in the best literature, and many of them were authorities in some field
of learning outside their profession as statesmen. It is doubtful
if any period of history can show a group of politicians equal in
intellectual culture and in high character to these.
Furthermore, to obtain intimate knowledge of the “inside politics” of
the last fifty years, we have Morley’s monumental life of Gladstone,
Morley’s own _Recollections_ and _Memorandum_, many Lives of Disraeli
and Bright, T. P. O’Connor’s _Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian_,
J. A. Spender’s _Life of Campbell-Bannerman_ and his _The Public
Life_, Asquith’s _Memories and Reflections_, Churchill’s _The World
Crisis_, Swift MacNeill’s _What I Have Seen and Heard_, Haldane’s
_Autobiography_, Memoirs by Tim Healy, Memoirs by Lord Grey, and many
other works.
The history of Charles Stewart Parnell is one of the most thrillingly
dramatic and romantic that can be found in either biography or legend.
His practical ability as a statesman is summed up in a sentence in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_.
“His influence on the course of English and Irish history may be
estimated by the fact that when he entered public life home-rule for
Ireland was viewed by English politicians as a wild impracticable
dream, while within 11 years he had induced a majority of one of the
two great English political parties to treat it as an urgent necessity.”
Without meaning anything derogatory to his character as a public man,
the portraits of Parnell, his attitude of command, and the methods
by which he controlled his party have always brought to my mind the
romantic pirate of melodrama. His bearded impassive face, the greatest
“poker face” political history has ever known, his quiet tones,
his utterly mysterious personality, his glacial manner, his iron
resolution, his rule of his party, every member of which had to sign a
pledge of absolute loyalty before he could be elected to Parliament,
his intolerance of any partner in leadership, all combined to make him
a romantically grim figure, hated and dreaded by his foes, dreaded and
idolised by his followers.
They knew he alone could and would lead them to victory; and then, when
the ten years in which he emerged from obscurity to dazzling eminence
were over, and victory was in his grasp, he and his party went down to
ruin through his infatuation for one woman, and in less than a year he
was in his grave.
For he was drunk with power as well as with love; had he temporarily
withdrawn from leadership, his party would have gone on to triumph, and
within a very short period he would undoubtedly have been called back
to the throne. But the absolute power he had enjoyed for years made him
insensible to the rules of the game of life.
In September 1890, I saw Gladstone. He was eighty years old, full of
confidence and vitality, for his partnership with Parnell, which had
lost the election in 1886, was now the means of triumph, and it was a
certainty that he would soon be in a position to make the dream of Home
Rule a reality. But in November, in less than two months, the divorce
suit brought by Captain O’Shea, in which Parnell was correspondent, and
the terrible scenes in December in Committee Room No. 15 where Parnell
tried in vain to maintain his rule over his party, changed the whole
face of things.
After Gladstone brought in his Home Rule Bill in 1886, politics became
violent. The Grand Old Man was hissed in London drawing-rooms. I
remember talking in 1880 with that most extreme of Tories, Professor
Mahaffy of the University of Dublin. I thought it strange that
differences in political opinion should ruin personal friendship.
“Why,” said Mahaffy excitedly, “Gladstone and I have been intimate
friends for many years. If I met him on the street now, I would cut him
dead.”
Then I asked him about Parnell, and he said contemptuously that
Parnell’s relations with women were scandalous. But I think he was
repeating the mere gossip of hatred; I do not think he knew anything
about Mrs. O’Shea, and that he was as much surprised as anyone else
when the truth came out the very next year.
Parnell was a great man. As the years pass, he will become more
and more a legendary figure, and there will probably be dozens of
biographies written about him. Already St. John Ervine, a man of
Belfast who used to hate Parnell, has written a glowing, adulatory
Life. I think we probably come nearest to the real Parnell in T. P.
O’Connor’s _Memoirs_.
Those were the great days in Parliament. Listen to “T. P.” on Gladstone.
“The most remarkable thing in the appearance of Gladstone was his
extraordinary eyes; they were large, black, and flashing; sometimes
there came into them a look that was almost wild.... The blackness
and the brightness of his eyes were brought into greater relief by
the almost deadly pallor of his complexion.... As he walked up the
floor of the House he seemed to be enveloped by a great solitude, so
unmistakably did he stand out from all the figures around him.
I must add to this description of his extreme physical gifts the
wonderful quality of his voice. It was a powerful voice, but sweet and
melodious, and it was managed as exquisitely and as faithfully as the
song of a great prima donna. If the speech were ringing, it came to
your ears almost soft by that constant change of tone which the voice
displayed; it could whisper, it could thunder.... I have seen many
great figures, but, with all respect to the greatest among them, the
House of Commons without Gladstone seems to me as great a contrast
as a chamber illumined by a farthing dip when the electric light has
failed.”
XIV
A ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW
What is the worst poem ever written by a man of genius? It is
certain that if an anthology should be made of the most terrible
verses of the English bards the results would be both surprising
and appalling. I cannot at this moment think of any worse pair of
lines in English literature than those offered in all seriousness by
the seventeenth-century poet, Richard Crashaw. They occur in a poem
containing many lovely passages. In comparing the tearful eyes of
Mary Magdalene to many different things he perpetrated a couplet more
remarkable for ingenuity than for beauty. Her eyes are
Two walking baths, two weeping motions,
Portable and compendious oceans.
Alfred Tennyson, in his second volume of poems, bearing the date 1833,
included the following, though it is only fair to say that he afterward
suppressed it. It aroused the mirth of the critics and still is often
resurrected as a specimen of what Tennyson could do when he was
deserted by both inspiration and taste.
O DARLING ROOM
O darling room, my heart’s delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.
For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter’s vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen have I been,
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene
Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.
Yet never did there meet my sight,
In any town, to left or right,
A little room so exquisite,
With two such couches soft and white;
Not any room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.
Imagine the profanity and laughter this piffle must have aroused among
the book reviewers; some of his severer critics called him “Miss
Alfred,” not knowing that he was a six-footer, with a voice like a sea
captain in a fog.
I have no mind to defend the poem. Apart from the fact that the
reading of it ought to teach Americans the correct accent on the word
“exquisite,” it must be admitted that when Tennyson wrote this stuff
he not only nodded but snored.
But, although it is difficult for me to understand how he could have
written it, have read it in proof and then published it, I perfectly
understand and sympathise with his enthusiasm for the room.
It is often said that polygamous gentlemen are--at any rate, for a
considerable period--monogamous; the Turk may have a long list of
wives, but he will cleave to one, either because he wants to or because
she compels him to. Thus, even in a house that has a variety of sitting
rooms, or living rooms or whatever you choose to call them, the family
will use only one. After the evening meal they will instinctively move
toward this one favourite room.
There is no doubt that even as dogs and cats have their favourite
corner or chair, or favourite cushion of nightly repose, men and women
have favourite rooms. And if this is true of a family in general, it
is especially true of a man or a woman whose professional occupation
is writing; and he becomes so attached to his room that Tennyson’s
sentiments, no matter how silly in expression, accurately represent his
emotion.
Twice a year, once in June and once in September, circumstances force
me to leave a room where I have for a long time spent the larger part
of my waking hours; I always feel the pain of parting, look around the
walls and at the desk and wish the place an affectionate farewell,
hoping to see it again, either in the autumn or in the next summer, as
the case may be. I love that room, as Tennyson loved his room. I love
it not because of the view from the windows, for a working room should
not have too good a view, but for the visions that have there appeared
to the eyes of the mind. It is the place where I have sat in thought,
where such ideas as are possible to my limited range have appeared to
me and where I have endeavoured to express them in words.
And if I can have so strong a passion for a room, with what tremendous
intensity must an inspired poet or novelist love the secluded chamber
where his imagination has found free play!
We know that Hawthorne, after his graduation from college, spent twelve
years in one room in Salem. When he revisited that room as a famous
writer he looked at it with unspeakable affection and declared that if
ever he had a biographer great mention must be made in his memoir of
this chamber, for here his mind and character had been formed and here
the immortal children of his fancy had played around him. He was alone
and not alone. As far as a mortal man may understand the feelings of a
man of genius, I understand the emotion of Hawthorne.
I think nearly every one, if he were able to afford it, would like to
have a room all his own. I believe it to be an important factor in the
development of the average boy or girl if in the family house each
child could have one room sacred to its own personality. When I was a
small boy, although I loved to be with family and friends, I also loved
to escape to my own room and read and meditate in solitude.
The age of machinery is not so adverse to spiritual development as
the age of hotels and apartment houses; there is no opportunity for
solitude, and a certain amount of solitude, serene and secure from
interruption, is almost essential for the growth of the mind. A great
many girls and women could be saved from the curse of “nerves” if there
were a place somewhere in the building where they could be for a time
alone. One of the worst evils of poverty is that there is no solitude;
eating, sleeping, living, all without privacy.
When I was a graduate student in the university I was fortunate enough
to possess for one year exactly the right kind of room. The young
philosopher, George Santayana, came to see me and exclaimed, “What a
perfect room for a scholar! The windows high up, as they should be.”
For if one is to have clear mental vision it is not well that the room
should have a view.
XV
TEA
“Thank God,” said Sydney Smith, “thank God for tea! What would the
world do without tea?--how did it exist? I am glad I was not born
before tea.” Well, I get along very well without tea, though I rejoice
to see that more and more in “big business” houses in American cities
there is a fifteen-minute pause for afternoon tea.
One of the chief differences between the life of Englishmen and of
Americans is tea. Millions of Englishmen take tea three times a day.
Tea is brought to their bedside early in the morning, and thirstily
swallowed while in a horizontal attitude. The first thing an Englishman
thinks of, if he wakes at dawn, is tea. When Arnold Bennett was
travelling in America he took a limited train from New York to Chicago.
Early in the morning he rang for the porter and when that individual
appeared he commanded nonchalantly a cup of tea. He might as well have
asked for a pot of hashish. The porter mechanically remarked that the
“diner” would be put on at such-and-such an hour. This unintelligible
contribution to the conversation was ignored by the famous novelist,
who repeated his demand for tea. He was amazed to find there was no
tea. “And you call this a first-class train!”
Then at breakfast--a substantial meal in British homes, though having
somewhat the air of a cafeteria--tea is drunk copiously. To the average
American tea for breakfast is flat and unprofitable. We are accustomed
to the most inspiring beverage in the world, actual coffee. The coffee
in England is so detestable that when an American tastes it for the
first time he thinks it is a mistake. And he is right. It is. Many
Americans give it up and reluctantly order tea. In my judgment, for
breakfast the worst coffee is better than the best tea.
There are many Americans who have tea served at luncheon. For some
reason this seems to the Englishman sacrilegious. The late Professor
Mahaffy, who is now (I suppose) drinking nectar, was absolutely
horrified to find that in my house he was offered a cup of tea at
lunch. “Tea for lunch!” he screamed, and talked about it for the rest
of the meal.
I was invited by a charming American lady to meet an English author
at her house for luncheon. Tea was served and she said deprecatingly
to the British author, “I don’t suppose you have tea at this time
in England.” “Oh, yes,” said he, “the servants often have it below
stairs.” To my delight, the hostess said, “Now, Mr. ----, aren’t you
really ashamed of offering me an insult like that? Isn’t that remark of
yours exactly the kind of thing you are going to be ashamed of when you
think it over, all by yourself?”
At precisely 4:13 P.M. every day the average Englishman has a thirst
for the astringent taste of tea. He does not care for hot water or
hot lemonade coloured with tea. He likes his tea so strong that to me
it has a hairy flavour. Many years ago the famous Scot William Archer
invited me to his rooms in the Hotel Belmont, New York, for afternoon
tea at 4:15. He had several cups and at five o’clock excused himself,
as he had to go out to an American home for tea. I suggested that he
had already had it. “Oh, that makes no difference.”
There are several good reasons (besides bad coffee) for tea in England.
Breakfast is often at nine (the middle of the morning to me), so that
early tea is desirable. Dinner is often at eight-thirty, so that
afternoon tea is by no means superfluous. Furthermore, of the three
hundred and sixty-five days of the year in England, very, very few are
warm; and afternoon tea is not only cheerful and sociable but in most
British interiors really necessary to start the blood circulating.
There are few more agreeable moments in life than tea in an English
country house in winter. It is dark at four o’clock. The family and
guests come in from the cold air. The curtains are drawn, the open
wood fire is blazing, the people sit down around the table and with a
delightful meal--for the most attractive food in England is served at
afternoon tea--drink of the cheering beverage.
William Cowper, in the eighteenth century, gave an excellent
description:
Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
Not long before this poem was written the traveller Jonas Hanway
had the bad luck to publish an essay on tea, “considered as
pernicious to health, obstructing industry, and impoverishing the
nation,” which naturally drew the artillery fire of the great Dr.
Johnson. Sir John Hawkins, in his life of Johnson, comments on this
controversy. He says: “That it is pernicious to health is disputed
by physicians”--where have I heard something like that recently? But
Hawkins continues: “Bishop Burnet, for many years, drank sixteen large
cups of it every morning, and never complained that it did him the
least injury.”
As for Johnson, “he was a lover of tea to an excess hardly credible;
whenever it appeared, he was almost raving, and by his impatience to
be served, his incessant calls for those ingredients which make that
liquor palatable, and the haste with which he swallowed it down, he
seldom failed to make that a fatigue to every one else, which was
intended as a general refreshment.”
In nearly every English novel I find the expression, “I am dying for
my tea!” On a voyage to Alaska, where tea was served on deck every
afternoon, at precisely the same moment an elderly British lady
appeared from below with precisely the same exclamation: “Oh, is there
tea going?” And on her face was a holy look.
Alfred Noyes told me that during the war, when he was writing up
important incidents for the benefit of the public, he was assigned to
interview the sailors immediately after the tremendous naval battle of
Jutland. He found a bluejacket who had been sent aloft and kept there
during the fearful engagement, when shells weighing half a ton came
hurtling through the air and when ships blew up around him. Thinking he
would get a marvellous “story” out of this sailor, Mr. Noyes asked him
to describe his sensations during those frightful hours. All the man
said was, “Well, of course, I had to miss my tea!”
XVI
THE WEATHER
Nearly all the great poetry of the world, ancient and modern, has been
written in Europe. This fact should never be forgotten in reading
literature that alludes to the weather. The reason every one talks
about the weather is not that the average person has nothing else to
say; it is that the weather is usually the most interesting topic
available. It is the first thing we think of in the hour of waking; it
affects our plans, projects and temperament.
When I was a little boy at school there was a song sung in unison
called “Hail, Autumn, Jovial Fellow!” It seemed to me to express
correctly the true character of autumn. It was not until I had reached
maturity in years that I discovered that the song, as judged by the
world’s most famous writers, was a misfit. Instead of autumn’s being
jovial, it was dull, damp, dark, depressing. To be sure, I never
really felt that way about it; the evidence of my eyes was in favour
of the school song, but, as the great poets had given autumn a bad
reputation, I supposed in some way she must have earned it.
Still later I learned that Goethe was right when he said that in order
to understand a poet you must personally visit the country where he
wrote. Literary geography is seldom taught or seriously considered, but
it is impossible to read famous authors intelligently without knowing
their climatic and geographical environment. So keenly did I come to
feel about this that I finally prepared a cardboard map of England,
marking only the literary places, and I required my students to become
familiar with it. One of them subsequently wrote me a magnificent
testimonial, which I have often considered printing on the margin of
the map.
Dear Mr. Phelps--I have been bicycling all over England this
summer, and have found your Literary Map immensely useful. I have
carried it inside my shirt, and I think on several occasions it has
saved me from an attack of pneumonia.
There are millions of boys and girls studying Shakespeare in South
Africa, Australia and New Zealand; the poet’s frequent allusions to the
climate and the weather must seem strange.
That you have such a February face.
February “down under” is midsummer. Southern latitudes give the lie to
Shakespeare’s metaphors.
The reason autumn has so bad a name in the world’s poetry and prose is
that autumn in Northern Europe is a miserable season. In London, Paris,
Berlin, November (and often October) is one of the worst times of the
year. A chronically overcast sky, a continual drizzle, a damp chill
even on mistily rainless days, combine to produce gloom. The first
autumn and winter I spent in Paris revised my notions of those two
seasons. As an American, I had thought of the difference between summer
and winter as a difference only in temperature; I reasonably expected
as much sunshine in autumn and winter as in summer. A typical January
day in New York is cold and cloudless.
Well, in Paris the sun disappeared for weeks at a time, and on the rare
occasions when it shone people ran out in the street to look at it.
One of the worst jokes in the world is the expression, “sunny France.”
The French themselves know better. François Coppée wrote of the “rare
smiles” of the Norman climate, and Anatole France, describing a pretty
girl, wrote “Her eyes were grey; the grey of the Paris sky.”
For the same reason “Italian skies” have been overpraised, because
their eulogists are English or French or German. The Italian sky
is usually so much better than the sky of more northerly European
localities that it seems good by contrast. Now, as a matter of fact
the winter sky over Bridgeport, Conn., is superior in brightness and
blueness to the sky over Florence or Venice.
November, one of the best months of the year in America, is dreaded
by all who live in France, England or Germany. Walking in New Haven
one brilliant (and quite typical) day in mid-November, exhibiting the
university and city to a visiting French professor, I enquired, “What
do you think of our November climate?” He replied, “It is crazy.”
A strange thing is that Bryant, born in the glorious Berkshires of
western Massachusetts, where autumn, instead of being pale and wet as
the European poets have described it, is brilliant and inspiring, all
blue and gold, did not use his eyes; he followed the English poetical
tradition.
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year.
James Whitcomb Riley used the evidence of his senses, and wrote an
autumnal masterpiece.
O it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best....
They’s something kind o’ hearty-like about the atmosphere
When the beat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here--Of
course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;
But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a picture that no painter has the colorin’ to mock--
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
One difference between the temperament of the typical Englishman and
the typical American is caused largely by the climate, and foreigners
in writing books about us should not forget the fact. If nearly every
morning the sky were overcast and the air filled with drizzle, we might
not be quite so enthusiastic.
On the other hand, the early spring in England and France is more
inspiring than ours, perhaps by reason of the darkness of winter. It
comes much earlier. Alfred Housman says:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
In our Northern American States a blossoming fruit tree at Eastertide
would be a strange spectacle.
XVII
WAR
War is a sentimental affair; that is why it is so difficult to abolish.
War is opposed to the dictates of common sense, prudence, rationality,
and wisdom. But the sentiments of man and the passions of man are
deeper, more elemental, and more primitive than his intelligence,
knowledge, and reasoning powers. For intelligence and morality belong
to man alone; his instincts he shares with the entire animal creation.
My own plan for getting rid of war would not win a peace prize, because
it would never be adopted. But I believe it strikes at the root of
war--sentiment. My plan would be to spoil the good looks of the
officers and also take away all their drums, fifes, and brass bands.
The uniforms are altogether too handsome, too attractive, too becoming.