things and spiritual things, the question whether the former are
ever of any real consequence or significance. As I have said before,
the evidence that Home the medium rose “miraculously”--to adopt a
convenient shorthand--into the air seems to me good; but is such
a phenomenon of any more true consequence than the phenomenon of
Hydrogen gas rising into the air from the admixture of water, zinc
and sulphuric acid? And so, were the incense clouds that came to my
nostrils in places where, assuredly, no material incense smoked, of
consequence? Was the billowy and resilient pavement of detestable
Rosebery Avenue of consequence? Were the pictures that shivered and
wavered on the unstable wall of consequence? I do not know; but
I am sure that the state which followed this last experience was
of high consequence. For when I rose, afraid, and broke off the
process in which I had been engaged, I found to my utter amazement
that everything within had been changed. Amazement; for the utmost
that I had hoped from my experiment was a temporary dulling of the
consciousness, a brief opium oblivion of my troubles. And what I
received was not mere dull lack of painful sensation, but a peace
of the spirit that was quite ineffable, a knowledge that all hurts
and doles and wounds were healed, that that which was broken was
reunited. Everything, of body and of mind, was resolved into an
infinite and an exquisite delight; into a joy so great that--let
this be duly noted--it became almost intolerable in its ecstasy.
I remember thinking at the time: “There is wine so strong that no
earthly vessels can hold it”: joy threatened to become an agony, that
must shatter all. Emily Brontë, describing the state of Heathcliff
soon before his death, has described just such a condition; I have
often wondered how she knew of it.
But this was later. For that day and for many days afterwards I was
dissolved in bliss, into a sort of rapture of life which has no
parallel that I can think of, which has, therefore, no analogies by
which it may be made more plain. The vine and the exultation of the
vine are solemn and ancient and approved figures of the joys of the
interior life, but these are not quite to my purpose. I can only fall
back on little things, and quite material things. My chambers in
Verulam Buildings were towards the northern portion of the Inn, and
the traffic of Theobald’s Road was distinct enough, distinct enough,
often, to be an annoyance. But this night, the “ping, ping!” of the
omnibus bell, the grind of the many wheels upon the cobble-stones
sounded to me as marvellous and tremendous chords reverberating
from some mighty organ; filling the air, filling the soul and the
whole being with rapture immeasurable. And another trifle, as
insignificant, even more insignificant, perhaps. In the ordinary
state of existence the sense of touch is exercised constantly, but
almost unconsciously. Now and again it is used with intent; the
buyer of old furniture acquires a sort of thumb-and-finger craft;
he passes the tips of his fingers over the edges of the bureau or
cabinet, and they help him to decide whether the object is an antique
or a novelty. And so, I suppose, a woman choosing stuffs uses her
fingers in much the same manner, learning something about the silk
or velvet by the process. But in general, and very conveniently, you
take up pen or pencil, or place your hand on the back of the chair
without any distinct consciousness of the impact of your flesh on
these exterior objects: unless, that is, your hand encounter some
unexpected object which insists on notice, such as a pin point or a
rusty nail. But in these strange days of which I am speaking touch
became an exquisite and conscious pleasure; I could not so much as
place my hand on the table before me without experiencing a thrill
of delight which was not merely sensuous, but carried with it,
mysteriously and wonderfully, the message of a secret and interior
joy.
And one more instance. I had always been subject to headaches which
visited me at intervals of five, six or seven weeks, and invariably
lasted for twenty-four hours. The pain was distressing, and any
movement of the head raised it into a racking, throbbing agony; I
should imagine that I suffered from a kind of migraine or megrims.
Late one night during the time of which I am speaking I felt the
first approaches of one of these tiresome attacks. I said to myself:
“I wonder whether I can stop it,” and I placed the tip of the
forefinger of the left hand upon my forehead. I felt the sense as of
a dull shock: and the pain was gone. And though I have had my share
of pains and aches since then, I have never been revisited by that
particular kind of headache from that day to this.
And there was yet another matter. In a little book of mine called
“The Great Return,” which nobody has heard of, I have told how the
Holy Grail came back for a brief while to Britain after long years.
And describing some of the things that were seen and known during
that happy visitation, I have written:
“The ‘glow’ as they call it seems more difficult to explain (than
certain other matters duly related). For they say that all through
the nine days, and indeed after the time had ended, there never was
a man weary or sick at heart in Llantrisant, or in the country round
it. For if a man felt that his work of the body or the mind was going
to be too much for his strength, then there would come to him of a
sudden a warm glow and a thrilling all over him and he felt as strong
as a giant, and happier than he had ever been in his life before, so
that lawyer and hedger each rejoiced in the task that was before him,
as if it were sport and play.”
Thus in the story, and thus it was with me in fact, in that autumn
and winter of 1899–1900. It was with a singular surprise that I
read, in St. Adamnan, many years afterwards, how St. Columba’s
monks, toiling in the fields, experienced now and again the very
sensation--if it be just to speak of it as a sensation--that I have
described. They, too, weary with their work of reclaiming the barren
land of their isle, would know that sudden glow of joy and strength
and courage; and they believed that it was the prayer of their Father
in God, Columba, strengthening them and inspiring them, as he knelt
before the altar of the Perpetual Choir. And lest it be said that
I had read Adamnan when I was a boy and had forgotten all about it
consciously though I had retained it subconsciously, I must solemnly
declare that this was not the case; and that when this strange
experience first befell me, I was overwhelmed with astonishment,
and could scarcely credit that which was actually happening. I
have hesitated as to whether it should be, in strictness, called a
sensation, and I still hesitate. It seems to me, and I think that I
can trust my recollection, that the two worlds of sense and spirit
were admirably and wonderfully mingled, so that it was difficult, or
rather impossible, to distinguish the outward and sensible glow from
the inward and spiritual grace. _Magnum vere sacramentum._ And all
this, be it remembered, would fall out in dim Bloomsbury squares, in
noisy, clattering Gray’s Inn Road, in a train on the Underground,
amongst hustling crowds in common streets. I mention this, not
forgetful of a pretty severe rebuke which I received from a very high
literary quarter on account of that little book, “The Great Return,”
which I have just cited. The critic noted the fact that in my book
the Holy Grail was manifested to the common people, to common modern
people, to Welsh tradesmen and farmers. He seemed to think this very
low. It may be low, but perhaps things happen in this way sometimes;
and so with me: I, by no manner of means a knight, received joys and
knew wonders while the trams clanged along the Clerkenwell Road in
the grey winter afternoon. So it was, and it appears to me necessary
to tell the truth. As Coventry Patmore says, quoting from an earlier
writer: “Let us not deny in the darkness that which we have known in
the light.”
And beyond all this, beyond these experiences in which things of the
body and things of the spirit were mingled, there was a better world
of which I saw the verges. There was no more grief; there was no more
resentment, there was no more anger. The griefs that flood the heart
with agony, the great sorrows of life, these were seen to be but
passing trifles of no moment, like the sorrow of a little child which
is past and forgotten before its tears are dry. I remember tearing up
an old diary which I had kept in the bitter days of Clarendon Road,
a record of struggles and starvings and desolations; I tore it up
because it no longer signified anything to me. The words, I daresay,
were strong enough, but the tale had become of no meaning at all. I
glanced at one page and another of the tattered old notebook before I
rent it, with a kind of mild curiosity as to the state of mind of the
silly stranger who had written all this, and had whined so dismally.
At all events, it had nothing to do with me, and so it went into
fragments and into the fire. If it could be restored to me now, I
should read it all with interest and whine again and foam again _sæva
indignatione_; but then I have long returned into that darkness in
which, I suppose, most of our lives are spent.
* * * * *
There is one thing that I hope I may be spared, that is the comment
of the Oriental Occult Ass. I confess that I have written all this
with difficulty, and with doubt as to the decency of writing it at
all, especially when the tale, if it is to be a true tale, makes
it necessary for me to seem to compare, for one little moment, the
saints of the company and following of St. Columba with myself. But
I do hope that nobody will say: “Why, this is only Ruja-Puja! You
get it all in the first chapter of the Anangasataga Raja! It’s all
perfectly elementary. Little Hindu children learn their A B C out of
it in the Svanka Visatvara. Why, when the Swami Vishnakanandaram Jam
Ghosh was over here last summer he mentioned all these phenomena as
things you have to forget before you set out on the Way. As he put it
so beautifully: ‘The sun arises. It gleams on the Lotus. The petals
of the _bhulji_ flower expand. The stars are no longer seen.’ Yes,
isn’t he wonderful? Fancy anybody still bothering about Keats and
those silly people!”
I hope, I say, that I shall be spared that. I can bear better I think
the (more or less) Occidental Idiot, who will speak of Shin--the
letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, not the delicate portion of our
anatomy--attribute it to the Tarot Trump called the Fool, and just
throw in a reference to Salt, Sulphur and Mercury.
As for me, I make no deductions, I infer nothing, I refrain from
saying “therefore.” Like Sancho Panza: “I come from my own vineyard;
I know nothing.” Perhaps I may venture to say that I have seen a
lousy, lazy tramp drinking from a roadside stream that drips cold and
pure from the rock in burning weather. Then the wastrel passes on his
ill way, refreshed indeed, but as lousy and lazy as ever.
_De torrente in via bibet: propterea exaltabit caput._
_Chapter X_
MR. CHARLES O’MALLEY, Castle O’Malley, Co. Galway.
That was the inscription of a card which had just been placed in my
hand, as I walked along Southampton Row--on which I found myself
stupidly gazing in real old Southampton Row, not the staring, blatant
street that bears the name now--one fine day in the summer of 1900.
Ten minutes or so before I had been taking my morning stroll in the
company of my bulldog, Juggernaut. I was accosted very politely by a
stoutish, youngish, clean-shaven gentleman, well dressed, with the
mere suspicion of an Irish accent.
He had said without preface of any kind:
“A fine dog you’ve got, sir. I should be very glad if you’d come up
with me and show it to a lady I know who lives in the flats opposite.”
I assented at once, feeling thoroughly in the scene, as they say
on the stage. I followed him and we displayed the dog Juggernaut,
certainly a noble specimen of his noble race, to the lady who, I
may say at once, was a lady, and appeared to be on terms of polite
acquaintance with the gentleman. Jug was admired, and the gentleman
and I went down into the street again. The lady had not evinced the
faintest astonishment at the introduction of a total stranger with
a bulldog into her flat. When we were both down on the pavement of
Southampton Row, the amateur of bulldogs gave me his card, and told
me that I should be welcome and more than welcome if ever I found
myself near Castle O’Malley, in County Galway. And so he vanished--if
he ever were there, as to which I held and still hold, in a fantastic
sort of way, vague doubts.
No, the flat was a perfectly quiet and unostentatious one. Nothing to
drink was produced; there were no K.O. drops. The lady did not ask me
to look in again some evening for a quiet game of cards with a few
congenial friends. Mr. O’Malley did not say that he had salvaged a
Spanish galleon wrecked beneath the rocks on which Castle O’Malley
was built, and that in consequence he had more money than he knew
what to do with. And I missed nothing from my pocket. That is one of
the reasons why I hate rationalism, since, when it is called in, in
a little difficulty or perplexity, its advices and explanations are
always so stupid, so wide of the mark, so absolutely futile. Finally,
from that day to this, I have never seen Mr. Charles O’Malley,
of Castle O’Malley, Co. Galway, nor have I heard of him. I have
forgotten to say that he did not so much as ask me my name.
I only wish that I had kept some kind of note of the very strange
period which I had entered. It came about gradually, the merging
of Syon into Bagdad; and I have a much dimmer recollection of the
latter city. For its essence, as will be seen in the anecdote of
the O’Malley, was lack of purpose, a certain fantastic confusion, a
sense that something without any ratio might happen at any moment.
Nothing began, nothing ended: strange people were apt to separate
themselves from the crowd, to engage in queer discourse without
intelligible motive or meaning, and then to sink back again, leaving
no trace behind. And when events lack logical sequence or connection,
it is difficult to retain them in the memory. But I believe that
I do remember that on this very day of the O’Malley incident ten
total strangers addressed me, without any very manifest reason and
to no discernible end. We encountered in all sorts of places, in
the street, in the restaurant, in the vanished Café de l’Europe in
Leicester Square; the strangers uttered their mysterious messages,
which to me were as incomprehensible as if they had been in cipher,
and so vanished away. Indeed, looking back, I begin to wonder whether
I were constantly being mistaken for someone else, who must have been
exactly like me; this Someone Else being evidently a prominent member
of a secret society, who would be aware of the signs and passwords of
the order. For all I know, when Mr. O’Malley praised poor old Jug--he
has long years ago gone to be a gargoyle on the parapet of some great
Gothic church of the skies--I should have answered: “Yes, he is a
fine dog, but green bulldogs with blue spots are finer.” Then, it may
be, the interview would have become coherent, and tending to some
end, and the lady in the flat would have pressed the secret panel and
have disclosed ... I really don’t know what.
That very day, I mean the day of the incident of the Bulldog, Mr.
O’Malley and the Lady in the Flat, I was sitting in the Café de
l’Europe with a friend, discussing various matters, when, as we
rose to go a young man of a somewhat colourless and unpretending
appearance, who had been sitting at the other side of the table,
suddenly observed:
“I have been very much interested, sir, in your conversation, and I
should very much like to hear more of it.”
Again, I was in the scene. I gave him my address in Gray’s Inn, and
he called to see me several times, always coming at night and staying
pretty late, asking me many questions about interior things. I think
it was only on his last visit that I found out his odd manner of
leaving the Inn, when he went away at one or half-past one in the
morning. He was ignorant of the fact that the Raymond Buildings Gate
and the Holborn Gate have watchers by them who will open the portals
all the long night; and so when he left me he would climb the spiked
wall which separates Verulam Buildings from Gray’s Inn Road and make
off into the gaslight. He, too, vanished, and I saw him no more.
It was some time earlier in this year that I became conscious of
a very odd circumstance. It will perhaps have been noticed that I
have become insensibly Stevensonian in my diction, as I have spoken
of the Incident of the Bulldog, or of this or of that. That is so
because the atmosphere in which I lived was becoming remarkably like
the atmosphere of “The Three Impostors,” which, as I have remarked,
is derived from the “New Arabian” manner of R. L. Stevenson. Not
only did strange and unknown and unexplained people start up from
every corner, from every café table, and engage me in obscure mazes
of talk, quite in the Arabian manner, but I presently became aware
that something very odd indeed was happening: certain characters in
“The Three Impostors” showed signs of coming to life, a feat which,
perhaps, they had failed to perform before. I was once talking to a
dark young man, of quiet and retiring aspect, who wore glasses--he
and I had met at a place where we had to be blindfolded before we
could see the light--and he told me a queer tale of the manner in
which his life was in daily jeopardy. He described the doings of a
fiend in human form, a man who was well known to be an expert in
Black Magic, a man who hung up naked women in cupboards by hooks
which pierced the flesh of their arms. This monster--I may say that
there is such a person, though I can by no means go bail for the
actuality of any of the misdeeds charged against him--had, for some
reason which I do not recollect, taken a dislike to my dark young
friend. In consequence, so I was assured, he had hired a gang in
Lambeth, who were grievously to maim or preferably to slaughter the
dark young man; each member of the gang receiving a retaining fee of
eight shillings and sixpence a day--a sum, by the way, that sounds
as if it were the face value of some mediæval coin long obsolete. I
listened in wonder, for there are some absurdities so enormous that
they seem to have a stunning effect on the common sense, paralysing
it for the moment and inhibiting its action. It was only when I got
home that it dawned upon me that I had been listening to the Young
Man in Spectacles, and that he came out of “The Three Impostors.”
And soon Miss Lally, another character from the book, appeared, and
like her prototype discoursed most amazing tales, was the heroine
of incredible adventures, would appear and disappear in a quite
inexplicable manner, relating always histories before unheard of, a
personage wholly diverting, enigmatic and enchanting.
And the odd thing is that it was as if these two had parts to play
for a season, and played them--till the prompter’s bell sounded,
and the curtain fell and the lights went out. Both Miss Lally and
the Young Man in Spectacles still live; but they have become useful
members of society and eminently successful, as I believe, in their
several employments. Thus do the King and Queen in the play go home
to their flats or their lodgings after the show and enjoy cold beef,
pickles and a comfortable bottle of beer.
And now I am going at last to say a good word for literature. I have
said, again and again, even to tedium, that the only good that I can
see in it is that it is one of the many ways of escaping from life,
to be classified with Alpine Climbing, Chess, Methylated Spirit and
Prussic Acid. The way I have always seen it is like this: I go out on
a Sunday afternoon in March with the black north-easter blowing to
take a walk up Gower Street. I say to myself: “O come! I can’t stand
this,” and go home and write--or try to write--a chapter in “The Hill
of Dreams.” Many people will say that the chapter is much worse than
the street, and I daresay that they are right; but, anyhow, it was
different: it was, for me, the nearest way out of Gower Street and
the black north-easter. But I believe that there may be a little
more in literature than this. It is certainly the escape from life;
but perhaps it is also the only means of realising and shewing life,
or, at least, certain aspects of life. Here is an example to my hand.
Here am I, not trying to write literature, but doing my best to tell
a true tale, and I find that I can make nothing of it. I can set
down the facts, or rather such of them as I remember, but I am quite
conscious that I am not, in the real sense of the word, telling the
truth; that is, I am not giving any sense of the very extraordinary
atmosphere in which I lived in the year 1900, of the curious and
indescribable impression which the events of those days made upon
me; the sense that everything had altered, that everything was very
strange, that I lived in daily intercourse with people who would have
been impossible, unimaginable, a year before; that the figure of the
world was changed utterly for me--of all this I can give no true
picture, dealing as I am with what are called facts. I maintained
long ago in “Hieroglyphics” that facts as facts do not signify
anything or communicate anything; and I am sure that I was right,
when I confess that, as a purveyor of exact information, I can make
nothing of the year 1900. But, avoiding the facts, I have got a good
deal nearer to the truth in the last chapter of “The Secret Glory,”
which describes the doings and feelings of two young people who are
paying their first visit to London. _I_ never bolted up to town with
the house-master’s parlour-maid; but truth must be told in figures.
There is one episode of this period of which I may say a little
more, that is the affair of the Secret Society. Putting two and two
together, a good many years after the event, I am inclined to think
that it was a mere item in the programme of strange and Arabian
entertainment that was being produced for my benefit: the Secret
Society was of the same order as the Incident of Mr. O’Malley and
the Adventure of the Young Man who always left by the Spiked Wall,
only of a more gorgeous and elaborate kind. And I must confess that
it did me a great deal of good--for the time. To stand waiting at
a closed door in a breathless expectation, to see it open suddenly
and disclose two figures clothed in a habit that I never thought to
see worn by the living, to catch for a moment the vision of a cloud
of incense smoke and certain dim lights glimmering in it before the
bandage was put over the eyes and the arm felt a firm grasp upon it
that led the hesitating footsteps into the unknown darkness: all this
was strange and admirable indeed; and strange it was to think that
within a foot or two of those closely curtained windows the common
life of London moved on the common pavement, as supremely unaware of
what was being done within an arm’s length as if our works had been
the works of the other side of the moon. All this was very fine; an
addition and a valuable one, as I say, to the phantasmagoria that was
being presented to me. But as for anything vital in the secret order,
for anything that mattered two straws to any reasonable being, there
was nothing of it, and less than nothing. Among the members there
were, indeed, persons of very high attainments, who, in my opinion,
ought to have known better after a year’s membership or less; but the
society as a society was pure foolishness concerned with impotent
and imbecile Abracadabras. It knew nothing whatever about anything
and concealed the fact under an impressive ritual and a sonorous
phraseology. It had no wisdom, even of the inferior or lower kind, in
its leadership; it exercised no real scrutiny into the characters of
those whom it admitted, and so it is not surprising that some of its
phrases and passwords were to be read one fine morning in the papers,
their setting being one of the most loathsome criminal cases of the
twentieth century.