"'The commonplace assertion that legal marriage preserves men and women in a virtuous life has been refuted these six thousand years. To the present day one is not able to deny the truth of what once a Turkish woman replied to a Christian lady. The latter asked the Oriental: "How can you tolerate the fact that your husband has at the same time and in the same house three other wives of his?" The Turkish lady replied: "Please, do not excite yourself unduly. The only difference between me and you is this, that I know the names of my rivals, and you do not."
"'In Free-Love-Land alone is there virtue. Men and women select freely, obeying only the dictates of infallible Nature. The result is order, health, joy, and efficiency. How can any person of sense believe in the present marriage systems, when one considers the countless lives of old maids sacrificed to the Moloch of modern legal monogamy?
"'In England there are about four times more old maids than in any other country; except in New England, in the United States, where every second woman is born an old maid. Has anybody ever seriously pondered over the great danger to Society and State implied in an excessive number of old maids? I leave it to you, and I dare say to everyone of you who has, no doubt, bitterly suffered at the hands of some one old maid in his or her family.
"'Old maids are either angels of goodness, or devils in human form; the real proportion of either must be left to the Lord Chancellor to decide. But who, or what produces old maids? Our legal monogamy. Give us Free Love, and you shall have heard the last word of old maids. Refuse Free Love, and we shall have to form our old maids into regiments and send them against the Germans. Plato said that the unsatisfied womb of a woman wanders about in all her body like a ravenous animal and devours everything on his path. Our present marriage system makes more victims than victors.'
"The good bag of bones wanted to continue in the same strain, but was stopped by a young policeman who threatened to take her into custody unless she discontinued her oratory. She threatened to love him freely; whereupon he ran away as speedily as he could manage, but was at once followed by the valiant she-orator, who nearly overtook him, crying all the time 'I love you freely'—'I love you freely.' The whole crowd followed, howling, screaming, laughing, and singing songs of Free Love. So ended the discourse on Free Love.
"A few weeks later," continued Alcibiades, "I made the acquaintance of what they call a societylady. She was, of course, a specialist. She had found out that her physical attractions were of a kind to show off best at the moment of entering a crowded room. She was, to use the phraseology of thechef, anentréebeauty. Her name was Entréa. At the moment she entered asalon, she gave, just for a few minutes, the impression of being strikingly handsome. She walked well, and the upper part of her head, her hair, forehead, and eyes were very pretty. She knew that on entering a room, the upper part of the head is precisely the one object of general attention. This she utilised in the most methodic manner. She entered with an innocent smile and lustrous eyes. The effect was decidedly pretty.
"In order to heighten it she always came late. Her cheeks, which were ugly; her shoulders, which were uglier; her arms, which were still uglier, were all cleverly disguised or made to appear secondary, and as if dominated by her big eyes. She was very successful. Most men considered her beautiful; and women were happy that her principal effect did not last very long. She knew some fifteen phrases by heart, which were meant to meet the conversation of the fifteen different species into which she had, for daily use, divided the different men she met in society. Each of these phrases gave her the appearance of muchespritand of an intelligent interest in the subject. She did not understand them at all; but she never mixed them up, thanks to her instinct, which was infallible.
"The last time she had done or said anything spontaneously or naively was on the day she left her nursery. Ever since she was the mere manager ofher words and acts. In everything there was a cool intention. As a matter of fact she was meant by Nature to be a salesgirl at Whiteley's. Failing this, she sold her presence, her smiles, her manners to the best social advantage. A rabid materialist, she always pretended to live for nothing but ideals. Sickened by music, she always gave herself out to be an enthusiast for Wagner. Like many women that have no natural talent for intellectual pursuits, she was most eager to read serious books, to attend serious lectures, and to engage a conversation on philosophy.
"I met her in my quality as Prince of Syracuse. She first thought that Syracuse was the name of my father; when I had explained to her that Syracuse was the name of a famous town in Sicily, she asked me whether I belonged to the great family whose motto wasqui s'excuse, s'iracuse.
"On my answering in the negative, she exclaimed: 'But surely you belong at least to the Maffia? Oh do, it would be so interesting!' In order to please her I at once belonged to that society of secret assassins. However, I soon noticed that she thought the Maffia was the Sicilian form of a society for patriotic Mafficking.
"When we became a little more intimate, she told me that I was never to speak of anything else than Syracuse. That would give me a certaincachet, as she put it, and distinguish me from the others. Accordingly I placed all my stories and occasional sallies of talk at Syracuse. I was the Syracusan. She swore my accent was Syracusan, and that my entire personality breathed Syracusan air. In society she presented me as a member of a curious race, the Syracusans, in Sicily, close to the Riviera.
"One day she surprised me with the question whether the men of Syracuse were still in the habit of marrying two women at a time. She had read in some book of the double marriage of Dionysus the Elder in the fourth century B.C. I calmed her in that respect. I said that since that time things had changed at Syracuse.
"On the other hand, I was unable to make out whether she was a divorced virgin, or a deceased sister's wife. It was not clear at all. When conversing with me alone, she was as dry as a Nonconformist; but in a drawing-room, full of people, she showered upon me all the sweets of passionate flirtation.
"One day I told her that I had won great victories in the chariot races at Olympia. She looked at me with a knowing smile and said: 'Come, come, why did I not read about it in theDaily Nail?' and, showing me the inside of her hat, she pointed at a slip of paper in it, on which was printed: 'I am somewhat of a liar myself.' I assured her that I had really won great prizes at Olympia.
"'Were they in the papers?' she asked.
"I said, we had no papers at that time.
"'No papers?' she exclaimed. 'Why, were you like the negroes? No papers! What will you tell me next? Had you perhaps no top-hats either? Do you mean to tell me that this great poet of yours—what you call him?—ah, Lord Homer, had no top-hat?'
"I assured her that we had no hats whatever.
"'Oh, I see,' she said, 'you were founded like the blue boys,—I see. But surely you wore gloves?'
"On my denying it, she turned a little pale.
"'No gloves either? Then I must ask you only one more thing: had you no shoes either?'
"'No,' I said, calmly, 'some of us, like Socrates, went always barefoot, others in sandals.'
"She smiled incredulously. I told her that in the heyday of Athens men in the streets went about over one-third nude. She did not mind the nude, but she stopped at the word heyday.
"She asked me: 'On which day of the year fell your heyday?'
"I did not quite know what to say, until it flashed upon my mind that she meant 'hay-day.' I soon saw I was right, because she added:
"'Does going barefoot cure hay-fever? And is that the reason why so many people still talk of Socrates?'
"I stared at her. Was it really possible that she did not know who Socrates was? I tried to give a short sketch of your life, O Socrates, but I could not go beyond the time before you were born. For, when I said that your mother had been a midwife, my lady friend recoiled with an expression of terror.
"'What,' she exclaimed, 'he was the son of a midwife?—a midwife?—Pray, do not let us talk about such people! I hoped he was at least the son of a baronet. How could you ever endure his company?'
"'That was just it,' said I, 'I could not. His charm was so great, that for fear of neglecting everything else I fled from him like a hunted stag.'
"'But pray,' she retorted, 'what charm can there be in a son of a midwife? I can imagine some interest in a clever midwife,—but in her son? Oh, that is too absurd for words!'
"'My charming friend,' I answered, 'Socrates was, as he frequently remarked it, himself a sort of midwife, who never pretended to be parent to a thought, but only to have helped others to produce them.'
"'Oh, is that it,—' she said dryly, 'Socrates did manual services in midwifery? How lost to all shame your women must have been to engage a man in their most delicate moments. I now see why so many of my lady friends deserted a man who had announced lectures on Plato. He also talked about Socrates, and when it became known that Socrates was a wretched midwife's clerk, we left the lecture-hall in indignation. Fancy that man said he talked about Plato, and yet in his discourses he talked about nurseries, teetotalism, Christian Science and all such things as date only of yesterday, and of which Plato could have known nothing.'
"'But my lovely Entréa,' I interrupted, 'Plato does talk of all these things, and with a vengeance.'
"'Howcouldhe talk of them?' she triumphantly retorted. 'Did he ever read theDaily NailorLadies' Wold?'
"'No,' I said, 'he never did, which is one of the many reasons of his divine genius. But he does speak of temperance, and simple life, and the superman, and all the other so-called discoveries of this age, with the full knowledge of a sage who has actually experienced those eccentricities.'
"My fascinating friend could stand it no longer. Interrupting me she said:
"'Why, every child knows that Plato talked of nothing else than of Platonic love. We all expected to hear about nothing else than that curious lovewhich all of us desire, if it is not too long insisted upon. We went to the course to revive in ourselves long-lost shivers not only of idealism, but even of bimetallism, or as it were the double weight of it.
"'We thought, since Plato is evidently named after platinum, which we know to be the dearest of precious metals, his philosophy must treat of such emotions as cost us the greatest sacrifice.
"'Platonic love is the most comfortable of subjects to talk or think about. It makes you look innocent, and yet on its brink there are such nicely dreadful possibilities of plunging into delightful abysses. Each thing gets two values; one Platonic, the other,—the naughty value. A whole nude arm may be Platonic; but a voluptuous wrist peeping out of fine laces may be only—a tonic.
"'Now these are precisely the subjects of which we desired to hear in those lectures. Instead of which the man said nothing about them, nothing about that dear Platonic love; in fact, he said that Plato never speaks of what is now called Platonic love. And that man calls himself a scholar? Why, my very chamber-maid knows better. The other day she saw the lecturer's photo in a paper and, smiling in an embarrassed way, she said to the cook: "That's the man what talks at Cliradge's about miscarriages." Was she not right? Is not Platonic love the cause of so many miscarriages, before, during, or after the wedding ceremony?
"'And then,' she added with a gasp, 'we all knew that Plato was a mystic, full of that shivery, half-toney, gruesomely something or other which makes us feel that even in everyday life we are surrounded by asterisks, or, as they also call them, astral forces.Was not Plato an intimate friend of Mrs Blavatsky, the sister of Madame Badarzewska, who was the composer of "A Maiden's Prayer"? There! why then did that lecturer not talk about palmistry, auristry, sorcery, witchcraft, and other itch-crafts? Not a word about them! We were indignant.
"'A friend of mine, Mrs Oofry Blazing, who talks French admirably, and whose teeth are the envy of her nose, declared: "Cet homme est un fumiste." Of course, he sold us fumes, instead of perfumes. One amongst us, an American woman of the third sex, told the man publicly straight into his face, and with inimitable delicacy of touch: "Sir, what are you here for?" Quite so; whatwashe there for? We wanted Plato, and nothing but Plato. One fairly expected him to begin every sentence with P's, or Pl's. Instead of that he wandered from one subject to another. One day he talked about the general and the particular; the other day about the particular and the general. But what particular is there in a general, I beg of you? Is an admiral not much more important? We do not trouble about the army at all. And then, and chiefly, what has a general to do with Plato? The lectures were not on military matters, but on the most immaterial matters, which yet matter materially. But, of course, now that you tell me that Socrates, Plato's master, was a he-midwife, I can very well understand that his modern disciples are philosophical miscarriages!'"
The gods laughed heartily, and Sappho asked Plato how he liked the remarks of Entréa. Plato smiled and made Sappho blush by reminding her what the little ones had at all times said of her, although not a tittle of truth was in it. "No ordinary citizen, nor his wife," he added, "ever wants to know persons or things as they really are. They only want to know what they imagine or desire to be the truth. This is the reason why so many men before the public take up a definite pose, the one demanded by the public. This they do, not out of sheer fatuity, but of necessity. A king could not afford to sing in public, no matter how well he sang; it does not fit the image the public likes to form about a king. In fact, the better he sang, the more harm it would do him. I have always impressed the little ones as a mystic, an enthusiast, a blessed spirit, as you Goethe used to call me. Yet my principal aim was Apollo, and not Dionysus; clearness, and not theclair-obscurof trances."
Alcibiades, whose beautiful head added to the charms of Venice, then continued: "Nothing, O Plato, can be truer than your remark. My lady friend was a living example of your statement. To me, after so many hundreds of experiences, her made-up little mask was no hindrance,—I saw through her within less than a week. She was, at heart, as dry, as kippered, as intentionalist, and coldly self-conscious as the driest of Egyptian book-keepers in a great merchant firm at Corinth. Nothing really interested her; she was only ever running after what she imagined to be the fashion of the moment. What she really wanted was to be the earliest in 'the latest.' When she came to thebookshop, at five in the afternoon, when all the others came, she would ask the clerk after the latest fashion in novels. She did that so frequently, and with such exasperating regularity, that one day the clerk, who could stand it no longer, said to her: 'Madame, be seated for a few moments—the fashion is just changing.' She, not in the least disconcerted, eagerly retorted: 'I say, is that "the latest"?' The clerk gave notice to leave!
"One day I found her in a very bad humour. When pressed for an explanation, she told me that just at that moment an elegant funeral was going on, at which she was most anxious to attend. 'Why, then, do you not go?' I asked.
"'Because,' she replied, 'it is simply impossible. Just fancy, that good woman died of heart failure!'
"'?'—
"'You cannot see? Heart failure? Can you imagine anybody to die of heart failure, when the only correct thing to do is to die of appendicitis? I telephoned in due time to her doctor, imploring him to declare that she died of that smart disease. But he is a brute. He would not do it. Now I am for ever compromised by the friendship of that woman. Oh how true was the remark of your sage Salami, when he said that nobody can be said to be happy before all his friends have died!'"
Thereupon the gods and heroes congratulated Solon upon his change of profession: having been a sage, he was now a sausage.
"The next time I saw my lady friend," Alcibiades continued, "I found her in tears. Inquiring after the cause of her distress, I learnt:
"'Just imagine! You know my little pet-dog. I bought him of a lady-in-waiting. He has the most exquisite tact and feels happy only in genteel society. An hour ago my maid suddenly left my flat, and expecting, as I did, a lady of very high standing, I did a little dusting and cleaning in my room. When my Toto saw that; when he watched me actually doing housemaid's work, he cried bitterly. He could not bear the idea of my demeaning myself with work unfit for a lady. It was really too touching for words. When I saw the refined sense of genteeldom in Toto's eyes, I too began crying. And so we both cried.'
"When I had lived through several scenes of the character just described, I could not help thinking that we Athenians were perhaps much wiser than the modern men, in that we did not allow our women to appear in society. They were, it is true, seldom interesting, nor physically greatly developed. On the other hand they never bored us with types of what these little ones call society ladies. I cannot but remember the exquisite evenings which I spent at the house of Critias, where one of our wittiesthetairai, or emancipated women, imitated the false manners, hypocrisy and inane pomp of the society ladies of Thebes in Egypt. We laughed until we could see no longer. What Leontion, thathetaira, represented was exactly what I observed in my lady friend in London. The same disheartening drynessof soul; the same exasperating superficiality of intellect; the same lack of all real refinement, that I found a few centuries later in society in the times of the Roman Cæsars.
"London desiccates; whereas Athens or Paris animates. When I gave up my relation to Entréa, I met a woman of about thirty-four, whose head was so perfect that Evænetus himself has never engraved a more absolutely beautiful one. Her hair was not only golden of the most lovely tint, but also full of waves, from long curls in Doricadagio, to tantalising Corinthianpizzicatofrizzles all round. Her face was a cameo cut in onyx, and both lovely and severe. Her loveliness was in the upper part of her face; her severity round the mouth and the chin. This strange reversal of what is usually the case gave her a character of her own. Her stark blue eyes were big and cold, yet sympathetic and intelligent-looking; and her ears were the finest shells that Leucothea presented her mother with from the wine-coloured ocean, and inside the shells were the most enchanting pearls, which the sea-nymph then left in the mouth of the blessed babe as her teeth. She was not tall, but very neatly made; afausse maigre. She wrote bright articles, in which from time to time she wrapped up a big truth inbon-bonpaper.
"There was in her the richest material for the most enchanting womanhood; a blend of Musarion and Aspasia; or to talk modern style, a blend of Mademoiselle l'Espinasse with Madame Récamier. She was neither. Not that she made any preposterous effort to be, what Paris calls, a Madame Récamier. But London desiccated her. From dry by nature, she became drier still by London. Beingas dry as she was, she only cared for mystic things; for what is behind the curtain of things; for the borderland of knowledge and dream. As sand can never drink in enough rain, so dry souls want to intoxicate themselves with mystic alcohol. In vulgarly dry persons that rain from above becomes—mud; in refinedly dry souls it is atomised into an intellectual spray. Her whole soul was athirst of that spray.
"When I told her that I was the son of Clinias, she wanted to know first of all, what had been going on at the mysteries of Eleusis. I told her that, like all the Hellenes, I had sworn never to reveal what I had seen at the holy ceremonies. This she could not understand. In her religion the priests are but too anxious to initiate anybody that cares for it.
"'Initiate me—oh initiate me—I beg you,' she said, and looked more beautiful than ever. Her arm trembled; her voice faltered. Even if I did not respect my oath, I should not have told her the teachings of Eleusis. They were far too simple for her mystery-craving soul. So I told her of the Orphic mysteries, and the more she heard of the extravagant and mind-shaking rites and tenets, the more interested she became. Her mouth, usually so severe, swung again in pouty lines of youthful timidity, and her voice got a 'cello down of mellowness.
"'Let us introduce Orphism into this country,' she exclaimed. 'Will you be honorary treasurer?'
"I accepted," said Alcibiades. "Within three days Orphism was presented as theOrphic Science. The members were called priestesses, archontes, or acolytes, according to their degree. Within a monththere were 843 members. Jamblichus was sent for and made secretary. Costumes were invented; pamphlets printed; cures promised; shares offered. It was declared that trances and mystic shivers would be procured 'while you wait'; dreams accounted for; inexplicables explained; the curtain of things raised every Friday at five, after tea. Finally the Orphics gave their first dinner at the Hotel Cecil.
"That was the worst blow. After that I abandoned Orphism."
FOURTH NIGHT
ALCIBIADES—CONTINUED
Hestia now interrupted Alcibiades with the question whether all the women in nebulous Britannia were as grotesque as those that he had described.
Alcibiades smiled and said:
"Not all of them, but all at times. Women must necessarily adapt themselves to the nature of their men, as clerks do to that of their patrons, or soldiers to that of their generals and officers. The Englishman buys his liberty at the expense of much human capital; which cannot but make him eccentric and grotesque. The women attune themselves to him, although no foreigner has a clearer nor a more depreciative idea of Englishmen's angularity than have English women. As women they do not, as a rule, care for liberty at all, and hence consider the sacrifices made by men for liberty as superfluous and uncalled-for. A woman wants in all things the human note, which the average Englishman hates. Hence the surprising power of Continental men over English women. A hundred picked Greeks from Athens, Sicyon and Syracuse could bring half of all English women to book—for Cytherea. How could it be otherwise? The animated, passionate, direct talk of a Greek is something so novel to an English woman that she is as it were hypnotised by it. Shethinks it is she and her personality that has given her Continental admirer thatverveof expression which she has never before experienced in the men of her circle. This alone is such flattery to her that she loses her head.
"If one resolutely goes on scraping off the man-made chalk from the manners and actions of English women, one is frequently rewarded with the pleasure of arriving at last at the woman behind the chalk. This is more especially the case in women of the higher classes. The only time in England I felt something of that painful bliss that mortals call love, was in the case of a lady friend of mine who, under mountains of London clay, hid away a passionate, loving woman. She was tall and luxuriously built. Her hands were of perfect shape and condignly continued by lovely arms, that attached themselves into majestic shoulders with the ease of a rivulet entering a lake by a graceful curve. Over her shoulders the minaret of her neck stood watch. In charming contrast to thelegato cantabileof her body was thestaccatoof her mind. Her words pecked at things like birds. Sometimes there appeared amongst the latter an ugly vulture or two; but there were more colibris and magpies. I had met her for months before I surmised that there was something behind that London clay. But when the moment came and the bells began sobbing in her minaret, then I knew that here was a heart aglow with true passion and with the dawn of hope divine. Like all women that do truly love, she would not believe me that I sincerely felt what I said. Doubt is to women what danger is to men: it sharpens the delight of love. She never became really tender; ay, she wasamazed and moved to tears at my being so. Her heart was uneducated; it wasgaucheat the game of love.
"Amongst the persons dressed in female attire I also met a number of beings whom, but for my long stay at Sparta, I should hardly have recognised as women. A French friend of mine remarked of them: 'Ce ne sont pas des femmes, ce sont des Américaines.' The species is very much in evidence in London. They reminded me violently of the Spartan women. They are handsome, if more striking than beautiful. I noticed that in contrast to European women, American females gain in years what they lose in dress at night. They look older when undressed. They have excellent teeth, and execrable hands; they jump well, but walk badly. Their great speciality is their voice, which is strident, top-nasal,falsetto, disheartening. The most beautiful amongst them is murdered by her voice. It is as if out of the most perfect mouth, set in the most charming face, an ugly rat would jump at one. That voice, the English say, comes from the climate of America. (This I do not believe at all; for I have noticed that in England everything is ascribed to the climate, as to the thing most talked about by the people. Climate and weather are the most popular subjects in England; the one that is never out of fashion.) As a matter of fact it comes from the total lack of emotionality in the Americans;just as amongst musical instruments the more emotional ones, like the 'cello, have more pectoral tonality, whereas the fife, for instance, having no deep emotions at all to express, is high and thin toned.
"Nothing seemed to me more interesting than the way in which the American female reminded me of the Spartans and the Amazons. Could anything be more striking than the coincidence between two conversations, one of which I had, far over two thousand years ago, with the Queen of an Amazonian tribe in Thracia, and the other with the wife of an American flour dealer settled in London? When I called on Thamyris in her tent, one of her first questions was as to the latest dramatic piece by Sophocles. I at once saw that the Queen wanted to impress herentouragewith her great literary abilities. I gave her some news about Sophocles, whereupon she turned round to her one-breasted she-warriors and said with a superior smile:
"'You must know that Sophocles is the latest star in Athenian comedy.'
"She mixed you up, O Sophocles, with Aristophanes. With the American flour dealer's wife my experience was as follows: He had made my acquaintance in a bar-room, and invited me to his house. On the way there he said to me:
"'My missus is quite a linguist. She talks French like two natives. Do talk to her French.'
"When we arrived at the house and entered the drawing-room, a rather handsome woman rose from an arm-chair, and stepping up to me said something that sounded like 'Monsieur, je suis ravie de faire votre connaissance'; I thanked her, also inFrench, when suddenly she bowed over me and whispered in American fifes:
"'Don't continue, that's all I know.'
"When I left, the husband accompanied me to the door. Before I took leave, he twinkled with his right eye, and asked me with a knowing look, 'Well, sir, what do you think of the linguistic range of my madame?'
"I did not quite know what to reply. At last I said: 'Like a true soldier she fights on the borderland.'
"One of the strangest things to note in London society is the fascination exercised by American women on Englishmen. Many of the really intelligent men among the English are practically lost as soon as the American woman begins playing with the little lasso of thin ropes which she carries about her in the shape of an acquired brightness and a studied vivacity. The most glaring defects of those women do not seem to exist for the average Englishman. He takes her loud brightness for Frenchespritdished up to him in intelligible English. Her total lack of self-restraint and modesty he takes for a charmingabandon. The real fact is that he is afraid of her. She may have many a bump: she certainly has not that of reverence. Her irreverent mind makes light of thegrandezzaof Englishmen, and thus cows him by his fear of making himself ridiculous.
"The first American woman (—sit venia verbo, as you would say, O Cicero—) I met in London was one married to an English lord. She was tall, well-built, with rich arms and hips, an expressive head, very fond of the arts, more especially ofmusic. Even her head, which was a trifle square, indicated that. When she learnt that I really was the famous Alcibiades, her excitement knew no bounds. She was good enough to explain it to me:
"'Just fancy that! Alcibiades! (They pronounce my name Elkibidees.) I am simply charmed! I have so far every year introduced some new and striking personage into drawing-rooms, in order to stun the natives of this obsolete island. I have brought into fashion one-legged dancers; three-legged calves; single-minded thought-readers; illusionists; disillusionists; disemotionists; dancers classical, mediæval, and hyper-modern; French lectures on the isle of Lesbos, after a series of discourses on the calves of the legs of Greek goddesses in marble; not to forget my unique course of lectures given at the drawing-room of the dearest of all duchesses, on the history ofdécolletage.
"'This year, to be quite frank with you, Mr Elkibidees, I meant to arrange in the magnificent drawing-room of an Oriental English lady, the uniquest and at the same time the boldest exhibition ever offered to the dear nerves of any class of women. I cannot quite tell you what it was going to be. I can only faintly indicate that it was to be a collection of all the oldest as well as latest inventions securing the tranquillity of enjoying just one child in the family. This, I have no doubt, would have been the greatest sensation of the season.
"'The city of Manchester and the town of Leeds would have publicly protested against so "immoral" an exhibition. Of course their councillors wouldhave done so after careful study of the things exhibited. Three bishops would have threatened to preach publicly in Hyde Park; while five archdeacons would have volunteered to be the honorary secretaries of so interesting an exhibition.
"'I communicated the idea to Father Bowan, a virulent Jesuit, who in the creepiest ofcapucinades, delivered on most Sundays during the season, gives us the most delightful shivers of repentance, and likewise many an inkling of charming vice of which we did not know anything before we learned it from his pure lips. He was delighted. "Do, my lady, do do it. I am just a little short of horrors, and your exhibition will give me excellent material for at least four Sundays. I hope you have not forgotten to illustrate by wax figures certain methods, far more efficient than any instrument can be, and most completely enumerated and described in the works of members of our holy Order, such as Suarez, Sanchez, Escobar, and others. Should you not have these works, I will send you an accurate abridgment of their principal statements of facts."
"'When I heard the Rev. Father talk like that, I could scarcely control myself with enthusiasm in anticipating the huge sensation my exhibition was sure to make. It would have been the best fed, the best clad, and the most enlightened sensation ever made in England since the battle of Hastings. I really thought that nothing greater could be imagined.
"'And yet, when I now come to think what a draw you will be, Mr Elki, if properly taken in hand, duly advertised, adroitly paragraphed, constantly interviewed, and occasionally leadered,—when I think of all that, I cannot but think that I shall have in you the greatest catch that has ever been in any country under any sun. In fact, I have my plan quite ready.
"'I will announce a big reception, "to meet" you. Some ladies will, by request, arrive in Greek dress. The public orator of one of the great Universities will address you in Greek, and you will reply in the same language. Then three of the prettiest daughters of earls and marquesses will dance the dance of the Graces, after which there will be a dramatic piece made by Hall Caine and Shaw, each of them writing alternate pages, the subject of which will be the Thirty Years' War, in which you excelled so much.'
"I interrupted her," said Alcibiades, "remarking that the Thirty Years' War was two thousand years after my time; my war was the Peloponnesian War.
"'Very well,' she exclaimed, 'the Peloponnesian War. I do not care which. Hall Caine will praise everything in connection with war, in his bestDaily Nailstyle. He is, you know, our leading light. He always wants to indulge in great thoughts, and would do so too, but for the awkward fact that he cannot find any.
"'Shaw, on the other hand, will cry down in choicest Gaelic all the glories of war. It will be the biggest fun out.
"'And then,entre nous, could you not bring with you a Lais, a Phryne or two, in their original costumes as they allured all you naughty Greeks in times bygone? It would be charmingly revolting.When I dimly represent to myself how the young eagles of society will tremble with pleasure at the thought of adding to their lists of conquests, in pink and white, a Corinthian or Atheniandemi-mondaineof two thousand years ago, I feel that I am a Personality.
"'If I could offer such an unheard-of opportunity I should get first leaders in theManchester Guardianand mild rebukes, full of secret zest, in the godlyGuardian; let alone other noble papers read by the goody-goody ones. TheRecordwould send me a testimonial signed by the leading higher critics. I should be the heroine of the day and of the night.'"
The gods and heroes encouraged Alcibiades by their gay laughter to tell them all that happened at the "At Home" of his American lady friend, and he continued as follows:
"When the evening of the Greeksoiréecame, I went to the drawing-room in company with Phryne and Lais, who were most charmingly dressed as flute-girls. When we entered the large room we saw a vast assembly of women and men, mostly dressed in the preposterous fashion of the little ones. The women looked like zoological specimens, some resembling Brazilian butterflies, others reptiles, others again snakes or birds of prey. The upper part of their bodies was uncovered, no matter whether the rest of the body had gone through countless campaigns enlivened by numerous capitulations, or whether it had just expanded into the buds of rosy spring. The men looked like the clowns in our farces. They wore a costume that no Greek slave would have donned. It was all black and all of the same cut. Instead of looking enterprising, they all looked likeundertakers. Each of them made a nervous attempt to appear as inoffensive, and as self-effacing as possible; just like undertakers entering the house where a person had died.
"When we entered the room the whole assembly rose and cried: 'Cairo—Cairo!' (they were told to cryChaire—but in vain). I could distinctly hear remarks such as these: 'How weird!'—'Is it not uncanny?'—'It makes me feel creepy!' After a few minutes there was a deep silence, and an elderly gentleman came up through the middle of the room and, bowing first to us and then to the people assembled, stepped up to the platform and began a speech in a strange language, which I vaguely remembered having heard before.
"Phryne suddenly began to giggle, and so irresistible was her laughter that both Lais and I could not but join her, especially when in words broken by continuous laughter she told us:
"'The old gent pretends to speak Athenian Greek!'
"It was indeed too absurd for words. There was especially that vulgar soundiconstantly recurring where we never dreamt of using such a sound; and our beautifulypsilon(γ) he pronounced like the Englishu, which is like serving champagne in soup-plates. When he stumbled over anou, he pronounced it with a sound to which dentists are better accustomed than any Athenian ever was, and our deep and manlych(χ) he castrated down to a lispingk. I remember Carians in Asia Minor who talked like that. Our noble and incomparable language, orchestral, picturesque, sculptural, became like the Palace of Minos which they are excavating atpresent: in its magnificent halls, eaten by weather and worm, one sees only poor labourers and here and there a directing mind.
"I imagined that the good man meant by his speech to welcome me back into the world, and so when my turn to answer him came, I got up and, leaning partly on Phryne and partly on Lais, who stood near me, I replied as follows, after speaking for a little while in Attic, in the language of the country:
"'It is indeed with no ordinary satisfaction that I beg to thank you, O Sophist, and you here present for the pleasant reception that you have given us. My lot has on the whole not been altogether bad. Your studious men, it is true, affect to condemn me, my policy, and my private life. Perhaps they will allow me to remark that the irregularity of my past morals is a matter of temptations. Diogenes used to tell us that one of my sternest historian-critics in Syracuse left his wife, children and house on being for once tempted by the chamber-maid of one of my passing caprices; and the historians of your race who so gravely decry a Madame de Montespan would, did Madame only smile at them, incontinently fall into a fit of hopeless moral collapse.
"'But if your men write against me, irrespective of what they really feel about me, I am sure your women take a much more lenient view of the case.'
"(Discreet applause.)
"'They feel that ambition did not eat up all the forces of my soul, and that in worshipping Ares (Mars), I never forgot the cult of Aphrodite (Venus) either. We Hellenes ventured to be humans, and that is why now we have become demi-gods. You,my friends, do not even venture to be humans, and that is why you remain the little ones.
"'I notice in the northern countries of Europe men do not, or to a very small degree care for women. Perhaps that is the reason why the Roman Catholic idea of the Holy Virgin has had no lasting hold on these nations.
"'I have seen,' continued Alcibiades, 'too many faces, masks, and pretences to be much impressed by the apparent indifference of the northerner to the charms of women. It never meant more than either an unavowed inclination towards his own sex, or sheer boorishness. Even we Hellenes had very much to suffer from our political and social neglect of women outside emancipated ones. The Romans acted much more wisely in that respect; while the nation of our hostess has practically become what we called agynæcocracyor women's rule, where man is socially what our Greek women used to be: relegated to the background. I hear, this is the privilege of Englishmen. I understand. When I was young I learnt but too much about that privilege.
"'But if I should be asked for advice I would tell your men to take your women much more seriously. I know that Englishmen are much more grave than serious; yet with regard to women they ought to be much more intent on considering them in everything their mates, and in several things their superiors. Of course, this is an unmilitary nation; and such nations will always remain boors in Sunday dress.
"'One of your great writers who, being outside the academic clique, has always been maligned by the officials, has written a beautiful essay on theinfluence of women. Poor Buckle—he treated the problem as a schoolroom paper. He came to the result that women encourage the deductive mode of thinking. However, women are more seductive than deductive, and their real influence is to charm the young, to warm the mature, and not to alarm the old.
"'I, being now above the changes of time, I only, contemplate their charm. And what greater potentialities of charm could one wish for than those that your women possess? If those magnificently cut and superbly coloured eyes learned to be expressive; if the muscles of those fine cheeks knew how to move with speedier grace; if that purely outlined mouth were more animated—what possibilities of fascination, like so many fairies, might rise over the dispassionate surface of those silent lakes! As they are, their several organs are positively hostile, or coldly indifferent to one another. The forehead, instead of being the ever-changing capital of the human column, setting off their beautiful hair, as ivory sets off gold; the shoulders, the seat of human grace, instead of giving to the head the pedestal of the Charites; and the arms and hands, instead of giving by their movements the proper lilt and cadence to everything said or done;—all these hate one another respectively. The arms do not converse with the face; theirs is like other conversations: after a few remarks on the weather all communication stops. So sullen is the antipathy of the arms, that as a rule they hide on the back, as if begrudging the face or the bust their company. It is in that way that English women who might be as beautiful and charming as the maidens of Thebes or ofTanagra, have made themselves into walking Caryatides, whom we invariably represented as doing a slavish labour, with their arms on their backs, and with a heavy load on their heads.
"'Remove the arms, O women of England, from your badly swung back and bring them into play in front of your well-shaped bust and your beautiful faces! Let the consciousness of your power electrify your looks, your dimples, and your gait; and when from musing Graces you will have changed into graceful Muses, your men too will be much superior to what they used to be.
"'See how little your influence is, as your language clearly indicates. Is not your language the only idiom in Europe that has completely dropped that fine shade of sweet intimacy which the use ofthouandthyis giving to the other languages? Is not a new world of tenderest internal joy permeating the French, German or Italian woman who for the first time dares totutoyerher lover? You women of England, the natural priestesses of all warmth and intimacy, you have suffered all that to decay.
"'To your men we Hellenes say: "Imitate us!" To you women, we do not say so. We ask you to exceed us, to go beyond us, and then alone when women will be what we Hellenic men were, that is, specimens of all-round humanity, then indeed you too will rise to the higher status, and the golden age will again fill the world with light and happiness!'
"After that speech of mine," continued Alcibiades, "there was much applause. I mingled with the public, and was at once interpellated by one of the American ladies present:
"'Most interesting speech,' she said. 'What Iespecially liked were your remarks about thou-ing. And what I want to know most is whether Caryatides were thou-ing one another?'
"I was a little perplexed, and all that I could answer was: 'Their dimples did,' and this seemed to satisfy my American lady marvellously well.
"Another lady asked me how many Muses we had, and on hearing that their number was nine, she was highly astonished. 'Only nine? Why in London there are mews in every second street. How strange!'
"A third lady asked me what I meant by shoulders being a pedestal. Her shoulders, she was sure, were no pedestals, and she would not allow anyone to stand on them. She added, that she was aware of my having said that the shoulders were the pedestal of the Charites, but with her best intention she could not allow even charity to be extended to her shoulders. I smiled consent.
"A fourth lady, whose name was Valley, but who was a mountain of otherwise rosy flesh, asked me what I had meant by maidens of Podagra? She was sure that young maids never suffered from that ugly disease. I told her that I really meant Chiragra. This satisfied her marvellously well.
"During that time Phryne and Lais were the heroines of the evening, lionised by women, and courted by men. The women asked them all sorts of questions and seemed extraordinarily eager to be instructed. One of them, a brilliant duchess—(who had three secretaries providing her with the latest information about everything, the first preparing all the catch-words from A to G, the second from H to N, and the third from O to Z)—asked Phrynewhether she would not permit her to convince herself of the accuracy of the estimate in which Hyperides held the exquisite form of Phryne's bosom. (A middle-class woman thereupon asked Mr Gox, M.P., what Hyperides meant. Mr Gox told her it was the Greek for Rufus, son of Abraham.) Phryne volunteered to do so at once, and the women disappeared in a special room, from where very soon cries of amazement could be heard. The pure beauty of Phryne enchanted the women. The sensation was immense, ay immensest.
"The representative of theDaily Nailoffered first £2000, then £3000, finally £5000 for permission to kodak Phryne.
"TheBad Timesat once prepared a folio edition ofThe Engravers' Engravings, payable in 263 instalments, or preferably at once.
"TheDaily Marconigraphstarted a public discussion in its columns: 'Shall the lower part of the upper anatomy of the female trunk be unveiled?'
"The excitement became so universal that Mr Gigerl See at once convened a national meeting for the erection of ten new statues to Shakespeare; and General Booth ordered an absolute fast of 105 hours' duration.
"All the directors of music halls, the next day, stormed Hotel Ritz where Phryne had a suite of six lovely rooms, and offered impossible prices for a performance of five minutes. Phryne, after consulting me, consented to appear at the Palace Theatre, in the immortal scene when, in presence of the entire population of Athens, she descended into the sea. Half of the proceeds were to be given to a fund for poor women in childbed. Endless advertisementssoon filled every available space on London's walls, parks, newspapers, 'buses, railways, and shops. Tickets sold at tenfold their original prices.
"At last the evening came. In the first two rows there were practically nothing but clergymen. The following rows were filled with lawyers, M.P.'s and University professors. In the boxes one could see all the aristocracy of the country. When Phryne's turn came, the orchestra played Wagner's 'Pilgrim's Chorus,' toward the end of which the curtain rolled up, and the scene represented the Piræus with apparently countless people, all in Greek dress. When the expectation was at its height, Phryne appeared clad only with the veil of her perfect beauty, and descended into the sea. Before she entered the water she said her prayers to Aphrodite, and then slowly went into the waves.
"Everyone in the audience had come to the theatre expecting to be badly shocked. To their utmost astonishment they found that there was not only nothing shocking in the scene, but even much to fill the people with awe. Like all the barbarians, the little ones deem nudity a shocking sight. What shocked them that night was the fact that they were not shocked. They felt for a moment that many of their notions and views must be radically wrong, and that was the only shock they received. Phryne triumphed over Londoners, as she did over the Athenians.
"My American lady friend was in raptures. The incredible sensation her Elki and his Athenian women had caused inblaséLondon society made her the centre of all social centres for a fortnight. She received innumerable letters from innumerablepeople. The greatest writers that the world has ever seen, such as Miss Cora Morelli, wrote to her saying, that:
"'She had from her infancy onward taken a deep interest in Alcibiades and his time, and that now, having actually seen him, she would forthwith publish a novel under the attractive title of "The Mighty Elki," let alone another novel, full of the most delightful shivers, called "Phry, the Pagan."'
"Mr Hall Caine, in a thundering article, fulminated against the row made over Phryne, and solemnly declared that the charms of his Manxman were incomparably greater. One day Mr Caine called on me. He implored me to become a Christian, and assured me that the shortest way to that effect would be to attend a performance of his piece of that name. I thanked him for his kind offer, but politely declined it. Whereupon Mr Caine remained musing, until at last he surprised me with the question: 'Mr Alcib, you are the man to solve the problem of my life. Do you not think I bear a remarkable resemblance to Lord Bacon?'
"I answered that I could discern no resemblance between him and the witty Chancellor, but that I was bound to confess that there was a striking resemblance between him and Shakespeare.
"Mr Caine smiled a superior smile. 'I wonder,' he said, 'you are not aware of the fact that Shakespeare was written by Lord Bacon.'
"'Very strange—very strange,' I replied. 'We in Olympus think that Shakespeare was written by the victory over the Armada, and published by Elizabeth and Co.'
"'Do you really think such stuff in Olympus?'exclaimed Mr Caine; 'then I do not wonder that I have never been invited to that place. What has the Armada to do withHamletorKing Lear? You might just as well say that my novels were written by our victory at Colenso and Spion Kop. It is revoltingly absurd. A book is a book and not shrapnel or bombs. Sir, I am ashamed of you; the purple of red indignation rises swellingly into my distended physiognomy, and my thought-fraught forehead sinks under the ignominy of such life-bereft incoherences!'
"I advised Mr Caine to drink Perrier; he thanked me profusely, and assured me that he had always done so. He evidently mixed it up with the Pierian sources of literature which, I learn, provide the innumerable papers of the Associated Press with the necessary water under the name of Perrier.
"In my honour my American lady friend gave, a few days later, a concert. The little ones call a concert a series of instrumental and vocal pieces played for sheer amusement, and without any relation to poetry, dance, or religion. I have these three to four hundred years accustomed myself to their music, which is thoroughly different from ours, being polyphonous, whereas ours was never so. Dionysus, who presides at their music, has often told us that he introduced it into the modern world in order to show his exceeding power even in times when the men and women have lamentably fallen from the height ofour Grecian culture. Our music was essentially Apollinic; that of the moderns is Dionysiac. You remember, O Zeus, that even Apollo was moved when three of the moderns had the honour to perform before him. Even he praised Mozart, Chopin, and some pieces of Weber. You need not blush, Frédéric, and you might help me to entertain and charm our holy circle by playing us one of your compositions in which beauty of form is married in tender love to truth of feeling."
Thereupon, at a sign of Zeus, Milo of Crotona, the Olympian victor of all victors, carried a piano on his mighty back, and put it down gently in one of the mystic barks. Chopin, bowing to the gods, and more particularly to Juno and Diana, sat down to the instrument and played the second and the third movement of his E minorConcerto. Round him waved the three Graces, while Dionysus laid an ivy wreath on his blessed head. Even the gods were moved, and when Frédéric had ended, they applauded him with passionate admiration.
"I wish, O Chopin," continued Alcibiades, "I had known you in my mortal time. What Terpander and Thaletas, the great musicians, did for Sparta, you might have helped me to do for Athens. It was not to be. The thought saddens me still. More than Sophocles and Aristophanes or Socrates, your incomparable music would have helped to keep theKosmosof Athens in due proportions."
A short pause ensued, and all looked with timidity on Zeus' immovable face.
"But let us drop these sorrowful reminiscences and return to the London concert given by my American hostess.
"She had engaged the best-known artists. For the solo songs she engaged a woman who had to be carried into the room in a motor chair, and was not allowed to stand up, before three architects had examined the solidity of the floor. Her range was from the deeppto the highl. She sang baritone, and soprano at the same time, and what her tone wanted in width hertailleamply replaced. She sang nothing but Wagner, whose music, it would appear, is written for two-ton women only. No smaller tonnage need apply. While she sang, three dozen violins executed the tremolos of five hundred whimpering children, while forty counter-basses gave, every three minutes, a terrible grunt inxminor. There were also fifteen fifes, and twenty-one different kinds of brass instruments, some of which had necks much longer than that of the oldest giraffe. The music was decidedly sensual and nerve-irritating. It was full of chords, both accords and discords, and what little melody there was in it was kneaded out into a tapeworm of prodigious length and such hydralike vitality, that no matter how frequently the strings throttled off its head, it yet constantly recurred bulging out a new head.
"The men present liked the singer; the women adored the music. It gave them all sorts of shivers, and although they did not understand it at all, they yet felt that here was a new shiver. Or as one of them, the bright Mrs Blazing, remarked: 'Quel artiste que ce M. Wagner!He has translated into music the grating noise of a comb on silk, the creaking of a rusty key in an old lock, and the strident rasp of a skidding sleigh or motor on hard-frozen snow.'
"The next artist was a Belgian violinist. For reasons that you alone, O Zeus, could tell us, the Belgians are credited with a special gift for pulling strings in general, and those of the violin in particular. Being a nation midway between the Germans and the French, they are believed to possess much of German musical talent and something of French elegance. This would easily make them good 'cello players. But not satisfied with the 'cello, in which they have excelled more than one nation, they must needs be great violinists too. However, the violin, while not at all the king of instruments, is yet the most vindictive and jealous amongst them. It is like the Lorelei: it allures hundreds, only to dash their bones against the rock of Failure. It wants the delicacy of a woman and the strength of a man. It requires the soul of spring and the heart of summer to play it well.
"A Belgian iseo ipsodebarred from reaching the height of violin-playing; just as a Chinaman, with his over-specialised mind, can never well play the orchestral piano. A Belgian heart is moving in a colourless and slouchingandante; the violin moves in a profoundly agitatedadagioorallegro. The violin is the instrument of luckless nations, such as were formerly the Italians, the Poles, and the Hungarians who gave us Paganini, Wienavski and Joachim. The Belgians have nearly always enjoyed theembonpointof fat prosperity. 'Leur jeu bedonne,' as Mrs Blazing would say.
"The Belgian played yourChaconnein D minor, O Bach."
At these words of Alcibiades all the thinkers and poets present rose from their seats and bowed toJohn Sebastian, who stood near Strabo and Aristotle, being exceedingly fond of geographical lore. Even the gods applauded and Polyhymnia allowed him to kiss her hands.
"You remember, O John Sebastian, when I met you near Lützen at one of your solitary walks and you spoke to me of yourChaconne. I listened with rapt attention and told you that your composition, which you then played to me on a violin which the old inn-keeper lent you and which had just arrived from Steiner in Tyrol, rendered as perfectly as possible the sentiments I had felt when for the first time in my life I went to the Oracle at Dodona, where the winds rush through the high oak-trees with a fierce power such as can be heard in no other spot in Europe. I re-imagined my awe-struck meditations in the holy grove; I heard the stormy music of Zeus' winds in Zeus' trees; I again felt all through me the soul-moving chorus of the priests which ends in a jubilating mood, and finally I left with deep regret at having to re-enter my life of stress after having spent a day in sacred and mystic seclusion.
"When the Belgian artist played it, I listened in vain for Dodona. What I heard was the rustling of silken tones through the wood of the chairs and tables at the Carlton. Where was the Oracle? Where the chorus of the priests? Where their jubilation? The only thing that I found were my regrets. But the public was charmed. It is imperative to admire theChaconne, chiefly because it is played Violinsolo. Mrs Blazing explained the matter to me with her wonted rapidity of mind: 'Why wonder at our admiration of theChaconne? Do we not say: "Chacun à son goût?"'
"The next artist was a pianist, whose name sounded like Pianowolsky or Forterewsky. He was of course a Pole. The English have long found out that -welsky or -ewsky goes with the name of a great pianist, as the pedal goes with the piano. It was for this reason that Liszt, the Orpheus of the last century, never had any success in England. He ought to have called himself Franzescowitch Lisztobulszky, and then, no doubt, he would have scored heavily. Rubinstein had indeed much success in England, but it is patent that most English took his official name as a mere abbreviation of Ruben Ishnajewich Stonehammercrushowsky. The English taste in music is remarkable; it is somewhat like their taste in fruit. They prefer hothouse grapes to natural ones. In the same way they prefer the piano music of Mendelmeier, called Bartholdy, to that of Stephen Heller or Volkmann. What they more particularly like are the 'Songs without Words' of that composer, which in reality areWords without Songs. His piano music is nothing but congealed respectability, or frozenshockingitis."
Aristoxenus, interrupting Alcibiades, exclaimed: "Do not, O son of Clinias, forget the man's marvellous compositions for the violin as well as for the orchestra. Diana frequently commands hisMidsummer Night's Dreamwhen she dwells with her nymphs in the mystic forest near Farnham Common, where Bartholdy composed it under the trees of Canute."
"You are quite right, O master of all Harmony, and I want to speak only of his piano music. The pianist at the concert had a very fine profile and beautiful hair. This helped him very much in a country where the sense of stylishness is exceedinglyacute. A coachman must have a broad back; a pianist, a fine profile; a violinist, long legs; a 'cellist, beautiful hands; and a lady singer, a vast promontory. Once these indispensable qualities are given, his or her music is practically a matter of indifference.
"The pianist then performing played well, as long as he playedforteandstaccato; but he had neither alegatonor, what was fatal, apiano, let alone apianissimo. Fortunately his sense of rhythm was very well developed; otherwise he did not rise above a first prizeman of a conservatory.
"He played a transcription or two by Liszt. This the English condemn; it appears unlegitimate to them. To please them, one must play one of the last sonatas of Beethoven, preferably those composed after his death, that is, those that the man wrote when he had long lost the power of moulding his ideas in the cast of a sonata, and when his vitality had been ebbing away for years. A transcription stands to the original as does an engraving of an oil-colour picture or a statue to its original. Most people will enjoy a fine engraving of theTransfigurationor of Our Lady of Milo much more readily than they would the original; just as I now know that you gave us, O Zeus, great artists like Scopas, Praxiteles, Lionardo, or Domenichino, because we could not bear, nor comprehend the sight of the originals of their divine art, as long as we still move in our mortal coil. The transcription of some of the ideas of Mozart'sDon Juanby Liszt is the best and most illuminating commentary on that incomparable opera.
"More interesting than the play were the remarks which I overheard from among the public. The men dwelt exclusively on the big sums of money the pianistmade by his 1526 recitals in 2000 towns of the United States. The profits they credited him with ranged from £15,000 to £100,000. A Viennese banker present drily remarked that he wished he could play the difference between the real and the imagined profits of the virtuoso on a fine Erard piano. The women made quite different remarks. Said one:
"'Herr Pianoforterewsky has been painted by royalty.'
"'Is that so?' said her neighbour. 'What an interesting face! I wish I could procure a photo of the picture.'
"'Do you know,' said a third, 'that Herr Pinaforewsky practises twenty-three hours a day? I know it on the best authority; his tuner told me so.'
"'Which tuner? Herr Pinacothekowsky, my dear, has three tuners: one for the high notes, the second for the middle ones, and the third for the low notes.'
"'How interesting! But suppose one of the tuners falls ill. What does he do then?'
"'Why, it's simple enough. In that case he only plays pieces requiring two of the three ranges of notes.'
"'How intensely interesting! But pray, if you do not take it amiss, my dear, I learnt that Herr Pedalewsky has only two tuners: one for the black keys, the other for the white ones.'
"'My dear, that was so in bygone times when he played sometimes a whole concert on the black keys alone, being 231 variations on Chopin'sEtudeon the black keys. But it made such a sad impression that some nasty critics said his piano was in mourningblack; other critics said that he was paid to do so by Mr Jay of Regent Street.'
"'How excruciatingly interesting! Do you know, my dear, I was told that Herr Polonorusky plays practically all the time, and even when he travels he carries with him a dumb piano on which he practises incessantly.'
"'How touching! I have heard that too, and believed it, until that atrocious man who writes for theBad Timesdestroyed all my illusions. He said that if Herr Pantyrewsky did that, he would for ever spoil his touch. Just fancy that! It is not the touch, but the pose of that languid, Chopinesque profile over a dumb piano in a rattling car that was so interesting. And now that horrid journalist spoils it all. Nay, he added that the whole story was deliberately invented by the artist's manager.'
"'How distressingly interesting! You know, my dear, I will not believe the story about the manager. I know too much about the wonderful pianist. I have learnt at Marienbad that he had ten teachers at a time, one for each of his fingers, and that for five years he lived in a tiny village in Bavaria, because, don't you see, it was so central for the ten different cities where his teachers lived. For the thumb he rushed off to Frankfort on the Maine. There is no town like Frankfort for the study of the thumb. That's why they make such excellent sausages there which resemble a thumb to perfection. For the index he went to Rome. And so forth and so on. It is most marvellous.'
"All during that time," Alcibiades continued, "the pianist was playing the moonlight sonata of Beethoven. At the end of the piece, the ladies whohad carried on the lively conversation applauded wildly. 'Was it not marvellous?' said one to the other. 'Oh—delightful!' was the answer.
"So ended the concert. On leaving my seat I met Mrs Blazing.
"'O mon cher,' she said, 'why do all these women pretend to enjoy music? They very well know that not one of them cares for it in the least. I frankly admit that music to me is the anarchy of air, the French Revolution of sounds, acoustic bankruptcy. All our lives we have been taught to suppress our emotions, and to consider it ungenteel to express them in any way whatever. We were told that we must hide and suppress them—which we have done so successfully that after some time we resemble to a nicety the famous safe of Madame Humbert. And then, in flagrant contradiction to all this genteel education, we are supposed to accept with joy the moanings, cries, sobs, sighs, and other unsuppressed emotions of some middle-class Dutchman or Teuton dished up to us in the form of a sonata. It is too absurd for words.
"'If that lower-middle-class Dutchman Beethoven (or as my Cynthia calls him: "Bête au vent") wants to exhale his moral distress and sentimental indigestion, let him do so by all means, but in a lonely room. Why does he interfere with the even tenor of our well-varnished life? If my charming Japanese china figures, or my pretty girls and shepherds invieux Saxesuddenly began to roar out their sentiments, I should have them destroyed or sold without any further ado. Why should I accept such roarings from an ugly, beer-drinking, unmannered Teuton? Why, I ask you?'
"'Music is the art of poor nations and poor classes. Outside a few Jews, no great musician came from among the rich classes; and Jews are socially impoverished. I can understand the attraction of ditties nursed in the music halls. They fan one with a gentle breeze of light tones, and here and there tickle a nerve or two. But what on earth shall we do with suchplesiosaurias the monsters they call symphonies, in which fifty or sixty instruments go amuck in fifty different ways? The flute tries to serpentine round the bassoon in order to instil in it drops of deadly poison; the violins gallop recklesslyà laMazeppa against and over the violas and 'celli, while the brass darts forth glowing bombs falling with cruelty into the finest flower-beds of oboes and harps. It is simply the hoax of the century. Would you at Athens ever have endured such a pandemonium?'
"'You are quite right,ma très charmante dame,' I said, 'we never had such music and we should have little cared for it. Our way of making symphonies was to write epics, crowded with persons, divine and human, and with events and incidents of all colours and shades. The Continental nations have lost the epic creativeness proper, and must therefore write epics in sound. Just as your languages do not allow you to write very strictly metred poetry such as we have written without impairing the fire and glamour of poetry, and the only way left for you of imitating the severe metres of Archilochus, Alcæus or Sappho is in the form of musical canons, fugues, or other counterpointed music. It seems to me that you English have not done much by way of music epics, because, like ourselves, you were busily engaged in writing epics of quite a different kind: the epic ofyour Empire. The nations that have written musical epics, did do so at a time when these were the only epics they could write,—the symphony of Empire being refused them.'
"'I see,' said Mrs Blazing. 'You mean to say that our Mozarts and Beethovens are Lord Chatham, Clive, Nelson and Wellington?'
"'In a manner, yes. Few nations, if any, can excel both in arts and in Empire-making, and had you English been able to hold in your imperial power considerable parts of Europe, say, of France, Germany or Spain, you would never have had either Walter Scott or Byron, Shelley or Tennyson. For the efforts required to conquer and hold European territory would have taxed all your strength so severely that no resources would have been left for conquests in the realm of the arts and literature.