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ADVENTURES AND ENTHUSIASMS
E. V. LUCAS
_Other Books of_ E. V. LUCAS
ENTERTAINMENTS
VERENA IN THE MIDST
THE VERMILION BOX
LANDMARKS
KISTENER'S LURE
MR. INGLESIDE
OVER BEMERTON'S
LONDON LAVENDER
ESSAYS
CLOUD AND SILVER
A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD
TWIXT EAGLE AND DOVE
THE PHANTOM JOURNAL
LOITERER'S HARVEST
ONE DAY AND ANOTHER
FIRESIDE AND SUNSHINE
CHARACTER AND COMEDY
OLD LAMPS FOR NEW
TRAVEL
A WANDERER IN VENICE
A WANDERER IN PARIS
A WANDERER IN LONDON
A WANDERER IN HOLLAND
A WANDERER IN FLORENCE
MORE WANDERINGS IN LONDON
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN SUSSEX
ANTHOLOGIES
THE OPEN ROAD
THE FRIENDLY TOWN
HER INFINITE VARIETY
GOOD COMPANY
THE GENTLEST ART
THE SECOND POST
THE BEST OF LAMB
REMEMBER LOUVAIN
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
THE SLOWCOACH
ANNE'S TERRIBLE GOOD NATURE
A BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN
ANOTHER BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN
RUNAWAYS AND CASTAWAYS
FORGOTTEN STORIES OF LONG AGO
MORE FORGOTTEN STORIES
THE "ORIGINAL VERSES" OF ANN AND JANE TAYLOR
SELECTED WRITINGS
A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING
HARVEST HOME
VARIETY LANE
MIXED VINTAGE
[Illustration: LAURA'S EARLY MORNING LESSONS. _See "The Innocent's
Progress"--Plate 2_]
ADVENTURES
AND
ENTHUSIASMS
BY
E. V. LUCAS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE PERFECT GUEST 13
THE SPARROWS' FRIEND 17
THE GOLDEN EAGLE 20
A MORNING CALL 26
THE TRUE WIZARD OF THE NORTH 30
INNOCENCE AND IMPULSE 42
POSSESSIONS 45
DRAKE AND HIS GAME 49
ADMIRALS ALL--TO BE 56
A STUDY IN SYMMETRY 61
DAVY JONES 66
THE MAN OF ROSS 71
THE INNOCENT'S PROGRESS 85
THOUGHTS AT THE FERRY 92
A LITTLE CHILD 97
A DEVONSHIRE INN 103
ON SHOPS AND STALLS 107
THIRD THOUGHTS 113
THE ITALIAN QUESTION 118
ON DISGUISE 122
BROKEN ENGLISH 126
ENTHUSIASTS 136
TELEPHONICS 141
THE WORLD REMEDIAL 147
WHAT THE SUN DID NOT SEE 152
TWO OF MARTHA'S SONS 158
FREAKS OF MEMORY 164
THE MORAL DRESSING-TABLE 169
THACKERAY'S SCHOOL FELLOW 173
_In re_ PHYSIOGNOMY
I IDENTIFICATION 184
II DR. SULLIVAN 187
THE WORLD'S DESIRE 191
A CONQUEROR 197
THE NEWNESS OF THE OLD 202
AUNTS 206
ON RECITATIONS 210
CLICQUOT WELL WON 218
THE SUFFERER 223
A SOUTH SEA BUBBLE 227
ON FINDING THINGS 231
PUNCTUALITY 236
THE OTHER TWO 240
ON SECRET PASSAGES 244
LITTLE MISS BANKS 248
GENTLEMEN BOTH 251
ON EPITAPHS 255
IN AND ABOUT LONDON
I A LONDON THRILL 263
II A DOOR PLATE 268
III ANGEL ADVOCACY 273
IV THE SOANE HOGARTHS 277
V GREENWICH HOSPITAL 281
VI KEW IN APRIL 285
VII ROYAL WINDSOR 288
VIII THREE LITTLE BACKWATERS 292
IX A SELF-MADE STATUE 297
X CROWDS AND A BAD SAMARITAN 302
XI BEFORE AND AFTER 306
XII THE GREEN AMONG THE GREY 311
XIII THE FATHERLY FORCE 318
XIV MY FRIEND FLORA 325
ILLUSTRATIONS
LAURA'S EARLY MORNING LESSONS _Frontispiece_
PAGE
LAURA RISES FOR THE DAY 44
LAURA COMBINES BREAKFAST AND PHILANTHROPY 84
LAURA'S MUSIC LESSON 96
LAURA VISITS THE SICK 140
LAURA DANCES TO HER MOTHER'S MUSIC 222
ADVENTURES AND ENTHUSIASMS
THE PERFECT GUEST
There are certain qualities that we all claim. We are probably wrong, of
course, but we deceive ourselves into believing that, short as we may
fall in other ways, we really can do this or that superlatively well.
"I'll say this for myself," we remark, with an approving glance in the
mirror, "at any rate I'm a good listener"; or, "Whatever I may not be,
I'm a good host." These are things that may be asserted of oneself, by
oneself, without undue conceit. "I pride myself on being a wit," a man
may not say; or "I am not ashamed of being the handsomest man in
London;" but no one resents the tone of those other arrogations, even if
their truth is denied.
It is less common, although also unobjectionable, to hear people
felicitate with themselves on being good guests. Indeed, I have lately
met two or three who quite impenitently asserted the reverse; and I
believe that I am of their company. Trying very hard to be good I can
never lose sight of the fact that my host's house is not mine. Fixed
customs must be surrendered, lateness must become punctuality, cigarette
ends must not burn the mantelpiece, one misses one's own China tea. The
bathroom is too far and other people use it. There is no hook for the
strop. In short, to be a really good guest and at ease under alien roofs
it is necessary, I suspect, to have no home ties of one's own; certainly
to have no very tyrannical habits.
I cut recently from the _Spectator_ this rhymed analysis of the perfect
guest:
She answered, by return of post,
The invitation of her host;
She caught the train she said she would,
And changed at junctions as she should;
She brought a small and lightish box,
And keys belonging to the locks.
Food, rare and rich, she did not beg,
But ate the boiled or scrambled egg;
When offered lukewarm tea she drank it,
And did not crave an extra blanket,
Nor extra pillows for her head;
She seemed to like the spare-room bed.
She brought her own self-filling pen,
And always went to bed at ten.
She left no little things behind,
But stories new and gossip kind.
Those verses seem to me to cover the ground, although one might want a
change here and there. For example, would a little spice of malice in
her anecdotage be so undesirable? And a little less meekness in the
lady, who comes out rather as a poor relation, might do no harm. They
also might emphasize the point that she was never indisposed, for it is
an unpardonable offence in a guest to be ill; that she spent a great
deal of time in writing letters (which all hostesses like their guests
to do); and that on returning home she sat down and composed a "roofer"
in the warmest possible terms. They might touch lightly but feelingly on
her readiness not only to eat what was offered, and not to desire
luxuries, but to refuse the rarities, such as, in recent times, bacon
and butter and sugar. ("Oh, no, I never take butter!"--what grateful
words to fall on a hostess's ear!) One would not, however, have one's
guest a vegetarian, because that way distraction lies. If vegetarians
ate vegetables all might be well, but they don't; they want made dishes
of an exotic nature, or hostesses think they do, and then the cook gives
notice. The verses might also refer to the perfect guest's easy flow of
conversation when neighbouring bores call; and last--but how far from
least!--they might note the genuine ring in her voice when she
volunteers to do a little weeding.
But the lines, as far as they go, are comprehensive; their defect is
that they deal with but one type--a woman visiting in the country. There
is also to be considered the woman from the country visiting in town,
who, to be perfect, must not insist too strongly on her own choice of
play, must not pine inordinately for dances, and must not bring more
frocks than her hostess can keep pace with. Mention of the hostess
reminds me that it is by a hostess that the verses obviously were
written, and that, as such, they leave apertures which the arrows of
censure might penetrate if we were considering the perfect hostess too.
For how could the poet, for all her epigrammatic conciseness, ever have
given her exemplary friend the opportunity of drinking lukewarm tea? In
any catalogue of the perfect hostess's virtues a very high place must be
reserved for that watchfulness over the teapot and the bell that
prevents such a possibility. And the perfect hostess is careful, by
providing extra blankets, to make craving for more unnecessary. She also
places by the bed biscuits, matches, and a volume either of O. Henry or
"Saki," or both.
THE SPARROWS' FRIEND
If you entered the Tuileries any fine morning (and surely the sun always
shines in Paris, does it not?) by the gate opposite Fremiet's golden
arrogant Joan of Arc, and turned into the gardens opposite the white
Gambetta memorial, you were certain to see a little knot of people
gathered around an old gentleman in a black slouch hat, with a deeply
furrowed melancholy face, a heavy moustache, and the big comfortable
slippers of one who (like so many a wise Frenchman) prefers comfort to
conventionality or the outraged opinion of others. All about him,
pecking among the grass of the little enclosed lawns, or in the gravel
path at his feet, or fluttering up to his hands and down again, were
sparrows--_les moineaux_: for this was M. Pol, the famous "_Charmeur
d'oiseaux_."
There is a certain attraction about Notre Dame, its gloom, its purple
glass and its history; Sainte Chapelle is not without a polished beauty;
the Louvre contains a picture or two and a statue or two that demand to
be seen and seen again; but this old retired civil servant with the
magic power over the _gamins_ of the Parisian roadways and
chimney-stacks was far more magnetic to many a tourist. Those other of
Baedeker's lions were permanent and would endure, but a frowsy furrowed
old man in scandalous footwear who not only charmed the sparrows but
quite clearly had confidential understandings with each was a marvel
indeed and not to be missed. Notre Dame's twin towers on each side of
that miracle of a rose window would be there next time; but would M.
Pol? That is how we reasoned.
We did well to see him as often as we could, for he is now no more; he
died in 1918.
For some time the old man had been missing from his accustomed haunts,
through blindness, and Death found him at his home at Chandon-Lagache,
in the midst of the composition of rhymes about his little friends,
which had long been his hobby, and took him quite peacefully.
I have stood by M. Pol for hours, hoping to acquire something of his
mystery; but these things come from within. He knew many of the birds by
name, and he used to level terrible charges against them, as facetious
uncles do with little nephews and nieces; but more French in character,
that is all. One very innocent mite--or as innocent as a Paris sparrow
can be--was branded as L'Alcoolique. Never was a bird less of an
inebriate, but no crumb or grain could it get except upon the
invitation, "_Viens, prendre ton Pernod!_" Another was Marguerite, saucy
baggage; another, La Comtesse; another, L'Anglais, who was addressed in
an approximation to our own tongue. Now and then among the pigmies a
giant pigeon would greedily stalk: welcome too. But it was with his
sparrows that M. Pol was at his best--remonstrative, minatory, caustic;
but always humorous, always tender beneath.
Latterly he sold a postcard now and then, with himself photographed on
it amid verses and birds; but that was a mere side issue. Often
strangers would engage him in conversation, and he would reply with the
ready irony of France; but he displayed little interest. His heart was
with those others. One felt that the more he saw of men the more he
liked sparrows.
The French have a genius for gay commemorative sculpture. If a statue of
M. Pol were set up on the scene of his triumphs (and many things are
less likely), with little bronze _moineaux_ all about him, I for one
should often make it an object of pilgrimage.
THE GOLDEN EAGLE
Mr. George Robey, C.B.E., our _soi-disant_ Prime Minister of Mirth, is,
in his songs, as a rule, more of a destructive than a reassuring
philosopher. Indeed, the cheerful cynicism of one whose prosperity is
invulnerable may be said to be his prevailing characteristic on the
stage. But he once sang, in the person of a landlady, a song which had
the refrain, calculated to comfort those in less happy circumstances,
"It's a blessing that you never miss the things you've never had." Upon
the respective merits of this sentiment and of Tennyson's famous dictum
"'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"
much might be said in discussion, although the two statements are not
antagonistic; but at the moment, thinking of my poor friend the Golden
Eagle, I vote wholly for Mr. Robey's optimism. It is a blessing that we
never miss the things we've never had, and, conversely, it is a real
calamity to lose something and be unable to forget it or to cease to
regret it. In other words, it is better not to have had a treasure than,
being parted from it, to be eternally wistful. Better, that is, for
unwilling auditors of the tragedy.
So much for prelude.
It is a hard thing to be credited with power that one does not possess
and have to disappoint a simple soul who is relying on one's help. That
is a general proposition, but I was reminded of the Golden Eagle and a
particular application of it by the remark which some one dropped the
other day about Baedeker. "Shall those of us who have kept our Baedekers
have the courage to carry them?" she asked; and instantly my mind flew
to a certain Italian city and the host of the Aquila d'Oro.
Never can any guest in a hotel have received so much attention from the
host as I did in the few days of my sojourn with him before I could
bring myself to change to another. And not only from the host, but from
every one on the staff, who bent earnest glances on me from morning till
night. The Golden Eagle himself, however, did more than that: he
buttonholed me. He was always somewhere near the door when I went out
and again when I came in: a large, flabby Italian, usually in his shirt
sleeves and wearing the loose slippers that strike such dismay into
British travellers. "No foreigner," said an acute young observer to me
recently, "ever has a good dog"; not less true is it that no Latin is
ever soundly shod. But the Golden Eagle was not exactly slovenly; he
owed it to his hotel not to be that; he was merely a vigilant _padrone_
eternally concerned with his business.
Although there were other people staying under his roof, and they had
better rooms than I and drank a better wine, it was I at whom he made
this set. It was I for whom he waited and upon whom his great melancholy
eyes rested so wistfully. For he was a Golden Eagle with a grievance,
and I, in whose bedroom he had been asked to place a writing-table, I,
who never went out without a note-book and who bought so many
photographs, I, who so obviously was engaged in studying the city, no
doubt for the purposes of a book, I it was who beyond question was in a
position, by removing that grievance, to restore him to prosperity and
placidity again.
And his grievance? The melancholy stamped upon that vast white
countenance, although much of it was temperamental, and you might say
national (for the Italian features in repose suggest disillusionment and
fatalism far oftener than light-heartedness), and the dejection in the
great shoulders, were due to the same cause. Baedeker, after years of
honourable mention of the Aquila d'Oro among the hotels of the city, had
suddenly, in the last edition, removed the asterisk against the name.
The Golden Eagle had lost his star. Now you see the connection between
this pathetic innkeeper (the last man in the world to call Boniface),
our triumphant _lion comique_ and the late Lord Tennyson. But in his
case it was not better, either for him or me, that he had lost what he
had loved. It would have been better, both for him and for me, if he had
never had a star.
Why it had been taken from him he had no notion. He had always done his
best; his wife had done her best; people were satisfied and came again;
but the star had gone. Was not his hotel clean? The linen was soft, the
attendance was good. He himself--as I could perceive, could I
not?--never rested, nor did his wife. They personally superintended all.
They spared nothing for the comfort of the house. Foolish innkeepers no
doubt existed who were cheese-parers, but not he. He knew that wherever
else economy was wise, it was not in the dining-room. Were not the meals
generous and diversified? Could I name a more abundant _collazione_ at 4
_lire_ or a better _pranzo_ at 5? Or served with more despatch? Was not
his wine sound and far from dear?
And yet, four years ago, and all inexplicably, the star had gone from
his hotel. It was monstrous, an outrage. Four years ago--without
warning and for no cause.
When he had looked at the new edition of Baedeker which a visitor had
left about and saw it, he could not believe his eyes. He had called his
wife--every one: they were also incredulous. It was like a thunderbolt,
and earthquake. After all their hard work too, their desire to please,
their regular customers, so contented, who came again and again. Was not
that the test--that they came again and again? Obviously then the
guide-book was wrong, guilty of a wicked injustice.
What did he think could have happened? All he could suppose was that one
of Herr Baedeker's agents, staying there incognito, had had some piece
of bad fortune; some accident of the kitchen impossible to prevent, but
isolated, had occurred and he had taken offence. But how unfair! No one
should judge by a single lapse. So many rivals still with stars and he
without!
Thus would the Golden Eagle complain, day after day, during my sojourn,
always ending with the assurance that I would help him to get the star
back, would I not?--I who had such influence.
And now there is to be, I suppose, a new system of guide-book astronomy.
If the Golden Eagle has survived the War he may, in the eclipse of
Baedeker, be more resigned to his lot: the substitute for that
travelling companion may confer a star of his own. But I do not propose
to stay with him in order to make sure.
A MORNING CALL
The card of invitation--for which I have to confess that, like a true
social climber, I had to some extent angled--came at last, stating that
my visit would be expected on the following day at noon precisely, and
that evening dress was to be worn. As I did not receive it until late at
night, and as some medals had to be bought and a carriage and pair
hired, I was busy enough after breakfast. The medals were for
distribution afterwards among certain intimates, and the carriage and
pair was to convey my friend and me to the reception, because we wished
to enter at the gate of honour, and if you would do this you must have
two horses. A single horse, and you are deposited at the inferior door
and have a long walk.
It was to one of the most famous buildings in the world that we are
going--possibly the most famous--and the horses' hoofs had a brave
resonance (not wholly to be dissociated from thoughts of Dumas) as they
clattered swiftly over the stones, beneath archways, past sentries, and
through spacious and venerable courtyards, to the foot of the famous
stairway. After ascending to an ante-room, where colossal guards
scrutinised us and splendid lackeys took our hat, we were shown into the
reception-room, in the doorway of which an elderly gentleman in black
with a black bag was talking with such animation to a major-domo that we
had to interrupt them in order to pass.
In this reception-room, an apartment of some splendour, in which we were
to meet our host, sufficient guests had already assembled to occupy most
of the wall space--for that is how we were placed, in four lines with
our backs to the walls. There were about ninety in all, I calculated, of
whom many were priests and nuns and many were women, the rest youths, a
few girls, and a very few civilian men. It needed only the swiftest
glance to discern that my friend and I were the only ones who had
complied with the regulation about evening dress. This, naturally,
greatly increased our comfort, since we became at once the cynosure (as
the learned would say) of every eye. In the centre of the room was a
little knot of officials, including four or five soldiers, all chatting
in low tones and occasionally glancing through the door opposite that by
which we had entered, which gave upon a long corridor. So for some
twenty minutes we waited, nervous and whispering, when suddenly the
officials stiffened, the soldiers hurriedly fetched their rifles from
the far corner (a proceeding not without humour when one considers all
things), and the whole ninety of us sank on our knees as a little quick,
dark man, dressed in white, entered the room.
To be on one's knees, in evening dress, at twenty past twelve in the
day, facing a row of people, across a vast expanse of carpet, similarly
kneeling, and being also a little self-conscious and hungry, is not
conducive to minute observation; but I was able to notice that our host
was alert and bird-like in his movements and had a searching, shrewd,
and very rapid and embracive glance. Beneath his cassock one caught
sight of elaborate slippers, and he wore a large and magnificent emerald
ring.
As he was late he got briskly to work. Each person had to be noticed
individually, but some had brought a little problem on which advice was
needed; others required solace for the absent and afflicted; most, like
myself, had medals of the saints which were to be made more efficacious;
and three or four of the priests were accompanied by far from negligible
or indigent old lady parishioners, to whom such an event as this would
be the more memorable and valuable if a little conversation could be
added. Hence, there was work before our host; but he performed his task
with noticeable discretion. To me, whom at last he reached, he said
nothing; but my friend, who is of the old persuasion, put to him the
case of a dying youth and obtained sufficient assurance to be comforted.
And all the while I could see the elderly gentleman in black with the
black bag glancing round the walls from the doorway--his function, as I
afterwards learned, being that of a doctor intent upon restoring to
consciousness those (and they are numerous) who swoon under the
immensity of this ceremony.
Having come to the last of his visitors, our host retired to the middle
of the room and delivered a short address on the meaning of his blessing
and the importance of rectitude. He then blessed us once again,
collectively, and was gone, and we struggled to a vertical position, the
elderly ladies finding the assistance of their attendant priests more
than useful in this process.
My knees, too, were very sore; but what did I care? I had seen Pope
Benedict XV.
THE TRUE WIZARD OF THE NORTH
It is no disrespect to the author of the Waverley Novels to say that the
true Wizard of the North was born on a Sunday in 1805, in a cobbler's
cottage at Odense, in Denmark, when Scott was thirty-four.
Hans Christian Andersen's father, a cobbler, was a thoughtful, original,
and eccentric man--as cobblers have the chance to be. On the day that
his little Hans was born, he sat by the bed-side and read to the child
Holberg's "Comedies." It made no difference that the audience only
cried. Later the father became his son's devoted slave and companion,
reading to him the "Arabian Nights," constructing puppet theatres and
other entertaining devices, and entrusting him with his peculiar views
of the world and religion. The mother was, in the words of Mary Howitt,
Hans Andersen's first English translator, "all heart"; from her perhaps
came his instant readiness to feel with others, his overmastering sense
of pity, his smiling tears, while from his father much of his odd humour
and irony. But there was still another influence. Like a child of
genius of our own race with whom Hans Andersen has not a little in
common, Charles Lamb (who in 1805 was thirty), the boy was much with his
grandmother, his father's mother, a distressful gentlewoman who, having
come upon evil days, lived in great poverty with an insane husband, a
toy-maker, and kept the home together by acting as gardener to a lunatic
asylum. To little Hans, who was often with her, she would tell stories
of her own youth and that of her mother, who had done an extremely
Andersenian thing--had run away from a rich home to marry a comedian.
Now and then Hans would accompany her to the asylum itself. "All such
patients," he has written, in "The True Story of My Life," "as were
harmless were permitted to go freely about the Court; they often came to
us in the garden, and with curiosity and terror I listened to them and
followed them about; nay, I even ventured so far as to go with the
attendants to those who were raving mad.... Close beside the place where
the leaves were burned the poor old women had their spinning room. I
often went in there and was very soon a favourite.... I passed for a
remarkably wise child who would not live long; and they rewarded my
eloquence by telling me tales in return; and thus a world as rich as
that of the 'Thousand and One Nights' was revealed to me. The stories
told by these old ladies, and the insane figures which I saw around me
in the asylum, operated in the meantime so powerfully upon me that when
it grew dark I scarcely dared to go out of the house."
Here, given a sensitive, imaginative nature, we have material enough to
build up much of the genius of Hans Christian Andersen. How could he
have been very different from what he was, one asks, with such
companions and surroundings in the most impressionable years--an
embittered whimsical father, full of the "Arabian Nights," a mother "all
heart," a grandmother all romantic memory, a mad, toy-making
grandfather, and these wool-gathering old ladies inventing strange
histories to amuse him? And, added to all this, circumstances of poverty
to drive his thoughts inwards? Poets, it would almost seem, can be both
made as well as born.
But the boy had still more luck; for he struck up an acquaintance,
ripening into friendship, with a man who carried out play-bills, "and he
gave me one every day. With this, I seated myself in a corner and
imagined an entire play, according to the name of the piece and the
characters in it. This was my first, unconscious poetizing." A little
later a clergyman's widow gave the boy the freedom of her library (as
Samuel Salt gave his to the little Charles Lamb), and there he first
read Shakespeare: "I saw Hamlet's ghost, and lived upon the hearth with
Lear. The more persons died in a play, the more interesting I thought
it. At this time I wrote my first piece; it was nothing less than a
tragedy, wherein, as a matter of course, everybody died. The subject of
it I borrowed from an old song about Pyramus and Thisbe; but I had
increased the incidents through a hermit and his son, who both loved
Thisbe, and who both killed themselves when she died. Many speeches of
the hermit were passages from the Bible, taken out of the Little
catechism, especially from our duty to our neighbours." Later the boy
wrote a drama with a king and queen in it, and, feeling himself at fault
as to the language of courts, produced a
German-French-English-and-Danish lexicon, and took a word out of each
language to lend the royal speeches an air.
Hans Andersen's father dying when the boy was still young, the mother
married again, and Hans was left even more to himself. He read and wrote
and recited all day, so that it became generally understood that he was
to be a poet; and as nothing is so absurd to the eyes of healthy normal
boys as a poet, he was the victim of not a little ridicule. His mother's
wish to apprentice him to a tailor precipitated his fate. Rather than
that he would go, he declared, to Copenhagen and join the theatre. To
deny her son anything was beyond her power; but she was happier about it
after consulting a witch and receiving from the coffee-grounds and the
cards the assurance (afterwards realised) that he would become a great
man, and that in honour of him Odense would one day be illuminated. And
so at the age of fourteen, with thirty shillings and a bundle of
clothes, Hans Christian Andersen arrived in Copenhagen to seek his
fortune.
On that day his childhood was over. Some one has said that nothing that
really counts ever happens to us after the teens are reached, and it is
more true than not. At Copenhagen, Hans Andersen, young as he was,
forsook the world of fantasy and entered the world of fact. The dancer
to whom he had an introduction laughed at him; he was repulsed from the
theatre. For four or five years he starved and suffered. His singing and
his passion for reciting, however, gained him a few friends to set
against poverty and the ridicule which his earnest enthusiasm, uncouth
lanky figure, and long nose brought him almost everywhere that he went.
Among them were Weyse, the composer, Sibonia, the singer, and Guldborg,
the poet, through whose interests the boy was able to take lessons in
singing and dancing, and even to make his theatrical debut in the
chorus. It was the composition of a tragedy that decided his fate and
made his fortune, for it came into the hands of Jonas Collin, director
of the Royal Theatre, brought him the interest of that influential man,
and led to the Royal Grant which sent the young author to the Latin
School at Skagelse for a period of three years.
In 1829 he published his first characteristic work, the "Journey on Foot
from Holm Canal to the East Point of Armager," a very youthful tissue of
grotesque humour and impudence. A desultory year or two followed, when
he wrote much and came in for a quite undue share of attack, which his
sensitive nature began to construe as a death-warrant; and then, in
1833, again through Collin, a travelling grant of L70 a year for two
years was obtained for him from Frederick VI, and he set off for Paris.
With that journey his true career began, the success of which was never
to be chequered save by occasional fits of depression following upon
hostile criticism. From Paris he went to Rome, where he met Thorwaldsen
and wrote his first and best known novel, "The Improvisatore," an
intense and fanciful story of Rome and the stage, marked by much tender
charm, and, like the writer's mother, "all heart," in which an
autobiographical thread is woven. The novel had an immediate success,
and Hans Andersen suddenly found himself one of the leading Danish
authors.
But not yet was his real work begun. His real work was the telling of
fairy tales--or "Eventyr og Historier," as he called them--the first of
which were published in a slender volume in 1835, a little after "The
Improvisatore," under the title "Fairy Tales as Told to Children." Since
in this book were "The Tinder Box," "Little Claus and Big Claus," "The
Princess and the Pea," and "Little Ida's Flowers," it will be seen that
Hans Andersen entered the arena fully armed. Next year came the second
part, containing "Thumbelina," "The Travelling Companion," and "The
Naughty Boy," and in 1837 a third part, with "The Little Mermaid" and
"The Emperor's New Clothes." Hans Andersen himself, whose constant
ambition (again like Lamb) was to write successfully for the stage,
thought but little of these stories, which presented no difficulties to
his pen. He preferred (authors often being their own worst judges) his
novels, his poems, his travels; above all, he preferred his dramatic
efforts; and yet it is by these tales that he lives and will ever live.
Hans Andersen now began to travel regularly every year and to write
little personal memoirs of his adventures in a manner which in England
to-day we associate with "Eoethen" and "An Inland Voyage." Wherever he
went he made friends, and he was always willing--more, eager--to read
his stories aloud: even in Germany, where, owing to his defective
knowledge of the language, his audiences had difficulty in maintaining
the cast of feature demanded by this most exacting of literary lions. In
1847 he was in London, much feted, the way having been paved by Mary
Howitt's translation of his autobiography and of "The Improvisatore,"
and in 1857 he was here again, spending five weeks at Gad's Hill with
Dickens (by seven years his junior), whom he revered and almost
worshipped. Hans Andersen's Anglo-Saxon readers have always been very
numerous and very appreciative, and in return he praised England and
wrote "The Two Baronesses" in our tongue. Only a few months before his
death he was gratified to receive a gift of books from the children of
America.
His latter years were full of honour and comfort. He had many wealthy
friends, including the Danish Royal Family, a substantial pension, and a
considerable revenue from his work. In the summer he lived with the
Melchiors at Rolighet; in winter in rooms in Copenhagen, dining with a
different friend regularly each night of the week. His health was better
than he liked to think it, and he was able almost to the end to indulge
his passion for travel. He went often to the theatre, or, if unable to
do so, had the play bill brought to his rooms, where, knowing every
classic play by heart, he would follow its course in imagination,
assisted by occasional visits from the performers. He never married,
and, when once an early and not very serious attachment was forgotten,
never seemed to wish it; but he liked to be liked by women. Indeed, he
was normal enough to like to be liked by every one, and most of the
unhappiness of which he was capable--even to a kind of
self-torture--proceeded from the suspicion that he was unwelcome here
and there. For in spite of his hard experience of the world, he
continued a child to the end; a spoilt child, indeed, more than not, as
men of genius often can be.
He lived to be seventy, and died peacefully on August 4, 1875. "Take
care, above all things," he had once said when humorously discussing his
funeral, "that you drill a little hole in my coffin, so that I may have
a peep at all the pomp and ceremony, and see which of my good friends
follow me to the grave and which do not." They were there, every one.
He was followed to the grave by all Denmark.
It is, as I have said, by his fairy tales that Hans Andersen lives and
will ever live. There he stands alone, supreme. As a whole, there is
nothing like them. One man of genius or another has now and then done
something a little in this or that Hans Andersen manner. Heine here and
there in the "Reisebilder"; Lamb in "The Child Angel" and perhaps "Dream
Children"; and one sees affinities to him occasionally in Sir James
Barrie's work (the swallows in "The Little White Bird," for example,
build under the eaves to hear the stories which are told to the children
in the house, while in Hans Andersen's "Thumbelina" the swallows live
under the poet's eaves in order to tell stories to him); but Hans
Andersen remains one of the most unique and fascinating minds in all
literature. Nominally just entertainment for children, these "Eventyr og
Historier" are a profound study of the human heart and a "criticism of
life" beyond most poetry. And all the while they are stories for
children too; for though Hans Andersen addresses both audiences, he
never, save in a very few of the slighter satirical apologues, such as
"The Collar" and "Soup from a Sausage Skewer," loses the younger. He had
this double appeal in mind when, on a statue being raised in his honour
at Copenhagen just before his death, showing him in the act of telling a
tale to a cluster of children, he protested that it was not
representative enough.
I would apply to Hans Andersen rather than to Scott the term "The Wizard
of the North"; because whereas Scott took men and women as he found
them, the other, with a touch of his wand, rendered inhuman
things--furniture, toys, flowers, poultry--instinct with humanity. He
knew actually how everything would behave; he knew how a piece of coal
talked, and how a nightingale. He did not merely give speech to a pair
of scissors, he gave character too. This was one of his greatest
triumphs. He discerned instantly the relative social positions of moles
and mice, bulls and cocks, tin soldiers and china shepherdesses. He
peopled a new world, and, having done so, he made every incident in it
dramatic and unforgettable. He brought to his task of amusing and
awakening children gifts of humour and irony, fancy and charm, the
delicacy of which will probably never be surpassed. He brought also an
April blend of tears and smiles, and a very tender sympathy with all
that is beautiful and all that is oppressed. He did not preach, or, if
he did, he so quickly rectified the lapse with a laugh or a quip that
one forgets the indiscretion; but he believed that only the good are
happy, and he wanted happiness to be universal. Hence to read his tales
is an education in optimism and benevolence.
INNOCENCE AND IMPULSE
Looking the other day into Grimm, I came upon the story called "Hans in
Luck," in which a foolish fellow, having his life's savings in a bag,
gives them away for an old horse, and the old horse for a cow, and the
cow for a pig, and so on, until at last he has only a heavy stone to his
name, and, getting rid of that burden, thinks himself the most fortunate
of men--Hans in luck. It was the very ordinary metal of this folk-tale
which Hans Andersen transmuted to fine gold in the famous story
entitled, in the translation on which I was brought up, "What the old
man does is always right," which is a veritable epic in little of
simplicity and enthusiasm. No one who has read it can forget it, for its
exquisite author is there at his kindliest and sunniest, all his
sardonic melancholy forgotten.
The old man, in bitter financial straits, setting out in the morning to
sell his cow at market, makes, in his incorrigible optimism, a series of
exchanges, all for the worse, so that when he reaches home in the
evening, instead of a pocketful of money to show for his day's
dealings, he has only a sack of rotten apples. Nothing, however, has
dimmed his radiant faith in himself as a good trafficker, and nothing
can undermine his wife's belief in him as the best and financially most
sagacious of husbands: a belief which, expressed in the presence of two
gentlemen who, having had a wager on her unshakeable loyalty, had come
to the house to settle it, led to the old couple's enrichment and
assured prosperity.
It was this charming story which came to my mind in the train the other
day as I looked at the young sandy-haired and freckled soldier opposite
me on the journey to Portsmouth, for here was another example of
impulsive simplicity. On the back of his right hand was tattooed a very
red heart, emitting effulgence, across which two hands were clasped, and
beneath were the words "True Love"; and on the back of his left hand was
tattooed the head of a girl. He was perhaps twenty. Should there be no
more wars to trouble the world, I thought, as from time to time I
glanced at him, he will probably live to be seventy. Since tattoo marks
never come out and the backs of one's hands are usually visible to
oneself, he is likely to have some curious thoughts as he passes down
the years. What kind of emotions, I wondered, will be his as he views
them at thirty-one, forty-one, fifty-one? And supposing that this first
love fails, what will be the attitude of subsequent ladies to these
embellishments? For it would probably be in vain, even if he were
sophisticated enough to think of it, for him to maintain that the
decoration was purely symbolic, the right-hand device standing for
devotion and the left for woman in the abstract. That would hardly wash.
Subsequent ladies--and judging from his appearance and his early start
there are sure to be some--may give him rather a difficult time.
It all goes to prove what a dangerous thing impulse can be. And yet as I
looked at his simple face, and reflected on what safe areas of
normally-hidden epidermis he possessed for such pictorial ebullition, I
found myself envying such a lack of self-protectiveness; and I asked
myself if, after all, those who will have nothing to do with
self-protectiveness are not the salt of the earth. The gamblers, the
careless, the sippers of all the honey the moment contains: are not
these the best?
Most young ardencies are not as reckless as his--and, of course, it may
all end happily: what the young man did may turn out also to be right.
With all my heart I hope so.
[Illustration: LAURA RISES FOR THE DAY. _See "The Innocent's
Progress"--Plate 1_]
POSSESSIONS
Some one has offered me a very remarkable and beautiful and valuable
gift--and I don't know what to do. A few years ago I should have
accepted it with rapture. To-day I hesitate, because the older one grows
the less does one wish to accumulate possessions.
It is said that the reason why Jews so often become fishmongers and
fruiterers and dealers in precious stones is because in every child of
Israel there is a subconscious conviction that at any moment he may be
called upon to return to his country, and naturally wishing to lose as
little as possible by a sudden departure he chooses to traffic either in
a stock which he can carry on his person, such as diamonds, or in one
which, being perishable and renewable day by day, such as fruit and
fish, can be abandoned at any moment with almost no loss at all.
Similarly the Jews are said to favour such household things as can be
easily removed: rugs, for example, rather than carpets. I have not, so
far as I know, any Jewish blood, but in the few years that are left me I
too want to be ready to obey the impulse towards whatever Jerusalem I
hear calling me, even should it be the platonically-loved city itself,
although that is unlikely. Without possessions one would be the readier
also for the longer last journey. Naked we come into this world and
naked we should go. Nor should we wilfully add to the difficulties of
leaving it.
I was lately led by its owner, rebuilder, and renovator through the
rooms and gardens of a Tudor house which, with infinite thought and
discretion, has been reclaimed from decay and made modernly debonair. At
every step, indoors and out, was something charming or adequate, whether
furniture or porcelain, whether flower or shrub. Within were long cool
passages where through the diamond panes sunlight splashed on the white
walls, and bedrooms of the gayest daintiness; without were lawns, and
vistas, and arrangements of the loveliest colours. "Well," my hostess
asked me, "what do you think of it all?" I thought many things, but the
one which was uppermost was this: "You are making it very hard to die."
I had a grandfather who, after he had reached a certain age, used
birthdays as occasions on which to give away rather than receive
presents; and I am sure he was right. But I would go beyond that. The
presents which he distributed were bought for the purpose. I would fix a
period in life when the wise man should begin to unload his
acquisitions--accumulating only up to that point and then dispersing
among the young. Ah! but you say, why be so illogical? If possessions
are undesirable, are they not undesirable also for the young? Well,
there are answers to that. For one thing, who said anything about being
logical? And then, are we not all different? Because I choose to cease
accumulating, that is no reason why others, who like to increase their
possessions, should cease also. And again, even I, with all my talk of
renunciation, have not suggested that it should begin till a middling
period has been reached; and I am all for circulating _objets d'art_,
too. I should like a continual progression of pictures and other
beautiful things throughout the kingdom, so that the great towns could
have the chance of seeing the best as well as London.
So far am I from withholding possessions from others, that as I walked
down Bond Street the other day and paused at this window and that,
filled with exquisite jewels and enamelled boxes and other voluptuous
trifles, I thought how delightful it would be to be rich enough to buy
them all--not to own them, but to give them away. To women for choice;
to one woman for choice. And a letter which I remember receiving from
France during the War had some bearing upon this aspect of the case, for
it mentioned a variety of possessions which carried with them, in the
trenches, extraordinary and constant pleasure and consolation. The
writer was a lady who worked at a canteen in the big Paris terminus for
the front, and she said that the soldiers returning from their leave
often displayed to her the mascots and other treasures which comforted
them in their vigils, and with which they were always well supplied.
Sometimes these possessions were living creatures. One soldier had
produced from a basket a small fox which he had found and brought up,
and which this lady fed with bread and milk while its owner ate his
soup. Another had a starling. A third took out of his pocket a venerable
handkerchief, which, on being unrolled, revealed the person of
Marguerite--a magpie whom he adored, and who apparently adored him. They
were inseparable. Marguerite had accompanied him into action and while
he was on _permission_, and she was now cheering him on his return to
the danger zone. She was placed on the table, where she immediately fell
asleep; at the end of the meal the poor fellow rolled her again in the
handkerchief, popped her in his pocket, and ran for his tragic train.
But for the companionship of Marguerite his heart would have been far
heavier; and she was thus a possession worth having.
DRAKE AND HIS GAME
The British Navy did not begin with Drake. On consulting the authorities
I find that the Navy proper, as an organization, may be said to have
begun in the reign of King John, and to have been put on its modern
basis by Henry VII. But Drake's is the first name to conjure with.
Any one wishing to lay a tangible tribute at the feet of Britain's
earliest naval hero of world-wide fame would have to visit either the
monument which was erected to him--not certainly in any indecent
haste--at Tavistock, in 1883, when he had been dead for nearly two
hundred and ninety years, or the replica of it, which was set up on
Plymouth Hoe in the year following. To go to the Hoe is, I think,
better; for at the Hoe you can look out on Drake's own sea.
London has no Drake monuments. But had a certain imaginative enthusiast
had his way in the year 1581 a memorial of the great seaman, more
interesting and stimulating than any statue, would have added excitement
to Ludgate Hill and to every Londoner passing that way, for it was
seriously proposed that the _Golden Hind_, the vessel in which Drake
sailed round the world, and the first English ship to make such a
voyage, should be bodily lifted to the top of St. Paul's (which had a
spire in those days) and permanently fixed there. Even had the project
been carried out we personally should be none the richer, for the Fire
of London was to intervene; but it was a fine idea. I wish something of
the kind might still be done; for if such a fascinating little model
galleon as the weathercock on Lord Astor's beautiful Embankment house by
the Essex Street steps can rejoice the eyes as it does, how would not a
real one, high over Ludgate Hill, quicken the mind and the pulse?
And we ought in London to think far more of ships than we do. By ships
we live, whether merchant ships bringing us food, or ironclads
preserving those ships; and not only should the docks be known to
Londoners, instead of being, as now, foreign parts infinitely more
remote than, say, Brighton, but the Navy should visit us too. The old
_Britannia_ ought to have been brought to the Thames when she was
superannuated. "There," the guides should have been able to say, "was
the training college of our admirals. There, in that hulk, Beatty
learned to navigate, Sturdee to tie knots, and Jellicoe to signal!" The
_Victory_ should be brought to London, as a constant and glorious
reminder of what Nelson did, before steam came in. She is wasted at
Portsmouth, which is all shipping. In London, either in the Thames or on
the top of St. Paul's, she would have noble results, and every
errand-boy would become a stowaway, as every errand-boy should.
A second proposal, to preserve the _Golden Hind_ as a ship for ever,
also fell through, and she was either allowed to decay or was broken up
(as the _Britannia_ has been); but whereas the relics from the
_Britannia_ are many, the only authentic memorial of the _Golden Hind_
is an arm-chair fashioned from her wood which is a valued possession of
the Bodleian. Why the Bodleian, I cannot explain, for Drake was neither
an Oxford graduate nor a scholar. His University was the sea.