"I doubt if we can really make this effort. Blacks, Stinks, Desolations,
Poisons, Hell's Nightmare generally have, I suspect, worked themselves
into the very form and mould of our thoughts. We are sober, and perhaps
the Tavern door is shut for ever against us.
"Now and then, perhaps, at rarer and still rarer intervals, a few of us
will hear very faintly the far echoes of the holy madness within the
closed door:
_"When up the thyrse is raised, and when the sound
Of sacred orgies flies 'around, around.'_
"Which is the _Sonus Epulantium in AEterno Convivio_.
"But this we shall not be able to discern. Very likely we shall take the
noise of this High Choir for the horrid mirth of Hell. How strange it is
that those who are pledged officially and ceremonially, as it were, to a
Rite of Initiation which figures certainly a Feast, should in all their
thoughts and words and actions be continually blaspheming and denying
all the uses and ends of feastings and festivals.
"This is not the refusal of the _species_ for the sake of enjoying
perfectly the most beautiful and desirable _genus_; it is the renouncing
of species and genus, the pronouncing of Good to be Evil. The Universal
being denied, the Particular is degraded and defiled. What is called
'The Drink Curse' is the natural and inevitable result and sequence of
the 'Protestant Reformation.' If the clear wells and fountains of the
magic wood are buried out of sight, then men (who must have Drink) will
betake them to the Slime Ponds and Poison Pools.
"In the Graal Books there is a curse--an evil enchantment--on the land
of Logres because the mystery of the Holy Vessel is disregarded. The
Knight sees the Dripping Spear and the Shining Cup pass before him, and
says no word. He asks no question as to the end and meaning of this
ceremony. So the land is blasted and barren and songless, and those who
dwell in it are in misery.
"Every day of our lives we see the Graal carried before us in a
wonderful order, and every day we leave the question unasked, the
Mystery despised and neglected. Yet if we could ask that question,
bowing down before these Heavenly and Glorious Splendours and
Hallows--then every man should have the meat and drink that his soul
desired; the hall would be filled with odours of Paradise, with the
light of Immortality.
"In the books the Graal was at last taken away because of men's
unworthiness. So it will be, I suppose. Even now, the Quester's
adventure is a desperate one--few there be that find It.
"Ventilation and sanitation are well enough in their way. But it would
not be very satisfactory to pass the day in a ventilated and sanitated
Hell with nothing to eat or drink. If one is perishing of hunger and
thirst, sanitation seems unimportant enough.
"How wonderful, how glorious it would be if the Kingdom of the Great
Drinkers could be restored! If we could only sweep away all the might
of the Sober Ones--the factory builders, the poison makers, the
politicians, the manufacturers of bad books and bad pictures, together
with Little Bethel and the morality of Mr. Mildmay, the curate (a series
of negative propositions)--then imagine the Great Light of the Great
Inebriation shining on every face, and not any work of man's hands, from
a cathedral to a penknife, without the mark of the Tavern upon it! All
the world a great festival; every well a fountain of strong drink; every
river running with the New Wine; the Sangraal brought back from Sarras,
restored to the awful shrine of Cor-arbennic, the Oracle of the _Dive
Bouteille_ once more freely given, the ruined Vineyard flourishing once
more, girt about by shining, everlasting walls! Then we should hear the
Old Songs again, and they would dance the Old Dances, the happy,
ransomed people, Commensals and Compotators of the Everlasting Tavern."
The whole treatise, of which this extract is a fragment in a rudimentary
and imperfect stage, is, of course, an impassioned appeal for the
restoration of the quickening, exuberant imagination, not merely in art,
but in all the inmost places of life. There is more than this, too. Here
and there one can hear, as it were, the whisper and the hint of deeper
mysteries, visions of a great experiment and a great achievement to
which some men may be called. In his own words: "Within the Tavern there
is an Inner Tavern, but the door of it is visible to few indeed."
In Ambrose's mind in the after years the stout notebook was dear,
perhaps as a substitute for that aroma of the past in a phial which he
has declared so desirable an invention. It stood, not so much for what
was written in it as for the place and the circumstances in which it was
written. It recalled Little Russell Row and Nelly, and the evenings at
the Chateau de Chinon, where, night by night, they served still
stranger, more delicious meats, and the red wine revealed more clearly
its high celestial origin. One evening was diversified by an odd
encounter.
A middle-aged man, sitting at an adjoining table, was evidently in want
of matches, and Ambrose handed his box with the sympathetic smile which
one smoker gives to another in such cases. The man--he had a black
moustache and a small, pointed beard--thanked him in fluent English with
a French accent, and they began to talk of casual things, veering, by
degrees, in the direction of the arts. The Frenchman smiled at Meyrick's
enthusiasm.
"What a life you have before you!" he said. "Don't you know that the
populace always hates the artist--and kills him if it can? You are an
artist and mystic, too. What a fate!
"Yes; but it is that applause, that _reclame_ that comes after the
artist is dead," he went on, replying to some objection of Ambrose's;
"it is that which is the worst cruelty of all. It is fine for Burns, is
it not, that his stupid compatriots have not ceased to utter follies
about him for the last eighty years? Scotchmen? But they should be
ashamed to speak his name! And Keats, and how many others in my country
and in yours and in all countries? The imbeciles are not content to
calumniate, to persecute, to make wretched the artist in his lifetime.
They follow him with their praise to the grave--the grave that they have
digged! Praise of the populace! Praise of a race of pigs! For, you see,
while they are insulting the dead with their compliments they are at the
same time insulting the living with their abuse."
He dropped into silence; from his expression he seemed to be cursing
"the populace" with oaths too frightful to be uttered. He rose suddenly
and turned to Ambrose.
"Artist--and mystic. Yes. You will probably be crucified. Good
evening ... and a fine martyrdom to you!"
He was gone with a charming smile and a delightful bow to "Madame."
Ambrose looked after him with a puzzled face; his last words had called
up some memory that he could not capture; and then suddenly he
recollected the old, ragged Irish fiddler, the player of strange
fantasies under the tree in the outskirts of Lupton. He thought of his
phrase about "red martyrdom"; it was an odd coincidence.