The Bed-Book of Happiness Part 33

George sighed. "I wish," he said, "that I could persuade him to bite all my generals."_

_A rich man, formerly a cheesemonger, was discussing the Poor Law with Lamb, and boasted that he had got rid of all the sentimental stuff called the milk of human kindness.

"Yes," said Lamb sadly, "you turned it into cheese long ago_."

_Jerrold said of some one who sent his wife effusive letters but not a farthing of money, that he was full of "unremitting kindness_."

_A Turkish proverb says, "The devil tempts the busy man, but the idle man tempts the devil_."

_Gladstone once asked, "In what country except ours would (as I know to have happened) a Parish Ball have been got up in order to supply funds for a Parish Hea.r.s.e?_"

"_They're rising in Connaught," shouted a scaremonger, das.h.i.+ng into Chesterfield's room. Quietly he drew out his watch. "Nine o'clock," he said gently. "They ought to be_."

"_He is one of those people," said Jerrold of a mistaken philanthropist, "who would vote for a supply of tooth-picks in a time of famine"; and of another--"He would hold an umbrella over a duck while it was raining_."

"_Hark at Boswell," muttered Wilkes, "telling every one how he has had his handkerchief picked from his pocket--it's merely brag, to show us he had one_."

"_Do you approve of clergymen riding?" Sydney Smith was asked. "Well, it depends," he replied thoughtfully; "yes, if they turn their toes out_."

"_The testator meant to keep a life interest in the estate himself,"

remarked the judge, who was trying a will case._

"_Surely, my lord," said the barrister, "you are taking the will for the deed_."

_Sydney Smith said of an obstinate man, "You might as well try to poultice the humps off a camel's back_."

A MASTER WITH BRAINS [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

At Bideford, died the only master I ever had who had any brains. When I was fourteen or fifteen he taught me to place my knowledge as it came, to have its proportion. He so kept me to the drawing of maps that the earth has ever since lain beneath me as if I could see it all from a great height, and he so taught me history that I see it now as a panorama, from the first days. In his time I could draw the coasts of all the world in very fair proportion, without looking at a map, and I think I could do it now, though not so well as then, perhaps; and always afterwards, if ever I heard or saw or read up a thing, I knew in what little pocket of the mind to put it. Right up to the end of Oxford days no one could compare with him. His name was Abraham Thompson, a doctor of divinity he was; black hair grew on the back of his hands which I used to marvel at, he was very handsome and dark. Funny little boys are--how they watch. He could be very angry and caned furiously; at times I caught it. I think he grew poor in his last years and had the school at Bideford. I never heard about him at the end. I wors.h.i.+pped him when I was little, and we used to look at each other in cla.s.s. I wonder what he thought when he looked; I used to think Abraham of Ur of the Chaldees was like him, and I am sure if he had bought a piece of land to bury his Sarah in, he would have been just as courteous as the first Abraham. I was always sorry that he was called Thompson, for I like lovely names--should have liked one myself and a handsome form--yes, I should. So that was Thompson. I have thought how far more needful with a lad is one year with a man of intellect than ten years of useless teaching. He taught us few facts, but spent all the time drilling us that we might know what to do with them when they came. Abraham Kerr Thompson, that was his name. I wonder if any one remembers him. A strange thing he would do, unlike any other I ever heard of; he would call up the cla.s.s, and open any book and make the head boy read out a chance sentence, and then he would set to work with every word--how it grew and came to mean this or that. With the flattest sentence in the world he would take us to ocean waters and the marshes of Babylon and the hills of Caucasus and wilds of Tartary and the constellations and abysses of s.p.a.ce. Yes, no one ever taught me anything but he only--I hope he made a good end. But how long ago it all was! It is forty-five years since I saw him.

A SPLENDID ADVENTURER [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

When I was fifteen or sixteen he (Newman) taught me so much I do mind--things that will never be out of me. In an age of sofas and cus.h.i.+ons he taught me to be indifferent to comfort, and in an age of materialism he taught me to venture all on the unseen, and this so early that it was well in me when life began, and I was equipped before I went to Oxford with a real good panoply, and it has never failed me. So if this world cannot tempt me with money or luxury--and it can't--or anything it has in its trumpery treasure-house, it is most of all because he said it in a way that touched me, not scolding nor forbidding, nor much leading--walking with me a step in front. So he stands to me as a great image or symbol of a man who never stooped, and who put all this world's life in one splendid venture, which he knew as well as you or I might fail, but with a glorious scorn of everything that was not his dream.

RED LION MARY [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

The life in Red Lion Square was a very happy one in its freedom. Red Lion Mary's originality all but equalled that of the young men, and she understood them and their ways thoroughly. Their rough and ready hospitality was seconded by her with unfailing good temper; she cheerfully spread mattresses on the floor for friends who stayed there, and when the mattresses came to an end it was said that she built up beds with boots and portmanteaus. Cleanliness, beyond the limits of the tub, was impossible in Red Lion Square, and hers was not a nature to dash itself against impossibilities, so the subject was pretty much ignored, but she was ready to fulfil any mission or do anything for them at a moment's notice, which was much more important. Never did she dishonour their bills.

"Mary!" cried Edward one evening when ordering breakfast over-night for Rossetti, who was staying with them, "let us have quarts of hot coffee, pyramids of toast, and mult.i.tudinous quant.i.ties of milk"; which to her meant all he intended. "Dear Mary," wrote Rossetti, "please go and smash a brute in Red Lion pa.s.sage to-morrow. He had to send a big book, a sc.r.a.pbook, to Master Crabb, 34, Westbourne Place, Eaton Square, and he hasn't done it. I don't know his name, but his shop is dirty and full of account books. This book was ordered ten days ago, and was to have been sent home the next day _and was paid for_--so sit on him hard to-morrow and dig a fork into his eye, as I can't come that way to murder him myself." From these hints she knew exactly what to say.

Her memory was excellent and sense of humour keen, so that some of the commissions on which she was sent gave her great enjoyment--as one day when Edward told her to take a cab and go to Mr. Watts at Little Holland House, and ask him for the loan of "whatever draperies and any other old things he could spare," and Mr. Watts, amused at the form of the request, sent her back with a parcel of draperies and an old pair of brown trousers, bidding her tell Mr. Jones those were the only "old things" he could spare. This delighted Edward, and he detained Mary while he took down his "Vasari" and read to her of the old Italian painter who had his breeches made of leather because they wore out so quickly; and then he professed to be grateful for Mr. Watts' gift, and said he would have the brown trousers made to fit him.

Mary wrote a good hand and spelled well, and would sit down and write with gravity such a note as the following, dictated to her by Edward.

"Mr. Bogie Jones' compts. to Mr. Price and begs to inform him he expects to be down for Commemoration and that he hopes to meet him, clean, well shaved, and with a contrite heart." Morris' quick temper annoyed her, but she once prettily said, "Though he was so short-tempered, I seemed so necessary to him at all times, and felt myself his man Friday."

ELEPHANT [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

My reading aloud to him began soon after our marriage, with Plutarch's "Lives"--an old folio edition. Holland's translation of Pliny's "Natural History" was also a treasure for the purpose, and the "Arabian Nights"

were ever fresh. The description of "Mrs. Gamp's apartment in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn," was read over and over again until I, but not he, was wearied for a time. These were all cla.s.sics admitting of no criticism, but some books were illuminated by commentary. For instance, the frequent comparison of Goethe with Shakespeare which G.H. Lewes makes in his "Life of Goethe" grew tiresome to the hearer, who quietly asked me to read the word Elephant instead of Shakespeare next time it occurred, and the change proved refres.h.i.+ng. But there was a kind of book that he reserved for himself and never liked any one to read to him--"The Broad Stone of Honour" and "Mores Catholici" are instances: they were kept in his own room, close to his hand, and often dipped into in wakeful nights or early mornings.

"Sillyish books both," he once said, "but I can't help it, I like them."

And no wonder, for his youth lay enclosed in them.

MY FACES [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

"Of course my faces have no expression in the sense in which people use the word. How should they have any? They are not portraits of people in paroxysms--paroxysms of terror, hatred, benevolence, desire, avarice, veneration, and all the 'pa.s.sions' and emotions that Le Brun and that kind of person find so _magnifique_ in Raphael's later work--mostly painted by his pupils and a.s.sistants, by the way. It is Winckelmann, isn't it, who says that when you come to the age of expression in Greek art you have come to the age of decadence? I don't remember how or where it is said, but of course it is true--can't be otherwise in the nature of things."

"Portraiture," he also said, "may be great art. There is a sense, indeed, in which it is perhaps the greatest art of any. Any portraiture involves expression. Quite true, but expression of what? Of a pa.s.sion, an emotion, a mood? Certainly not. Paint a man or woman with the d.a.m.ned 'pleasing expression,' or even the 'charmingly spontaneous' so dear to the 'photographic artist,' and you see at once that the thing is a mask, as silly as the old tragic and comic mask. The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental. Apart from portraiture you don't want even so much, or very seldom: in fact you only want types, symbols, suggestions. The moment you give what people call expression, you destroy the typical character of heads and degrade them into portraits which stand for nothing."

FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

The different stages of his children's lives were of profound interest to him, and as they grew up they found in him an elder brother as well as a father. As soon as Margaret was old enough she began to share and then almost entirely to take my post as reader-aloud in the studio.

Beside many other books she went through the whole of Thackeray twice in this way; d.i.c.kens was my special province. She and Edward had their own world of fun, and for her he invented a "little language," besides the most unheard-of names. I remember hearing him and Millais once talk to each other about their daughters, each boasting that he was the most devoted father. "Ah, but _you_ don't take your daughter's breakfast up to her in bed," said Edward, certain that the prize belonged to him.

Millais' triumphant "Yes, I do!" left them only equal.

"ANNA KARENINA"

[Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

"Don't lend me any sad stories--no, not if they are masterpieces. I cannot afford to be made unhappy, and I suspect that book 'Anna Karenina'--I suspect it is Russian, and if it is I know what to expect, and I couldn't bear it. There would be a beautiful woman in it--all that is best in a woman, and she would be miserable and love some trumpery frip (as they do) and die of finding out she had been a fool--and it would be beautifully written and full of nature and just like life, and I couldn't bear it. These books are written for the hard-hearted, to melt them into a softer mood for once before they congeal again--as much music is written--not for poets but for stockjobbers, to wring iron tears from them for once; that is the use of sorrowful art, to penetrate the thick hide of the obtuse, and I have grown to be a coward about pain. I should like that Anna so much and be so sorry for her and wish I had been the man instead of that thing she would have--and it wouldn't be happy. Look! tells me it ends well and that the two lovers marry and are happy ever afterwards, and I'll read it gratefully--and I shall wait your answer."