POETS’ CORNER
THE September sun was shining on Beers Cooperage, shining as brightly
on the dingy London yard as on the glittering emerald seas of France.
The inhabitants of the Cooperage were rejoicing in the light and
warmth. The cripple had brought out a rocking-chair, with its cane seat
patched up with string, and was swinging himself with half-shut eyes in
front of the little row of flowers which assiduous watering had kept
alive during the summer drouth. A new canary in the mended cage of its
predecessor chirruped gaily from the open window of one of the tiny row
of cottages; the window of another revealed a trophy of travel, a box
bearing on its lid a photograph of Southend Pier, framed in polished
mussel-shells, which its owner, with an altruism not often found in the
denizens of lordlier neighbourhoods, had disposed so that its beauty
could be enjoyed by the passer-by at the expense of the inmates of the
house themselves.
Over the whole of the Cooperage there was an atmosphere of freshness
and content. The little gates and palings on the window-sills were
newly painted in artistic green and white. Many of them now revealed
their inner utility by guarding pots of musk or mignonette, with here
and there a bright red geranium. The pavement of the yard was clean
beyond its former wont, and the refuse heap that had once marked the
abode of Mike Finigan had disappeared.
It was over Mike Finigan’s house that the greatest change of all had
come. Not a single broken window was any longer to be seen in the
front of the dwelling. The door had been painted green to match the
five-barred gates, and decorated with a handsome old brass knocker that
shone like an imitation sun. The window of the ground-floor was open,
and through it could be seen a perfectly æsthetic kitchen--a kitchen
after the heart of South Kensington, with a high-backed settle, a
Cromwellian table and armchairs, all of the finest black oak, a dresser
lined with willow-pattern plates of deepest blue, and a mantelshelf
glorious with copper saucepans scoured to the grain.
The transformation had extended to, or rather it had begun with, the
inhabitants of the regenerated hovel. The bewildered dwellers in the
Cooperage dated their present era of peacefulness and brightness from
the appearance of a remarkable announcement in the _Times_:
“On Monday, the 14th instant, at the registry office, Lambeth, Lord
Alistair Fingal Stuart Campbell-Stuart, brother of the Duke of Trent
and Colonsay, to Miss Molly Finucane, daughter of the late Jeremiah
Finucane, of Beers Cooperage, Lambeth, S. W.”
Following on the step thus disclosed to the world Lord and Lady
Alistair had taken up their residence in what might have been
described with truthfulness as the home of her ladyship’s family,
vacated beforehand by her brother.
Stuart had not attempted to reform Mike Finigan. He had adopted the
easier and simpler plan of reforming Mike Finigan’s surroundings by
obtaining him a post as water-bailiff to a friend who rented some
fishing in the heart of the Finigan country. Mike was now living his
natural life among his own people, breaking their heads and getting his
own broken to their mutual contentment, and earning the character of
the best water-bailiff in green Connacht.
Alistair would have been glad to adjust his own life as successfully as
he had adjusted his brother-in-law’s.
In the first flush of her joy at his return, and gratitude for the rank
he had given her, he had found it easy to persuade Molly to try the
experiment of life in Beers Cooperage. He allowed the little woman to
consider the scheme as a sort of practical joke, one of those slaps in
the face to the hated middle class which she had learned to relish as a
proof of aristocratic feeling.
To their humble neighbours the invasion of such a spot as the Cooperage
by such a figure as Lord Alistair--Mr. Stuart, he called himself to
them--could only be understood in the light of those settlements and
missions by which the well-disposed had recently striven to irradiate
the gloom of darkest London. One of the great public schools had
planted a hall in adjacent Battersea, the Wesleyans had a settlement
somewhere Walworth way, the Church of England was bestirring itself in
Southwark. The Cooperites were convinced that the new resident had come
amongst them on evangelizing thoughts intent. They accepted the green
paint and the flowers as a preliminary sop, and awaited with stolid
resignation the tracts and the lectures on wireless telegraphy and the
Andaman Islands that would surely follow.
Alistair himself was surprised to find how little was changed in
his life by the transmigration. The brief episode which lay behind
him at Dinard took its place as a dream from which he had awakened.
Respectable society, as represented by the Secretary of State for
the Home Department, had dropped him once more, and his old friends
had welcomed him back. The marriage announcement had been hailed in
the circle of which he was the acknowledged chief as a masterpiece,
reflecting more glory on him even than the bankruptcy which was now
formally complete. If Alistair Stuart had gone under he had proved
himself, like Samson, most formidable to the Philistines in his end.
He was able to estimate the greatness of his triumph when he found that
his first visitor was the Chevalier Vane.
It was true that the Chevalier came as to the house of mourning, to
condole and patronize rather than to congratulate, but Stuart knew him
well enough to be sure that he would not have come at all unless he
considered that there was still some distinction to be drawn from the
association.
Vane’s restless vanity had just stimulated him to make a bid for
notoriety on his own account, on lines more congenial to his cautious
temper. Inspired by the example of certain distinguished writers of
the French decadent school who had exchanged the Bacchic ivy for the
Christian palm with evident benefit to their reputations, he had
conceived the felicitous idea of publicly entering the Church of Rome.
He had already in the press a volume of hymns composed in honour of
various medieval saints, collectively entitled “A Rosary of Twilight,”
and he trusted that the contrast between its mystic piety and the
erotic breathings of his unregenerate muse would at last stir the
reviewers out of their apathy.
He had cherished the hope that a man of his importance would be deemed
a proper subject for conversion by a Bishop. But the Roman authorities
had taken, as usual, a severely practical view of the situation, and
had intimated that the reception of a convert, however illustrious, was
a matter to be regulated, like other ecclesiastical ceremonies, by the
mundane consideration of fees. The cost of an episcopal welcome proved
too severe a wrench for the mercenary instincts of the poet, but after
a good deal of haggling he secured a monsignor, whose violet stockings
made the function a moderate success in the dearth of by-elections and
divorce suits.
Wickham Vane, after a severe internal struggle, revolted on this
occasion from his allegiance, and struck out a line of his own by
embracing the tenets of the Theosophists. But the two brothers
continued to live together in the same harmony as before, and it was
remarkable that the priests who came from time to time to confirm
the new Catholic in his faith found Wickham a much more interested
listener, while the yogis and mahatmas who visited Wickham went away
under the firm impression that it was his brother who was their
disciple.
The author of “A Rosary of Twilight” brought with him a presentation
copy as an inexpensive form of wedding-present. Molly received it with
gratification as a homage offered to her in the serious character of a
Christian matron. But the page containing the inscription to Lord and
Lady Alistair was the one that she read with most pleasure; indeed, it
was the only one that she could understand.
Her promotion had not wrought much change in Molly’s manners; there
was no reason why it should, having regard to the tone of the
most fashionable circles; but it had infused a distinct shade of
condescension into her treatment of such of her acquaintance as were
commoners. To the Chevalier Vane she accorded the courtesy due to his
rank, but the untitled Wickham found himself almost snubbed.
Stuart showed the brothers over his new dwelling. The front-door
opened directly into the art kitchen, behind which there was a tiny
wash-house, where real cooking could be accomplished on a gas-stove.
Lady Alistair volunteered the information that they usually dined out,
and that the household work was attended to by a plebeian neighbour.
Overhead there were two small bedrooms, one of which Alistair had had
fitted up as a dressing-room and study for himself.
The Vanes were charmed with the whole establishment, Egerton merely
advising a cuckoo clock for the foot of the stairs as a finishing
touch, and Wickham inclining to think old tapestry more suitable than
wallpapers for the rooms upstairs. In his enthusiasm the Chevalier even
expressed himself as seriously disposed to install himself in the house
adjoining.
“We might set a fashion,” he declared, with that naïve vanity by which
Alistair hardly knew whether he was more amused or annoyed. “In time
we might draw other men of letters round us, and have the whole court
occupied.”
“Then it would have to be called Poet’s Corner,” Alistair observed.
“That is just what I was going to say,” Vane snapped back, becoming
almost rude in his greediness to appropriate the suggestion. “Such a
settlement would be like a lighthouse of civilization.”
“I hope not,” Stuart retorted. “We have had too many attempts to
civilize the slums. I have come here to barbarize them.”
This time the Chevalier was compelled to acknowledge the master’s
superiority.
“You are right,” he heroically confessed. “But I am certain my idea is
a good one. It will make a sensation. We shall have pilgrims coming to
visit us from all parts of Europe and America.”
And already in his egoistic fancy he pictured himself receiving a
stream of reporters in his own cottage, seated in state in some exotic
garb, and dictating interviews on the subject of the poetry of the
Catholic renascence, which would be wired to the ends of the earth.
Stuart read his thoughts, and smiled rather sadly. Vane’s proposal had
pleased him at first, corresponding as it did more or less with the
project dimly shaping in his own mind. He had always had a soft corner
in his heart for the two brothers. He knew his own need of intellectual
fellowship, and both the Vanes, under their absurd affectations,
possessed some real taste. Egerton could be a pleasant enough companion
on those too rare occasions when he was not iterating the tedious
personal note, and Wickham shone as a mildly agreeable moon. Stuart
was not blind to their faults, but, then, no master has ever found
faultless disciples. If the disciple were equal to the master there
would be no masterhood.
As it is natural for a leader to crave for followers, so it is natural
that he should bear much from those who seem disposed to follow him.
Stuart, without analyzing his motives, had made many efforts to attach
the Vanes to himself. He had tried to melt the adamantine selfishness
of the elder by generous praise of all in him that was possible to
praise. He had tried to fan what little sparks of individuality he
had detected in the younger. He had shut his eyes as much as he could
to their humiliating vanity and meanness, vices which he hoped might
exhale in the sunshine of a little success.
Now he was moved to despair of them. It was evident that the real
attraction for Egerton in the project he had embraced so feverishly was
not the companionship of congenial minds, but the notoriety conferred
by reporters. His soul thirsted not after the praise of the judicious,
but after the paragraphs of Fleet Street. Regretfully Alistair made up
his mind to abandon the half-formed scheme, unless the two brothers
could be persuaded to abandon him. The participation of such a man
as Egerton Vane would degrade any movement in which he played a part
to the level of his own vanity. It did not deserve even to be called
vanity--it was vulgarity. Instead of the vanity of genius, it was the
vulgarity of the charlatan.
Happily unconscious of the reflections passing through Lord Alistair’s
mind, the Chevalier Vane was occupying his mind with the problem of
his neglected volume, which Lady Alistair had laid aside. The poet
of the Catholic renascence was anxious to read some of his work to
the company, unworthy though they seemed to feel themselves of such a
privilege, and he began forcibly turning the conversation towards the
end in view.
“The new poetry will be distinguished from the old by its form not
less than its spirit,” he proclaimed magisterially. “I have come to the
conclusion to discard the sonnet in favor of the acrostic.” (There was
an acrostic in the “Rosary of Twilight.”) “Form is the essence of art,
and the acrostic represents form in its severest limitations.”
“Form _is_ art,” flashed Alistair, who saw through the visitor’s
strategy, and felt maliciously disposed to balk him. It had always
been an honourable understanding among the Decadents that they were
to listen to each other’s poems and look at each other’s pictures, as
some slight mutual compensation for the deafness and blindness of the
middle class. But it seemed scarcely fair to extend the benefit of this
arrangement to the poetry of the Catholic renascence.
Vane blinked, but recovered himself promptly.
“That is what I said. Form is art or its essence. For that reason it
ought not to be concealed. In the acrostic form takes its right place
as the governing condition of the whole.”
Wickham dutifully came to his brother’s reinforcement.
“That is why I find tapestry so far superior to painting,” he murmured.
“The limitations of the needle are so much severer than those of the
brush; their influence over the composition is so much more obvious.
There is something vulgar in dexterity.”
“Is there not something vulgar in expression itself?” Stuart put in.
“Surely the unexpressed is always higher than the expressed?”
This was a wedge driven between the opposing forces. Wickham, whose
claims to consideration rested entirely on the meditations in which he
was believed to indulge, could not reject the principle which justified
his existence. Egerton, fretting with impatience, began to fear that he
should be reduced to the coarse manœuvre of openly seizing his book and
reading unasked.
But even this was not to be permitted him.
“For my part,” Stuart said, “I consider that as the first word of
literature was the riddle, so it must be the last. Poetry is falsehood,
and we should never be allowed to tell the truth. Remember that when
Shakespeare ventured to talk poetry to Ben Jonson in the Mermaid
Tavern, he ‘had to be stopped.’ The poet will always be stopped by
respectable people when he talks prose, and that is why he has to
talk poetry, which they can’t understand. Take my advice, throw your
acrostics overboard, and write riddles. Write them in Sanskrit if
possible, and use a cipher. That will give you all the limitations
you want. And the middle class will form a Vane Society, as they have
formed a Shakespeare Society and a Browning Society, to interpret you;
and when you are dead they will write biographies to prove that you
were fairly orthodox and perfectly respectable.”
The author of the “Rosary of Twilight,” as he walked home in dudgeon,
observed to the fraternal satellite:
“I am afraid Stuart is deteriorating. He seems to be incapable of high
seriousness.”
“He needs to surround himself with pale green tapestry,” was the
melancholy response.
Others of Alistair’s old circle came round him in his new home, and
rejoiced in this fresh defiance to the Victorian proprieties. But there
was one notable absentee. The figure of the Brazilian banker was never
seen in the little high-art kitchen. Since Molly Finucane had become
Lady Alistair, Mendes had been struck off her visiting-list.