There was nothing to see,Nothing to do,Nothing to play with,Except that in an empty room upstairsThere was a large tin boxContaining reproductions of the Magna Charta,Of the Declaration of Independence,And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada;There were also several packets of stamps,Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots,Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak,Indians and Men-of-warFrom the United States,And the green and red portraitsOf King FrancobolloOf Italy.I don't believe in GodI do believe in avenging godsWho plague us for sins we never sinnedBut who avenge us.That's why I'll never have a child,Never shut up in a chrysalis in a match-boxFor the moth to spoil and crush its bright colours,Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall.
There was nothing to see,Nothing to do,Nothing to play with,Except that in an empty room upstairsThere was a large tin boxContaining reproductions of the Magna Charta,Of the Declaration of Independence,And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada;There were also several packets of stamps,Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots,Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak,Indians and Men-of-warFrom the United States,And the green and red portraitsOf King FrancobolloOf Italy.
I don't believe in GodI do believe in avenging godsWho plague us for sins we never sinnedBut who avenge us.That's why I'll never have a child,Never shut up in a chrysalis in a match-boxFor the moth to spoil and crush its bright colours,Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall.
Alfred Kreymborg is also very free, and only sometimes musical, but he hammers in his images with a vengeance. But of all the new Americans, Vachel Lindsay's jolly fantasies, with a slightly heard banjo accompaniment, are the most fascinating and least tiresome of all the New.
When one has wallowed for a time with the Imagists and carefully examined thevers librists, with the aid of a catalogue and explanations, one turns to the "Collected Poems" of Walter de la Mare. Come, now! Listen to this:
When slim Sophia mounts her horseAnd paces down the avenue,It seems an inward melodyShe paces to.Each narrow hoof is lifted highBeneath the dark enclustering pines,A silver ray within his bitAnd bridle shines.His eye burns deep, his tail is arched,And streams upon the shadowy air,The daylight sleeks his jetty flanks,His mistress' hair.Her habit flows in darkness down,Upon the stirrup rests her foot,Her brow is lifted, as if earthShe heeded not.'Tis silent in the avenue,The sombre pines are mute of song,The blue is dark, there moves no breezeThe boughs among.When slim Sophia mounts her horseAnd paces down the avenue,It seems an inward melodyShe paces to.
When slim Sophia mounts her horseAnd paces down the avenue,It seems an inward melodyShe paces to.
Each narrow hoof is lifted highBeneath the dark enclustering pines,A silver ray within his bitAnd bridle shines.
His eye burns deep, his tail is arched,And streams upon the shadowy air,The daylight sleeks his jetty flanks,His mistress' hair.
Her habit flows in darkness down,Upon the stirrup rests her foot,Her brow is lifted, as if earthShe heeded not.
'Tis silent in the avenue,The sombre pines are mute of song,The blue is dark, there moves no breezeThe boughs among.
When slim Sophia mounts her horseAnd paces down the avenue,It seems an inward melodyShe paces to.
It is difficult for the simple minded to understand why Walter de la Mare, who is a singer with something to sing about, cannot be classed as an Imagist. He uses the language of common speech and tries always to say exactly what he means; he suits his mood to his rhythm, and his cadences to his ideas; he believes passionately in the artistic value of modern life; but he does not seem to see why he should not write about an old-fashioned aëroplane of the year 1914, if he can make it the centre of something interesting.
The professional Imagist tries to produce poetry that is hard and clear and never blurred or indefinite, and he holds that concentration is the very essence of poetry. The Imagist fights for "free verse" as for the principle of liberty. But why does he fight? If "free verse" is musical, if it expresses a mood or an emotion or a thought in terms that appeal to the mind or the heart or the imagination, why should it be necessary to fight for it? It may suit certain verse makers to makemen of straw in order "to fight" for them; but all the world loves a poet, if the poet once touches its heart. "The Toys" of Coventry Patmore is a good example of what "free verse" ought to be. But it is not free because it is lawless; its freedom is the freedom of all true art which does not ignore, which obediently accepts, certain laws that govern the expression of the beautiful. Mr. Richard Aldington's "Daisy" is certainly a less appealing poem than that one in which Swinburne sings of the lady who forgot his kisses, and he forgot her name!
José de Herédia, in "Les Trophées," is both an Imagist and a Symbolist. He has the inspiration and the science of the Sibyl without her contortions. It is unfortunate that the truculent attitude of the professional makers of "free verse" should have arrayed a small and angry group against them; and this group will have none of Robert Frost, who is certainly a poet and a poet of great courage and originality. There are others, however, who may not be imitators of Robert Frost, but who seem as if they were. Tennyson's "Owl," which is looked on to-day as an example of Victorian idiocy, is really better than Mr. T. S. Eliot's "Cousin Nancy":
Miss Nancy EllicottStrode across the hills and broke them,Rode across the hills and broke them—The barren New England hills—Riding to houndsOver the cow-pasture.Miss Nancy Ellicott smokedAnd danced all the modern dances;And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,But they knew that it was modern.Upon the glazen shelves kept watchMatthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,The army of unalterable law.
Miss Nancy EllicottStrode across the hills and broke them,Rode across the hills and broke them—The barren New England hills—Riding to houndsOver the cow-pasture.
Miss Nancy Ellicott smokedAnd danced all the modern dances;And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,But they knew that it was modern.
Upon the glazen shelves kept watchMatthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,The army of unalterable law.
The Imagist does not believe in ornament, and this glimpse of character might be uttered in one sentence. Perhaps, however, a tendency to ornamentation might have made the poem at least decorative. After all, when one has emerged from the rarefied atmosphere of the Imagist, the Symbolist, and thevers librist, one swims into the splendours of Francis Thompson as one might take refuge from a wooden farmhouse unprotected by trees, in a Gothic spire, a Byzantine altar-piece, or a series of Moorish arabesques. It is a frightful descent from the heaven of Crashaw and the places of the Seraphim in "The Hound of Heaven," by Francis Thompson, to Richard Aldington.
Each lover of poetry has his favourite poem and his favourite poet, and it has always seemed to me that one of the hardest tasks of the critic is to decide on the position of a poet among poets, or of a poet in relation to life. For myself, to speak modestly, I cannot see how I could condemn the taste of the man who thinks that Browning and Swinburne and Tennyson, and, in fact, nearly all the modern English poets, deserve to be classed indiscriminately together as "inspiring." And I cannot even scorn the man who declares that Tennyson isdemodébecause his heroines are in crinoline and conventional, and his mediæval knights cut out of pasteboard.
By comparison with the original of the "Idylls of the King" this statement seems to be true. Sir Thomas Malory's knights and ladies—by modern standards they would hardly be called "ladies"—do not bear the test of even the most elemental demands of modern taste. They are as different as the characters in Saxo Grammaticus's "Hamblet" are from those in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." But I may enjoy the smoothness of the "Idylls of the King," their bursts of exquisite lyricism, their cadences, and their impossibilities,and at the same time read Sir Thomas Malory with delight. When I hear raptures over Browning and Swinburne, when people grow dithyrambic over John Masefield and Alfred Kreymborg and others new—chacun à son goût—I feel that by comparison with Francis Thompson, these poets are not rich. They are poor because they seem to leave out God; that is, the God of the Christians.
Swinburne could never be a real pagan, because he could not escape the shadow of the Crucifixion. Theocritus was a real pagan because he knew neither the sorrow of the Crucifixion nor the joy of the Resurrection. Keats was a lover of Greece, was ardent, inexpressibly beautiful, sensuously charming; but Keats could no more be a real Greek than Shakespeare, in "Julius Cæsar," could be a real Roman. Nor could Tennyson, nor Browning, nor William Morris, nor the Preraphaelites be really out of their time, for they could not understand the essentially religious qualities of the times into which they tried to project themselves.
If you compare the "Idylls" of Tennyson with those idylls of Theocritus he imitated, you easily see that his pictures are not even bad copies of theoriginals; they are not even paraphrases—to turn again from painting to literature. They are fine in themselves, and the critics of the future, more reasonable than ours and less reactionary, will give them their true place. As for Browning, it is only necessary to read the Italian writers of the Renascence, to find how very modern he is in his poems that touch on that period. He is always modern. With all his efforts he cannot understand that mixture of paganism and Catholicism which made the Renascence possible. He seems to assume that the Catholic Church in the time of the Renascence produced men in whom paganism struggled with Christianity. The fact is that paganism had melted into Christianity and Christianity had given it a new light and a new form.
It was not difficult for an artist of the Renascence to look on a statuette of Leda and the Swan or Danaë and the Descent of Jupiter as a shower of gold, as prefiguring the Incarnation. There was nothing blasphemous in this pagan symbolism of a pagan prophecy of the birth of a God from a virgin. It does not follow that Browning is not powerfully beautiful and essentially poetical, even when he reads modern meanings impossibly into the lifeof older days. Nevertheless, he is unsatisfactory, as almost all modern poets, when they interpret the past, are unsatisfactory. A great poet may look into his heart and write, but with Tennyson, with Browning, with Swinburne, one feels that very often they mistake the beating of their own hearts for the sound of the pulsations of the hearts of others.
Similarly, modern Christians who claim to be orthodox are sometimes shocked when they are told that Saint Peter, for example, did not believe that a man might not be both circumcised and baptized. According to a common belief, the two could not exist together among the converted Jews. And the modern man of letters seems to think that paganism and Christianity were at odds at all points. A deeper knowledge of the manifestations of religion, before the Reformation, would dissipate an illusion which spoils so much fine modern poetry.
Another point, in applying my canons of criticism to poets whom I love in spite of this defect, is that I find that they have no desire to be united with God—you may call him Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, to quote Pope. They are, as a rule, withoutmysticism and constantly without that ecstasy which makes Southwell, Crashaw, and the greatest of all the mystical poets writing in English, Francis Thompson, so satisfactory.
Wordsworth may have been transcendental, as Emerson certainly was, but in different ways they made their search for the Absolute, and the search, especially in Wordsworth's case, was fervent. Neither had the splendours, the ecstasies of that love that casteth out fear, the almost fierce and violent fervour of desire, reflected from the Apocalypse of Saint John and the poems of Saint Teresa and of Saint John of the Cross, which we find in Francis Thompson. In this respect, all modern poets pale before him. He sees life as a glory as Baudelaire saw it as a corpse. After a reading of "The Hound of Heaven," with its glorious colour, its glow, its flame, all other modern poets seem to me to be a pale mauve by comparison to its flaming gold and crimson.
To many of my friends who love modern poets each in his degree, this seems unreasonable and even incomprehensible; but to me it is very real; and all literature which assumes to treat our lives as if Christianity did not exist lacks that satisfactory quality which one finds in Dante, in Calderon, in Sir Thomas More, and in Shakespeare. It is possible that the prevalence of doubt in modern poetry is the cause of its lack of gaiety. There is a modern belief that gaiety went out of fashion when Pan died or disappeared into hidden haunts. This is not true. The Greeks were gay at times and joyous at times, but if their philosophers represent them, joyousness and gaiety were not essential points of their lives.
The highest cultivation of its time could not save Athens from despondency and destruction, and when the leaders in the city of Rome came to believe so little in life that only the proletariat had children, it was evident that their very tolerant system of adopting any god that pleased them did not add to the joy of life. The poet, then, who misunderstands the paganism of the Greeks, who does not desire to be united to an absolute Perfection, who is sad by profession, cannot be, according to my canons, a true poet. I speak, not as a critic, but as a man who loves only the poetry that appeals to him.
My friendship with Thackeray and Dickens was an evolution rather than a discovery. Once having read "Vanity Fair" or "Nicholas Nickleby," the book became not so much a book but a state of mind—and, as is sometimes felt about a friend—it is hard to remember a time when we did not know him!
Mark Twain was a discovery. "The Jumping Frog of Calavaras" and that chuckling scene in "Innocents Abroad," where the unhappy Italian guide introduces Christopher Columbus to the American travellers, were joys indeed. These were more delightful and satisfying than the kind of humour that preceded them—they seemed better than the whimsicalities of Artemus Ward, and not to be compared to the laboured humour of Mrs. Partington. But, leaving out these amusing passages, my pleasure in the works of Mark Twain faded more and more as I came to the age of reason, which is somewhat over twenty-five. It was hard to laugh at Mark after a time. Compared to him, the "Pickwick Papers" had an infinite variety. There were other things in Dickens which were finer than anything in "Pickwick," but the humour of Pickwick had a softness about it, a human interest, a lack of coarseness, which placed it immeasurably above that of Mark Twain.
The greatest failure of Dickens was "A Tale of Two Cities." And the greatest failure of Mark Twain is his "Joan of Arc." But Dickens redeemed himself in a hundred ways, while Mark Twain sank deeper and deeper into coarseness and pessimism. As Mark Twain is by all odds apparently the national American author, it is heresy to say this; and I know persons who have assumed an air of coldness as long as they could in my presence, because I declined to look on "Joan of Arc" as a masterpiece.
It shows some faults of Mark Twain's philosophy of life, it suggests his narrow and materialistic point of view, and makes plain his lack of knowledge of the perspectives of history. It is all the worse for an appearance of tenderness. Mark Twain was neither mystical nor spiritual. Thatdoes not mean that he was not a good husband and father, a kind friend and a man very loyal to all his engagements. There are many other authors who had not all these qualities, but who would have more easily understood the character of Joan than did Mark Twain.
Dickens's failure in "A Tale of Two Cities" was from very different causes. It was not through a failure of tenderness, a lack of an understanding of the real pathos of life, or through the want of a spirituality without which no great work can be effective. It was because Dickens relied very largely on Carlyle for the foundation of his study of the historical atmosphere of that novel—the best, from the point of view of style, except "Barnaby Rudge," that he ever wrote, probably due to the fact that, treading as he did on ground that was new to him, he had to guide his steps very carefully. The novel is nevertheless a failure because it is untrue; it concerns itself with a France that never existed seen through as artificial a medium as the mauve tints through which certain artists see their figures and landscapes. It was not with Dickens a case of defect in vision, but a lack of knowledge. It was not lack of perceptionor the absence of a great power of feeling. It was pure ignorance. He was without that training which would have enabled him to go intelligently to the sources of French history.
In Mark Twain's case it was not a lack of the power to reach the sources; it was an inability to understand the character of the woman whom he reverenced, so far as he could feel reverence, and an invincible ignorance of the character of her time. Mark Twain was modern; but modern in the vulgarest way. I know that "Huckleberry Finn" and the other young Americans—whom our youth are expected to like, if not to imitate—are looked on as sacred by the guardians of those libraries who recommend typical books to eager juvenile readers. But let that pass for the moment. To take a case in point, there is hardly any man or woman of refinement who will hold a brief in defense of the vulgarity of "A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur."
It may be said that the average reader of Mark Twain's books—that is, the average American reader—for Mark Twain is read the world over—cares nothing for his philosophy of life. The average American reads Mark Twain only to beamused, or to recall the adventures of a time not far away when we were less sophisticated. Still, whether my compatriots are in the habit of looking into books for a philosophy or not, or of considering the faiths or unfaiths of the writer in hand, it does not follow that it is to their credit if they neglect an analysis which cultivated readers in other countries seldom omit.
If I thought that any words of mine would deprive anybody of the gaiety which Mark Twain has added to life, I should not write these words; but as this little volume is a book of impressions, and sincere impressions, I may be frank in the full understanding that the average American reader will not take seriously what I say of Mark Twain, since he has become an integral part of American literature. There may perhaps come a time when his works will be sold in sets, carefully arranged on all self-respecting bookshelves, pointed to with pride as a proof of culture, and never read. They will perhaps one day be the Rogers's statuettes of literature. But that day is evidently far off. I do not think that any jester of the older day—the day of Touchstone or of Rigoletto, with a rooted sorrow in his heart, could have been more pessimistic and more hopeless than Mark Twain. To change the words of Autolycus—"For the life to come, I jest out the thought of it!"
"You who admire Don Quixote," said an infuriated Mark Twainite, "should not talk of coarseness. There are pages in that romance of Cervantes which I would not allow my son or daughter to read."
One should give both sides of an argument, and I give this other side to show what may be said against my views. But the coarseness of Cervantes is, after all, a healthy coarseness. Modern ideas of purity were not his. Ignorance in those days—the days of Cervantes—did not mean innocence. Even the fathers of the Church were quite willing to admit that the roots of water lilies were in the mud, and there was no conspiracy to conceal the existence of the mud. Mark Twain's coarseness, however, is more than that of Cervantes or Shakespeare. Neither Cervantes nor Shakespeare is ever irreverent.
To them, even the ordinary things of life have a certain sacerdotal quality; but Mark Twain abhorred the sacerdotal quality as nature abhors a vacuum. To say that he has affected the American spirit or the American heart would be to go too far—for Americans are irreverent only on the surface. It seems to me that they are the most reverent people in the world toward those essential qualities which make up the spiritual parts of life. Curiously enough, however, Mark Twain is just at present the one author to whom all Europe and all outlanders point as the great typical American writer!
That a delightful kind of American humour may exist without exaggeration, or the necessity of debasing the moral currency, many joyous books in our literature show. There are a few, of course, that are joyous without self-consciousness; but for real joyousness and charm and innocent gaiety, united to a knowledge of the psychology of the American youth, none so far has equalled Booth Tarkington's "Penrod," or, what is better, "Seventeen."
Now nobody has yet done anything so delightful, so mirth provoking, so pathetic, in a way, as "Seventeen." In my youth I was deprived of the knowledge of this book, for when I swam into the tide of literature, Booth Tarkington was in that world from which Wordsworth's boy came,bringing rainbows, which moved to all the music of the spheres. It was during the late war that "Seventeen" was cast on the coasts of Denmark, at a time when American books scarcely reached those coasts at all. St. Julian, the patron of merry travellers, must have guided it through the maze and labyrinths of bombs and submarines in the North Sea. It arrived just when the world seemed altogether upside down; when death was the only real thing in life, and pain as much a part of the daily routine as the sunshine, and when joy seemed to have been inexplicably crushed from the earth, because sorrow was ever so recurrent that it could not be forgotten for a moment. Then "Seventeen" arrived.
Booth Tarkington may have his ups and downs in future, as he has had in the past. "The Gentleman from Indiana" seemed to me to be almost one of the most tiresome books ever invented, while "Monsieur Beaucaire" was one of the most fascinating, charming. You can hardly find a better novel of American life than "The Turmoil," unless it is Judge Grant's "Unleavened Bread."
But the best novels of American life seem to be written in order to be forgotten. Who reads"The Breadwinners" now? Or who, except the professional "teacher" of literature, recalls "Prue and I"? Or that succession of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels, almost unequalled as pictures of a section of our life, each of which better expresses her talent than "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? The English and the French have longer memories. Mrs. Oliphant's "Chronicles of Carlingford"—some of us remember "Miss Majoribanks" or "Phœbe Junior"—finds a slowly decreasing circle of readers. And while "Sapho" is almost forgotten, "Les Rois en Exilé" and "Jack" are still parts of current French literature. But "Unleavened Bread" or "The Damnation of Theron Ware" or "Elsie Venner" or the "Saxe Holm's Stories" are so much of the past as to be unread.
To the credit of the gentle reader, Miss Alcott's stories perennially bloom. And, for some strange reason, the weird "Elsie Dinsmore" series is found under the popular Christmas tree, while nobody gives the Rollo books to anybody. Why? One may begin to believe that that degeneracy which the prevalence of jazz, lip-sticks, and ballet costumes adapted to the subway is supposed to indicate, is a real menace when one discovers that "Penrod" or "Seventeen" has ceased to be read!
We may read Mark Twain and wallow in vulgarity, but it is my belief that Sodom and Gomorrah would have escaped their fate, if a Carnegie of that time had made it possible to keep books like "Penrod" and "Seventeen" in general circulation!
It was once said of Anthony Trollope that as long as English men and women of the upper and middle classes continued to exist, he might go on writing novels with ever-increasing zest. And the same thing might be said of Booth Tarkington in relation to his unique chronicles of youth—that is, the youth of the Middle West, with a universal Soul. His types are American, but there are Americas and Americas. Usage permits us to use a term for our part of the continent to which our Canadian and South and Central Americans and Mexicans might reasonably object; but while the young Americans of Booth Tarkington are typically American, they personally could belong only to the Middle West. The hero of "Seventeen" would not be the same boy if he had been born in Philadelphia or New York or Boston. Circumstances would have made him different. Theconsciousness of class distinction would have made him old before his time; and though he might be just as amusing—he would not have been amusing quite in the same way.
And this is one of the fine qualities of Mr. Tarkington's imaginative synthesis. He is individual and of his own soil; he knows very well that it is unnecessary to exaggerate or even to invent; he has only to perceive with those rare gifts of perception which he possesses. It all seems so easy until you try to do it yourself!
The state of mind of Penrod, when he is being prepared for the pageant of the "Table Round," is inexpressibly amusing to the adult reader; but no child can look on it as entirely amusing, because every child has suffered more or less, as Penrod suffered, from the unexplainable hardness of heart and dullness of mind of older people. Something or other prevents the most persecuted boy from admitting that his parents are bad parents because they force impositions which tear all the fibres of his soul and make him helpless before a jeering world. When Penrod has gone through horrors, which are nameless because they seem to be so unreasonable, he murmurs aloud, "Well, hasn't thisbeen a day!" Because of the humour in "Penrod" there is a pathos as true and real as those parts in the "Pickwick Papers" where fortunately Dickens is pathetic in a real sense because he did not strive for pathos. Everybody admits now that Dickens becomes almost repellent when he wilfully tries to be pathetic.
One could pick out of "Seventeen" a score of delightful situations which seem to ripple from the pen of Booth Tarkington, one of the best being the scene between the hero and his mother when thatesprit terrible, his sister, seems to stand between him and the lady of his thoughts. And "Penrod" is full of them. The description of that young gallant's entrance into society is of Mr. Tarkington's best. Penrod is expected to find, according to the rules of dancing academies, a partner for the cotillion. It is his duty to call on the only young lady unengaged, who was Miss Rennsdale, aged eight. Penrod, carefully tutored, makes his call.
A decorous maid conducted the long-belated applicant to her where she sat upon a sofa beside a nursery governess. The decorous maid announced him composedly as he made his entrance."Mr. Penrod Schofield!"Miss Rennsdale suddenly burst into loud sobs."Oh!" she wailed. "I just knew it would be him!"The decorous maid's composure vanished at once—likewise her decorum. She clapped her hand over her mouth and fled, uttering sounds. The governess, however, set herself to comfort her heartbroken charge, and presently succeeded in restoring Miss Rennsdale to a semblance of that poise with which a lady receives callers and accepts invitations to dance cotillons. But she continued to sob at intervals.Feeling himself at perhaps a disadvantage, Penrod made offer of his hand for the morrow with a little embarrassment. Following the form prescribed by Professor Bartet, he advanced several paces toward the stricken lady and bowed formally."I hope," he said by rote, "you're well, and your parents also in good health. May I have the pleasure of dancing the cotillon as your partner t'-morrow afternoon?"The wet eyes of Miss Rennsdale searched his countenance without pleasure, and a shudder wrung her small shoulders; but the governess whispered to her instructively, and she made a great effort."I thu-thank you fu-for your polite invu-invu-invutation; and I ac——" Thus far she progressed when emotion overcame her again. She beat frantically upon the sofa with fists and heels. "Oh, I did want it to be Georgie Bassett!""No, no, no!" said the governess, and whispered urgently, whereupon Miss Rennsdale was able to complete her acceptance."And I ac-accept wu-with pu-pleasure!" she moaned, and immediately, uttering a loud yell, flung herself face downward upon the sofa, clutching her governess convulsively.Somewhat disconcerted, Penrod bowed again."I thank you for your polite acceptance," he murmuredhurriedly; "and I trust—I trust—I forget. Oh, yes—I trust we shall have a most enjoyable occasion. Pray present my compliments to your parents; and I must now wish you a very good afternoon."Concluding these courtly demonstrations with another bow he withdrew in fair order, though thrown into partial confusion in the hall by a final wail from his crushed hostess:"Oh! Why couldn't it be anybody but him!"
A decorous maid conducted the long-belated applicant to her where she sat upon a sofa beside a nursery governess. The decorous maid announced him composedly as he made his entrance.
"Mr. Penrod Schofield!"
Miss Rennsdale suddenly burst into loud sobs.
"Oh!" she wailed. "I just knew it would be him!"
The decorous maid's composure vanished at once—likewise her decorum. She clapped her hand over her mouth and fled, uttering sounds. The governess, however, set herself to comfort her heartbroken charge, and presently succeeded in restoring Miss Rennsdale to a semblance of that poise with which a lady receives callers and accepts invitations to dance cotillons. But she continued to sob at intervals.
Feeling himself at perhaps a disadvantage, Penrod made offer of his hand for the morrow with a little embarrassment. Following the form prescribed by Professor Bartet, he advanced several paces toward the stricken lady and bowed formally.
"I hope," he said by rote, "you're well, and your parents also in good health. May I have the pleasure of dancing the cotillon as your partner t'-morrow afternoon?"
The wet eyes of Miss Rennsdale searched his countenance without pleasure, and a shudder wrung her small shoulders; but the governess whispered to her instructively, and she made a great effort.
"I thu-thank you fu-for your polite invu-invu-invutation; and I ac——" Thus far she progressed when emotion overcame her again. She beat frantically upon the sofa with fists and heels. "Oh, I did want it to be Georgie Bassett!"
"No, no, no!" said the governess, and whispered urgently, whereupon Miss Rennsdale was able to complete her acceptance.
"And I ac-accept wu-with pu-pleasure!" she moaned, and immediately, uttering a loud yell, flung herself face downward upon the sofa, clutching her governess convulsively.
Somewhat disconcerted, Penrod bowed again.
"I thank you for your polite acceptance," he murmuredhurriedly; "and I trust—I trust—I forget. Oh, yes—I trust we shall have a most enjoyable occasion. Pray present my compliments to your parents; and I must now wish you a very good afternoon."
Concluding these courtly demonstrations with another bow he withdrew in fair order, though thrown into partial confusion in the hall by a final wail from his crushed hostess:
"Oh! Why couldn't it be anybody but him!"
Dickens would not have done the scene quite this way; he could not have so conceived it, and he might have overdone it, but Booth Tarkington gets it just right. He has created boy characters which will live because they are alive. One of the most detestable books, after Mark Twain's "Yankee at the Court of King Arthur," is Dickens's "Child's History of England." The two books have various gross faults in common and these faults are due to colossal ignorance. Mr. Gilbert Chesterton says that one of Dickens's is due to
the application of a plain rule of right and wrong to all circumstances to which it was applied. It is not that they wrongly enforce the fixed principle that life should be saved; it is that they take a fire-engine to a shipwreck and a life-boat to a house on fire. The business of a good man in Dickens's time was to bring justice up to date. The business of a good man in Dunstan's time was to toil to ensure the survival of any justice at all.
the application of a plain rule of right and wrong to all circumstances to which it was applied. It is not that they wrongly enforce the fixed principle that life should be saved; it is that they take a fire-engine to a shipwreck and a life-boat to a house on fire. The business of a good man in Dickens's time was to bring justice up to date. The business of a good man in Dunstan's time was to toil to ensure the survival of any justice at all.
It seems to me that if all the works of Dickens were lost we might do very well with the "Pickwick Papers" and "Nicholas Nickleby." To these, one is tempted to add "Our Mutual Friend."
When I was young enough to assist at meetings of Literary Societies, where papers on Dickens were read, I was invariably informed that "Charles Dickens could not paint a lady or a gentleman." There was no reason given for this censure. It was presumed that the authors of the papers meant an English lady or gentleman. Nobody, to my knowledge, ever defined what an English gentleman or lady was. When one considers that for a long period an English gentleman's status was determined by the fact that he owned land, had not even a remote connection with "trade" or that he was instructed at Eton or Harrow, in Oxford or Cambridge, the more modern definition would have been very different from what the English of the olden time would have called a gentleman. Even now, when a levelling education has rather blurred the surface marks of class in England, it might be difficult for an American to define what was meant by this criticism of Dickens. It seems to me that no one could define exactly what wasmeant. The convention that makes the poet in Pennsylvania write as if the banks of the Wissahickon were peopled by thrushes, or orchestrated by the mavis, or the soaring lark, causes him often to borrow words from the English vocabulary of England without analyzing their exact meaning. There can be no doubt that Don Quixote was a gentleman but not exactly in the English conventional sense. And, if he was a gentleman, why are not Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller gentlemen? An interesting thesis might be written on the application of Cardinal Newman's definition of a gentleman to both Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller. Why not?
There is a truth about the English people, at least the lower classes, which Mr. Chesterton in his illuminating "Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens"—one of his best books—brings out, though he does not accentuate it sufficiently: this is that the lower classes of the English are both witty and humorous. Witty because they are satirical and humorous because they are ironical. Sam Weller represents a type—a common type—more exactly than Samuel Lover's "Handy Andy" or any of Charles Lever's Irishcharacters. When one examines the foundation for the assertion that Dickens could not draw a lady or a gentleman, one discovers that his ladies and gentlemen, in the English sense, are deadly dull. It is very probable that all conventional ladies and gentlemen bored Dickens, who never ceased to be a cockney, though he became the most sublimated of that class. Doctor Johnson was a cockney, too, but, though it may seem paradoxical to say it, not so greatly impressed by class distinctions as Dickens was.
Dickens had the art of making insupportable bores most interesting. This was an art in which the delicate Miss Austen excelled, too; but Dickens's methods compared to hers are like those of a scene painter when compared to those of an etcher in colours. There are times when Dickens is consciously "common," and then he is almost unbearable; but this objection cannot be made to the "Pickwick Papers." This book is inartistic; it is made up of unrelated parts; the characters do not grow; they change. But all this makes no difference. They are spontaneous. You feel that for once Dickens is doing the thing he likes to do—and all the world loves a lover who loves his work.
There are doubtless some people still living who can tolerate the romantic quality in "Nicholas Nickleby." There are no really romantic qualities in the "Pickwick Papers"—thank heaven!—no stick of a hero, no weeping willow of a heroine. The heroic sticks of Dickens never bloom suddenly as the branch in "Tannhäuser" bloomed. Even Dickens can work no miracle there.
It increases our admiration of him to examine the works of those gentlemen who are set down in the textbooks of literature as his predecessors. Some of these learned authors mention Sterne's "Tristram Shandy," a very dull and tiresome narrative; and "Tom Jones," very tiresome, too, in spite of its fidelity to certain phases of eighteenth-century life. And later, Pierce Egan's "Tom and Jerry." I was brought up to consider the renown of the two Pierce Egans with reverence and permitted to read "Tom and Jerry; or The Adventures of Corinthian Bob" as part of the family pedigree, but it requires the meticulous analysis of a German research-worker to find any real resemblance between the artificial dissipations of "Tom and Jerry" and the adventures of the peerless Pickwick.
If the elder Pierce Egan had the power of influencing disciples, he ought to have induced his son to produce something better than "The Poor Boy; or, The Betrayed Baffled," "The Fair Lilias," and others too numerous to mention.
The voracious reader of Dickens, as he grows older, perhaps becomes a student of Dickens, and is surprised to find that the development of Dickens is much more marked and easily noted than the development of Thackeray. In fact, Thackeray, like his mild reflector, Du Maurier, sprang into the public light fully equipped and fully armed. Both these men had wide experience and a careful training in form and proportion before they attempted to write seriously. They were educated in art and life and letters. The education of Dickens, on the other hand, was only begun with "Pickwick," which knew neither method nor proportion; and he who reads "Barnaby Rudge" for the flavour of Dickens finds a new and good perspective and proportion, and even self-restraint. Artistically, it is the best of all Dickens's novels. For that reason it lacks that flavour which we find in the earlier books. I could not get such thorough enjoyment from it asfrom "Nicholas Nickleby." In it Dickens sacrificed too much to his self-restraint, and there is no moment in it that gives us the joy of the discovery of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Crummles or of 'Tilda Price.
Anthony Trollope, in his "Autobiography," which ought to be a textbook in all those practical classes of literature that work to turn out self-supporting authors, tells us that the most important part of a novel is the plot. This may be true, but the inefficiency of the plot in the works of Charles Dickens may easily be shown in an attempt to summarize any of them, except "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."
Still, when all is said for Dickens, one cannot even in old age begin to read him over and over again, as one can read Thackeray. But who reads an American book over and over again? Hawthorne never wearies the elect, and one may go back to Henry James, in order to discover whether one thinks that he means the same thing in 1922 one thought he meant in 1912. But who makes it a practice in middle age to read any novel of Mrs. Wharton's or Mrs. Deland's or Mr. Marion Crawford's or Mr. Booth Tarkington's at least once a year? There are thousands of persons who findleisure to love Miss Austen, that hardiest of hardy perennials; and during the war, when life in the daytime became a nightmare, there was a large group of persons who read Trollope from end to end! This is almost incredible; but it is true. And I must confess that if I do not read Miss Austen's novels once every year, preferably cozily in the winter, or "Cranford," or parts of Froissart—whose chronicle takes the bad taste of Mark Twain's "Joan of Arc" from my memory—I feel as if I had had an ill-spent year. It makes me seem as slothful as if I omitted a daily passage from "The Following of Christ" or, at least, a weekly chapter from the Epistles of St. Paul!
George Eliot I had known even before the time I had begun to read. No well-brought-up child could escape "Adam Bede" and the drolleries of Mrs. Poyser. As I grew older, however, "Romola" attracted me most. The heroine is perhaps a little too good for human nature's daily food, but she is a great figure in the picture. I suspect that the artificiality of Kingsley's "Hypatia," which I read at almost the same time, made me admire, if I did not love, Romola, by way of contrast. No youth could ever love Romola asWalter Scott made him love Mary Stuart or Catherine Seton. But as it happened that just at this time I was labouring with Blackstone (Judge Sharswood's Notes), with a volume of scholastic philosophy "on the side"—I think it was Jourdain'sconsomméof St. Thomas Aquinas in French—Romola was a decided relief, and she seemed truer and more interesting in every way than Hypatia, who was aspapier-machéas her whole environment is untrue to the history of the time. An historical novel ought not necessarily to be true to history, but it ought to be illuminating and interesting, as "Hypatia" is not and as "Romola" is. So it makes no difference whether George Eliot's reading of Savonarola is correct or not, though it ought to be correct, of course. Then there is Tito, the delicious and treacherous Tito! and the scene in the barber shop! And if you want a good, mouth-filling novel, give me "Middlemarch." Few persons read it now, and probably fewer will read it in the future. It is nevertheless a great monument to the genius of a woman who had such an infinite quality for taking pains, that it almost defeated the end for which she worked.
Some of us have acquired a state of mind which helps us to believe that whenever a man mentions a book he either condemns or approves of it. In a word, the mere naming a book means a criticism of the book at once. It is true that books are criticisms of life, and that life, if it is not very narrow and limited, is a good criticism of books; but one of the most pleasant qualities of a reader who has lived among books all his life is that he does not attempt always to recommend books to others, or to preach about them. Besides, it is too dangerous to recommend unreservedly or to condemn unreservedly. The teachers of literature have undertaken the recommendation of books for the young; there are schools of critics who spend their time in approving of them for the old; and the "Index" at Rome assumes the difficult task of disapproval and condemnation. That lets me out, I feel.
One of my most cherished books is the "Letters to People in the World," by Saint Francis de Sales. I have known people who have declared that it is entirely exotic and has no meaning whatever for them. For me, it is a book of edification and a guide to life; and the "Letters" of Saint Francis himself, not entirely concerned with spiritual matters or the relations of spiritual matters to life, are to me a constant source of pleasure. I remember reading aloud to a friend the passage in which this charming Bishop writes that, when he slept at his paternal château, he never allowed the peasants on the domain to perform their usual duty, which was to stay up all night and beat the waters of the ponds, or perhaps of the moat, around the castle, so that the seigneur and his friends might sleep peacefully. My friend was very much bored and could not see that it represented a social point of view, which showed that the Saint was much ahead of his time! It did not bring old France back to him; he could not see the old château and the water in the moonlight, or conceive how glad the peasants were to be relieved of their duty. I can read the "Letters" of Saint Francis de Sales over and over again, as I read the"Letters" of Madame de Sévigné or the "Memoirs" of the Duc de Saint Simon.
I think I first made acquaintance of Saint Simon in an English translation by Bayle St. John. If you have an interest in interiors—the interiors of rooms, of gardens, of palaces—you must like Saint Simon. Most people to-day read these "Memoirs" in little "collections"; but I think it is worth while taking the trouble to learn French in order to become an understanding companion of this malicious but very graphic author. To me the Palace of Versailles would be an empty desert without the "Memoirs" of Saint Simon. Else, how could anybody realize a picture of Mademoiselle de la Vallière looking hopelessly out of the window of her little room just before the birth of her child? Or what would the chapel be without a memory of those devout ladies who knelt regularly, holding candles to their faces, at the exercises in Lent, after Louis XIV. had become devout, in order that he might see them?
But because I love to linger in the society of the Duc de Saint Simon and Cardinal de Retz, it does not follow that I mean to introduce modern and ingenuous youth to the society of thesegentlemen. Each man has his pet book. I still retain a great affection for a man of my own age who gives on birthdays and great feasts copies of "The Wide, Wide World" and "Queechy" to his grandchildren and their friends! Could you believe that? He dislikes Miss Austen's novels and sneers at Miss Farrar's "Marriage." He has never been able to read Miss Edgeworth's book; and he considers Pepys's "Diary" an immoral book! Now, I find it very hard to exist without at least a weekly peep into Pepys. And, by the way, in a number of theAtlantic Monthlynot so long ago there is a vivid, pathetic, and excellently written piece of literature. It is "A Portion of the Diurnal of Mrs Eliz^th Pepys" by E. Barrington.
If anybody asks me why I like Pepys, I do not feel obliged to reply. I might incriminate myself. Very often, indeed, by answering a direct question about books, one does incriminate oneself.
However, to return to what I was saying—while I love the "Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz," I adore—to be a little extravagant—the "Letters of Saint Vincent de Paul." The man that does not know the real story of the life of Saint Vincent de Paul knows nothing of the evolution of thebrotherhood of man in the seventeenth century. This Frenchman really fought with beasts for the life of children, and was the only real reformer in the France of his time.
Now it is not because Saint Vincent was for a time the preceptor of Cardinal de Retz that I find the Cardinal so delightful! On the contrary! I enjoy the Cardinal, famous coadjutor of his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris, because he is a true type of the polite, the worldly, and the intriguing gentleman of his time. He died a good peaceful death, as all the gay and the gallant did at his time. He earned the deepest affection and respect of Madame de Sévigné, for which any discerning man might have been willing to spend half a lifetime. But even that is beside the point. He lives for me because he gives a picture of the French ruling classes of his time which is shamelessly true. No living man to-day in political office, although he might be as great an intriguer as the Cardinal, would dare to be so interestingly shameless. That is a great charm in itself. And, then, if you read him in French, you discover that he knew how to make literature.
The only wonder in my mind has always beenhow a man who became so penitent during the last years of his life as Paul de Gondi should not have been forced by his confessor to destroy his book of revelations. But one must remember that the confessors of his period—the period of the founding of the French Academy—had a great respect for mere literature. His father was Philip Emanuel de Gondi, Count de Joigni, General of the Gallies of France, and Knight of the Order of the Holy Ghost; who retired in the year 1640, to live among the Fathers of the Oratory. There he entered into holy orders, and there he died, with the reputation of a mightily pious man, on June 29, 1662, aged eighty-one.