SUNDAY EVENING IN LONDON
Married folk always know, only the bachelor asks, "Where shall I dine?
Shall I spend two shillings in a chop-house, or five in my club, or
ten at the Café Royal?" For two or three more shillings one may sit on
the balcony of the Savoy, facing the spectacle of evening darkening on
the river, with lights of bridge and wharf and warehouse afloat in the
tide. Married folk know their bedfellows; bachelors, and perhaps
spinsters, are not so sure of theirs: this is a side issue which we
will not pursue; an allusion to it will suffice to bring before the
reader the radical difference between the lives of the married and the
unmarried. O married ones, from breakfast to six, only, do our lives
resemble yours! At that hour we begin to experience a sense of freedom
and, I confess it, of loneliness. Perhaps life is essentially a lonely
thing, and the married and the unmarried differ only in this, that we
are lonely when we are by ourselves, and they are lonely when they are
together.
At half-past six the bachelor has to tidy up after the day's work, to
put his picture away if he be a painter, to put his writings away if
he be a writer, and then the very serious question arises, with whom
shall he dine? His thoughts fly through Belgravia and Mayfair, and
after whisking round Portman Square, and some other square in the
northern neighbourhood, they soar and go away northward to Regent's
Park, seeking out somebody living in one of those stately terraces who
will ask him to stay to dinner. At So-and-So's there is always a round
of beef and cold chicken-pie, whereas What-do-you-call-them's begin
with soup. But really the food is not of much consequence; it is
interesting company he seeks.
It was last week that I realised, and for the first time, how
different was the life of the married from the unmarried. The day was
Sunday, and I had been writing all day, and in the hush that begins
about six o'clock I remembered I had no dinner engagement that
evening. The cup of tea I generally take about half-past four had
enabled me to do another hour's work, but a little after six sentences
refused to form themselves, a little dizziness began in the brain, and
the question not only "Where shall I dine?" but "Where shall I pass
the hour before dinner?" presented itself. The first thing to do was
to dress, and while dressing I remembered that I had not wandered in
St. James's Park for some time, and that that park since boyhood had
fascinated me. St. James's Park and the Green Park have never been
divided in my admiration of their beauty. The trees that grow along
the Piccadilly railings are more beautiful in St. James's Park, or
seem so, for the dells are well designed. The art of landscape-gardening
is more akin to the art of a musician than to that of
a painter; it is a sort of architecture with colour added. The
formal landscape-gardening of Versailles reminds one of a tragedy by
Racine, but the romantic modulations of the green hills along the
Piccadilly areas are as enchanting as Haydn. There was a time when a
boy used to walk from Brompton to Piccadilly to see, not the dells,
but the women going home from the Argyle Rooms and the Alhambra, but
after a slight hesitation he often crossed from the frequented to the
silent side, to stand in admiration of the white rays of moonlight
stealing between the trunks of the trees, allowing him to perceive the
shapes of the hollows through the darkness. The trees grow so
beautifully about these mounds, and upon the mounds, that it is easy
to fill the interspaces with figures from Gainsborough's pictures,
ladies in hoops and powdered hair, elegant gentlemen wearing buckled
shoes, tail-coats, and the swords which made them gentlemen.
Gainsborough did not make his gentlemen plead--that was his fault; but
Watteau's ladies put their fans to their lips so archly, asking the
pleading lover if he believes all he says, knowing well that his vows
are only part of the gracious entertainment. But why did not the great
designer of St. James's Park build little Greek temples--those
pillared and domed temples which give such grace to English parks?
Perhaps the great artist who laid out the Green Park was a moralist
and a seer, and divining the stream of ladies that come up from
Brompton to Piccadilly he thought--well, well, his thoughts were his
own, and now the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say.
Five-and-twenty years ago the white rays slanted between the
tree-trunks, and the interspaces lengthened out, disappearing in
illusive lights and shades, and, ascending the hill, the boy used to
look over the empty plain, wondering at the lights of the Horse Guards
shining far away like a village. Perhaps to-night, about midnight, I
may find myself in Piccadilly again, for we change very little; what
interested us in our youth interests us almost to the end. St. James's
Park is perhaps more beautiful in the sunset--there is the lake, and,
led by remembrance of some sunsets I had seen on it, I turned out of
Victoria Street last Sunday, taking the eastern gate, my thoughts
occupied with beautiful Nature, seeing in imagination the shapes of
the trees designing themselves grandly against the sky, and the little
life of the ponds--the ducks going hither and thither, every duck
intent upon its own business and its own desire. I was extremely
fortunate, for the effect of light in the Green Park was more
beautiful last Sunday than anything I had ever seen; the branches of
the tall plane trees hung over the greensward, the deciduous foliage
hardly stirring in the pale sunshine, and my heart went out to the
ceremonious and cynical garden, artificial as eighteenth-century
couplets. Wild Nature repels me; and I thought how interesting it was
to consider one's self, to ponder one's sympathies. Our antipathies
are not quite so interesting to consider, but they are interesting,
too, in a way, for they belong to one's self, and self is man's main
business: all outside of self is uncertain; all comes from self, all
returns to self. The reason I desired St. James's Park last Sunday was
surely because it was part of me--not that part known to my friends;
our friends understand only those margins of themselves which they
discover in us. Never did I meet one who discovered for himself or
herself that I loved trees better than flowers, or was deeply
interested in the fact when attention was called to it....
I watch the trees and never weary of their swaying--solemnly silent
and strangely green they are in the long, rainy days, excited when a
breeze is blowing; in fine weather they gossip like frivolous girls!
In their tremulous decline they are more beautiful than ever, far more
beautiful than flowers. Now, I am telling myself, the very
subconscious soul is speaking. And with what extraordinary loveliness
did the long branches hang out of the tall, stately plane trees like
plumes; in the hush of sound and decline of light the droop of the
deciduous foliage spoke like a memory. I seemed to have known the park
for centuries; yon glade I recognised as one that Watteau had painted.
But in what picture? It is difficult to say, so easily do his pictures
flow one into the other, always the same melancholy, the melancholy of
festival, that pain in the heart, that yearning for the beyond which
all suffer whose business in life is to wear painted or embroidered
dresses, and to listen or to plead, with this for sole variation, that
they who listen to-day will plead to-morrow. Watteau divined the
sorrow of those who sit under colonnades always playing some part,
great or small, in love's comedy, listening to the murmur of the
fountain, watching a gentleman and lady advancing and bowing, bowing
and retiring, dancing a pavane on a richly coloured carpet. Pierrot,
the white, sensual animal, the eighteenth-century modification of the
satyr, of the faun, plays a guitar; the pipe of Pan has been exchanged
for a guitar.
As the twilight gathered under the plane trees my vision became more
mixed and morbid, and I hardly knew if the picture I saw was the
picture in the Dulwich Gallery or the exquisite picture in the Louvre,
"Une Assemblée dans la Parc." We all know that picture, the gallants
and the ladies by the water-side, and the blue evening showing through
the tall trees. The picture before me was like that picture, only the
placing of the trees and the slope of the greensward did not admit of
so extended a composition. A rough tree-trunk, from which a great
branch had been broken or lopped off, stood out suddenly in very
nineteenth-century naturalness, awaking the ghost of a picture which I
recognised at once as Corot. Behind the tree a tender, evanescent sky,
pure and transparent as the very heart of a flower, rose up, filling
the park with romance, and as the sunset drooped upon the water, my
soul said, "The Lake!" Ah, the pensive shadow that falls from the
hills on either side of "The Lake," leaving the middle of the picture
suffused with a long stream of light, narrowing as it approached the
low horizon. But the line of the trees on the hither side of this
London lake was heavier than the spiritual trees in the picture
entitled "By the Water-side," and there was not anywhere the beauty of
the broken birch that leans over the lake in "Le Lac de Garde." Then I
thought of "The Ravine," for the darkening island reminded me of the
hillside in the picture. But the St. James's Park sky lacked the
refined concentration of light in "The Ravine," so beautifully placed,
low down in the picture, behind some dark branches jutting from the
right. The difference between Nature and Corot is as great as the
difference between a true and a false Corot. Not that there is
anything untrue in Nature, only Nature lacks humanity--self! Therefore
not quite so interesting as a good Corot.
So did I chatter to myself as I walked toward the bridge, that dear
bridge, thrown straight as a plank across the lake, with numerous
water-fowl collected there, a black swan driving the ducks about,
snatching more than his due share of bread, and little children
staring stolidly, afraid of the swan, and constantly reproved by their
mothers for reasons which must always seem obscure to the bachelor. A
little breeze was blowing, and the ducks bobbed like corks in the
waves, keeping themselves in place with graceful side-strokes of their
webbed feet. Sometimes the ducks rose from the water and flew round
the trees by Queen Anne's Mansions, or they fled down the lake with
outstretched necks like ducks on a Japanese fan, dropping at last into
the water by the darkening island, leaving long silver lines, which
the night instantly obliterated.
An impression of passing away, of the effacement of individual life.
One sighs, remembering that it is even so, that life passes, sunrise
after sunrise, moonlight upon moonlight, evening upon evening, and we
like May-flies on the surface of a stream, no more than they for all
our poets and priests.
The clock struck seven, reminding me of the dinner-hour, reminding
me that I should have to dine alone that evening. To avoid dining
alone I should not have lingered in St. James's Park, but if I had
not lingered I should have missed an exquisite hour of meditation,
and meditations are as necessary to me as absinthe to the
absinthe-drinker. Only some little incident was wanting--a meeting
with one whom one has not seen for a long time, a man or a woman, it
would not matter which, a peg whereon to hang the description of the
dusk among the trees, but I had met no friend in the Park. But one
appeared on the threshold of St. James's Street. There I met a young
man, a painter, one whose pictures interested me sometimes, and we
went to a restaurant to talk art.
"After dinner," I said, "we will get the best cigars and walk about
the circus. Every Sunday night it is crowded; we shall see the women
hurrying to and fro on love's quest. The warm night will bring them
all out in white dresses, and a white dress in the moonlight is an
enchantment. Don't you like the feather boas reaching almost to the
ground? I do. Lights-o'-love going about their business interest me
extraordinarily, for they and the tinkers and gipsies are the last
that remain of the old world when outlawry was common. Now we are all
socialists, more or less occupied with the performance of duties which
obtain every one's approval. Methinks it is a relief to know that
somebody lives out of society. I like all this London, this midnight
London, when the round moon rises above the gracious line of Regent
Street, and flaming Jupiter soars like a hawk, following some quest of
his own. We on our little, he on his greater quest."
* * * * *
The night was hot and breathless, like a fume, and upon a great silken
sky the circular and sonorous street circled like an amphitheatre....
I threw open my light overcoat, and, seizing the arm of my friend, I
said:
"He reminds me of a Turk lying amid houris. The gnawing, creeping
sensualities of his phrase--his one phrase--how descriptive it is of
the form and whiteness of a shoulder, the supple fulness of the arm's
muscle, the brightness of eyes increased by kohl! Scent is burning on
silver dishes, and through the fumes appear the subdued colours of
embroidered stuffs and the inscrutable traceries of bronze lamps. Or,
maybe, the scene passes on a terrace overlooking a dark river. Behind
the domes and minarets a yellow moon dreams like an odalisque, her
hand on the circle of her breast; and through the torrid silence of
the garden, through the odour of over-ripe fruit and the falling sound
thereof, comes the melancholy warble of a fountain. Or is it the
sorrow of lilies rising through the languid air to the sky? The night
is blue and breathless; the spasms of the lightning are intermittent
among the minarets and the domes; the hot, fierce fever of the garden
waxes in the almond scent of peaches and the white odalisques
advancing, sleek oracles of mood.... He reminds me of the dark-eyed
Bohemian who comes into a tavern silently, and, standing in a corner,
plays long, wild, ravishing strains. I see him not, I hardly hear him;
my thoughts are far away; my soul slumbers, desiring nothing. I care
not to lift my head. Why should I break the spell of my meditations?
But I feel that his dark eyes are fixed upon me, and little by little,
in spite of my will, my senses awake; a strange germination is in
progress within me; thoughts and desires that I dread, of whose
existence in myself I was not aware, whose existence in myself I would
fain deny, come swiftly and come slowly, and settle and absorb and
become part of me.... Fear is upon me, but I may not pause; I am
hurried on; repudiation is impossible, supplication and the wringing
of hands are vain; God has abandoned me; my worst nature is uppermost.
I see it floating up from the depths of my being, a viscous scum. But
I can do nothing to check or control.... God has abandoned me.... I am
the prey to that dark, sensual-eyed Bohemian and his abominable
fiddle; and seizing my bank-notes, my gold and my silver, I throw him
all I have. I bid him cease, and fall back exhausted. Give me "The
Ring," give me "The Ring." Its cloud palaces, its sea-caves and
forests, and the animality therein, its giants and dwarfs and sirens,
its mankind and its godkind--surely it is nearer to life! Or go into
the meadows with Beethoven, and listen to the lark and the blackbird!
We are nearer life lying by a shady brook, hearing the quail in the
meadows and the yellow-hammer in the thicket, than we are now, under
this oppressive sky. This street is like Klinsor's garden; here, too,
are flower-maidens--patchouli, jessamine, violet. Here is the
languorous atmosphere of "Parsifal." Come, let us go; let us seek the
country, the moon-haunted dells we shall see through Piccadilly
railings. Have you ever stood in the dip of Piccadilly and watched the
moonlight among the trees, and imagined a comedy by Wycherley acted
there, a goodly company of gallants and fine ladies seated under the
trees watching it? Every one has come there in painted sedan-chairs;
the bearers are gathered together at a little distance."
"My dear friend, you're talking so much that you don't see those who
are passing us. That girl, she who has just turned to look back,
favours heliotrope; it is delicious still upon the air; she is as
pretty a girl as any that ever came in a sedan-chair to see a comedy
by Wycherley. The comedy varies very little: it is always the same
comedy, and it is always interesting. The circus in a sultry summer
night under a full moon is very like Klinsor's garden. Come, if you be
not _Parsifal_."