From Mr. David Crimp to Montague Tigg,Esq.
The Golden Balls, May 28.
Dear Mr. Tigg,—You alwayswerefull of your chaff, but you must have been drinking when you wrote all that cock-and-a-bull gammon. Thirty pounds! No; nor fifteen; nor as many pence. I never heard of the party you mention by the name of the Count of Monte Cristo; and as for the Prince, he’s as likely to be setting out for Boulogne with an eagle as you are to start a monkey and a barrel-organ in Jericho; or may bethat’sthe likeliest of the two. So stow your gammon, and spare your stamps, is my last word.—Yours respectfully to command,
D.Crimp.
From Christian to Piscator.
Walton and Bunyan were men who should have known each other. It is a pleasant fancy, to me, that they may have met on the banks of Ouse, while John was meditating a sermon, and Izaak was “attentive of his trembling quill.”
Sir,—Being now come into the Land of Beulah; here, whence I cannot so much as see Doubting Castle; here, where I am solaced with the sound of voices from the City,—my mind, that is now more at peace about mine own salvation, misgives me sore about thine. Thou wilt remember me, perchance, for him that met thee by a stream of the Delectable Mountains, and took thee to be a man fleeing from the City of Destruction. For, beholding thee from afar, methought that thou didst carry a burden on thy back, even as myself before my deliverance did bear the burden of my sins and fears. Yet when I drew near I perceived that it was but a fisherman’s basket on thy back, and that thou didst rather seek to add to the weight of thy burden than to lighten it or fling it away. But, when we fell into discourse, I marvelled much how thou camest so far upon the way, even among the sheep and the shepherds of that country. For I found that thou hadst little experience in conflict with Apollyon, and that thou hadst never passed through the Slough of Despond nor wandered in the Valley of the Shadow. Nay, thou hadst never so much as been distressed in thy mind with great fear, nor hadst thou fled from thy wife and children, to save, if it might be, thy soul for thyself, as I have done. Nay, rather thou didst parley with the shepherds as one that loved their life; and I remember, even now, that sweet carnal song
The Shepherd swains shall dance and sing,For thy delight, each May morning;If these delights thy mind may move,Then live with me and be my love.
The Shepherd swains shall dance and sing,For thy delight, each May morning;If these delights thy mind may move,Then live with me and be my love.
These are not the songs that fit the Delectable Country; nay, rather they are the mirth of wantons. Yet didst thou take pleasure in them; and therefore I make bold to ask how didst thou flee at all from the City of Destruction, and come so far upon thy way? Beware lest, when thou winnest to that brook wherein no man casts angle, even to that flood where there is no bridge to go over and the River is very deep—beware, I say, of one Vain Hope, the Ferryman! For I would not have thee lost, because thou art a kindly man and a simple. Yet for Ignorance there is an ill way, even from the very gates of the City.—Thy fellow-traveller,
Christian.
From Piscator to Christian.
Sir,—I do indeed remember thee; and I trust thou art amended of these gripings which caused thee to groan and moan, even by the pleasant streams from the hills of the Delectable Mountains. And as for my “burden” ’twas pleasant to me to bear it; for, like not the least of the Apostles, I am a fisher, and I carried trout. But I take no shame in that I am an angler; for angling is somewhat like poetry; men are to be born so, and I would not be otherwise than my Maker designed to have me. Of the antiquity of angling I could say much; but I misdoubt me that thou dost not heed the learning of ancient times, but art a contemner of good learning and virtuous recreations. Yet it may a little move thee that in the Book of Job mention is made of fish-hooks, and without reproof; for let me tell you that in the Scriptures angling is always taken in the best sense.
Touching my flight from the City of Destruction, I love that place no more than thou dost; yet I fear not its evil communications, nor would I so hastily desert it as to leave my wife and children behind therein. Nor have I any experience of conflict with the Evil One; wherefore I thank Him that hath set me in pleasant fields, by clear waters, where come no wicked whispers (be they from Apollyon or from our own hearts); but there is calmness of spirit, and a world of blessings attending upon it. And hence can no man see the towers of Doubting Castle, for the green trees and the hedges white with May. This life is not wholly vile, as some of thy friends declare (Thou, who makest thy pilgrims dance to the lute, knowest better); and, for myself, I own that I love such mirth as does not make men ashamed to look upon each other next morning. Let him that bears a heavy heart for his ill-deeds turn him to better, but not mourn as though the sun were taken out of the sky. What says the song?—nay, ’tis as good balm for the soul as many a hymn:
A merry heart goes all the day,Your sad one tires in a mile-a!
A merry heart goes all the day,Your sad one tires in a mile-a!
He that made the world made man to take delight in it; even as thou saw’st me joyful with the shepherds—ay, with godly Mr. Richard Hooker, “he being then tending his small allotment of sheep in a common field,” as I recount in a brief life of a good man. As to what awaits me on the other side of that River, I do expect it with a peaceful heart, and in humble hope that a man may reach the City with a cheerful countenance, no less than through groans and sighs and fears. For we have not a tyrant over us, but a Father, that loveth a cheerful liver no less than a cheerful giver. Nevertheless, I thank thee for thy kind thought of one that is not of thy company, nor no Nonconformist, but a peaceful Protestant. And, lest thou be troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits, read that comfortable sermon of Mr. Hooker’s to weak believers, on theCertainty of Adherence, though they want the inward testimony of it.
But now falls there a sweet shower, “a singing shower” saith old George Chapman, and methinks I shall have sport; for I do note that the mayfly is up; and, seeing all these beautiful creatures playing in the air and water, I feel my own heart play within me; and I must out and dape under yonder sycamore tree. Wherefore, prithee, pardon me a longer discourse as at this time.—Thy friend,
Piscator.
From Truthful James to Mr. Bret Harte.
WILLIAM NYE’S EXPERIMENT.
Angel’s.
Dear Bret Harte,I’m in tears,And the camp’s in the dust,For with anguish it hearsAs poor William may bust,And the last of the Nyes is in danger ofsleeping the sleep of the just.No revolver it wasInterfered with his health,The convivial glassDid not harm him by stealth;It was nary! He fell by a scheme whichhe thought would accumulate wealth!For a Moqui came roundTo the camp—Injun Joe;And the dollars was foundIn his pockets to flow;For he played off some tricks with livesnakes, as was reckoned a competent show.They was rattlers; a pairIn his teeth he would hold,And another he’d wearLike a scarf to enfoldHis neck, with them dangerous crittersas safe as the saint was of old.Sez William, “That sameIs as easy as wink.I am fly to his game;For them rattlers, I think,Has had all their incisors extracted.They’re harmless as suthin’ to drink.”So he betted his pileHe could handle them snakes;And he tried, with a smile,And a rattler he takes,Feeling safe as they’d somehow beendoctored; but bless you, that sarpent awakes!Waken snakes! and theydidAnd they rattled like mad;For it was not a “kid,”But some medicine he had,Injun Joe, for persuadin’ the critters butWilliam’s bit powerful bad.So they’ve put him outsideOf a bottle of Rye,And they’ve set him to rideA mustang as kin shy,To keep up his poor circulation; andthat’s the last chance for Bill Nye.But a near thing it is,And the camp’s in the dust.He’s a pard as we’d missIf poor Bill was to bust—If the last of the Nyes were a-sleepinthe peaceable sleep of the just.
Dear Bret Harte,I’m in tears,And the camp’s in the dust,For with anguish it hearsAs poor William may bust,And the last of the Nyes is in danger ofsleeping the sleep of the just.
No revolver it wasInterfered with his health,The convivial glassDid not harm him by stealth;It was nary! He fell by a scheme whichhe thought would accumulate wealth!
For a Moqui came roundTo the camp—Injun Joe;And the dollars was foundIn his pockets to flow;For he played off some tricks with livesnakes, as was reckoned a competent show.
They was rattlers; a pairIn his teeth he would hold,And another he’d wearLike a scarf to enfoldHis neck, with them dangerous crittersas safe as the saint was of old.
Sez William, “That sameIs as easy as wink.I am fly to his game;For them rattlers, I think,Has had all their incisors extracted.They’re harmless as suthin’ to drink.”
So he betted his pileHe could handle them snakes;And he tried, with a smile,And a rattler he takes,Feeling safe as they’d somehow beendoctored; but bless you, that sarpent awakes!
Waken snakes! and theydidAnd they rattled like mad;For it was not a “kid,”But some medicine he had,Injun Joe, for persuadin’ the critters butWilliam’s bit powerful bad.
So they’ve put him outsideOf a bottle of Rye,And they’ve set him to rideA mustang as kin shy,To keep up his poor circulation; andthat’s the last chance for Bill Nye.
But a near thing it is,And the camp’s in the dust.He’s a pard as we’d missIf poor Bill was to bust—If the last of the Nyes were a-sleepinthe peaceable sleep of the just.
From Professor Forth to the Rev. Mr. Casaubon.
The delicacy of the domestic matters with which the following correspondence deals cannot be exaggerated. It seems that Belinda (whose Memoirs we owe to Miss Rhoda Broughton) was at Oxford while Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon were also resident near that pleasant city, so famed for its Bodleian Library. Professor Forth and Mr. Casaubon were friends, as may be guessed; their congenial characters, their kindred studies, Etruscology and Mythology, combined to ally them. Their wives were not wholly absorbed in their learned pursuits, and if Mr. Ladislaw was dangling after Mrs. Casaubon, we know that Mr. Rivers used to haunt with Mrs. Forth the walks of Magdalen. The regret and disapproval which Mrs. Casaubon expresses, and her desire to do good to Mrs. Forth, are, it is believed, not alien to her devoted and exemplary character.
Bradmore-road, Oxford, May 29.
Dear Mr. Casaubon,—In the course of an investigation which my researches into the character of the Etruscan “Involuti” have necessitated, I frequently encounter the rootKâd,k2âd, orQâd. Schnitzler’s recent and epoch-making discovery thatdin Etruscan =b2, has led me to consider it a plausible hypothesis that we may convertKâdorQâdintoKab2, in which case it is by no means beyond the range of a cautious conjecture that the Involuti are identical with theCab-iri(Cabiri). Though you will pardon me for confessing, what you already know, that I am not in all points an adherent to your ideas concerning a “Key to All Mythologies” (at least, as briefly set forth by you in Kuhn’sZeitung), yet I am deeply impressed with this apparent opportunity of bridging the seemingly impassable gulf between Etrurian Religion and the comparatively clear and comprehensible systems of the Pelasgo-Phoenician peoples. That Kâd or Kâb can refer either (as inQuatuor) to a four-footed animal (quadruped, “quad”) or to a four-wheeled vehicle (esseda, Celticcab) I cannot for a moment believe, though I understand that this theory has the support of Schrader, Penka, and Baunder.[125]Any information which your learning can procure, and your kind courtesy can supply, will be warmly welcomed and duly acknowledged.—Believe me, faithfully yours,
James Forth.
P.S.—I open this note, which was written from my dictation by my secretary, Mrs. Forth, to assure myself that her inexperience has been guilty of no error in matters of so much delicacy and importance. I have detected no mistake of moment, and begin to hope that the important step of matrimony to which I was guided by your example may not have been a rash experiment.
From the Rev. Mr. Casaubon to James Forth,Esq.,Professor of Etruscan,Oxford.
Dear Mr. Forth,—Your letter throws considerable light on a topic which has long engaged my earnest attention. To my thinking, theCabinCabiri=CAV, “hollow,” as incavus, and refers to the Ark of Noah, which, of course, before the entrance of every living thing according to his kind, must have been the largest artificial hollow or empty space known to our Adamite ancestors. Thus the Cabiri would answer, naturally, to the Patæci, which, as Herodotus tells us, were usually figured on the prows of ships. The Cabiri or Patæci, as children of Noah and men of the “great vessel,” or Cave-men (a wonderful anticipation of modern science), would perpetuate the memory of Arkite circumstances, and would be selected, as the sacred tradition faded from men’s minds, as the guides of navigation. I am sorry to seem out of harmony with your ideas; but it is only a matter of seeming, for I have no doubt that the Etruscan Involuti are also Arkite, and that they do not, as Max Müller may be expected to intimate, represent the veiled or cloudy Dawns, but rather the Arkite Patriarchs. We thus, from different starting-places, arrive at the same goal, the Arkite solution of Bryant. I am aware that I am old-fashioned—like Eumæus, “I dwell here among the swine, and go not often to the city.” Your letters with little numerals (ask2) may represent the exactness of modern philology; but more closely remind me of the formulæ of algebra, a study in which I at no time excelled.
It is my purpose to visit Cambridge on June 3, to listen to a most valuable address by Professor Tösch, of Bonn, on Hittite and Aztec affinities. If you can meet me there and accept the hospitality of my college, the encounter may prove aturning point in Mythological and Philological Science.—Very faithfully yours,
J.Casaubon.
P.S.—I open this note, written from my dictation by my wife, to enclose my congratulations on Mrs. Forth’s scholarly attainments.
From Professor Forth to Rev. Mr. Casaubon.(Telegram.)
Will be with you at Cambridge on the third.
From Mrs. Forth,Bradmore-road,Oxford,to David Rivers,Esq.,Milnthorpe,Yorkshire.
He goes on Saturday to Cambridge to hear some one talk about the Hittites and the Asiatics. Did you not say there was a good Sunday train? They sing “O Rest in the Lord” at Magdalen. I often wonder that Addison’s Walk is sodeserted on Sundays. He stays over Sunday at Cambridge.[129]
From David Rivers,Esq.,to Mrs. Forth,Oxford.
Dear Mrs. Forth,—Saturday is a half-holiday at the Works, and I propose to come up and see whether our boat cannot bump Balliol. How extraordinary it is that people should neglect, on Sundays, the favourite promenade of the Short-faced Humourist. I shall be there: the old place.—Believe me, yours ever,
D.Rivers.
From Mrs. Casaubon to William Ladislaw,Esq.,Stratford-on-Avon.
Dear Friend,—Your kind letter from Stratford is indeed interesting. Ah, when shall I have an opportunity of seeing these, and so many other interesting places! But in a world where duty isso much, and soalwayswith us, why should we regret the voids in our experience which, after all, life is filling in the experience of others? The work is advancing, and Mr. Casaubon hopes that the first chapter of the “Key to All Mythologies” will be fairly copied and completed by the end of autumn. Mr. Casaubon is going to Cambridge on Saturday to hear Professor Tösch lecture on the Pittites and some other party, I really forget which;[130]but it is not often that he takes so much interest in meremodernhistory. How curious it sometimes is to think that the great spirit of humanity and of the world, as you say, keeps working its way—ah, to what wonderful goal—by means of these obscure difficult politics: almost unworthy instruments, one is tempted to think. That was a true line you quoted latelyfrom the ‘Vita Nuova.’ We have no books of poetry here, except a Lithuanian translation of the Rig Veda. How delightful it must be to read Dante with a sympathetic fellow-student, one who has also loved—andrenounced!—Yours very sincerely,
Dorothea Casaubon.
P.S.—I do not expect Mr. Casaubon back from Cambridge before Monday afternoon.
From William Ladislaw,Esq.,to the Hon. Secretary of the Literary and Philosophical Mechanics’ Institute,Middlemarch.
My Dear Sir,—I find that I can be in your neighbourhood on Saturday, and will gladly accept your invitation to lecture at your Institute on the Immutability of Morals.—Faithfully yours,
W.Ladislaw.
From William Ladislaw,Esq.,to Mrs. Casaubon.
Dear Mrs. Casaubon,—Only a line to say that I am to lecture at the Mechanics’ Institute on Saturday. I can scarcely hope that, as Mr. Casaubon is away, you will be able to attend my poor performance, but on Sunday I may have, I hope, the pleasure of waiting on you in the afternoon?—Very sincerely yours,
W.Ladislaw.
P.S.—I shall bring the ‘Vita Nuova’—it is not so difficult as the ‘Paradiso’—and I shall be happy to help you with a few of the earlier sonnets.
From Mrs. Casaubon to Mrs. Forth.
June 5.
Dear Lady,—You will be surprised at receiving a letter from a stranger! How shall I address you—how shall I say what I ought to say? Our husbands are not unknown to each other, I may almost call them friends, but we have met only once. You did not see me; but I was at Magdalen a few weeks ago, and I could not help asking who you were, so young, so beautiful; and when I saw you so lonely among all those learned men my heart went out to you, for I too know what the learned are, and how often, when we are young, we feel as if they were so cold, so remote. Ah, then there cometemptations, but they must be conquered.—We are not born to live for ourselves only, we must learn to live for others—ah! not forAnother!
Some one[133]we both know, a lady, has spoken to me of you lately. She too, though you did not know it, was in Magdalen Walk on Sunday evening when the bells were chiming and the birds singing. She saw you; you were not alone! Mr. Rivers (I am informed that is his name) was with you. Ah, stop and think, and hear me before it is too late. A word; I do not know—a word of mine may be listened to, though I have no right to speak. But something forces me to speak, and to implore you to remember that it is not for Pleasure we live, but for Duty. We must break the dearest ties if they do not bind us to the stake—the stake of all we owe to all! You will understand, you will forgive me, will you not? You will forgive another woman whom your beauty and sadness have won to admire and love you. Youwillbreak these ties, will you not, and be free, for only in Renunciation is there freedom? Hemust notcome again, you will tell him that he must not.—Yours always,
Dorothea Casaubon.
From Euphues to Sir Amyas Leigh,Kt.
This little controversy on the value of the herb tobacco passed between the renowned Euphues and that early but assiduous smoker, Sir Amyas Leigh, well known to readers of “Westward Ho.”
(He dissuadeth him from drinking the smoke of the Indian weed.)
Sir Amyas,—Take it not unkindly that a traveller (though less wide a wanderer than thou) dissuadeth thee from a new-found novelty—the wanton misuse, or rather the misuseful wantonness, of the Indian herb. It is a blind goose that knoweth not a fox from a fern-bush, and a strange temerity that mistaketh smoke for provender. The sow, when she is sick, eateth the sea-crab and is immediately recovered: why, then, should man, being whole and sound, haste to that which maketh many sick? The lobster flieth not in the air, nor doth the salamander wanton in the water; wherefore, then, will man betake him for nourishment or solace to the fire? Vesuvius bringeth not forth speech from his mouth, but man, like a volcano, will utter smoke. There is great difference between the table and the chimney; but thou art for making both alike. Though the Rose be sweet, yet will it prove less fragrant if it be wreathed about the skunk; and so an ill weed from the land where that beast hath its habitation defileth a courteous knight. Consider, if this practice delights thee, that the apples of Sodom are outwardly fair but inwardly full of ashes; the box-tree is always green, but his seed is poison. Mithridate must be taken inwardly, not spread on plasters. Of his nature smoke goeth upward and outward; why wilt thou make it go inward and downward? The manners of the Cannibal fit not theEnglishman; and this thy poison is unlike Love, which maimeth every part before it kill the Liver, whereas tobacco doth vex the Liver before it harmeth any other part. Excuse this my boldness, and forswear thy weed, an thou lovest
Euphues.
From Sir Amyas Leigh to Euphues.
Whereas thou bringest in a rabble of reasons to convince me, I will answer thee in thine own kind. Thou art like those that proffer a man physic before he be sick, and, because his pleasure is not theirs, call him foolish that is but early advised. Nature maketh nothing without an end: the eye to see with, the ear to hear, the herb tobacco to be smoked. As wine strengtheneth and meat maketh full, tobacco maketh the heart at rest. Helen gave Nepenthe to them that sorrowed, and Heaven hath made this weed for such as lack comfort. Tobacco is the hungry man’s food, the wakeful man’s sleep, the weary man’s rest, the old man’s defence against melancholy, the busy man’s repose, the talkative man’s muzzle, the lonely man’s companion. Indeed, there was nothing but this one thing wanting to man, of those that earth can give; wherefore, having found it, let him so use as not abusing it, as now I am about doing.—Thy servant,
Amyas Leigh.
From Mr. Paul Rondelet to the Very Rev. Dean Maitland.[139]
That Dean Maitland should have taken the political line indicated in Mr. Rondelet’s letter will amaze no reader of ‘The Silence of Dean Maitland.’ That Mr. Paul Rondelet flew from his penny paper to a Paradise meet for him is a matter of congratulation to all but his creditors. He really is now in the only true Monastery of Thelema, and is simply dressed in an eye-glass and a cincture of pandanus flowers. The natives worship him, and he is the First Æsthetic Beach-comber.
Te-a-Iti, The Pacific.
Dear Maitland,—As my old friend and tutor at Lothian, you ask me to join the Oxford Home Rule Association. Excuse my delay in answering. Your letter was sent to that detested and long-deserted newspaper office in Fleet Street, and from Fleet Street to Te-a-Iti; thank Heaven! it is a long way. Were I at home, and still endeavouring to sway the masses, I might possibly accept your invitation. I dislike crowds, and I dislike shouting; but if shout I must, like you I would choose to chime in with the dingier and the larger and the more violent assembly. But, having perceived that the masses were very perceptibly learning to sway themselves, I have retired to Te-a-Iti. You have read “Epipsychidion,” my dear Dean? And, in your time, no doubt you have loved?[140]Well, this is the Isle of Love, described, as in a dream, by the rapt fancy of Shelley. Urged, perhaps, by a reminiscence of the Great Aryan wave of migration, I have moved westward to this Paradise. Like Obermann, I hide my head “from the wild tempest of the age,” but in a much dearer place than “chalets near the Alpine snow.” Long ago I said, to one who would not listen, that “all the religions of the world are based on false foundations, resting on the Family, and fatally unsound.” Here the Family, in our sense, has not been developed. Here no rules trammel the best and therefore the most evanescent of our affections. And as for Religion, it is based upon Me, on Rondelet of Lothian. Here nobody asks me why or how I am “superior.” The artless natives at once perceived the fact, recognised me as a god, and worship me (do not shudder, my good Dean) with floral services. In Te-a-Iti (vain to look for it on the map!) I have found my place—a place far from the babel of your brutal politics, a place where I am addressed in liquid accents of adoration.
You may ask whether I endeavour to raise the islanders to my own level? It is the last thing that I would attempt. Culture they do not need: their dainty hieratic precisions of ritual are a sufficient culture in themselves. As I said once before, “it is an absurdity to speak of married people being one.” Here we are an indefinite number; and no jealousy, no ambitious exclusiveness, mars the happiness of all. This is the Higher Life about which we used ignorantly to talk. Here the gross temporal necessities are satisfied with a breadfruit, a roasted fish, and a few pandanus flowers. The rest is all climate and the affections.
Conceive, my dear Dean, the undisturbed felicity of life without newspapers! Empires may fall, perhaps have fallen, since I left Fleet Street; Alan Dunlop may be a ditcher in good earnest on an estate no longer his; but here we fleet the time carelessly, as in the golden world. And you ask me to join a raucous political association for an object you detest in your heart, merely because you want to swim with the turbid democratic current! You are an historian, Maitland: did you ever know this policy succeed? Did you ever know the respectables prosper when they allied themselves with the vulgar? Ah, keep out of your second-hand revolutions. Keep your hands clean, whether you keep your head on your shoulders or not. You will never, I fear, be Bishop of Winkum, with all your historical handbooks and all your Oxford Liberalism.
But I am losing my temper, for the first time since I discovered Te-a-Iti. This must not be.—Yours regretfully,
Paul Rondelet.
P.S.—Don’t give any one my address; some of these Oxford harpies are still unappeased. The only European I have seen was not an University man. He was a popular Scotch novelist, and carried Shorter Catechisms, which he distributed to my flock. I only hope he won’t make “copy” out of me and my situation.
P. R.
From Harold Skimpole,Esq.,to the Rev. Charles Honeyman,M.A.
These letters tell their own tale of Genius and Virtue indigent and in chains. The eloquence of a Honeyman, the accomplishments of a Skimpole, lead only to Cursitor Street.
Coavins’s, Cursitor Street, May 1.
My Dear Honeyman,—It is May-day, when even the chimney-sweeper, developing the pleasant unconscious poetry of his nature, forgets the flues, wreathes the flowers, and persuades himself that he is Jack-in-the-Green. Jack who? Was he Jack Sprat, or the young swain who mated with Jill! Who knows? The chimney-sweeper has all I ask, all that the butterflies possess, all that Common-sense and Business and Society deny to Harold Skimpole. He lives, he is free, he is “in the green!” I am in Coavins’s! In Cursitor Street I cannot hear the streams warble, the birds chant, the music roll through the stately fane, let us say, of Lady Whittlesea’s. Coavins’s (as Coavins’s man says) is “a ’ouse;” but how unlike, for example, the hospitable home of our friend Jarndyce! I can sketch Coavins’s, but I cannot alter it: I can set it to music, on Coavins’s piano; but how melancholy are the jingling strains of that dilapidated instrument! At Jarndyce’s house, when I am there, I am in possession of it: here Coavins’s is in possession of me—of the person of Harold Skimpole.
And why am I here? Why am I far from landscape, music, conversation? Why, merely because I will follow neither Fame nor Fortune nor Faith. They call to us in the market-place, but I will not dance. Fame blows her trumpet, and offers her shilling (the Queen’s). Faith peals her bells, and asks formyshilling. Fortune rattles her banking-scales. They call, and the world joins the waltz; but I will not march with them. “Go after glory, commerce, creeds,” I cry; “only let Harold Skimpole live!”[146]The world pursues the jangling music; but in my ear sound the pipes of Pan, the voices of the river and the wood.
Yet I cannot be in the playground, whither they invite me. Harold Skimpole is fettered—by what? By items! I regret my incapacity for details. It may be the tinker or the tailor at whose suit I am detained. I am certain it is not at that of the soldier, or the sailor, or the ploughboy, or the thief. But, for the apothecary—why, yes—itmaybe the apothecary! In the dawn of life I loved—who has not?—I wedded. I set about surrounding myself with rosy cheeks. These cheeks grow pallid. I call for the aid of Science—Science sends in her bill! “To the Mixture as Before,” so much to “the Tonic,” so much. The cheeks are rosy again. I pour forth the blessings of a father’s heart; but there stands Science inexorable, with her bill, her items. I vainly point out that the mixture has played its part, the tonic has playeditspart; and that, in the nature of things, the transaction is ended. The bill is unappeasable. I forget the details; a certain number of pieces of yellow and white dross are spoken of. Ah, I see it is fifteen and some odd shillings and coppers. Let us say twenty.
My dear Honeyman, you who, as I hear, are about to follow the flutes of Aphrodite into a temple where Hymen gilds the horns of the victims[147]—you, I am sure, will hurry to my rescue. You may not have the specie actually in your coffers; but with your prospects, surely you can sign something, or make over something, or back something, say apost obitorpost vincula, or employ some other instrument? Excuse my inexperience; or, I should say, excuse my congenital inability to profit by experience, now considerable, ofdifficulties—and of friendship. Let not the sun of May-day go down on Harold Skimpole in Coavins’s!—Yours ever,
H. S.
P.S.—A youthful myrmidon of Coavins’s will wait for a reply. Shall we say, while we are about it, Twenty-five?
From the Rev. Charles Honeyman to Harold Skimpole,Esq.
Cursitor Street, May 1.
My Dear Skimpole,—How would I have joyed, had Providence placed it within my power to relieve your distress! But it cannot be. Like the Carthaginian Queen of whom we read in happier days at dear old Borhambury, I may say that I amhaud ignarus mali. But, alas! the very evils in which I am not unlearned, make it impossible for me to addmiseris succurrere disco! Rather am I myself in need of succour. You, my dear Harold, have fallen among thieves; I may too truly add that in this I am your neighbour. The dens in which we are lodged are contiguous; we are separated only by the bars. Your note was sent on hither from my rooms in Walpole Street. Since we met I have known the utmost that woman’s perfidy and the rich man’s contumely can inflict. But I can bear my punishment. I loved, I trusted. She to whose hand I aspired, she on whose affections I had based hopes at once of happiness in life and of extended usefulness in the clerical profession,shewas less confiding. She summoned to her council a minion of the Law, one Briggs.Hisestimate of my position and prospects could not possibly tally with that of one whosehopesare not set where the worldling places them. Let him, and such as he, take thought for the morrow and chaffer about settlements. I do not regret the gold to which you so delicately allude. I sorrow only for the bloom that has been brushed from the soaring pinions of a pure and disinterested affection.Sunt lacrymæ rerum, and the handkerchief in which I bury my face is dank with them.
Nor is this disappointment my onlycross. The carrion-birds of commerce have marked down the stricken deer from their eyries in Bond Street and Jermyn Street. To know how Solomons has behaved, and theblackcolours in which Moss (of Wardour Street) has shown himself, is to receive a new light on the character of a People chosen under a very different Dispensation! Detainers flock in, like ravens to a feast. At this moment I have endured the humiliation of meeting a sneering child of this world—Mr. Arthur Pendennis—the emissary of one[151]to whom I gave in other days the sweetest blossom in the garden of my affections—my sister—of one who has, indeed, behaved like a brother—in law! My word distrusted, my statements received with a chilling scepticism by thisNabobNewcome, I am urged to make some “composition” with my creditors. The world is very censorious, the ear of a Bishop is easily won; who knows how those who haveenviedtalents not misused may turn my circumstances to my disadvantage? You will see that, far from aiding another, I am rather obliged to seek succour myself. But that saying about the sparrows abides with me to my comfort. Could aught be done, think you, with a bill backed by our joint names? On July 12 my pew-rents will come in. I swear to you that theyhave not been anticipated. Yours afflictedly,
Charles Honeyman.
P.S.—Would Jarndyce lend his name to a small bill at three months? You know him well, and I have heard that he is a man of benevolent character, and of substance. But “how hardly shall a rich man”—you remember the text.—C. H.
From Miss Harriet to M. Guy de Maupassant.
This note, from one of the English damsels whom M. Guy de Maupassant dislikes so much, is written in such French as the lady could muster. It explains that recurrent mystery,why Englishwomen abroad smell of gutta-percha. The reason is not discreditable to our countrywomen, but if M. de Maupassant asks, as he often does, why Englishwomen dress like scarecrows when they are on the Continent, Miss Harriet does not provide the answer.
Miss Pinkerton’s, Stratford-atte-Bowe, Mars 12.
Monsieur,—Vous devez me connaître, quoique je ne vous connais pas le moins du monde. Il m’est défendu de lire vos romans, je ne sais trop pourquoi; mais j’ai bien lu la notice que M. Henry James a consacrée, dans leFortnightly Review, à votre aimable talent. Vous n’aimez pas, à ce qu’il paraît, ni ‘la sale Angleterre’ ni les filles de ce pays immonde. Je figure moi-même dans vos romans (oumoâ-même, car les Anglais, il est convenu, prononcent ce pronom comme le nom d’un oiseau monstrueux et même préhistorique de New Zealand)—oui, ‘Miss Harriet’ se risque assez souvent dans vos contes assez risqués.
Vous avez posé, Monsieur, le sublime problème, ‘Comment se prennentelles les demoiselles anglaises pour sentir toujours le caoutchouc?’ (‘to smell of india-rubber’: traduction Henry James). En premier lieu, Monsieur, elles ne ‘smell of india-rubber’ quand elles se trouvent chez elles, dans les bouges infectes qu’on appelle les ‘stately homes of England.’[154]C’est seulement à l’étranger que nous répandons l’odeur saine et réjouissante de caoutchouc. Et pourquoi? Parce que, Monsieur, Miss Harriet tient à son tub—ou tôb—la chose est anglaise; c’est permis pourtant à un galant homme d’en prononcer le nom comme il veut, ou comme il peut
Or, quand elle voyage, Miss Harriet trouve, assez souvent, que le ‘tub’ est une institution tout-à-fait inconnue à ses hôtes. Que fait-elle donc? Elle porte dans sa malle un tub de caoutchouc, ‘patent compressible india-rubber tub!’ Inutile à dire que ses vêtements se trouvent imprégnés du “smell of india-rubber.” Voici, Monsieur, la solution naturelle, et même fort louable, d’une question qui est faite pour désespérer les savants de la France!
Vous, Monsieur, qui êtes unstylisteaccompli, veuillez bien me pardonner les torts que je viens de faire à la belle langue française. Dame, on fait ce qu’on peut (comme on dit dans les romans policiers) pour être intelligible à un écrivain si célèbre, qui ne lit couramment, peut-être, l’idiôme barbare et malsonnant de la sale Angleterre. M. Paul Bourget lui-même ne lit plus le Grec.Non omnia possumus omnes.
Agréez, Monsieur, mes sentiments les plus distingués.
Miss Harriet.
From S. Gandish,Esq.,to the‘Newcome Independent.’
The Royal Academy.
It appears that Mr. Gandish, at a great age—though he was not older than several industrious Academicans—withdrew from the active exercise of his art and employed his learning and experience as Art Critic of the “Newcome Independent.” The following critique appears to show traces of declining mental vigour in the veteran Gandish.
Ourgreat gallery has once more opened her doors, if not to the public, nor even to the fashionableélite, at least to the critics. They are a motley throng who lounge on Press Days in the sumptuous halls; ladies, small boys, clergymen are there, and among them but few, perhaps, who have received the training in High Art of your correspondent, and have had their eye, through a lifetime more than commonly prolonged, on the glorious Antique. And what shall we say of the present Academy? In some ways, things have improved a little since my “Boadishia” came back on my hands (1839) at a time when High Art and the Antique would not do in this country: they would not do. As far as the new exhibition shows, they do better now than when the century was younger and “Portrait of the Artist, by S. Gandish”—at thirty-three years of age—was offered in vain to the jealously Papist clique who then controlled the Uffizi. Foreigners are more affable now; they have taken Mr. Poynter’s of himself.
To return to the Antique, what the President’s “Captive Andromache” must have costin models aloneis difficult to reckon. When times were cheaper, fifty years since, my ancient Britons in “Boadishia” stood me in thirty pounds: the central figures, however, were members of my own family. To give every one his due, “Andromache” is high art—yes, it is high—and the Antique has not been overlooked. About the back-view of the young party at the fountain Mr. Horsley may have something to say. For my part, there seems a want of muscle in vigorous action: where are thebiceps, where are the thews of Michael Angelo? The President is a touch too quiet for a taste framed in the best schools. As to his colour, where is that nutty brown tone of the flesh? But the designs on the Greek vase are carefully rendered; though I have heard it remarked by a classical scholar that these kind of vases were not in use about Homer’s time. Still, the intention is good, though the costumes are not whatweshould have called Ancient Roman when the President was a boy—ay, or earlier.
Then, Mr. Alma-Tadema, he has not turnedhisback on the glorious Antique. “The Roses of Heliogabalus” are not explained in the catalogue. As far as I understand, there has been an earthquake at a banquet of this unprincipled monarch. The King himself, and his friends, are safe enough at a kind of high table; though whichisHeliogabalus (he being a consumptive-looking character in his coins in the Classical Dictionary) your critic has not made out. The earth having opened down below, the heads of some women, and of a man with a beard and his hair done up like a girl, are tossing about in a quantity of rose-leaves, which had doubtless been strown on the floor, as Martial tells us was the custom,dum regnat rosa. So I overheard a very erudite critic remarking. The composition of the piece would be thus accounted for; but I cannot pretend that Mr. Tadema reminds one of either Poussin or Annibale Carracci. However, rumour whispers that a high price has been paid for this curious performance. To my thinking the friends of Heliogabalus are a little flat and leathery in the handling of the flesh. The silver work, and the marble, will please admirers of this eccentric artist; but I can hardly call the whole effect “High.” But Mr. Armitage’s “Siren” will console people who remember the old school. This beautiful girl (somewhat careless in her attitude, though she has been sensible enoughnotto sit down on the damp rock without putting her drapery beneath her) would have been a true gem in one of the old Books of Beauty, such as the Honourable Percy Popjoy and my old friend, Miss Bunnion, used to contribute to in the palmy days of the English school. Mr. Armitage’s “Juno,” standing in mid-air, with the moon in the neighbourhood, is also an example to youth, and very unlike the way such things are generally done now. Mr. Burne-Jones (who does not exhibit) never did anything like this. Poor Haydon, with whom I have smoked many a pipe, would have acknowledged that Mr. Goodall’s “David’s Promise to Bathsheba” and “By the Sea of Galilee” prove that his aspirations are nearly fulfilled. These are extremely large pictures, yet well hung. The figure of Abishag is a little too much in the French taste for an old-fashioned painter.Ars longa,nuda veritas! I hope (and so will the Liberal readers of the “Newcome Independent”) that it is by an accident the catalogue reads—“The Traitor.” “Earl Spencer, K.G.” “The Moonlighters.” (Nos. 220, 221, 225.) Some Torywagamong the Hanging Committee may have taken this juxtaposition for wit: our readers will adopt a different view.
There is a fine dog in Mr. Briton Riviere’s “Requiescat,” but how did the relations of the dead knight in plate armour acquire the embroidery, at least three centuries later, on which he is laid to his last repose? This destroys the illusion, but does not diminish the pathos in the attitude of the faithful hound. Mr. Long’s large picture appears to exhibit an Oriental girl being tried by a jury of matrons—at least, not having my Diodorus Scriblerus by me, I can arrive at no other conclusion. From the number of models engaged, this picture must have been designed quite regardless of expense. It is a study of the Antique, but I doubt if Smee would have called it High Art.
Speaking of Smee reminds me of portraits. I miss “Portrait of a Lady,” “Portrait of a Gentleman;” the names of the sitters are now always given—a concession to the notoriety-hunting proclivities of the present period. Few portraits are more in the style of the palmy days of our school (just after Lawrence) than a study of a lady by Mr. Goodall (687). On the other hand, young Mr. Richmond goes back to the antiquated manner of Reynolds in one of his representations. I must admit that I hear this work much admired by many; to me it seems old-fashioned and lacking in blandness and affability. Mr Waterhouse has a study of a subject from a poem that Mr. Pendennis, the novelist (whom I knew well), was very fond of when he first came on the town: “The Lady of Shalott.” It represents a very delicate invalid, in a boat, under a counterpane. I remember the poem ran (it was by young Mr. Tennyson):—
They crossed themselves, their stars they blest,Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.There lay a parchment on her breastThat puzzled more than all the restThe well-fed wits of Camelot:“The web was woven curiously,The charm is broken utterly;Draw near and fear not, this is IThe Lady of Shalott.”
They crossed themselves, their stars they blest,Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.There lay a parchment on her breastThat puzzled more than all the restThe well-fed wits of Camelot:“The web was woven curiously,The charm is broken utterly;Draw near and fear not, this is IThe Lady of Shalott.”
I admit that the wonder and dismay of the “well-fed wits,” if the Lady was like Mr. Waterhouse’s picture of her, do not surprise me. But I confess I do not understand modern poetry, nor, perhaps, modern painting. Where is historical Art? Where is Alfred and the Cake—a subject which, as is well known, I discovered in my researches in history. Where is “Udolpho in the Tower”? or the “Duke of Rothsay the Fourth Dayafter He was Deprived of his Victuals”? or “King John Signing Magna Charta”? They are gone with the red curtain, the brown tree, the storm in the background. Art is revolutionary, like everything else in these times, when Treason itself, in the form of a hoary apostate and reviewer of contemporary fiction, glares from the walls, and is painted by Royal—markRoyal!—Academicians! . . .