many hours listening, endeavoring to analyze it, and to interpret its
effect. Its continuity and variety are perhaps its most striking
characteristics. It is so ceaseless that it suggests the everlasting.
Within this perpetuity it rises and sinks, leaps and falls, gathers
and dissolves; it sweeps and rolls, sways and trembles; it seems to
approach and withdraw, to flow and overflow; it sounds and resounds,
repeats and changes. And well it may do all this and more, considering
that its source is a countless number and variety of waves, surging,
breaking, and seething among themselves; rushing, plashing, lapping on
the shore, chafing sand, rattling pebbles, grating shells, grinding
rocks:--all of the resulting sound being constantly varied as well
as augmented by breeze, wind, and storm; by the configuration and
reverberating qualities of the shore; and by the varying acoustic
properties of the atmosphere.
“Analysis being thus nearly baffled, I turned to analogy, and found
the sound like the rumble of thunder, the crash of falling rocks, the
rush of cataracts; like the quiver of green branches and the rustle of
dry leaves; like the bellow and roar of animals; the clash of arms and
armor. It is very much like music in its elements of monotone, chord,
cadence, melody, and harmony; its relations of continuity, rhythm,
repetition, and variation; in its sounds as of cymbal, tympani, bell,
trumpet, viol, harp, or organ; its suggestions of symphony or chorale.
It is, perhaps, most of all like the human voice, half audible in
whisper or murmur; inarticulate in sigh or sob; muffled in mutter
or moan; hushed in lullaby or croon; blended in a unison of song or
supplication; confused in the hum and rumor, the call and shout, the
clamor or tumult of great crowds.
“From such prosing of my own I turned to the record and interpretation
of sea music by the poets. From them I collected an alphabetical list
of characterizations, and by the time that I had accumulated about
one hundred I fell so into their spirit that I, myself, produced the
following--as yet unnamed--poetic fragment:
_Always attunéd, its anthem billowing, breaking is blown;
Ceaseless, its cadenced complaining deepens to dirge or to drone;
Ever its eloquent echo falling, again flies free,
Till it gathers and grows in grandeur like heaven’s high harmony._
“I stopped there, because ‘kissing’ was the next striking epithet
and that seemed rather too fanciful, although the Swinburnian spirit
aroused by the composition yearned, so to speak, to go on to ‘mightily
murmured the main’ and ‘sonorously sounded the sibilant sea.’
“Seriously, however, the problem of adequately recording and
interpreting the aspects of the sea is as fascinating as it is
difficult. The best media are, of course, sculpture for its form and
substance, painting for its light and color, music for its movement
and sound. Poetry and prose reflect something of all of these, poetry
more suggestively, prose more accurately. The poets, however, turn
so quickly from actual aspects and impressions to their mental and
emotional accompaniments, that they seem devoted rather to exploiting
their own poetic gifts than the richness of their subject. Their
observation is usually sensitive and keen, but it is quickly checked
and often distorted by the action of fancy. Accuracy of expression
is frequently disturbed by spontaneous or deliberate search for the
picturesque or figurative utterance, made so easy by the enormous
vocabulary that the sea has impressed upon our language. Poets who are
gifted with rhythmical or harmonic power habitually exceed in those
directions also. Happily there are some sea poems that are true as well
as beautiful, but it seems quite too bad that such masters as Shelley,
Arnold, and Emerson should intellectualize, and Coleridge, Rossetti,
and Poe should dream, about the sea until they make it appear merely
a minister to their moods rather than the immense, unspoiled, cosmic
thing it really is.”
“Man overboard?” said Professor Maturin suddenly, as he halted abruptly
before me in the perambulation he had begun after rising to secure the
manuscript of his poetic fragment, and had slowly continued ever since
back and forth along the long rug that he calls his “beat”--“I have
flowed in good earnest. Your submerged appearance indicates that you
agree with me that my experience was well-nigh overwhelming.”
Accepting his helping hand, I pulled myself out of the depths of the
huge leather chair into which I had sunk, and expressed my genuine
appreciation by saying, along with my good-nights, “The next time we
meet, I should like just such another dip.”
VII
_Christmas_
It is always possible to divine something of the state of Professor
Maturin’s mind from the order or the congestion of his books and
papers. When, therefore, the other day, I found him behind a perfect
rampart of volumes bristling with paper-markers, I knew that he was
loading with some new knowledge or other, and meditated how I might
draw his fire. But he anticipated my efforts by sallying from his
fortification, dishevelled but beaming, with the salvo:
“_God rest you, merry gentleman;
Let nothing you dismay!--_
“What will you give for the Christmas spirit?” he continued. “I have
been seeking it, seasonably, and believe that I have found it.”
I capitulated immediately, and we sat down by the fire for a parley,
which he began promptly.
“The Christmas spirit appears to be inherent in human nature, in
the climatic change from summer seed-time, through autumn harvest,
to hearty winter relaxation and cheer over the garnered fruits of
husbandry or art. In the South it began as the winter feast of Saturn,
celebrated with masking and gifts. In the North it was Odin’s, with
log fires and feasting. Then the early Christian fathers chose it for
celebrating their Founder’s new teaching of peace and good-will.
“Gradually all of this blended into the most interesting mingling of
the material and the spiritual that we have in all our manners and
customs. The traditions of the shepherds and the star, the nativity,
and the wise men of the East became the centre of the celebration.
But the mediaeval popularity of Macrobius’s book on the Saturnalia
perpetuated its carnival and games, its candles and garlands, and its
giving of gifts, especially to children. The descending Teutons brought
their wassail and their tree ceremonials. Germany added Saint Nicholas,
Santa Claus, and the filling of stockings. France seems to have
furnished the carols. England elaborated the season’s food and drink,
and America contributed the turkey.
“With the growth of church and state the day became one of pomp and
circumstance. Westminster Abbey was consecrated on Christmas in 1065,
and William was crowned there the next Christmas. Other episcopal and
royal functions followed, until more was spent on this season than in
all the year beside. There were special buildings, elaborate pageants
elaborately set, and feasts of five hundred dishes with sixty oxen for
one course and eight-hundred-pound plum puddings. There were jousts at
which three hundred spears were broken, and the presentation of as many
as thirty plays. Earlier, the plays were religious; later, Shakespeare
provided the court play for Christmas, 1601, and Ben Jonson for 1616.
Milton’s ‘Comus’ was presented at Ludlow Castle during the Christmas
season of 1634.
“The universities and the inns of court were likewise keen for plays
and for ‘the boar’s head served with minstrelsy.’ The aristocracy
and gentry kept open house, for sometimes as many as three hundred
persons. Sir Roger de Coverley sent a string of puddings and a pack
of cards to every poor family in the parish; and rich decedents left
Christmas dinners and gifts to the poor. The peasantry entered heartily
into seasonable mummery and games, dances and songs, so industriously
thumbing the many early printed books of carols that almost none of
them remain.
“Everywhere indoor leisure and the seasonable mood gave rise to all
sorts and conditions of legendary lore--of spirits, of trees that
flower and animals that speak on Christmas eve, and of weather wisdom,
like:
_If Christmasse day on fryday be,
The frost of wynter harde shal be._
“From the beginning, the spirit of the celebration had to wage war
with the flesh. The fathers of the church never ceased to remonstrate
that festivity endangered the solemnity of the season. There were
constant failures to remember the peaceful character of the feast.
The Danes fell on King Alfred while he was celebrating Christmas in
878, and William the Conqueror got into York on Christmas in 1069 by
sending in spies with good-will gifts of food. The mediaeval Lords of
Misrule, originally established to control festivity, became themselves
uncontrolled, and had to be abolished.”
“Even though they made some very good laws,” I interrupted, “against
eating two dinners in one day, and kissing without leave.”
“The Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth frowned on current excesses by working
on Christmas day in 1620 and by later prohibiting its celebration.
Cromwell’s Parliament sat every Christmas day from 1644 to 1656, and
sermonized and legislated against the celebration as a carnal feast,
ordering churches shut, shops open, and decorations down. But this was
too extreme, and the people smashed the shop windows and put up more
evergreens than the Lord Mayor’s men could burn; and Evelyn delighted
in being arrested for going to church on Christmas in 1657. In five
years all was so changed that Pepys could for once combine preaching
and practice, by hearing a Christmas sermon on joyousness and having
plum pudding and mince pie for dinner.
“From the beginning, too, the spirit of benevolence has had its
difficulties. Watchmen left verses at doors, wanderers sang carols, and
children chanted, ‘I’ve got a little pocket to put a penny in,’ until
such suggestion to benevolence became a little too definite, and it
was legislated against. In 1668 Pepys says tipping ‘cost me much money
this Christmas already, and will do more.’ Half a century later Swift
writes: ‘By the Lord Harry, I shall be done with Christmas boxes. The
rogues at the coffee house have raised their tax, every one giving a
crown, and I gave mine for shame; besides a great many half-crowns, to
great men’s porters, etc.’
“Of other giving Swift writes: ‘Making agreeable presents ... [is] an
affair as delicate as most in the course of life,’ and he never fails
to caution Stella against a new danger, that of losing her money in
Christmas gaming. Concerning this custom Walpole wrote on twelfth-day
in 1752: ‘His Majesty, according to annual custom, offered myrrh,
frankincense, and a small bit of gold; and, at night, in commemoration
of the three kings or wise men, the King and royal family played at
hazard ... his most sacred Majesty won three guineas, and his R. H. the
duke, three thousand four hundred pounds.’
“Concerning gifts, Walpole instances the charming presents devised for
a little girl of ten by the Duchess of Suffolk and Lord Chetwynd, aged
seventy-six and eighty, respectively; and he prescribes the theory,
‘Pray remember not to ruin yourself in presents. A very slight gift of
a guinea or two obliges as much, is more fashionable, and not a moment
sooner forgotten than a magnificent one; and then you may cheaply
oblige the more persons.’”
“Such being the earlier history and tradition of the festival, what
should be its modern spirit?” I inquired.
“For that, too,” continued Professor Maturin, “there is no lack of
leading. Charles Lamb is frankly for ‘the good old munching system
... _ingens gloria apple-pasty-orum_,’ and does not hesitate to
prescribe for Christmas, 1800, ‘snipes exactly at nine, punch at ten,
with argument; difference of opinion expected about eleven, perfect
unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, before twelve.’
“Thomas Love Peacock makes his Rev. Dr. Opimian say, about 1860: ‘I
think much of Christmas and all its associations. I like the idea of
the yule-log. I like the festoons of holly on the walls and windows;
the dance under the mistletoe; the gigantic sausage; the baron of beef;
the vast globe of plum pudding; the tapping of the old October; the
inexhaustible bowl of punch.... I like the idea of what has gone, and I
can still enjoy the reality of what remains.’
“Dr. Opimian further prescribes for the season such merry tales as his
contemporary ‘Ingoldsby Legends’ provide in the distinguished career,
but inglorious end, of ‘The Spectre of Tappington,’ which nightly made
away with the trousers of the guest who occupied the haunted room at
Christmas. All of these same hearty traditions are perpetuated by
Fenimore Cooper in his description of Christmas festivity in ‘The
Pioneers.’”
“Does not Washington Irving,” I asked, “have an important place in the
tradition?”
“Precisely so,” continued Professor Maturin; “it was reserved for
him, from his knowledge of Dutch and English customs, to make a new
selection and recombination of Christmas ideals so appealing as to
have set the standard ever since. His half-dozen Christmas papers
dwell, with his characteristic love of the past, on the superior
honesty, kindliness, and joy of the old holiday customs. No refinement
of elegance can replace, he maintains, the family gatherings, the
perfecting of sympathies, the realization of mutual dependence, and
the increase of mutual affection, instinct in the ancient hospitality.
To his own question as to the worth of Christmas observances, he gives
the most characteristic answer in his philosophy--there is plenty of
wisdom in the world, but we need more sound pleasure to beguile care
and increase benevolence and good humor.
“It was this ethical intention to reëstablish the old tradition of
kindliness that Dickens followed, with the result of again endearing
the season, as Mr. Howells has said, ‘to the whole English-speaking
world, with a wider and deeper hold than it had ever had before ... the
chief agency in universalizing the great Christmas holiday as we now
have it.’
“There is no need to remind any one how the whole baker’s dozen of
Dickens’s ‘Christmas Stories’ delightfully champion hard work and good
cheer, sympathy and benevolence, affection and self-sacrifice, and even
the softening effects of suffering and sorrow--sometimes by directly
illustrating these blessings, again by picturing the misery of their
opposites. His satires at pretended benevolence and commercial greed,
and his championship of the common man, answer in advance all later
criticisms concerning the burden and the cost of Christmas and current
complaints over popular ingratitude.
“‘I have great faith in the poor,’ Dickens once wrote. ‘To the best of
my ability I always endeavour to present them in a favourable light to
the rich; and I shall never cease, I hope, until I die, to advocate
their being made as happy and as wise as the circumstances of their
condition, in its utmost improvement, will admit.’
“Thackeray called Dickens’s ‘Christmas Stories’ a national benefit, and
to any man or woman who reads them a personal kindness; and Thackeray,
too, served the season with Christmas pieces of sympathy, humor, and
pantomime, and with his famous onslaught on pretentious misanthropy.
You recall how the _Times_ slated one of his Christmas stories as
worthless on the very day that the publishers asked for a second
edition; and how Thackeray, in the preface to the second edition,--‘An
Essay on Thunder and Small Beer,’--made such delightful fun of the
review’s futility, its absurd superciliousness, its inflated language,
and its false figures of speech, that snarling criticism learned at
least a temporary lesson.
“Thackeray waged his war differently from Dickens, but, on the whole, I
have found nothing more compactly adequate on the Christmas spirit than
Thackeray’s
_I wish you health, and love, and mirth,
As fits the solemn Christmas-tide,_
unless it be the conclusion to old Nicholas Breton’s ‘Fantasticks,’
written in 1626: ‘In brief I thus conclude it: I hold it a memory of
Heaven’s love and the world’s peace, the mirth of the honest and the
meeting of the friendly. Farewell.’”
VIII
_The Sovran Herb_
“You are come most opportunely,” said Professor Maturin, as I was shown
into his study. “Just in time for coffee and a cigar and some good
talk with my friend the Vicar of All Souls.” And he presented me to a
gentleman whose clerical dress graced a more than ordinarily handsome
figure. His chair and Professor Maturin’s being on opposite sides of
the fireplace, I drew mine between them, and noted, during the pouring
of the coffee, the fine seriousness and serenity of the clergyman’s
face. He made no remark, however, until he said, “None, I thank you,”
slightly raising his hand when I proffered the cigars that Professor
Maturin had passed. But, after I had made my selection and had returned
the box to Professor Maturin, the Vicar reconsidered and joined us.
“Smoking rests me greatly when I am tired,” he continued, after we
had lighted, “but I am thinking of giving it up. I am moved to do so
by such statements as this from my afternoon paper”--and extracting
a clipping from his pocket and adjusting his eye-glasses, he read:
“Medical opinion and statistics unite to prove that smoking irritates
the respiratory system, decreases lung capacity, prevents the
purification of the blood, depresses the nerve centres, checks heart
action, impairs digestion, retards growth, reduces weight, strength,
and endurance; restricts the therapeutic effects of medicines, delays
the healing of wounds, and impairs, if it does not destroy, mental
life--all of which effects, inevitable although perhaps hidden
for years, would make tobacco one of the gravest dangers of the
century even if it did not harm the eyes, excite thirst, and induce
intemperance.”
“If we believed that,” said Professor Maturin, getting out of his
chair, “we should not only abandon tobacco instantly, but organize a
crusade for its total prohibition. But my medical friends inform me
that the statistics are still quite too scanty to generalize from, and
that there have been no scientific experiments, except a few which have
apparently proved that smoking aids digestion.
“As for personal opinion, it has long been equally violent on
both sides of the question. Here,” he continued, opening a volume
of pamphlets which he had drawn from one of his bookcases, “is a
three-century-old illustration,” and he read: “There cannot be a more
base, and yet hurtful corruption in a country than this barbarous and
beastly habit borrowed from wild Indians, a habit unnatural, urgent,
expensive, unclean--loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful
to the brain, dangerous to the lungs--and in the black, stinking fume
thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that
is bottomless.”
“That,” resumed Professor Maturin, “is the personal opinion of James
the First of England in the ‘Counterblaste to Tobacco,’ which he
followed up by imposing a duty of six shillings eightpence a pound in
addition to the modest tuppence previously demanded.
“But here also is a counterblast to King James’s, by one of the most
learned physicians of his time, William Barclay. He proclaims tobacco
to be a heavenly panacea of wondrous curative power, the fuel of life
divinely sent to a cold, phlegmatic land. He characterizes all other
opinions as ‘raving lies, forged by scurvy, lewd, unlearned leeches.’”
As Professor Maturin put the book up and returned to his chair he
concluded: “I cannot feel that personal opinion on the subject to-day
has any sounder basis.”
“Possibly not,” replied the Vicar, after a short pause,--“possibly not.
But can we not conclude something from the standing of the witnesses?
Is there not some significance in the cordial affiliation between the
weed and alcohol? How shall we answer Horace Greeley’s offer to give
two white blackbirds for one blackguard who did not use tobacco?”
“The collocation of Bacchus and tobacco is, of course, historic,”
responded Professor Maturin, “but, on the other hand, as a substitute
for alcohol, tobacco is certainly on the side of temperance. If,
moreover, it is to be judged by the company it has kept, we must reckon
with the practical advocacy of many good men and true from Milton to
Emerson, as well as of all the smoking roysterers from Ben Jonson to
Burns.”
“I must admit that I can recall only Sir Isaac Newton and Horace
Walpole, Dr. Holmes and Mr. Swinburne, in specific opposition,” said
the Vicar, “although I venture to think that the Greeks would have
opposed it.”
“And the Romans have approved it,” rejoined Professor Maturin. “There
is an immense mass of literature on both sides. I agree neither
with King James nor with his counterblasters. But I do believe with
Cowper that smoking quickens thought, with Lowell that it mellows
conversation, with Dr. Johnson that it induces tranquillity, and with
Molière that it prompts benevolence.”
“But Dr. Holmes held that it muddled thought,” retorted the Vicar,
“and it certainly silenced two eloquent talkers on that occasion when
Carlyle and Emerson smoked together a whole evening with never a word.
I fear that only too often it relaxes divine discontent into ill-timed
resignation, turns thought to reverie, and lulls the stir of action
into dreams.”
“That, surely, is the defect of its quality,” admitted Professor
Maturin; “yet it did not cloud Kant’s thought, dim Milton’s poetic
vision, or relax the will of Frederick the Great or of Bismarck.
It may, perhaps, have somewhat clouded Lowell, dimmed Thackeray,
and relaxed Lamb. But who can tell? We cannot determine the ideal
combination of the strenuous and the contemplative life until we solve
the personal equation.”
“Very true, very true,” acknowledged the Vicar; “therefore, let us
begin again. Is not smoking an essentially selfish, or at least an
anti-social, habit?”
“It does, I believe,” responded Professor Maturin, “incline one to
prefer the company of other smokers, and to reduce the number even of
those that one desires at a time. However, if that be the case, we
must commend it for inciting such conversation as the present, such
intimate games as chess, and such profitable solitude as that with
books. It was no accidental combination that made Buckle say he never
regretted the money spent for books or tobacco. King Alfred and his
ancient candle are succeeded by the modern scholar, measuring time by
the rings on the ash of his cigar, or by the succession of his pipes.
Is not tobacco, therefore, an encourager of domesticity? What makes one
more content to stay at home?”
“Or away from home?” smiled the clergyman, consulting his watch. “As
for domesticity, you know the saying that ‘tobacco is woman’s only
successful rival;’ and you recall those shocking lines of Kipling’s. I
think I never knew a woman who was not, secretly, at least, distressed
by the odor of tobacco--no matter what the younger ones may say to the
contrary. Remember poor Mrs. Carlyle!”
“There were two Mrs. Carlyles,” chuckled Professor Maturin, “and
you must restrict your sympathies to Jane, for the dowager and son
Thomas used to smoke their pipes together. Of the feminine reaction
to tobacco, however, I am no judge, although I do recall George
Sand’s pipe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s snuff, and the cigarettes of
contemporary empresses and suffragettes. Have I not heard that women
physicians prescribe the latter--cigarettes, I mean--for feminine
nervousness?”