down your spines. Cannon! Cannon! from one of the "black ships."
Thirteen thudding explosions, thirteen red dragon tongues, thirteen
clouds of smoke like the breath of the mountain gods. Thirteen
hammer strokes shaking the Great Gate, and the seams in the metal
widen. Open Sesame, shotless guns; and "The Only, High, Grand and
Mighty, Invisible Mysteriousness, Chief Barbarian" reveals himself,
and steps into his barge.
Up, oars, down; drip--sun-spray--rowlock-rattle. To shore! To
shore! Set foot upon the sacred soil of the "Land of Great Peace,"
with its five thousand armed men doing nothing with their spears and
matchlocks, because of the genii in the black guns aboard the "black
ships."
One hundred marines in a line up the wharf. One hundred sailors, man
to man, opposite them. Officers, two deep; and, up the centre--the
Procession. Bands together now: "Hail Columbia." Marines in file,
sailors after, a staff with the American flag borne by seamen,
another with the Commodore's broad pennant. Two boys, dressed for
ceremony, carrying the President's letter and credentials in golden
boxes. Tall, blue-black negroes on either side of--THE COMMODORE!
Walking slowly, gold, blue, steel-glitter, up to the Conference
House, walking in state up to an ancient tottering Gate, lately
closed securely, but now gaping. Bands, ram your music against this
golden barrier, harry the ears of the monkey-men. The doors are
ajar, and the Commodore has entered.
Prince of Idzu--Prince of Iwami--in winged dresses of gold brocade,
at the end of a red carpet, under violet, silken hangings, under
crests of scarlet heart-shaped Asarum leaves, guardians of a scarlet
lacquered box, guardians of golden doors, worn thin and bending.
In silence the blue-black negroes advance and take the golden boxes
from the page boys; in silence they open them and unwrap blue velvet
coverings. Silently they display the documents to the Prince of
Idzu--the Prince of Iwami--motionless, inscrutable--beyond the red
carpet.
The vellum crackles as it is unfolded, and the long silk-gold cords
of the seals drop their gold tassels to straight glistening inches
and swing slowly--gold tassels clock-ticking before a doomed,
burnished gate.
The negroes lay the vellum documents upon the scarlet lacquered box;
bow, and retire.
"I am desirous that our two countries should trade with each other."
Careful letters, carefully traced on rich parchment, and the low sun
casts the shadow of the Gate far inland over high hills.
"The letter of the President of the United States will be delivered
to the Emperor. Therefore you can now go."
The Commodore, rising: "I will return for the answer during the
coming Spring."
But ships are frail, and seas are fickle, one can nail fresh plating
over the thin gate before Spring. Prince of Idzu--Prince of
Iwami--inscrutable statesmen, insensate idiots, trusting blithely to
a lock when the key-guns are trained even now upon it.
Withdraw, Procession. Dip oars back to the "black ships." Slip
cables and depart, for day after day will lapse and nothing can
retard a coming Spring.
Panic Winter throughout the "Land of Great Peace." Panic, and haste,
wasting energies and accomplishing nothing. Kiōto has
heard, and prays, trembling. Priests at the shrine of Isé whine
long, slow supplications from dawn to dawn, and through days dropping
down again from morning. Iyéyoshi is dead, and Iyésada rules in
Yedo; thirteenth Shōgun of the Tokugawa. Rules and
struggles, rescinds laws, urges reforms; breathless, agitated
endeavours to patch and polish where is only corroding and puffed
particles of dust.
It is Winter still in the Bay of Yedo, though the plum-trees of
Kamata and Kinagawa are white and fluttering.
Winter, with green, high, angular seas. But over the water, far
toward China, are burning the furnaces of three great steamers, and
four sailing vessels heel over, with decks slanted and sails full and
pulling.
"There's a bit of a lop, this morning. Mr. Jones, you'd better take
in those royals."
"Ay, ay, Sir. Tumble up here, men! Tumble up! Lay aloft and stow
royals. Haul out to leeward."
"To _my_,
Ay,
And we'll _furl_
Ay,
And pay Paddy Doyle for his boots."
"Taut band--knot away."
Chug! Chug! go the wheels of the consorts, salting smoke-stacks with
whirled spray.
The Commodore lights a cigar, and paces up and down the quarter-deck
of the Powhatan. "I wonder what the old yellow devils will do," he
muses.
Forty feet high, the camellia trees, with hard, green buds unburst.
It is early yet for camellias, and the green buds and the glazed
green leaves toss frantically in a blustering March wind. Sheltered
behind the forty feet high camellia trees, on the hills of Idzu,
stand watchmen straining their eyes over a broken dazzle of sea.
Just at the edge of moonlight and sunlight--moon setting; sun
rising--they come. Seven war ships heeled over and flashing, dashing
through heaped waves, sleeping a moment in hollows, leaping over
ridges, sweeping forward in a strain of canvas and a train of
red-black smoke.
"The fire-ships! The fire-ships!"
Slip the bridles of your horses, messengers, and clatter down the
Tokaido; scatter pedestrians, palanquins, slow moving cattle, right
and left into the cryptomerias; rattle over bridges, spatter dust
into shop-windows. To Yedo! To Yedo! For Spring is here, and the
fire-ships have come!
Seven vessels, flying the stars and stripes, three more shortly to
join them, with ripe, fruit-bearing guns pointed inland.
Princes evince doubt, distrust. Learning must beat learning.
Appoint a Professor of the University. Delay, prevaricate. How long
can the play continue? Hayashi, learned scholar of Confucius and
Mencius--he shall confer with the barbarians at Uraga. Shall he!
Word comes that the Mighty Chief of Ships will not go to Uraga.
Steam is up, and--Horror! Consternation! The squadron moves toward
Yedo! Sailors, midshipmen, lieutenants, pack yards and cross-trees,
seeing temple gates, castle towers, flowered pagodas, and look-outs
looming distantly clear, and the Commodore on deck can hear the slow
booming of the bells from the temples of Shiba and Asakusa.
You must capitulate, great Princes of a quivering gate. Say
Yokohama, and the Commodore will agree, for they must not come to
Yedo.
Rows of japonicas in full bloom outside the Conference House. Flags,
and streamers, and musicians, and pikemen. Five hundred officers,
seamen, marines, and the Commodore following in his white-painted
gig. A jig of fortune indeed, with a sailor and a professor
manoeuvring for terms, chess-playing each other in a game of future
centuries.
The Americans bring presents. Presents now, to be bought hereafter.
Good will, to head long bills of imports. Occidental mechanisms to
push the Orient into limbo. Fox-moves of interpreters, and Pandora's
box with a contents rated far too low.
Round and round goes the little train on its circular railroad, at
twenty miles an hour, with grave dignitaries seated on its roof.
Smiles, gestures, at messages running over wire, a mile away. Touch
the harrows, the ploughs, the flails, and shudder at the "spirit
pictures" of the daguerreotype machine. These Barbarians have
harnessed gods and dragons. They build boats which will not sink,
and tinker little gold wheels till they follow the swinging of the
sun.
Run to the Conference House. See, feel, listen. And shrug
deprecating shoulders at the glisten of silk and lacquer given in
return. What are cups cut out of conch-shells, and red-dyed figured
crêpe, to railroads, and burning engines!
Go on board the "black ships" and drink mint juleps and brandy
smashes, and click your tongues over sweet puddings. Offer the
strangers pickled plums, sugared fruits, candied walnuts. Bruit the
news far inland through the mouths of countrymen. Who thinks of the
Great Gate! Its portals are pushed so far back that the shining
edges of them can scarcely be observed. The Commodore has never
swerved a moment from his purpose, and the dragon mouths of his guns
have conquered without the need of a single powder-horn.
The Commodore writes in his cabin. Writes an account of what he has
done.
The sands of centuries run fast, one slides, and another, each
falling into a smother of dust.
A locomotive in pay for a Whistler; telegraph wires buying a
revolution; weights and measures and Audubon's birds in exchange for
fear. Yellow monkey-men leaping out of Pandora's box, shaking the
rocks of the Western coastline. Golden California bartering panic
for prints. The dressing-gowns of a continent won at the cost of
security. Artists and philosophers lost in the hour-glass sand
pouring through an open Gate.
Ten ships sailing for China on a fair May wind. Ten ships sailing
from one world into another, but never again into the one they left.
Two years and a tip-turn is accomplished. Over the globe and back,
Rip Van Winkle ships. Slip into your docks in Newport, in Norfolk,
in Charlestown. You have blown off the locks of the East, and what
is coming will come.
POSTLUDE
In the Castle moat, lotus flowers are blooming,
They shine with the light of an early moon
Brightening above the Castle towers.
They shine in the dark circles of their unreflecting leaves.
Pale blossoms,
Pale towers,
Pale moon,
Deserted ancient moat
About an ancient stronghold,
Your bowmen are departed,
Your strong walls are silent,
Their only echo
A croaking of frogs.
Frogs croaking at the moon
In the ancient moat
Of an ancient, crumbling Castle.
1903. JAPAN
The high cliff of the Kegon waterfall, and a young man carving words
on the trunk of a tree. He finishes, pauses an instant, and then
leaps into the foam-cloud rising from below. But, on the tree-trunk,
the newly-cut words blaze white and hard as though set with diamonds:
"How mightily and steadily go Heaven and Earth! How infinite the
duration of Past and Present! Try to measure this vastness with five
feet. A word explains the Truth of the whole Universe--_unknowable_.
To cure my agony I have decided to die. Now, as I stand on the crest
of this rock, no uneasiness is left in me. For the first time I know
that extreme pessimism and extreme optimism are one."
1903. AMERICA
"Nocturne--Blue and Silver--Battersea Bridge.
Nocturne--Grey and Silver--Chelsea Embankment.
Variations in Violet and Green."
Pictures in a glass-roofed gallery, and all day long the throng of
people is so great that one can scarcely see them. Debits--credits?
Flux and flow through a wide gateway. Occident--Orient--after fifty
years.
HEDGE ISLAND
A RETROSPECT AND A PROPHECY
Hedges of England, peppered with sloes; hedges of England, rows and
rows of thorn and brier raying out from the fire where London burns
with its steaming lights, throwing a glare on the sky o' nights.
Hedges of England, road after road, lane after lane, and on again to
the sea at the North, to the sea at the East, blackberry hedges, and
man and beast plod and trot and gallop between hedges of England,
clipped and clean; beech, and laurel, and hornbeam, and yew, wheels
whirl under, and circle through, tunnels of green to the sea at the
South; wind-blown hedges to mark the mouth of Thames or Humber, the
Western rim. Star-point hedges, smooth and trim.
Star-point indeed, with all His Majesty's mails agog every night for
the provinces. Twenty-seven fine crimson coaches drawn up in double
file in Lombard Street. Great gold-starred coaches, blazing with
royal insignia, waiting in line at the Post-Office. Eight of a
Summer's evening, and the sun only just gone down. "Lincoln,"
"Winchester," "Portsmouth," shouted from the Post-Office steps; and
the Portsmouth chestnuts come up to the collar with a jolt, and stop
again, dancing, as the bags are hoisted up. "Gloucester," "Oxford,"
"Bristol," "York," "Norwich." Rein in those bays of the Norwich
team, they shy badly at the fan-gleam of the lamp over the
Post-Office door. "All in. No more." The stones of St.
Martin's-le-Grand sparkle under the slap of iron shoes. Off you go,
bays, and the greys of the Dover mail start forward, twitching,
hitching, champing, stamping, their little feet pat the ground in
patterns and their bits fleck foam. "Whoa! Steady!" with a rush
they are gone. But Glasgow is ready with a team of piebalds and
sorrels, driven chess-board fashion. Bang down, lids of
mail-boxes--thunder-lids, making the horses start. They part and
pull, push each other sideways, sprawl on the slippery pavement, and
gather wave-like and crashing to a leap. Spicey tits those!
Tootle-too! A nice calculation for the gate, not a minute to spare,
with the wheelers well up in the bit and the leaders carrying bar.
Forty-two hours to Scotland, and we have a coachman who keeps his
horses like clock-work. Whips flick, buckles click, and wheels turn
faster and faster till the spokes blur. "Sound your horn, Walter."
Make it echo back and forth from the fronts of houses. Good-night,
London, we are carrying the mails to the North. Big, burning light
which is London, we dip over Highgate hill and leave you. The air is
steady, the night is bright, the roads are firm. The wheels hum like
a gigantic spinning-jenny. Up North, where the hedges bloom with
roses. Through Whetstone Gate to Alconbury Hill. Stop at the
_Wheatsheaf_ one minute for the change. They always have an eye open
here, it takes thirty seconds to drink a pot of beer, even the
post-boys sleep in their spurs. The wheels purr over the gravel.
"Give the off-hand leader a cut on the cheek." Whip! Whew! This is
the first night of three. Three nights to Glasgow;
hedges--hedges--shoot and flow. Eleven miles an hour, and the hedges
are showered with glow-worms. The hedges and the glow-worms are very
still, but we make a prodigious clatter. What does it matter? It is
good for these yokels to be waked up. Tootle-toot! The
diamond-paned lattice of a cottage flies open. Post-office here.
Throw them on their haunches. Bag up--bag down--and the village has
grown indistinct behind. The old moon is racing us, she slices
through trees like a knife through cheese. Distant clocks strike
midnight. The coach rocks--this is a galloping stage. We have a
roan near-wheel and a grey off-wheel and our leaders are chestnuts,
"quick as light, clever as cats."
The sickle-flame of our lamps cuts past sequences of trees and
well-plashed quickset hedges--hedges of England, long shafts of the
nimbus of London. Hurdles here and there. Park palings.
Reflections in windows. On--on--through the night to the North.
Over stretched roads, with a soft, continuous motion like slipping
water. Nights and days unwinding down long roads.
In the green dawn, spires and bell-towers start up and stare at us.
Hoary old woods nod and beckon. A castle turret glitters through
trees. There is a perfume of wild-rose and honey-bine, twining in
the hedges--Northerly hedges, sliding away behind us. The
pole-chains tinkle tunes and play a saraband with sheep-bells beyond
the hedges. Wedges of fields--square, flat, slatted green with corn,
purple with cabbages. The stable clocks of Gayhurst and Tyringham
chime from either side of the road. The Ouse twinkles blue among
smooth meadows. Go! Go! News of the World! Perhaps a victory! the
"Nile" or "Salamanca"! Perhaps a proclamation, or a fall in the rate
of consols. Whatever it is, the hedges of England hear it first.
Hear it, and flick and flutter their leaves, and catch the dust of it
on their shining backs. Bear it over the dumpling hills and the
hump-backed bridges. Start it down the rivers: Eden, Eshe, Sark,
Milk, Driff, and Clyde. Shout it to the sculptured corbels of old
churches. Lurch round corners with it, and stop with a snap before
the claret-coloured brick front of the _Bell_ at Derby, and call it
to the ostler as he runs out with fresh horses. The twenty
Corinthian columns of pale primrose alabaster at Keddleston Hall
tremble with its importance. Even the runaway couples bound for
Gretna Green cheer and wave. Laurels, and ribbons, and a red flag on
our roof. "Wellesley forever!"
Dust dims the hedges. A light travelling chariot running sixteen
miles an hour with four blood mares doing their bravest. Whip,
bound, and cut again. Loose rein, quick spur. He stands up in the
chariot and shakes a bag full of broad guineas, you can hear
them--clinking, chinking--even above the roar of wheels. "Go it! Go
it! We are getting away from them. Fifty guineas to each of you if
we get there in time." Quietly wait, grey hedges, it will all happen
again: quick whip, spur, strain. Two purple-faced gentlemen in
another chariot, black geldings smoking hot, blood and froth flipped
over the hedges. They hail the coach: "How far ahead? Can we catch
them?" "Ten minutes gone by. Not more." The post-boys wale their
lunging horses. Rattle, reel, and plunge.
But the runaways have Jack Ainslee from the _Bush_, Carlisle. He
rides in a yellow jacket, and he knows every by-lane and wood between
here and the border. In an hour he will have them at Gretna, and
to-night the lady will write to her family at Doncaster, and the down
mail will carry the letter, with tenpence halfpenny to pay for news
that nobody wishes to hear.
"Buy a pottle of plums, Good Sir." "Cherries, fine, ripe cherries
O." Get your plums and cherries, and hurry into the _White Horse
Cellar_ for a last rum and milk. You are a poet, bound to Dover over
Westminster Bridge. Ah, well, all the same. You are an Essex
farmer, grown fat by selling your peas at Covent Garden Market at
four guineas a pint. Certainly; as you please. You are a prebend of
Exeter or Wells, timing your journey to the Cathedral Close. If you
choose. You are a Corinthian Buck going down to Brighton by the
_Age_ which runs "with a fury." Mercury on a box seat.
Get up, beavers and top-boots. Shoot the last parcel in. Now--"Let
'em go. I have 'em." That was a jerk, but the coachman lets fly his
whip and quirks his off-wheeler on the thigh. Out and under the
archway of the coach-yard, with the guard playing "Sally in our
Alley" on his key-bugle. White with sun, the streets of London.
Cloud-shadows run ahead of us along the streets. Morning. Summer.
England. "Have a light, Sir? Tobacco tastes well in this fresh air."
Hedges of England, how many wheels spatter you in a day? How many
coaches roll between you on their star-point way? What rainbow
colours slide past you with the fluency of water? Crimson mails
rumble and glide the night through, but the Cambridge _Telegraph_ is
a brilliant blue. The _Bull and Mouth_ coaches are buttercup yellow,
those of the _Bull_ are painted red, while the _Bell and Crown_
sports a dark maroon with light red wheels. They whirl by in a
flurry of dust and colours. Soon all this will drop asunder like the
broken glass of a kaleidoscope. Hedges, you will see other pictures.
New colours will flow beside you. New shapes will intersect you.
Tut! Tut! Have you not hawthorn blossoms and the hips and haws of
roses?
Trundle between your sharp-shorn hedges, old _Tally-hoes_, and
_Comets_, and _Regents_. Stop at the George, and turn with a
flourish into the yard, where a strapper is washing a mud-splashed
chaise, and the horsekeeper is putting a "point" on that best whip of
yours. "Coach stops here half an hour, Gentlemen: dinner quite
ready." A long oak corridor. Then a burst of sunshine through
leaded windows, spangling a floor, iris-tinting rounds of beef, and
flaked veal pies, and rose-marbled hams, and great succulent cheeses.
Wine-glasses take it and break it, and it quivers away over the
table-cloth in faint rainbows; or, straight and sudden, stamps a
startling silver whorl on the polished side of a teapot of hot bohea.
A tortoise-shell cat naps between red geraniums, and myrtle sprigs
tap the stuccoed wall, gently blowing to and fro.
Ah, hedges of England, have you led to this? Do you always conduct
to galleried inns, snug bars, beds hung with flowered chintz, sheets
smelling of lavender?
What of the target practice off Spithead? What of the rocking
seventy-fours, flocking like gulls about the harbour entrances?
Hedges of England, can they root you in the sea?
Your leaves rustle to the quick breeze of wheels incessantly turning.
This island might be a treadmill kept floating right side up by
galloping hoofs.
Gabled roofs of _Green Dragons_, and _Catherine Wheels_, and
_Crowns_, ivy-covered walls, cool cellars holding bins and bins of
old port, and claret, and burgundy. You cannot hear the din of
passing chaises, underground, there is only the sound of beer running
into a jug as the landlord turns the spiggot of a barrel. Green
sponge of England, your heart is red with wine. "Fine spirits and
brandies." Ha! Ha! Good old England, drinking, blinking, dreading
new ideas. Queer, bluff, burly England. You have Nelsons, and
Wellesleys, and Tom Cribbs, but you have also Wordsworths and
Romneys, and (a whisper in your ear) Arkwrights and Stevensons.
"Time's up, Gentlemen; take your places, please!" The horn rings
out, the bars rattle, the horses sidle and paw and swing;
swish--clip--with the long whip, and away to the hedges again. The
high, bordering hedges, leading to Salisbury, and Bath, and Exeter.
Christmas weather with a hard frost. Hips and haws sparkle in the
hedges, garnets and carnelians scattered on green baize. The edges
of the coachman's hat are notched with icicles. The horses slip on
the frozen roads. Loads are heavy at this time of year, with rabbits
and pheasants tied under the coach, but it is all hearty Christmas
cheer, rushing between the hedges to get there in time for the
plum-pudding. Old England forever! And coach-horns, and waits, and
Cathedral organs hail the Star of Bethlehem.
But our star, our London, gutters with fog. The Thames rolls like
smoke under charcoal. The dome of St. Paul's is gone, so is the
spire of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, only the fires of torches are
brisk and tossing. Tossing torches; tossing heads of horses. Eight
mails following each other out of London by torchlight. Scarcely can
we see the red flare of the horn lantern in the hand of the ostler at
the Peacock, but his voice blocks squarely into the fog: "_York
Highflyer_," "_Leeds Union_," "_Stamford Regent_." Coach lamps
stream and stare, and key-bugles play fugues with each other; "Oh,
Dear, What Can the Matter Be?" and "The Flaxen Headed Plough-boy"
canon and catch as the mails take the road. There will be no
"springing" the horses over the "hospital ground" on a day like this;
we cannot make more than three miles an hour in such a fog. Hedges
of England, you are only ledges from which water drips back to the
sea. The rain is so heavy the coach sways. There will be floods
farther on. Floods over the river Mole, with apples, and trees, and
hurdles floating. Have a care with your leaders there, they have
lost the road, and the wheelers have toppled into a ditch of
swirling, curling water. The wheelers flounder and squeal and drown,
but the coach is hung up on the stump of a willow-tree, and the
passengers have only a broken leg or two among them.
Double thong your team, Coachman, that creaking gibbet on the top of
Hindhead is an awesome sight at the fall of night, with the wind
roaring and squeaking over the heather. The murder, they say, was
done at this spot. Give it to them on the flank, good and hot.
"Lord, I wish I had a nip of cherry-brandy." "What was that; down in
the bowl!" "Drop my arm, Damn you! or you will roll the coach over!"
Teeth chatter, bony castanets--click--click--to a ghastly tune,
click--click--on the gallows-tree, where it blows so windily. Blows
the caged bones all about, one or two of them have dropped out. The
up coach will see them lying on the ground like snow-flakes
to-morrow. But we shall be floundering in a drift, and shifting the
mailbags to one of the horses so that the guard can carry them on.
Hedges of England, smothered in snow. Hedges of England, row after
row, flat and obliterate down to the sea; but the chains are choked
on the gallows-tree. Round about England the toothed waves snarl,
gnarling her cliffs of chalk and marl. Crabbed England, consuming
beef and pudding, and pouring down magnums of port, to cheat the
elements. Go it, England, you will beat Bonaparte yet. What have
you to do with ideas! You have Bishops, and Squires, and
Manor-houses, and--rum.