Prose Fancies Part 8

No one wants a woman to be silly and vain about her beauty. But vanity and conceit are qualities that exist in people quite independently of their gifts and graces. The ugly and stupid are perhaps more often conceited than the beautiful or the clever,--vain, it would appear, of their very ugliness and stupidity. Besides, is it any worse for a woman to be vain of her looks than of her brains?--and the advanced woman is without doubt most inordinately vain of those. Of the two, so far as they are at present developed, is there any doubt that the woman with beauty is better off than the woman with brains? In some few hundred years, maybe, the brain of woman will be a joy to herself and the world: when she has got more used to its possession, and familiar with the fruitful control of it. At present, however, it is merely a discomfort, not to say a danger, to herself and every one else--a tiresome engine for the pedantic a.s.similation of German and the higher mathematics. And it may well happen--horrid prophecy--that when that brain of woman has come to its perfection, the flower of its meditation will be to realise the significance, the sacredness, of the Simple Woman. It is in its apprehension of the mystery of simplicity that the brain of man, at present, is superior to that of woman.

Young brain delights in the complex, old in the simple. Woman's love of the complex has been ill.u.s.trated abundantly during the last few years, in her enthusiasm for certain great imperfect writers, who have been able to stir up the mud in the fountain of life (doubtless, to medicinal ends) but unable to bring it clear again. An eternal enigma herself, woman is eternally in love with enigmas. Like a child, she loves any one who will show her the 'works' of existence, and she is still in that inquisitive stage when one imagines that the inside of a doll will afford explanation of its fascinating exterior. It is no use telling her that a.n.a.lysis can never explain the mystery of synthesis. Like an American humourist, she still goes on wanting 't'know.'

Even more than man, she exaggerates the value of the articulate, the organised. She has always been in love with 'accomplishments,' and she loves natures that are minted into current coin of ready gifts and graces.

She cares more for the names of things than for the things themselves. Of things without names she is impatient. Talkative as she is said to be, and in so many modern languages, she knows not yet how to talk with Silence--unless she be the inspired Simple Woman--for to talk with Silence is to apprehend the mystic meanings of simplicity. For this reason, mystics are more often found among men than women--a fact on which the Pioneer Club is at liberty to congratulate itself. What advanced woman understands that saying of Paracelsus: 'who tastes a crust of bread tastes the heavens and all the stars.' Else would she understand also that the 'humblest' ministrations of life, those nearest to nature, are the profoundest in their significance: that it means as much to bake a loaf as to write a book, and that to watch over the sleep of a child is a liberal education--nay, an initiation granted only to mothers and those meek to whom mysteries are revealed. It has always been to the simple woman that the angel has appeared--to Mary of Bethany, to Joan of Arc. Is it impious to infer that the Angel Gabriel himself dreads a blue-stocking? What chance indeed would he have with our modern viragoes of the brain, the mighty daughters of the pen?

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Other people's poetry--I don't mean their published verse, but their absurdly romantic view of unromantic objects--is terribly hard to translate. It seldom escapes being turned into prose. It must have happened to you now and again to have had the photograph of your friend's beloved produced for your inspection and opinion. It is a terrible moment.

If she does happen to be a really pretty girl--heavens! what a relief. You praise her with almost hysterical grat.i.tude. But if, as is far more likely, her beauty proves to be of that kind which exists only in the eyes of a single beholder, what a plight is yours! How you strive to look as if she were a new Helen, and how hopelessly unconvincing is your weary expression--as unconvincing as one's expression when, having weakly pretended acquaintance with a strange author, we feign ecstatic recognition of some pa.s.sage or episode quoted by his ruthless admirer.

There is this hope in the case of the photograph: that its amorous possessor will probably be incapable of imagining any one insensitive to such a Golconda of charms, and you have always in your power the revenge of showing him your own sacred graven image.

Is it not curious that the very follies we delight in for ourselves should seem so stupid, so absolutely vulgar, when practised by others? The last illusion to forsake a man is the absolute belief in his own refinement.

A test experience in other people's poetry is to sit in the pit of a theatre and watch 'Arry and 'Arriet making love and eating oranges simultaneously. 'Arry has a low forehead, close, black, oily hair, his eyes and nose are small, and his face is freckled. His clothes are painfully his best, he wears an irrelevant flower, and his tie has escaped from the stud and got high into his neck, eclipsing his collar. 'Arriet has thick unexpressive features, relying rather on the expressiveness of her flaunting hat, she wears a straight fringe low down on her forehead, and endeavours to disguise her heavy _ennui_ by an immovable simper. This pair loll one upon each other. Whether lights be high or low they hold each other's hands, hands hard and coa.r.s.e with labour, with nails bitten down close to the quick. But, for all that, they, in their strange uncouth fas.h.i.+on, would seem to be loving each other. 'Not we alone have pa.s.sions hymeneal,' sings an aristocratic poet. They smile at each other, an obvious animal smile, and you perhaps shudder. Or you study them for a realistic novel, or you call up that touch of nature our great poet talks of. But somehow you cannot forget how their lips will stick and smell of oranges when they kiss each other on the way home. What is the truth about this pair? Is it in the unlovely details on which, maybe, we have too much insisted--or behind these are we to imagine their souls radiant in celestial nuptials?

Mr. Chevalier may be said to answer the question in his pictures of coster love-making. But are those pictures to be taken as doc.u.ments, or are they not the product of Mr. Chevalier's idealistic temperament? Does the coster actually wors.h.i.+p his 'dona' with so fine a chivalry? Is he so sentimentally devoted to his 'old Dutch'? If you answer the question in the negative, you are in this predicament: all the love and 'the fine feelings' remain with the infinitesimal residuum of the cultured and professionally 'refined.' Does that residuum actually incarnate all the love, devotion, honour, and other n.o.ble qualities in man? One need hardly trouble to answer the absurd question. Evidently behind the oranges, and the uncouth animal manners, we should find souls much like our own refined essences, had we the seeing sympathetic eye. All depends on the eye of the beholder.

Among the majority of literary and artistic people of late that eye of the beholder has been a very cynical supercilious eye. Never was such a bitter cruel war waged against the poor _bourgeois_. The lack of humanity in recent art and literature is infinitely depressing. Doubtless, it is the outcome of a so-called 'realism,' which dares to pretend that the truth about life is to be found on its grimy pock-marked surface. Over against the many robust developments of democracy, and doubtless inspired by them, is a marked spread of the aristocratic spirit--selfish, heartless, subtle, of mere physical 'refinement'; a spirit, too, all the more inhuman because it is for the most part not tempered by any intercourse with homely dependants, as in the feudal aristocracy. It would seem to be the product of 'the higher education,' a university priggishness, poor as proud. It is the deadliest spirit abroad; but, of course, though it may poison life and especially art for a while, the great laughing democracy will in good time dispose of it as Hercules might crush a wasp.

This is the spirit that draws up its skirts and sneers to itself at poor 'old bodies' in omnibuses, because, forsooth, they are stout, and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh. One thinks of Falstaff's plaintive 'If to be fat is to be hated!' At displays of natural feelings of any sort this comfortless evil spirit ever curls the lip. Inhabiting modern young ladies, it is especially superior to the maternal instinct, and cringes from a baby in a railway carriage as from an adder. At the dropping of an 'h' it shrinks as though the weighty letter had fallen upon its great toe, and it will forgive anything rather than a provincial accent. It lives entirely in the surfaces of things, and, as the surface of life is frequently rough and p.r.i.c.kly, it is frequently uncomfortable.

At such times it peevishly darts out its little sting, like a young snake angry with a farmer's boot. It is amusing to watch it venting its spleen in papers the _bourgeois_ never read, in pictures they don't trouble to understand. John Bull's indifference to the 'new' criticism is one of the most pleasing features of the time. Probably he has not yet heard a syllable of it, and, if he should hear, he would probably waive it aside with, 'I have something more to think of than these megrims.' And so he has. While these superior folk are wrangling about Degas and Mallarme, about 'style' and 'distinction,' he is doing the work of the world. There is nothing in life so much exaggerated as the importance of art. If it were all wiped off the surface of the earth to-morrow, the world would scarcely miss it. For what is art but a faint reflection of the beauty already sown broadcast over the face of the world? And that would remain.

We should lose Leonardo and t.i.tian, Velasquez and Rembrandt, and a great host of modern precious persons, but the stars and the great trees, the n.o.ble sculptured hills, the golden-dotted meadows, the airy sailing clouds, and all the regal pageantry of the seasons, would still be ours; and an almond-tree in flower would replace the National Gallery.

Yes, surely the true way of contemplating these undistinguished ma.s.ses of humanity, this 'h'-dropping, garlic-eating, child-begetting _bourgeois_, is Shakespeare's, d.i.c.kens', Whitman's way--through the eye of a gentle sympathetic beholder--one who understands Nature's trick of hiding her most precious things beneath rough husks and in rank and bearded envelopes--and not through the eye-gla.s.s of the new critic.

For these undistinguished people are, after all, alive as their critics are not. They are, indeed, the only people who may properly be said to be alive, dreaming and building while the superior person stands by cogitating sarcasms on their swink'd and dusty appearances. More of the true spirit of romantic existence goes to the opening of a little grocer's shop in a back street in Whitechapel than to all the fine marriages at St.

George's, Hanover Square, in a year. But, of course, all depends on the eye of the beholder.

TRANSFERABLE LIVES

I sometimes have a fancy to speculate how, supposing the matter still undecided, I would like to spend my life. Often I feel how good it would be to give it in service to one of my six dear friends: just to offer it to them as so much capital, for whatever it may be worth. In pondering the fancy, I need hardly say that I do not a.s.sess myself at any extravagant value. I but venture to think that the devotion of one human creature, however humble, throughout a lifetime, is not a despicable offering. To use me as they would, to fetch and carry with me, to draw on me for whatever force resides in me, as they would on a bank account, to the last penny, to use my brains for their plans, my heart for their love, my blood for added length of days: and thus be so much the more true in their love, the more prosperous in their business, the more buoyant in their health--by the addition of _me_.

But then embarra.s.sment comes upon me. Which of my friends do I love the most? To whose account of the six would I fain be credited? Then again I think of the ten thousand virgins who go mateless about the world, sweet women, with hearts like hidden treasure, awaiting the 'Prince's kiss' that never comes; virgin mothers, whose bosoms shall never know the light warm touch of baby-hands:

'Pale primroses That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength.'

How often one sees such a one in train or omnibus, her eyes, may be, spilling the precious spikenard of their maternal love on some happier woman's child. I noticed one of them withering on the stalk on my way to town this morning. She was, I surmised, nearly twenty-eight, she carried a roll of music, and I had a strong impression that she was the sole support of an invalid mother. I could hardly resist suggesting to one of my men companions what a good wife she was longing to make, what a Sleeping Beauty she was, waiting for the marital kiss that would set all the sweet bells of her nature a-chime. I had the greatest difficulty in preventing myself from leaning over to her, and putting it to her in this way--

'Excuse me, madam, but I love you. Will you be my wife? I am just turning thirty. I have so much a year, a comfortable little home, and probably another thirty years of life to spend. Will you not go shares with me?'

And my imagination went on making pictures: how her eyes would suddenly brighten up like the northern aurora, how a strange bloom would settle on her somewhat weary face, and a dimple steal into her chin; how, when she reached home and sat down to read Jane Austen to her mother, her mother would suddenly imagine roses in the room, and she would blus.h.i.+ngly answer, 'Nay, mother--it is my cheeks!'; and presently the mother would ask, 'Where is that smell of violets coming from?' and again she would answer, 'Nay, mother--it is my thoughts!'; and yet again the mother would say, 'Hus.h.!.+ listen to that wonderful bird singing yonder!' and she would answer, 'Nay, mother dear--it is only my heart!'

But, alas! she alighted at Charing Cross, and not one of us in the compartment had asked her to be his wife.

The weary clerk, the sweated shopman, the jaded engineer--how good it would be to say to any of them, 'Here, let us change places awhile. Here is my latch-key, my cheque-book, my joy and my leisure. Use them as long as you will. Quick, let us change clothes, and let me take my share of the world's dreariness and pain'!

Or to stop the old man of sixty, as he hobbles down the hill, with never a thought of youth or spring in his heart, not a hope in his pocket, and his faith long since run dry--to stop him and say: 'See, here are thirty years; I have no use for them. Will you not take them? If you are quick, you may yet catch up Phyllis by the stile. She has a wonderful rose in her hand. She will sell it you for these thirty years; and she knows a field where a lark is singing as though it were in heaven!'

To take the old lady from the bath-chair, and let her run with her daughter to gather b.u.t.tercups, or make eyes at the church gallants. Oh, this were better far than living to one's-self, if we were only selfish enough to see it!

But, best of all were it to go to the churchyard, where the dead have long since given up all hopes of resurrection, and find some new grave, whose inhabitant was not yet so fast asleep but that he might be awakened by a kind word. To go to Alice's grave and call, 'Alice! Alice!' and then whisper: 'The spring is here! Didn't you hear the birds calling you? I have come to tell you it is time to get ready. In two hours the church-bells will be ringing, and Edward will be waiting for you at the altar. The organist is already trying over the 'Wedding March,' and the bridesmaids have had their dresses on and off twice. They can talk of nothing but orange-blossom and rice. Alice, dear, awaken. Ah, did you have strange dreams, poor girl--dream that you were dead! Indeed, it was a dream--an evil dream.'

And, then, as Alice stepped bewildered homewards, to steal down into her place, and listen, and listen, till the sound of carriages rolled towards the gate, listen till the low hush of the marriage service broke into the wild happy laughter of the organ, and the babbling sound of sweet girls stole through the church porch; then to lie back and to think that Alice and Edward had been married after all--that your little useless life had been so much use, at least: just to dream of that awhile, and then softly fall asleep.

Ah, who would not give all his remaining days to ransom his beloved dead?--to give them the joys they missed, the hopes they clutched at, the dreams they dreamed? O river that runs so sweetly by their feet, when you shall have stopped running will they rise? O sun that s.h.i.+nes above their heads, when you have ceased from s.h.i.+ning will they come to us again? When the lark shall have done with singing, and the hawthorn bud no more, shall we then, indeed, hear the voices of our beloved, sweeter than song of river or bird?

THE APPARITION OF YOUTH

Sententious people are fond of telling us that we change entirely every seven years, that in that time every single atomy of body (and soul?) finds a subst.i.tute. Personally, I am of opinion that we change oftener, that rather we are triennial in our const.i.tution. In fact, it is a change we owe to our spiritual cleanliness. But there is a truth pertaining to the change of which the sententious people are not, I think, aware. When they speak of our sloughing our dead selves, they imagine the husk left behind as a dead length of hollow scale or skin. Would it were so. These sententious people, with all their information, have probably never gone through the process of which they speak. They have never changed from the beginning, but have been consistently their dull selves all through. To those, however, who can look back on many a metamorphosis, the quick-change artists of life, a fearful thing is known. The length of discarded snake lies glistering in the greenwood, motionless, and slowly perishes with the fallen leaves in autumn. But for the dead self is no autumn. By some mysterious law of spiritual propagation, it breaks away from us, a living thing, as the offspring of primitive organisms are, it is said, broken off the tail of their sole and undivided parent. It goes on living as we go on living; often, indeed, if we be poets or artists, it survives us many years; it may be a friend, but it is oftener a foe; and it is always a sad companion.

I sat one evening in my sumptuous library near Rutland Gate. I was deep in my favourite author, my bank-book, when presently an entry--as a matter of fact, a quarterly allowance to a friend (well, a woman friend) of my youth--set me thinking. Just then my man entered. A youth wished to see me. He would not give his name, but sent word that I knew him very well for all that. Being in a good humour, I consented to see him. He was a young man of about twenty, and his shabby clothes could not conceal that he was comely. He entered the room with light step and chin in air, and to my surprise he strode over to where I sat and seated himself without a word. Then he looked at me with his blue eyes, and I recognised him with a start 'What's the new book?' he asked eagerly, pointing to my open bank-book.

Bending over he looked at it: 'Pshaw! Figures. You used not to care much about them. When we were together it used to be Swinburne's _Poems and Ballads_, or Shakespeare's _Sonnets_!'

As he spoke he tugged a faded copy of the _Sonnets_ from his pocket. It slipped from his hand. As it fell it opened, and faded violets rained from its leaves. The youth gathered them up carefully, as though they had been valuable, and replaced them.

'How do you sell your violets?' I asked, ironically. 'I'll give you a pound apiece for them!'

'A pound! Twenty pounds apiece wouldn't buy them,' he laughed, and I remembered that they were the violets Alice Suns.h.i.+ne and I had gathered one spring day when I was twenty. We had found them in a corner of the dingle, where I had been reading the _Sonnets_ to her, till in our book that day we read no more. As we parted she pressed them between the leaves and kissed them. I remember, too, that I had been particular to write the day and hour against them, and I remember further how it puzzled me a couple of years after what the date could possibly mean.

Having secured his book, my visitor once more looked me straight in the face, and as he did so he seemed to grow perplexed and disappointed. As I gazed at him my contentment, too, seemed to be slowly melting away. Five minutes before I had felt the most comfortable _bourgeois_ in the world.

There seemed nothing I was in need of, but there was something about this youth that was dangerously disillusionising. Here was I already envying him his paltry violets. I was even weak enough to offer him five pounds apiece for them, but he still smilingly shook his head.

'Well!' he said presently, 'what have you been doing with yourself all these years?'

I told him of my marriage and my partners.h.i.+p in a big city house.

'Phew!' he said. 'Monstrous dull, isn't it? As for me, I never intend to marry. And if you don't marry, what do you want with money? You used to despise it enough once. And do you remember our favourite line: "_Our loves into corpses or wives_?"'

'Hus.h.!.+' I said, for wives have ears.

'Is it Alice Suns.h.i.+ne?' he asked.

'No,' I said, 'not Alice Suns.h.i.+ne.'