There are some people who can't enjoy fairy-stories, and don't like
imagining. They are a bit too hard-headed. I don't blame such people;
they are all right enough in their way. Only they ought not to go around
saying fairy-stories are silly. They ought simply to let them alone and
live nice hard-headed lives.
It is the same way with soft-headed people who cannot enjoy the real
world. Not having much taste for it, and not getting on too well in it,
they are apt to call it pretty bad names and to wish it were different.
I think them too hasty. Before they abuse or advise it they should first
understand it. If they can't, they should let it alone more, and live in
their dreams.
Or in those of such dreamers as Maeterlinck, Dunsany, or Poe.
The Maeterlinck books constitute quite a beautiful country. They have
long been a favorite home for our soft-headed friends. And those of us
who are of a compound between hard and soft enjoy visiting the
Maeterlinck coast as we might a resort. It is pleasantly unreal; it is
varied. Gentle breezes of sweetness; blue seas, massive rocks; and
storms too. Here and there a crag, or dark castle of terrible grandeur.
Is it not picturesque? Don't poke at the castles with your umbrella; you
might go through the tin; but take it all in the right spirit as you
would Coney Island.
Human nature being what it is, there is certainly a need for this place.
There is one little difficulty about the situation however. Monsieur
Maeterlinck, the proprietor, although he makes his home in this region,
likes sometimes to visit the real world, if but for a change. Well, this
would be nothing to object to, though for him injudicious, but he is
such a stranger there that he does not at all know his place. He takes
himself seriously at his home; it is natural, I'm sure; but it leads him
to speak in the real world with a voice of authority. He is not in the
least offensive about it, no one could be more gentle, but he doesn't at
all realize that his rank here permits no such tone. On the Maeterlinck
coast, in the realms of romance, he is king. In the real world his
judgments are not above those of a child.
It would give me more pleasure (or at any rate it ought to, I know) to
dwell on his many abilities than on this one fault. But this excellent
man has the misfortune to resemble wood-alcohol. Wood-alcohol is a
respectable liquid; it is useful in varnish; when poured in a lamp it
heats tea; yes, it has its good side. Yet how little we dwell on its
uses, how much on its defect; its one small defect that it's fatal when
taken internally.
Maeterlinck has for years made a business of beautiful thoughts. With
some of them he built romantic tales that are or were a refreshment. But
others he embodied in sermons addressed to reality. He told us none
needed to go to his coast for romance, or for purity and beauty and
goodness, for we really were full of them. We were made in fact of just
these ingredients, at least in our hearts; and it followed, he said,
that our actions should be chosen accordingly. Without ever having
learned anything much of mankind, he described just the way that he felt
all mankind should behave. He put on the robes of a sage, and he
sweetened his looks, and his voice became tender and thrilling and
rather impressive; and he wrote about the Treasure of the Humble, and
Wisdom and Destiny.
The real world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery.
Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed. A man
must stay sober: not always, but most of the time. Those of us who drink
from the flasks of the sages of dreamland become so intoxicated with
guff we are a peril to everyone.
We trust in Hague tribunals for instance, on the eve of great wars.
The flask that Wood-Alcohol Maurice, if I may so call him, held so long
to our lips in the years before 1914, produced the usual effects of joy
first, and then blindness and coma. I speak from experience. I took some
myself and was poisoned, and I knew other cases. But it poisoned poor
Maeterlinck more--I may say, most of all--for he had taken his own
medicine honorably as fast as he mixed it. Owing to this imprudence, he
found himself, in 1914, in such a deep coma it almost killed him to come
out of it. His anger at having to wake up and face things was loud. He
found himself compelled to live for a while in the midst of hard facts,
and his comments upon them were scathing; as all dreamers' are.
Since then he has gone part-way back to the land of romance, and if he
will stay there I shall not prefer charges against him. He is one of the
masters of fancy. He can mine fairy gold. But any time he comes to this
world we're now learning to live in, or offers us any more mail-order
lessons in sweetness, I think we should urge him to go and stay where he
belongs.
There is a poem by Joaquin Miller about Columbus that describes his long
voyage. It consists, as I remember, entirely of groans by the sailors,
who keep asking Columbus whether he will please let them turn back. But
Columbus never has but one answer, and that is "Sail on." He says "Sail
on, sail on," over and over again, at the end of each stanza. I grant
you it must have been monotonous enough to the crew, who after the first
week or two probably knew it by heart; but never mind, it sounds well to
us. It's especially good when declaimed. I don't suppose Columbus
himself climbed the poop and declaimed it; he merely stopped shaving,
stuck his head out of the chart-room and screeched it,--suitably mixed
with whatever profanities his day could command. But Time, which softens
all homely history, has beautified this. All the boy Columbuses _I_ ever
heard recite it, when I was at school, had as noble a way as one could
ask of telling their crews to sail on.
I did not mean to make so long a digression. To get back to Maeterlinck.
We ought to provide him with a beautiful baby-blue ship. Odd, charming
allegorical figures should sit on the decks, and fenders should hang
from the sides to ward off bumps of truth. Astern he might tow a small
wife-boat, as a mariner should, with its passenger capacity carefully
stamped on the bottom. And instead of Columbus, a honey-fed spirit of
dream should stand in his prow and adjure him to sail on, to dreamland.
"Dream on, dream on, dream on," she should patter, each time he grew
restless. I could not take a turn in the prow myself, it would be too
much honor; but I should be glad to take my stand in the gentleman's
rear, and do all I could to accelerate his progress from thence.
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