pictured by the boyish imagination. There were no bullies--at least,
not among the boys; the masters did the bullying. They exercised a
reign of terror; they ruled by mysterious hints and vague threats, so
that one moved perpetually under the shadow of an impending but unknown
doom. The sense of guilt for some crime which one didn’t know the
nature of was perpetually being brought home to one. And the boys used
to catch the tone of mystery, and act as if they formed part of the
conspiracy, which, of course, they didn’t. They were all equally in the
dark.
The discretion of boys is extraordinary: their fear of giving anything
away; their constant profession of happiness, in spite of obvious
misery. But then, of course, it must be remembered that they accept
the conditions of school life as the best that life has to offer. They
think that _is_ happiness.
* * * * *
In the evening after dinner some of the “boys” played poker. Gradually
I made their acquaintance. One of them told me of the life in Buenos
Ayres. He asked me to lend him a book. He had a pal who read books, and
was in fact reading, he said, a book which he believed to be the _best
book in print_. That was a nice phrase, and I have already quoted it.
He fetched the book: it turned out to be “Monte Cristo.” I agree as to
the description of it.
In another book on English prisons I have read just lately, called “A
Holiday in Gaol,” the writer says that “Monte Cristo” was engaged half
a dozen deep by the prisoners at Wormwood Scrubbs.
The “boy” turned over the leaves of “Monte Cristo” and came across the
name “Sinbad the Sailor,” and asked me whether it was the same story
as “Sinbad the Sailor,” because he had seen that played at Sydney, and
couldn’t make it out. It is, indeed, not very easy to make out the
story of “Sinbad the Sailor” from a pantomime version.
I saw this actual version of “Sinbad the Sailor” later in Wellington,
and a very good pantomime it was; but lucidity and cohesion of plot
were not its strongest points.
In Sydney pantomimes go on all the year round, I am told, and not only
at Christmas time, as in England.
I was playing patience after dinner. This led to talking of
fortune-telling by cards, and one of the Sydney “boys” asked me to tell
his fortune, which I did, as well as that of five or six others. The
next day one of them informed me that I had told their fortunes “to a
tick.”
Let me hastily say that I don’t believe there is anything in it; but
cards are uncanny things all the same, and fruitful in odd coincidences.
Once when I was travelling in Russia I met a man who professed to tell
fortunes by cards. It was in a third-class railway carriage and the man
was a poor man. This is how he did it. He told one to wish, and then
dealt out his cards in the orthodox manner; but he added, “When you
wish, you mustn’t think of a green horse or else your wish won’t come
true.” As if after being told such a thing one could help thinking of a
green horse.
* * * * *
I am reading a book by that delightful author, William de Morgan,
called “Somehow Good.” He is one of those authors who does the work for
you. The book reads itself: just in the same way as Italian servants
say that crockery breaks. For instance, an Italian servant never says,
“The cook has broken a plate,” but “A plate has broken itself to the
cook.” (Si e rotto un piatto alla cuoca.)
I have often wondered how housemaids acquired the apparently innate
genius they possess for breaking things. It certainly amounts to
genius; for it happens automatically and suddenly, as if prompted by
divine and authentic inspiration. The gift is apparently shared by
steerage passengers in a liner. The chief officer of the liner in which
I travelled from England told me, before we had reached Fremantle, that
twelve hundred glasses had been broken in the steerage. (There were
eight hundred passengers.)
Sailors and Chinamen never break anything; but, on the other hand,
there is nothing that children will not break. Children are like white
ants; they are entirely destructive, and they construct nothing, except
sand castles. And sand is the best safety-valve for the terrible and
unlimited powers of childhood that exists.
This has been noted by the poet, who says:--
“On the other hand,
Children in ordinary dress
May always play with sand.”
* * * * *
In reading through the last pages that I have written, I am struck by
the fact that there is very little about travel in these supposed notes
on travel. The word longitude has not yet occurred, and no scrap of
information that could be of any possible practical use to any one has
yet been given. Does it matter?
[Illustration: YOU MUSTN’T THINK OF A GREEN HORSE]
Practical information can be sought for in guidebooks. I say _sought
for_ purposely, for it can really only be obtained by experience. As
for geographical details, I cannot think that the perusal of them
is very interesting. And then, in writing on random subjects under
a misleading title, I am only following well-known precedents. For
instance, if you buy a modern book on “Gardening,” what do you find?
You open the book, say, at the chapter headed “June,” and you find this
kind of thing:--
I don’t think the pictures in the Royal Academy are so good this year
as they were last: but the average level is on the whole higher. I
remember Lord Melbourne saying that the Academy was the only picture
gallery he really enjoyed, because the pictures told one stories and
there was no damned nonsense of art about them. I am sorry that the
girls of the present day are no longer taught sketching. Every girl
should be able to sketch badly. Albums of sketches, made on the
Continent, are a great resource on rainy Saturdays, and do well to sell
at bazaars.
Italy is a good subject for sketching. Apropos of Italy, I came across
the following poem in the South Wiltshire “Gazette.” It was said to be
by Wordsworth, but a kind correspondent tells me that it is really by
Miss Ellen F. Winthrope, who died at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1887,
at the age of seventy-three:--
_Lines written at Florence_
Look upward, for the sky is not all cloud.
Look forward, think not of the dismal shroud.
No lane but has a turning, and no road
That leads not somewhere to a warm abode.
Take courage. If the day seems rather long,
The cooling dew will fall at evensong.
Believe, and Doubt is sure to slink away,
Doubt is a cur; and Fear is but a fool;
Rely upon yourself and let your stay
Be the observance of the heavenly rule.
Never say die; and do not be afraid;
At eventide the wages will be paid.
A Dutch friend of mine gave me the following very good recipe for
cooking anchovies: “Take an old garden hat, boil for seven minutes
in boiling water. Add four pounds of cinnamon, one nutmeg, and half a
glass of Chablis. Cut the anchovies in pieces and place on china plate.
Pour the boiling water over them, and serve tepid with slices of lemon.”
Another friend of mine gave me this quaint, old-fashioned recipe
for boiling a turkey: “Gather strawberry leaves on Lamas Eve, press
them in the distillery until the aromatick perfume thereof becomes
sensible. Take a fat turkey and pluck him, and baste him, then enfold
him carefully in the strawberry leaves. Then boyl him in water from
the well, and add rosemary, rue, parsefoil, passevelours, carraway,
floramour, velvet flower, lavender, thistles, stinging nettles, and
other sweet smelling herbs. Add also a pinte of Canary wine, and half
pound of butter and one of ginger passed through the sieve. Serve with
plums and stewed raisons and a little salt. Cover him with a silver
dish cover. The Compleat Cook, 1656.”
Appended to this was the quaint motto:--
“Live and learne, for flowyrres fade,
June waiteth not for man or mayde.”
That is the kind of thing you will find in the June chapter of the
modern book on “Gardening.”
Then, if you take a book on a definite place, called, say, Rome. What
do you find? Facts? No. Dates? No. But something like this:--
_The Spirit of Rome_ (_with apologies to Vernon Lee_)
_May 11._ We drove this afternoon to the Villa Madama; on the way we
talked of Richard Strauss and the non-melodic musicians. Strauss is a
Dionysiac. We compared his prophetic mood-music with the old-fashioned
facile melodies of Wagner that pleased our youth. While we were
talking a shepherd passed us. As he passed he took off his hat and
said, “Buon giorno.” Very Roman that.
_May 27._ Porta Pia. A ragged cloud in the west and the sun shining
very pale and watery. Passed a man playing a harmonium. P---- insisted
on stopping to listen and the man asked him the time. This is the kind
of thing that only happens to P---- and in Rome.
_May 31._ Mount Aventine. S---- and I strolled up the hill. We walked
into a church (blonde marbles and seaweed-coloured pillars). A woman
dressed in a bonnet and black silk came in and said her prayers.
S---- said this reminded her of Boston. Why?
_June 2._ Sunday. Heard a sermon in the afternoon at the church of
St. Praxed. (Alas! the tomb of Browning’s Bishop is not there, nay,
probably Browning had another church in his eye.) The priest in the
middle of his sermon, yawned, and said, “Basta!” Then, for the first
time during this visit, for the first time since twenty years, I felt
the unmistakable thrill of recognition, and said, “This is Rome.”
Or there is another method. That is the contemplative historic
description of something you have never seen (the Belloc method). You
don’t pretend to have seen it; but you describe what you might have
felt, had you seen it. It is something like this:--
I have never been to Arles. But yesterday as I was walking along the
Roman Road between Chanctonbury and Horsham, I thought of Arles. Arles
is perpetually seeking new things in Europe. Arles has the spirit,
the judgment, and the greatness of the thirteenth century. Chicago
differs utterly in mood from Arles. In Chicago there is war. You buy
a newspaper and ten to one the leading article will be an affirmation
or a denial of a creed or a dogma. In Arles you may buy newspapers for
a month and get nothing but the record of the weather, two days old.
And, as I consider the two towns, neither of which I have visited, I
find almost as great a pleasure in imagining them as in remembering
the sharp pictures of Birmingham and Swindon. I have been to Swindon;
and that reminds me, Swindon has a song of its own. It is called “If
the Swin was in the Swim.” I have great hopes of the town of Swindon.
The world has become introspective and subjective. People no longer
write about what they heard or saw. They assume that the reader knows
all that. But they describe what they felt and thought on Monday, or
on Tuesday, or on any other day of the week. Anatole France started
the game by saying that criticism was the adventures of the soul among
masterpieces.
This method came as a boon to reviewers and critics: they no longer
had to pretend to read the books they reviewed. To dramatic critics,
especially, the system was invaluable; but they have now carried it
further still. The “literary” critic who wrote an account of a play
instead of telling you what the play was about and the effect it had
on the audience, gave you his “impressions” of the play. But now he
just gives you his impressions: not his impressions of the play, but
his impressions of anything: the Woman’s Suffrage Movement--the Rocky
Mountains. He need scarcely mention the play; but it is generally
done. These impressions he will write in the obscure dialect of modern
Oxford, which consists of a complicated kind of literary slang. He
writes so carefully that it is impossible to know exactly what he
means. He will begin by describing a journey he has just made; he will
continue to give you his views on Henry James, or the principles of
art, then he will suddenly find after two columns of disquisition that
he has come to the end of his space, and he will put off dealing with
the play to the following week. By that time he will have forgotten
what he meant to be going to say, and he will be obliged to write a new
disquisition on something else. That is how the “literary critic” deals
with the drama to-day. I find no fault with the system.
This is how the “literary” critic would deal with “Hamlet” were
“Hamlet” a new play:--
_A Non-Conductor_
Last week I had a good deal to say about the possible effect of
woman’s suffrage on art, and this led me to disagree, as the French
say, on the attitude of Aristophanes towards the woman question. The
fault I have to find with Mr. Shakespeare’s play which was produced
tentatively at the Repertory Theatre in Wolverhampton last Tuesday,
will be plainer when I have first explained the reason why Walt
Whitman never wrote a play.
Walt Whitman had probably the greatest unexpressed dramatic gift
of the century. He was the most potentially dramatic of all the
modern poets: although his centrifugality led him out, so to speak,
of his perspective, and shifted his dioramic outlook from the
psychologic-human to the devisualized-ideal. Yes, Whitman was perhaps
the greatest dramatist who never wrote a play: with the possible
exception of Browning, who wrote plays which were in reality unbegun
novels. Unlike Swinburne, whose system consisted of finishing his
play before it began and filling up the space with deciduous phrases.
Swinburne and Browning are the two great negative poles of drama:
Whitman is the inverted mute magnet, who repelled drama from him
instead of attracting it. I will explain, and in order to explain, we
must go back to the Indian drama; etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
Here, on the other hand, in contrast to this, is an example of
the older impressionist method; a short notice written in a cheap
newspaper, by a critic who has not had time to see the last act, and to
whom the manager has refused to give a sketch of the plot:--
_Hamlet: Puzzle-Play at the Pantheon_
Mr. Shakespeare is presumably a new writer. I don’t remember having
seen any of his work before, although it was rumoured last night
that he had once been guilty of some sonnets. He may be able to
write sonnets; but writing sonnets is one thing and writing a play is
another. Not that there is no cleverness and no promise in “Hamlet”;
but it is a literary cleverness, and not a dramatic cleverness.
The play suffers from dullness, length, and want of action. There is
far too much talk from beginning to end. And the talk is not dramatic.
Mr. Shakespeare has made the unpardonable mistake of not making his
intention clear.
Is Hamlet, the hero of this rather disagreeable family imbroglio,
meant to be mad, or is he meant to be simulating madness? Is the
ghost a real ghost? Are we to take it seriously, or is it merely the
practical mystification of a royal buffoon?
And what are we to think of the heroine? Is she really mad also?
Or is her madness a literary device contrived so as to afford Mr.
Shakespeare opportunities for “lyricism” and incidental music? Either
Mr. Shakespeare meant to write a serious tragedy on the subject of
madness, or he meant to parody the prevalent mania for so-called
psychological studies: but the audience, being at a loss to know what
he meant, was merely puzzled and bored. The actors did their best with
their thankless task, and Mrs. Siddons, who celebrated her diamond
jubilee last Thursday, looked younger than ever in the somewhat
ungrateful part of the peevish and provoking heroine.
The upshot of all this digression is that I wish to excuse myself
for having written at random by the exposition of current models and
precedents.
* * * * *
After a four days’ voyage from Sydney, I have arrived at the other end
of the world: Antipodes.
_Wellington: August 10_
It is the end of winter here, the beginning of spring; and colder, of
course, than it is in Australia. The Wellington wind which you hear so
much of you feel and hear a great deal as soon as you get up on to the
hills. In the town I think you feel it less than one is told.
Before sailing from London, five people told me that you can always
tell a Wellington man because he holds on his hat when he walks round a
corner of a street, because the wind blows round the corners. Everybody
in the ship coming out, to whom I mentioned New Zealand, told me the
story again, until at last I thought of having a small placard hanging
round my neck with “I know how to tell a Wellington man” written on it,
or “Don’t tell me the story of the Wellington man and wind; I know it.”
[Illustration: A WELLINGTON MAN TURNING A STREET CORNER]
The first thing that strikes an Englishman about the landscape of
New Zealand is the absence of atmosphere. The jagged hills stand
out sharp against the clear sky like a photograph seen through a
stereoscope. There are no half-lights, no melting mist or wreathing
haze, no vague distances.
Another thing which strikes the stranger is the volcanic appearance
of the hills and the soil. New Zealand is a tropical island cooled
and made temperate by the neighbourhood of the South Pole. Wellington
nestles among steep hills covered with light-green grass and shorn of
all trees. Its roofs are nearly all red. If you climb up a hill you see
the view on either side of it, and the sea, very deep and blue.
Not so very many years ago New Zealand was covered with bush; and the
vegetation must have been riotously splendid, for what remains is very
fine.
My first walk in the country along the beach, where a very blue sea
breaks over sharp brown rocks, and high cliffs stand out sharp and
sheer, reminded me of South Devon.
My first long drive in the country reminded me of Russia, that is
to say, of eastern Siberia and Transbaikalia. The little wooden
one-storied houses, with red iron roofs and verandahs, might have been
taken from Siberia. The sharp outline of the hills, the colour of the
scrub, the clearness of the sky, all this is very much like what you
see from the windows of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Another thing the stranger will notice immediately is the limpidity of
the streams and the water.
Everybody tells me that this is the wrong time of year to be in New
Zealand. One should be here in the summer: that is to say, in November
and December. One should be able to camp out in the bush, by the
great lakes, where the black swans sweep and wheel in the transparent
afterglow.
I shan’t see all that, alas! because it is practically winter now. I
shall miss probably all the important sights.
In Wellington you see a great many private automobiles; very few public
cabs and taxis. Most people use the tram-cars, which is much the most
convenient way of getting about, let alone the cheapness.
The first thing that strikes you in Wellington is the well-to-do-ness
of everybody. There are no beggars; the workmen are all well off. The
people seem quite extraordinarily happy.
_Near Palmerston: August 20_
I have spent four days in the country near Palmerston. As you travel in
the train the country is more like eastern Siberia than ever. In the
distance you see a sharp range of blue hills, in the foreground a flat
plain on which little squat one-storied wooden houses with red iron
roofs are dotted about.
The small provincial cities, too, are--as in Australia--very like the
provincial towns in Russia. The streets are broad and the houses have
verandahs.
Another point of resemblance: the way the people ride. You meet
children riding back from school, two on a pony. They seem to belong
to the pony. They ride like little centaurs. This reminds me of the
evenings in the plains of the Russian country, where one used to see
the children of the village galloping off bareback on large horses and
driving a lot of riderless horses to the river, to water them.
As you drive in the country in New Zealand, the first thing you notice
is the tall gum-trees, and whenever you get near the bush you hear the
song of strange, unfamiliar birds. No native-born New Zealand bird has
wings.
* * * * *
The New Zealanders are born footballers. You see the children playing
everywhere. On every Saturday afternoon there is a big football match,
and crowds of people look on. Rugby football is the national game of
New Zealand, and I suppose the New Zealanders are the best players in
the world.
At the Athletic Park Ground you often see two matches going on at once.
It is extremely difficult to watch two matches at once; because the
moment you begin to watch something in the one, something interesting
is sure to happen in the other. One would think, speaking as an
outsider, that the Rugby game is far more interesting to look on at
than the Association game. But the Londoner does not think so. Every
Saturday in London, and, indeed, all over England, thousands of people
look on at the Association game, and they care very much less for
Rugby, which they consider to be a “toff’s game.” There is, they say,
“too much shirt-tearing” about it for their taste.
Rugby football in New Zealand has not yet been spoiled by
professionalism. People think it is an honour to play for a team, and
they are willing to travel and play all over the country for the honour
of it, and without remuneration.
In England professionalism has spoiled not only football but almost
every other game, with the possible exception of “Old Maid,” cribbage,
and “My Bird Sings.”
The result is:--
(1) People prefer looking on at games to playing them themselves.
(2) They demand professionals and they bet on them.
(3) Some games become so professionally perfect that people no longer
care to look on at them.
The passion of the crowd in England for watching football is looked
upon by many people as the most ominous sign of national decadence, and
as a manifestation resembling that of the gladiatorial shows in ancient
Rome. They say it is this passion for watching, and for betting in the
watching, that is responsible for the prevalence of professionalism.
In England one local club buys a celebrated player from another local
club. Therefore, it is obvious that this is the death of any real local
spirit.
As for the games becoming so professional that people lose interest in
them, this does not apply to football: but it does apply to cricket. In
the last years there is in England a great falling-off in the public
interest in cricket. The play has become so perfect that nobody cares
to look at it.
And even, or rather especially, at the schools in England, games have
become ultra-professional.
All this is a pity, but it does not apply to New Zealand. New Zealand
has, up to now, been unspoiled by professionalism. Long may it remain
so. One football enthusiast told me that the cloven hoof was making its
appearance.
* * * * *
What most people want to hear about New Zealand are facts with regard
to the economic situation of the country: the labour question, the
effects of woman’s suffrage, the drink question, prohibition, etc.
Now, unless one makes a really thorough and serious study of these
questions, which it is impossible to do without devoting considerable
time to it, without, in fact, living in the country for a reasonable
period, it is worse than useless to fire off a few superficial and
dogmatic generalizations. It is for this reason that I forbear from
discussing them here.
_Wellington: September_
The first manifestations of the spring have taken the form of rain and
wind. Whenever the wind is in the south, the weather is cold: for the
wind comes straight from the South Pole. But luckily the rain does not
last long. Changes of weather in New Zealand are very sudden. The hills
are now covered with gorse in bloom. Daffodils are out everywhere; and
in the town you see arum lilies that grow wild in New Zealand in great
profusion; but I imagine their time is later.
I am leaving the country just as the pleasant season is beginning, and
I am leaving before I have had time to see the most interesting places
in it. I have not seen New Zealand; but I have seen Wellington, and I
have had a glimpse of the country. I have seen the Parliament sitting.
I have met many interesting people. I have been to two concerts, one
picture-show, one hospital, one theatre, and four football matches. I
have not been to one thing: and that is morning tea.
Morning tea is, I believe, a custom peculiar to New Zealand. The New
Zealanders give teas at eleven o’clock in the morning.