VIHENLEY THE VAINGLORIOUS

Henley was a master of the vainglorious phrase. He was Pistol with a style. He wrote in order to be overheard. His words were sturdy vagabonds, bawling and swaggering. “Let us be drunk,” he cried in one of hisrondeaux, and he made his words exultant as with wine.

He saw everywhere in Nature the images of the lewd population of midnight streets. For him even the moon over the sea was like some old hag out of a Villon ballade:

Flaunting, tawdry and grim,From cloud to cloud along her beat,Leering her battered and inveterate leer,She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,Her horrible old man,Mumbling old oaths and warmingHis villainous old bones with villainous talk.

Flaunting, tawdry and grim,

From cloud to cloud along her beat,

Leering her battered and inveterate leer,

She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,

Her horrible old man,

Mumbling old oaths and warming

His villainous old bones with villainous talk.

Similarly, the cat breaking in upon the exquisite dawn that wakes the “little twitter-and-cheep”of the birds in a London Park becomes a picturesque and obscene figure:

BeholdA rakehell cat—how furtive and acold!A spent witch homing from some infamous dance—Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fadeThrough shadowy railings into a pit of shade!

Behold

A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold!

A spent witch homing from some infamous dance—

Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade

Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade!

Or, again, take the description of the East Wind inLondon Voluntaries:

Out of the poisonous East,Over a continent of blight,Like a maleficent influence releasedFrom the most squalid cellarage of hell,The Wind-fiend, the abominable—The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light—Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,Hard on the skirts of the embittered night;And in a cloud uncleanOf excremental humours, roused to strifeBy the operation of some ruinous change,Wherever his evil mandate run and range,Into a dire intensity of life,A craftsman at his bench, he settles downTo the grim job of throttling London Town.

Out of the poisonous East,

Over a continent of blight,

Like a maleficent influence released

From the most squalid cellarage of hell,

The Wind-fiend, the abominable—

The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light—

Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,

Hard on the skirts of the embittered night;

And in a cloud unclean

Of excremental humours, roused to strife

By the operation of some ruinous change,

Wherever his evil mandate run and range,

Into a dire intensity of life,

A craftsman at his bench, he settles down

To the grim job of throttling London Town.

This is, of its kind, remarkable writing. It may not reflect a poetic view of life, but it reflects a romantic and humorous view. Henley’s humour is seldom good humour: it is, rather, asort of boisterous invective. His phrases delight us like the oaths of some old sea-captain if we put ourselves in the mood of delight. And how extravagantly he flings them down, like a pocketful of money on the counter of a bar! He may only be a pauper, behaving like a rich man, but we, who are his guests for an hour, submit to the illusion and become happy echoes of his wild talk.

For he has the gift of language. It is not the loud-sounding sea but loud-sounding words that are his passion. Compared to Henley, even Tennyson was modest in his use of large Latin negatives. His eloquence is sonorous with the music of “immemorial,” “intolerable,” “immitigable,” “inexorable,” “unimaginable,” and the kindred train of words. He is equally in love with “wonderful,” “magnificent,” “miraculous,” “immortal,” and all the flock of adjectival enthusiasm.

Here in this radiant and immortal street,

he cries, as he stands on a spring day in Piccadilly. He did not use sounding adjectives without meaning, however. His adjectives express effectively that lust of life that distinguishes him from other writers. For it is lust of life, in contradistinction to love, that is the note ofHenley’s work. He himself lets us into this secret in the poem that begins:

Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.

Again, when he writes of Piccadilly in spring, he cries:

Look how the liberal and transfiguring airWashes this inn of memorable meetings,This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings,Till, through its jocund loveliness of lengthA tidal-race of lust from shore to shore,A brimming reach of beauty met with strength,It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream,Some vision multitudinous and agleam,Of happiness as it shall be evermore!

Look how the liberal and transfiguring air

Washes this inn of memorable meetings,

This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings,

Till, through its jocund loveliness of length

A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore,

A brimming reach of beauty met with strength,

It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream,

Some vision multitudinous and agleam,

Of happiness as it shall be evermore!

The spectacle of life produced in Henley an almost exclusively physical excitement. He did not wish to see things transfigured by the light that never was on sea or land. He preferred the light on the wheels of a hansom cab or, at best, the light that falls on the Thames as it flows through London. His attitude to life, in other words, was sensual. He could escape out of circumstances into the sensual enchantments of theArabian Nights, but there was no escape for him, as there is for the great poets, into the general universe of the imagination. This physicalobsession may be put down in a measure to his long years of ill-health and struggle. But even a healthy and prosperous Henley, I fancy, would have been restless, dissatisfied, embittered. For him most seas were Dead Seas, and most shores were desolate. The sensualist’s “Dust and Ashes!” breaks in, not always mournfully, but at times angrily, upon the high noon of his raptures. He longs for death as few poets have longed:

Of art and drink I have had my fill,

he declares, and the conclusion of the whole matter is:

For the end I know is the best of all.

To his mother, to his sister, to Stevenson he writes this recurrent message—the glad tidings of death to come. Man’s life is for him but a child’s wanderings among the shows of a fair:

Till at last,Tired of experience he turnsTo the friendly and comforting breastOf the old nurse, Death.

Till at last,

Tired of experience he turns

To the friendly and comforting breast

Of the old nurse, Death.

And in most of his poems on this theme it seems to be the peace of the grave he desires, not an immortality of new experiences. There is onemoving poem, however, dedicating the “windlestraws” of his verse to his wife in which a reference to their dead child suggests that he, too, may have felt the hunger for immortality:

Poor windlestrawsOn the great, sullen, roaring pool of TimeAnd Chance and Change, I know!But they are yours, as I am, till we attainThat end for which we make, we two that are one:A little exquisite GhostBetween us, smiling with the serenest eyesSeen in this world, and calling, calling stillIn that clear voice whose infinite subtletiesOf sweetness, thrilling back across the grave,Break the poor heart to hear:“Come, Dadsie, come?Mama, how long—how long?”

Poor windlestraws

On the great, sullen, roaring pool of Time

And Chance and Change, I know!

But they are yours, as I am, till we attain

That end for which we make, we two that are one:

A little exquisite Ghost

Between us, smiling with the serenest eyes

Seen in this world, and calling, calling still

In that clear voice whose infinite subtleties

Of sweetness, thrilling back across the grave,

Break the poor heart to hear:

“Come, Dadsie, come?Mama, how long—how long?”

“Come, Dadsie, come?

Mama, how long—how long?”

Sufferer and sensualist, Henley found in the affections some relief from his savage unrest. It was affection that painted that masterly sonnet-portrait of Stevenson inApparition, and there is affection, too, in that song in praise of England,Pro Rege Nostro, though much of his praise of England, like his praise of life, is but poetry of lust. Lust in action, unfortunately, has a way of being absurd, and Henley is often absurd in his lustful—by which one does not mean lascivious—poems. HisSong of the Swordand hisSong of Speedare both a little absurd in their sheer lustfulness. Here we have a mere extravagance of physical exultation, with a great deal of talk about “the Lord,” who is—to the ruin of the verse—a figure of rhetoric and phrase of excitement, and not at all the Holy Spirit of the religious.

Henley, indeed, was for the most part not a religious man but an egoist. He saw his own shadow everywhere on the universe, like the shadow of a crippled but undefeated lion. He saw himself sometimes with pity, oftener with pride. One day he found his image in an “old, black rotter of a boat” that lay stranded at Shoreham:

With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line,That makes me think of legs and a broken spine.

With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line,

That makes me think of legs and a broken spine.

But he preferred to think, as in the most famous of his poems, of his “unconquerable soul,” and to enjoy the raree-show of life heroically under the promise of death. To call this attitude vainglorious is not to belittle it. Henley was a master in his own school of literature, and his works live after him. His commixture of rude and civil phrase may be a dangerous model for other writers, but with what skill he achieves the right emphasis and witty magniloquence ofeffect! He did not guess (or guess at) the secrets of life, but he watched the pageant with a greedy eye, sketched one or two figures that amused or attracted him, and cheered till his pen ought to have been hoarse. He also cursed, and, part of the time, he played with rhymes, as if in an interchange of railleries. But, in all circumstances, he was a valiant figure—valiant not only in words but in the service of words. We need not count him among the sages, but literature has also room for the sightseers, and Henley will have a place among them for many years to come.

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