for them, when I would transfer this
dainty elusive birthling of my brain to paper for their benefit.
It would make them dream of moonlit lanes and sweethearting; reveal to
them the golden threads in the sober city woof; creep in close and
whisper good cheer, and smooth out tired creases in heart and brain; a
draught from the fountain of Jouvence could work no greater miracle than
the tale I had to unfold.
Aye, they might pass me by now, not even give me the inside of the
pavement, I would not blame them for it!--but later on, later on, they
would flock to thank me. They just didn't realise, poor money-grubbers!
How could they? But later on.... I grew perfectly radiant at the thought
of what I would do for poor humanity, and absurdly self-satisfied as the
conviction grew upon me that this would prove a work of genius--no mere
glimmer of the spiritual afflatus--but a solid chunk of genius.
Meanwhile I took a 'bus and paid my penny. I leant back and chuckled to
myself as each fresh thought-atom added to the precious quality of my
pearl. Pearl? Not one any longer--a whole quarrelet of pearls, Oriental
pearls of the greatest price! Ah, how happy I was as I fondled my
conceit!
It was near Chancery Lane that a foreign element cropped up and
disturbed the rich flow of my fancy.
I happened to glance at the side-walk. A woman, a little woman, was
hurrying along in a most remarkable way. It annoyed me, for I could not
help wondering why she was in such a desperate hurry. Bother the jade!
what business had she to thrust herself on my observation like that, and
tangle the threads of a web of genius, undoubted genius?
I closed my eyes to avoid seeing her; I could see her through the lids.
She had square shoulders and a high bust, and a white gauze tie, like a
snowy feather in the breast of a pouter pigeon.
We stop--I look again--aye, there she is! Her black eyes stare boldly
through her kohol-tinted lids, her face has a violet tint. She grips her
gloves in one hand, her white-handled umbrella in the other, handle up,
like a knobkerrie.
She has great feet, too, in pointed shoes, and the heels are under her
insteps; and as we outdistance her I fancy I can hear their decisive
tap-tap above the thousand sounds of the street.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I return to my pearl--my pearl that is to
bring _me_ kudos and make countless thousands rejoice. It is dimmed a
little, I must nurse it tenderly.
Jerk, jerk, jangle--stop.--Bother the bell! We pull up to drop some
passengers, the idiots! and, as I live, she overtakes us! How the men
and women cede her the middle of the pavement! How her figure dominates
it, and her great feet emphasise her ridiculous haste! Why should she
disturb me? My nerves are quivering pitifully; the sweet inner light is
waning, I am in mortal dread of losing my little masterpiece. Thank
heaven, we are off again....
"Charing Cross, Army and Navy, V'toria!"--Stop!
Of course, naturally! Here she comes, elbows out, umbrella waving! How
the steel in her bonnet glistens! She recalls something, what is
it?--what is it? A-ah! I have it!--a strident voice, on the deck of a
steamer in the glorious bay of Rio, singing:
"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier,
Le seul pompier...."
and _la mióla_ snaps her fingers gaily and trills her _r's_; and the
Corcovado is outlined clearly on the purple background as if bending to
listen; and the palms and the mosque-like buildings, and the fair islets
bathed in the witchery of moonlight, and the star-gems twinned in the
lap of the bay, intoxicate as a dream of the East.
"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier,
Le seul pompier...."
What in the world is a _pompier_? What connection has the word with this
creature who is murdering, deliberately murdering, a delicate creation
of my brain, begotten by the fusion of country and town?
"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier,..."
I am convinced _pompier_ expresses her in some subtle way--absurd word!
I look back at her, I criticise her, I anathematise her, I _hate_ her!
What is she hurrying for? We can't escape her--always we stop and let
her overtake us with her elbowing gait, and tight skirt shortened to
show her great splay feet--ugh!
My brain is void, all is dark within; the flowers are faded, the music
stilled; the lovely illusive little being has flown, and yet she pounds
along untiringly.
Is she a feminine presentment of the wandering Jew, a living embodiment
of the ghoul-like spirit that haunts the city and murders fancy?
What business had she, I ask, to come and thrust her white-handled
umbrella into the delicate network of my nerves and untune their
harmony?
Does she realise what she has done? She has trampled a rare little
mind-being unto death, destroyed a precious literary gem. Aye, one that,
for aught I know, might have worked a revolution in modern thought;
added a new human document to the archives of man; been the keystone to
psychic investigations; solved problems that lurk in the depths of our
natures and tantalise us with elusive gleams of truth; heralded in,
perchance, the new era; when such simple problems as Home Rule,
Bimetallism, or the Woman Question will be mere themes for schoolboard
compositions--who can tell?
Well, it was not my fault.--No one regrets it more, no one--but what
could I do?
Blame her, woman of the great feet and dominating gait, and waving
umbrella-handle!--blame her! I can only regret it--regret it!
Portrait of a Lady
By Charles W. Furse
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: Portrait of a Lady]
Reticence in Literature
By Arthur Waugh
_He never spoke out._ Upon these four words, gathered by chance from a
private letter, Matthew Arnold, with that super-subtle ingenuity which
loved to take the word and play upon it and make it of innumerable
colours, has constructed, as one may conjecture some antediluvian wonder
from its smallest fragment, a full, complete, and intimate picture of
the poet Thomas Gray. _He never spoke out._ Here, we are told, lies the
secret of Gray's limitation as much in life as in literature: so
sensitive was he in private life, so modest in public, that the thoughts
that arose in him never got full utterance, the possibilities of his
genius were never fulfilled; and we, in our turn, are left the poorer
for that nervous delicacy which has proved the bane of the poet, living
and dead alike. It is a singularly characteristic essay--this paper on
Gray, showing the writer's logical talent at once in its strongest and
its weakest capacities, and a complete study of Arnold's method might
well, I think, be founded upon its thirty pages. But in the present
instance I have recurred to that recurring phrase, _He never spoke out_,
not to discuss Matthew Arnold's estimate of Gray, nor, indeed, to
consider Gray's relation to his age; but merely to point out, what the
turn of Arnold's argument did not require him to consider, namely, the
extraordinarily un-English aspect of this reticence in Gray, a
reticence alien without doubt to the English character, but still more
alien to English literature. Reticence is not a national
characteristic--far otherwise. The phrase "national characteristic" is,
I know well, a cant phrase, and, as such, full of the dangers of abuse.
Historical and ethnographical criticism, proceeding on popular lines,
has tried from time to time to fix certain tendencies to certain races,
and to argue from individuals to generalities with a freedom that every
law of induction belies. And so we have come to endow the Frenchman,
universally and without exception, with politeness, the Indian, equally
universally, with cunning, the American with the commercial talent, the
German with the educational, and so forth. Generalisations of this kind
must, of course, be accepted with limitations. But it is not too much,
perhaps, to say that the Englishman has always prided himself upon his
frankness. He is always for speaking out; and it is this faculty of
outspokenness that he is anxious to attribute to those characters which
he sets up in the market-places of his religion and his literature, as
those whom he chiefly delights to honour. The demigods of our national
verse, the heroes of our national fiction, are brow-bound, above all
other laurels, with this glorious freedom of free speech and open
manners, and we have come to regard this broad, untrammelled virtue of
ours, as all individual virtues _will_ be regarded with the revolution
of the cycle of provinciality, as a guerdon above question or control.
We have become inclined to forget that every good thing has, as
Aristotle pointed out so long ago, its corresponding evil, and that the
corruption of the best is always worst of all. Frankness is so great a
boon, we say: we can forgive anything to the man who has the courage of
his convictions, the fearlessness of freedom--the man, in a word, who
speaks out.
But we have to distinguish, I think, at the outset between a national
virtue in the rough and the artificial or acquired fashion in which we
put that virtue into use. It is obvious that, though many things are
possible to us, which are good in themselves, many things are
inexpedient, when considered relatively to our environment. Count
Tolstoi may preach his gospel of non-resistance till the beauty of his
holiness seems almost Christ-like; but every man who goes forth to his
work and to his labour knows that the habitual turning of the right
cheek to the smiter of the left, the universal gift of the cloak to the
beggar of our coat, is subversive of all political economy, and no
slight incentive to immorality as well. In the same way, it will be
clear, that this national virtue of ours, this wholesome, sincere
outspokenness, is only possible within certain limits, set by custom and
expediency, and it is probably a fact that there was never a truly wise
man yet but tempered his natural freedom of speech by an acquired habit
of reticence. The man who never speaks out may be morose; the man who is
always speaking out is a most undesirable acquaintance.
Now, I suppose everyone is prepared to admit with Matthew Arnold that
the literature of an age (we are not now speaking of poetry alone, be it
understood, but of literature as a whole), that this literature must, in
so far as it is truly representative of, and therefore truly valuable
to, the time in which it is produced, reflect and criticise the manners,
tastes, development, the life, in fact, of the age for whose service it
was devised. We have, of course, critical literature probing the past:
we have philosophical literature prophesying the future; but the truly
representative literature of every age is the creative, which shows its
people its natural face in a glass, and leaves to posterity the record
of the manner of man it found. In one sense, indeed, creative literature
must inevitably be critical as well, critical in that it employs the
double methods of analysis and synthesis, dissecting motives and
tendencies first, and then from this examination building up a type, a
sample of the representative man and woman of its epoch. The truest
fiction of any given century, yes, and the truest poetry, too (though
the impressionist may deny it), must be a criticism of life, must
reflect its surroundings. Men pass, and fashions change; but in the
literature of their day their characters, their tendencies, remain
crystallised for all time: and what we know of the England of Chaucer
and Shakespeare, we know wholly and absolutely in the truly
representative, truly creative, because truly critical literature which
they have left to those that come after.
It is, then, the privilege, it is more, it is the duty of the man of
letters to speak out, to be fearless, to be frank, to give no ear to the
puritans of his hour, to have no care for the objections of prudery; the
life that he lives is the life he must depict, if his work is to be of
any lasting value. He must be frank, but he must be something more. He
must remember--hourly and momently he must remember--that his virtue,
step by step, inch by inch, imperceptibly melts into the vice which
stands at its pole; and that (to employ Aristotelian phraseology for the
moment) there is a sort of middle point, a centre of equilibrium, to
pass which is to disturb and overset the entire fabric of his labours.
Midway between liberty and license, in literature as in morals, stands
the pivot of good taste, the centre-point of art. The natural
inclination of frankness, the inclination of the virtue in the rough, is
to blunder on resolutely with an indomitable and damning sincerity, till
all is said that can be said, and art is lost in photography. The
inclination of frankness, restrained by and tutored to the limitations
of art and beauty, is to speak so much as is in accordance with the
moral idea: and then, at the point where ideas melt into mere report,
mere journalistic detail, to feel intuitively the restraining, the
saving influence of reticence. In every age there has been some point
(its exact position has varied, it is true, but the point has always
been there) at which speech stopped short; and the literature which has
most faithfully reflected the manners of that age, the literature, in
fine, which has survived its little hour of popularity, and has lived
and is still living, has inevitably, invariably, and without exception
been the literature which stayed its hand and voice at the point at
which the taste of the age, the age's conception of art, set up its
statue of reticence, with her finger to her lips, and the inscription
about her feet: "So far shalt thou go, and no further."
We have now, it seems, arrived at one consideration, which must always
limit the liberty of frankness, namely, the standard of contemporary
taste. The modesty that hesitates to align itself with that standard is
a shortcoming, the audacity that rushes beyond is a violence to the
unchanging law of literature. But the single consideration is
insufficient. If we are content with the criterion of contemporary taste
alone, our standard of judgment becomes purely historical: we are left,
so to speak, with a sliding scale which readjusts itself to every new
epoch: we have no permanent and universal test to apply to the
literature of different ages: in a word, comparative criticism is
impossible. We feel at once that we need, besides the shifting standard
of contemporary taste, some fixed unit of judgment that never varies,
some foot-rule that applies with equal infallibility to the literature
of early Greece and to the literature of later France; and such an unit,
such a foot-rule, can only be found in the final test of all art, the
necessity of the moral idea. We must, in distinguishing the thing that
may be said fairly and artistically from the thing whose utterance is
inadmissible, we must in such a decision control our judgment by two
standards--the one, the shifting standard of contemporary taste: the
other, the permanent standard of artistic justification, the presence of
the moral idea. With these two elements in action, we ought, I think, to
be able to estimate with tolerable fairness the amount of reticence in
any age which ceases to be a shortcoming, the amount of frankness which
begins to be a violence in the literature of the period. We ought, with
these two elements in motion, to be able to employ a scheme of
comparative criticism which will prevent us from encouraging that
retarding and dangerous doctrine that what was expedient and
justifiable, for instance, in the dramatists of the Restoration is
expedient and justifiable in the playwrights of our own Victorian era;
we ought, too, to be able to arrive instinctively at a sense of the
limits of art, and to appreciate the point at which frankness becomes a
violence, in that it has degenerated into mere brawling, animated
neither by purpose nor idea. Let us, then, consider these two standards
of taste and art separately: and first, let us give a brief attention to
the contemporary standard.
We may, I think, take it as a rough working axiom that the point of
reticence in literature, judged by a contemporary standard, should be
settled by the point of reticence in the conversation of the taste and
culture of the age. Literature is, after all, simply the ordered,
careful exposition of the thought of its period, seeking the best matter
of the time, and setting it forth in the best possible manner; and it is
surely clear that what is written in excess of what is spoken (in excess
I mean on the side of license) is a violence to, a misrepresentation of,
the period to whose service the literature is devoted. The course of the
highest thought of the time should be the course of its literature, the
limit of the most delicate taste of the time the limit of literary
expression: whatever falls below that standard is a shortcoming,
whatever exceeds it a violence. Obviously the standard varies immensely
with the period. It would be tedious, nor is it necessary to our
purpose, to make a long historical research into the development of
taste; but a few striking examples may help us to appreciate its
variations.
To begin with a very early stage of literature, we find among the
Heracleidae of Herodotus a stage of contemporary taste which is the
result of pure brutality. It is clear that literature adjusted to the
frankness of the uxorious pleasantries of Candaules and Gyges would
justifiably assume a degree of license which, reasonable enough in its
environment, would be absolutely impossible, directly the influences of
civilisation began to make themselves felt. The age is one of
unrestrained brutality, and the literature which represented it would,
without violence to the contemporary taste, be brutal too. To pass at a
bound to the Rome of Juvenal is again to be transported to an age of
national sensuality: the escapades of Messalina are the inevitable
outcome of a national taste that is swamped and left putrescent by
limitless self-indulgence; and the literature which represented this
taste would, without violence, be lascivious and polluted to its depth.
In continuing, with a still wider sweep, to the England of Shakespeare,
we find a new development of taste altogether. Brutality is softened,
licentiousness is restrained, immorality no longer stalks abroad
shouting its coarse phrases at every wayfarer who passes the Mermaid or
the Globe. But, even among types of purity, reticence is little known.
The innuendoes are whispered under the breath, but when once the voice
is lowered, it matters little what is said. Rosalind and Celia enjoy
their little _doubles entendres_ together. Hero's wedding morning is an
occasion for delicate hints of experiences to come. Hamlet plies the
coarsest suggestions upon Ophelia in the intervals of a theatrical
performance. The language reflects the taste: we feel no violence here.
To take but one more instance, let us end with Sheridan. By his time
speech had been refined by sentiment, and the most graceful compliments
glide, without effort, from the lips of the adept courtier. But even
still, in the drawing-rooms of fashion, delicate morsels of scandal are
discussed by his fine ladies with a freedom which is absolutely unknown
to the Mayfair of the last half-century, where innuendo might be
conveyed by the eye and suggested by the smile, but would never, so
reticent has taste become, find the frank emphatic utterance which
brought no blush to the cheek of Mrs. Candour and Lady Sneerwell. In the
passage of time reticence has become more and more pronounced; and
literature, moving, as it must, with the age, has assumed in its normal
and wholesome form the degree of silence which it finds about it.
The standard of taste in literature, then, so far as it responds to
contemporary judgment, should be regulated by the normal taste of the
hale and cultured man of its age: it should steer a middle course
between the prudery of the manse, which is for hiding everything vital,
and the effrontery of the pot-house, which makes for ribaldry and
bawdry; and the more it approximates to the exact equilibrium of its
period, the more thoroughly does it become representative of the best
taste of its time, the more certain is it of permanent recognition. The
literature of shortcoming and the literature of violence have their
reward:
"They have their day, and cease to be";
the literature which reflects the hale and wholesome frankness of its
age can be read, with pleasure and profit, long after its openness of
speech and outlook has ceased to reproduce the surrounding life. The
environment is ephemeral, but the literature is immortal. But why is the
literature immortal? Why is it that a play like _Pericles_, for
instance, full as it is of scenes which revolt the moral taste, has
lived and is a classic forever, while innumerable contemporary pieces of
no less genius (for _Pericles_ is no masterpiece) have passed into
oblivion? Why is it that the impurity of _Pericles_ strikes the reader
scarcely at all, while the memory dwells upon its beauties and forgets
its foulness in recollection of its refinement? The reason is not far to
seek. _Pericles_ is not only free of offence when judged by the taste of
its age, it is no less blameless when we subject it to the test by which
all literature is judged at last; it conforms to the standard of art; it
is permeated by the moral idea. The standard of art--the presence of the
idea--the two expressions are, I believe, synonymous. It is easy enough
to babble of the beauty of things considered apart from their meaning,
it is easy enough to dilate on the satisfaction of art in itself, but
all these phrases are merely collocations of terms, empty and
meaningless. A thing can only be artistic by virtue of the idea it
suggests to us; when the idea is coarse, ungainly, unspeakable, the
object that suggests it is coarse, ungainly, unspeakable; art and ethics
must always be allied in that the merit of the art is dependent on the
merit of the idea it prompts.
Perhaps I shall show my meaning more clearly by an example from the more
tangible art of painting; and let me take as an instance an artist who
has produced pictures at once the most revolting and most moral of any
in the history of English art. I mean Hogarth. We are all familiar with
his coarsenesses; all these have we known from our youth up. But it is
only the schoolboy who searches the Bible for its indecent passages;
when we are become men, we put away such childish satisfactions. Then
we begin to appreciate the idea which underlies the subject: we feel
that Hogarth--
"Whose pictured morals charm the mind,
And through the eye correct the heart"--
was, even in his grossest moments, profoundly moral, entirely sane,
because he never dallied lasciviously with his subject, because he did
not put forth vice with the pleasing semblance of virtue, because, like
all hale and wholesome critics of life, he condemned excess, and
pictured it merely to portray the worthlessness, the weariness, the
dissatisfaction of lust and license. Art, we say, claims every subject
for her own; life is open to her ken; she may fairly gather her subjects
where she will. Most true. But there is all the difference in the world
between drawing life as we find it, sternly and relentlessly, surveying
it all the while from outside with the calm, unflinching gaze of
criticism, and, on the other hand, yielding ourselves to the warmth and
colour of its excesses, losing our judgment in the ecstasies of the joy
of life, becoming, in a word, effeminate.
The man lives by ideas; the woman by sensations; and while the man
remains an artist so long as he holds true to his own view of life, the
woman becomes one as soon as she throws off the habit of her sex, and
learns to rely upon her judgment, and not upon her senses. It is only
when we regard life with the untrammelled view of the impartial
spectator, when we pierce below the substance for its animating idea,
that we approximate to the artistic temperament. It is unmanly, it is
effeminate, it is inartistic to gloat over pleasure, to revel in
immoderation, to become passion's slave; and literature demands as much
calmness of judgment, as much reticence, as life itself. The man who
loses reticence loses self-respect, and the man who has no respect for
himself will scarcely find others to venerate him. After all, the world
generally takes us at our own valuation.
We have now, I trust, arrived (though, it may be, by a rather circuitous
journey) at something like a definite and reasonable law for the
exercise of reticence; it only remains to consider by what test we shall
most easily discover the presence or absence of the animating moral idea
which we have found indispensable to art. It seems to me that three
questions will generally suffice. Does the work, we should ask
ourselves, make for that standard of taste which is normal to
wholesomeness and sanity of judgment? Does it, or does it not, encourage
us to such a line of life as is recommended, all question of tenet and
creed apart, by the experience of the age, as the life best calculated
to promote individual and general good? And does it encourage to this
life in language and by example so chosen as not to offend the
susceptibilities of that ordinarily strong and unaffected taste which,
after all, varies very little with the changes of the period and
development? When creative literature satisfies these three
requirements--when it is sane, equable, and well spoken, then it is safe
to say it conforms to the moral idea, and is consonant with art. By its
sanity it eludes the risk of effeminate demonstration; by its choice of
language it avoids brutality; and between these two poles, it may be
affirmed without fear of question, true taste will and must be found to
lie.
These general considerations, already too far prolonged, become of
immediate interest to us as soon as we attempt to apply them to the
literature of our own half-century, and I propose concluding what I
wished to say on the necessity of reticence by considering, briefly and
without mention of names, that realistic movement in English literature
which, under different titles, and protected by the ægis of various
schools, has proved, without doubt, the most interesting and suggestive
development in the poetry and fiction of our time. During the last
quarter of a century, more particularly, the English man-of-letters has
been indulging, with an entirely new freedom, his national birthright of
outspokenness, and during the last twelve months there have been no
uncertain indications that this freedom of speech is degenerating into
license which some of us cannot but view with regret and apprehension.
The writers and the critics of contemporary literature have, it would
seem, alike lost their heads; they have gone out into the byways and
hedges in search of the new thing, and have brought into the study and
subjected to the microscope mean objects of the roadside, whose analysis
may be of value to science but is absolutely foreign to art. The age of
brutality, pure and simple, is dead with us, it is true; but the age of
effeminacy appears, if one is to judge by recent evidence, to be growing
to its dawn. The day that follows will, if it fulfils the promise of its
morning, be very serious and very detrimental to our future literature.
Every great productive period of literature has been the result of some
internal or external revulsion of feeling, some current of ideas. This
is a commonplace. The greatest periods of production have been those
when the national mind has been directed to some vast movement of
emancipation--the discovery of new countries, the defeat of old enemies,
the opening of fresh possibilities. Literature is best stimulated by
stirrings like these. Now, the last quarter of a century in English
history has been singularly sterile of important improvements. There has
been no very inspiring acquisition to territory or to knowledge: there
has been, in consequence, no marked influx of new ideas. The mind has
been thrown back upon itself; lacking stimulus without, it has sought
inspiration within, and the most characteristic literature of the time
has been introspective. Following one course, it has betaken itself to
that intimately analytical fiction which we associate primarily with
America; it has sifted motives and probed psychology, with the result
that it has proved an exceedingly clever, exact, and scientific, but
scarcely stimulating, or progressive school of literature. Following
another course, it has sought for subject-matter in the discussion of
passions and sensations, common, doubtless, to every age of mankind,
interesting and necessary, too, in their way, but passions and
sensations hitherto dissociated with literature, hitherto, perhaps,
scarcely realised to their depth and intensity. It is in this
development that the new school of realism has gone furthest; and it is
in this direction that the literature of the future seems likely to
follow. It is, therefore, not without value to consider for a moment
whither this new frankness is leading us, and how far its freedom is
reconciled to that standard of necessary reticence which I have tried to
indicate in these pages.
This present tendency to literary frankness had its origin, I think, no
less than twenty-eight years ago. It was then that the dovecotes of
English taste were tremulously fluttered by the coming of a new poet,
whose naked outspokenness startled his readers into indignation.
Literature, which had retrograded into a melancholy sameness, found
itself convulsed by a sudden access of passion, which was probably
without parallel since the age of the silver poets of Rome. This new
singer scrupled not to revel in sensations which for years had remained
unmentioned upon the printed page; he even chose for his subjects
refinements of lust, which the commonly healthy Englishman believed to
have become extinct with the time of Juvenal. Here was an innovation
which was absolutely alien to the standard of contemporary taste--an
innovation, I believe, that was equally opposed to that final moderation
without which literature is lifeless.
Let us listen for one moment:
"By the ravenous teeth that have smitten
Through the kisses that blossom and bud,
By the lips intertwisted and bitten
Till the foam has a savour of blood,
By the pulse as it rises and falters,
By the hands as they slacken and strain,
I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,
Our Lady of Pain.
As of old when the world's heart was lighter,
Through thy garments the grace of thee glows,
The white wealth of thy body made whiter
By the blushes of amorous blows,
And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,
And branded by kisses that bruise;
When all shall be gone that now lingers,
Ah, what shall we lose?
Thou wert fair in thy fearless old fashion,
And thy limbs are as melodies yet,
And move to the music of passion
With lithe and lascivious regret.
What ailed us, O gods, to desert you
For creeds that refuse and restrain?
Come down and redeem us from virtue,
Our Lady of Pain."
This was twenty-eight years ago; and still the poetry lives. At first
sight it would seem as though the desirable reticence, upon which we
have been insisting, were as yet unnecessary to immortality. A quarter
of a century has passed, it might be argued, and the verse is as fresh
to-day and as widely recognised as it was in its morning: is not this a
proof that art asks for no moderation? I believe not. It is true that
the poetry lives, that we all recognise, at some period of our lives,
the grasp and tenacity of its influence; that, even when the days come
in which we say we have no pleasure in it, we still turn to it at times
for something we do not find elsewhere. But the thing we seek is not the
matter, but the manner. The poetry is living, not by reason of its
unrestrained frankness, but in spite of it, for the sake of something
else. That sweet singer who charmed and shocked the audiences of 1866,
charms us, if he shocks us not now, by virtue of the one new thing that
he imported into English poetry, the unique and as yet imperishable
faculty of musical possibilities hitherto unattained. There is no such
music in all the range of English verse, seek where you will, as there
is in him. But the perfection of the one talent, its care, its
elaboration, have resulted in a corresponding decay of those other
faculties by which alone, in the long run, poetry can live. Open him
where you will, there is in his poetry neither construction nor
proportion; no development, no sustained dramatic power. Open him where
you will, you acquire as much sense of his meaning and purpose from any
two isolated stanzas as from the study of a whole poem. There remains in
your ears, when you have ceased from reading, the echo only of a
beautiful voice, chanting, as it were, the melodies of some outland
tongue.
Is this the sort of poetry that will survive the trouble of the ages? It
cannot survive. The time will come (it must) when some newer singer
discovers melodies as yet unknown, melodies which surpass in their
modulations and varieties those poems and ballads of twenty-eight years
ago; and, when we have found the new note, what will be left of the
earlier singer, to which we shall of necessity return? A message? No.
Philosophy? No. A new vision of life? No. A criticism of contemporary
existence? Assuredly not. There remains the melody alone; and this, when
once it is surpassed, will charm us little enough. We shall forget it
then. Art brings in her revenges, and this will be of them.
But the new movement did not stop here. If, in the poet we have been
discussing, we have found the voice among us that corresponds to the
decadent voices of the failing Roman Republic, there has reached us from
France another utterance, which I should be inclined to liken to the
outspoken brutality of Restoration drama. Taste no longer fails on the
ground of a delicate, weakly dalliance, it begins to see its own
limitations, and springs to the opposite pole. It will now be virile,
full of the sap of life, strong, robust, and muscular. It will hurry us
out into the fields, will show us the coarser passions of the common
farm-hand; at any expense it will paint the life it finds around it; it
will at least be consonant with that standard of want of taste which it
falsely believes to be contemporary. We get a realistic fiction abroad,
and we begin to copy it at home. We will trace the life of the
travelling actor, follow him into the vulgar, sordid surroundings which
he chooses for the palace of his love, be it a pottery-shed or the
ill-furnished lodging-room with its black horsehair sofa--we will draw
them all, and be faithful to the lives we live. Is that the sort of
literature that will survive the trouble of the ages? It cannot survive.
We are no longer untrue to our time, perhaps, if we are to seek for the
heart of that time in the lowest and meanest of its representatives; but
we are untrue to art, untrue to the record of our literary past, when we
are content to turn for our own inspiration to anything but the best
line of thought, the highest school of life, through which we are
moving. This grosser realism is no more representative of its time than
were the elaborate pastiches of classical degradation; it is as though
one should repeople Eden with creatures imagined from a study of the
serpent's head. In the history of literature this movement, too, will
with the lapse of time pass unrecognised; it has mourned unceasingly to
an age which did not lack for innocent piping and dancing in its
market-places.
The two developments of realism of which we have been speaking seem to
me to typify the two excesses into which frankness is inclined to fall;
on the one hand, the excess prompted by effeminacy--that is to say, by
the want of restraints which starts from enervated sensation; and on the
other, the excess which results from a certain brutal virility, which
proceeds from coarse familiarity with indulgence. The one whispers, the
other shouts; the one is the language of the courtesan, the other of the
bargee. What we miss in both alike is that true frankness which springs
from the artistic and moral temperament; the episodes are no part of a
whole in unity with itself; the impression they leave upon the reader is
not the impression of Hogarth's pictures; in one form they employ all
their art to render vice attractive, in the other, with absolutely no
art at all, they merely reproduce, with the fidelity of the kodak,
scenes and situations the existence of which we all acknowledge, while
taste prefers to forget them.
But the latest development of literary frankness is, I think, the most
insidious and fraught with the greatest danger to art. A new school has
arisen which combines the characteristics of effeminacy and brutality.
In its effeminate aspect it plays with the subtler emotions of sensual
pleasure, on its brutal side it has developed into that class of fiction
which for want of a better word I must call chirurgical. In poetry it
deals with very much the same passions as those which we have traced in
the verse to which allusion has been made above; but, instead of leaving
these refinements of lust to the haunts to which they are fitted, it has
introdduced them into the domestic chamber, and permeated marriage with
the ardours of promiscuous intercourse. In fiction it infects its
heroines with acquired diseases of names unmentionable, and has debased
the beauty of maternity by analysis of the process of gestation. Surely
the inartistic temperament can scarcely abuse literature further. I own
I can conceive nothing less beautiful.
It was said of a great poet by a little critic that he wheeled his
nuptial couch into the area; but these small poets and smaller novelists
bring out their sick into the thoroughfare, and stop the traffic while
they give us a clinical lecture upon their sufferings. We are told that
this is a part of the revolt of woman, and certainly our women-writers
are chiefly to blame. It is out of date, no doubt, to clamour for
modesty; but the woman who describes the sensations of childbirth does
so, it is to be presumed--not as the writer of advice to a wife--but as
an artist producing literature for art's sake. And so one may fairly ask
her: How is art served by all this? What has she told us that we did not
all know, or could not learn from medical manuals? and what impression
has she left us over and above the memory of her unpalatable details?
And our poets, who know no rhyme for "rest" but that "breast" whose
snowinesses and softnesses they are for ever describing with every
accent of indulgence, whose eyes are all for frills, if not for garters,
what have they sung that was not sung with far greater beauty and
sincerity in the days when frills and garters were alluded to with the
open frankness that cried shame on him who evil thought. The one
extremity, it seems to me, offends against the standard of contemporary
taste; ("people," as Hedda Gabler said, "do not say such things now");
the other extremity rebels against that universal standard of good taste
that has from the days of Milo distinguished between the naked and the
nude. We are losing the distinction now; the cry for realism, naked and
unashamed, is borne in upon us from every side:
"Rip your brother's vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them
stare."
But there was an Emperor once (we know the story) who went forth among
his people naked. It was said that he wore fairy clothes, and that only
the unwise could fail to see them. At last a little child raised its
voice from the crowd! "Why, he has nothing on," it said. And so these
writers of ours go out from day to day, girded on, they would have us
believe, with the garments of art; and fashion has lacked the courage to
cry out with the little child: "They have nothing on." No robe of art,
no texture of skill, they whirl before us in a bacchanalian dance naked
and unashamed. But the time will come, it must, when the voices of the
multitude will take up the cry of the child, and the revellers will
hurry to their houses in dismay. Without dignity, without
self-restraint, without the morality of art, literature has never
survived; they are the few who rose superior to the baser levels of
their time, who stand unimpugned among the immortals now. And that
mortal who would put on immortality must first assume that habit of
reticence, that garb of humility by which true greatness is best known.
To endure restraint--_that_ is to be strong.
A Lady Reading
By Walter Sickert
_Reproduced by Messrs. Carl Hentschel & Co._
[Illustration: A Lady Reading]
Modern Melodrama
By Hubert Crackanthorpe
The pink shade of a single lamp supplied an air of subdued mystery; the
fire burned red and still; in place of door and windows hung curtains,
obscure, formless; the furniture, dainty, but sparse, stood detached and
incoördinate like the furniture of a stage-scene; the atmosphere was
heavy with heat, and a scent of stale tobacco; some cut flowers, half
withered, tissue-paper still wrapping their stalks, lay on a gilt,
cane-bottomed chair.
"Will you give me a sheet of paper, please?"
He had crossed the room, to seat himself before the principal table. He
wore a fur-lined overcoat, and he was tall, and broad, and bald; a sleek
face, made grave by gold-rimmed spectacles.
The other man was in evening dress; his back leaning against the
mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets: he was moodily scraping the
hearthrug with his toe. Clean-shaved; stolid and coarsely regular
features; black, shiny hair, flattened on to his head; under-sized eyes,
moist and glistening; the tint of his face uniform, the tint of
discoloured ivory; he looked a man who ate well and lived hard.
"Certainly, sir, certainly," and he started to hurry about the room.
"Daisy," he exclaimed roughly, a moment later, "where the deuce do you
keep the note-paper?"
"I don't know if there is any, but the girl always has some." She spoke
in a slow tone--insolent and fatigued.
A couple of bed-pillows were supporting her head, and a scarlet plush
cloak, trimmed with white down, was covering her feet, as she lay curled
on the sofa. The fire-light glinted on the metallic gold of her hair,
which clashed with the black of her eyebrows; and the full, blue eyes,
wide-set, contradicted the hard line of her vivid-red lips. She drummed
her fingers on the sofa-edge, nervously.
"Never mind," said the bald man shortly, producing a notebook from his
breast-pocket, and tearing a leaf from it.
He wrote, and the other two stayed silent; the man returned to the
hearthrug, lifting his coat-tails under his arms; the girl went on
drumming the sofa-edge.
"There," sliding back his chair, and looking from the one to the other,
evidently uncertain which of the two he should address. "Here is the
prescription. Get it made up to-night, a table-spoonful at a time, in a
wine-glassful of water at lunch-time, at dinner-time and before going to
bed. Go on with the port wine twice a day, and (to the girl,
deliberately and distinctly) you _must_ keep quite quiet; avoid all sort
of excitement--that is extremely important. Of course you must on no
account go out at night. Go to bed early, take regular meals, and keep
always warm."
"I say," broke in the girl, "tell us, it isn't bad--dangerous, I mean?"
"Dangerous!--no, not if you do what I tell you."
He glanced at his watch, and rose, buttoning his coat.
"Good-evening," he said gravely.
At first she paid no heed; she was vacantly staring before her: then,
suddenly conscious that he was waiting, she looked up at him.
"Good-night, doctor."
She held out her hand, and he took it.
"I'll get all right, won't I?" she asked, still looking up at him.
"All right--of course you will--of course. But remember you must do what
I tell you."
The other man handed him his hat and umbrella, opened the door for him,
and it closed behind them.
* * * * *
The girl remained quiet, sharply blinking her eyes, her whole expression
eager, intense.
A murmer of voices, a muffled tread of footsteps descending the
stairs--the gentle shutting of a door--stillness.
She raised herself on her elbow, listening; the cloak slipped
noiselessly to the floor. Quickly her arm shot out to the bell-rope: she
pulled it violently; waited, expectant; and pulled again.
A slatternly figure appeared--a woman of middle-age--her arms, bared to
the elbows, smeared with dirt; a grimy apron over her knees.
"What's up?--I was smashin' coal," she explained.
"Come here," hoarsely whispered the girl--"here--no--nearer--quite
close. Where's he gone?"
"Gone? 'oo?"
"That man that was here."
"I s'ppose 'ee's in the downstairs room. I ain't 'eard the front door
slam."
"And Dick, where's he?"
"They're both in there together, I s'ppose."
"I want you to go down--quietly--without making a noise--listen at the
door--come up, and tell me what they're saying."
"What? down there?" jerking her thumb over her shoulder.
"Yes, of course--at once," answered the girl, impatiently.
"And if they catches me--a nice fool I looks. No, I'm jest blowed if I
do!" she concluded. "Whatever's up?"
"You must," the girl broke out excitedly. "I tell you, you must."
"Must--must--an' if I do, what am I goin' to git out of it?" She paused,
reflecting; then added: "Look 'ere--I tell yer what--I'll do it for half
a quid, there?"
"Yes--yes--all right--only make haste."
"An' 'ow d' I know as I'll git it?" she objected doggedly. "It's a jolly
risk, yer know."
The girl sprang up, flushed and feverish.
"Quick--or he'll be gone. I don't know where it is--but you shall have
it--I promise--quick--please go--quick."
The other hesitated, her lips pressed together; turned, and went out.
And the girl, catching at her breath, clutched a chair.
* * * * *
A flame flickered up in the fire, buzzing spasmodically. A creak
outside. She had come up. But the curtains did not move. Why didn't she
come in? She was going past. The girl hastened across the room, the
intensity of the impulse lending her strength.
"Come--come in," she gasped. "Quick--I'm slipping."
She struck at the wall; but with the flat of her hand, for there was no
grip. The woman bursting in, caught her, and led her back to the sofa.
"There, there, dearie," tucking the cloak round her feet. "Lift up the
piller, my 'ands are that mucky. Will yer 'ave anythin'?"
She shook her head. "It's gone," she muttered. "Now--tell me."
"Tell yer?--tell yer what! Why--why--there ain't jest nothin' to tell
yer."
"What were they saying? Quick."
"I didn't 'ear nothin'. They was talking about some ballet-woman."
The girl began to cry, feebly, helplessly, like a child in pain.
"You might tell me, Liz. You might tell me. I've been a good sort to
you."
"That yer 'ave. I knows yer 'ave, dearie. There, there, don't yer take
on like that. Yer'll only make yerself bad again."
"Tell me--tell me," she wailed. "I've been a good sort to you, Liz."
"Well, they wasn't talkin' of no ballet-woman--that's straight," the
woman blurted out savagely.
"What did he say?--tell me." Her voice was weaker now.
"I can't tell yer--don't yer ask me--for God's sake, don't yer ask me."
With a low crooning the girl cried again.
"Oh! for God's sake, don't yer take on like that--it's awful--I can't
stand it. There, dearie, stop that cryin' an' I'll tell yer--I will
indeed. It was jest this way--I slips my shoes off, an' I goes down as
careful--jest as careful as a cat--an' when I gets to the door I
crouches myself down, listenin' as 'ard as ever I could. The first
things as I 'ears was Mr. Dick speakin' thick-like--like as if 'ee'd bin
drinkin'--an t'other chap 'ee says somethin' about lungs, using some
long word--I missed that--there was a van or somethin' rackettin' on the
road. Then 'ee says 'gallopin', gallopin',' jest like as 'ee was talkin'
of a 'orse. An' Mr. Dick, 'ee says, 'ain't there no chance--no'ow?' and
'ee give a sort of a grunt. I was awful sorry for 'im, that I was, 'ee
must 'ave been crool bad, 'ee's mostly so quiet-like, ain't 'ee? An', in
a minute, ee sort o' groans out somethin', an' t'other chap 'es answer
'im quite cool-like, that 'ee don't properly know; but, anyways, it 'ud
be over afore the end of February. There I've done it. Oh! dearie, it's
awful, awful, that's jest what it is. An' I 'ad no intention to tell
yer--not a blessed word--that I didn't--may God strike me blind if I
did! Some'ow it all come out, seein' yer chokin' that 'ard an' feelin'
at the wall there. Yer 'ad no right to ask me to do it--'ow was I to
know 'ee was a doctor?"
She put the two corners of her apron to her eyes, gurgling loudly.