O Rose of the World, a nightingale,A Bird of the World, am I,I have loved all the world and sung all the world,But I come to your side to die.Tired of the world, as the world of me,I plead for your quiet breast,I have loved all the world and sung all the world—But—where is the nightingale's nest?In a hundred gardens I sung the rose,Rose of the World, I confess—But for every rose I have sung beforeI love you the more, not less.Perfect it grew by each rose that died,Each rose that has died for you,The song that I sing—yea, 'tis no new song,It is tried—and so it is true.Petal or thorn, yea! I have no care,So that I here abide;Pierce me, my love, or kiss me, my love,But keep me close to your side.I know not your kiss from your scorn, my love,Your breast from your thorn, my rose,And if you must kill me, well, kill me, my love!But—say 'twas the death I chose.
O Rose of the World, a nightingale,A Bird of the World, am I,I have loved all the world and sung all the world,But I come to your side to die.
O Rose of the World, a nightingale,
A Bird of the World, am I,
I have loved all the world and sung all the world,
But I come to your side to die.
Tired of the world, as the world of me,I plead for your quiet breast,I have loved all the world and sung all the world—But—where is the nightingale's nest?
Tired of the world, as the world of me,
I plead for your quiet breast,
I have loved all the world and sung all the world—
But—where is the nightingale's nest?
In a hundred gardens I sung the rose,Rose of the World, I confess—But for every rose I have sung beforeI love you the more, not less.
In a hundred gardens I sung the rose,
Rose of the World, I confess—
But for every rose I have sung before
I love you the more, not less.
Perfect it grew by each rose that died,Each rose that has died for you,The song that I sing—yea, 'tis no new song,It is tried—and so it is true.
Perfect it grew by each rose that died,
Each rose that has died for you,
The song that I sing—yea, 'tis no new song,
It is tried—and so it is true.
Petal or thorn, yea! I have no care,So that I here abide;Pierce me, my love, or kiss me, my love,But keep me close to your side.
Petal or thorn, yea! I have no care,
So that I here abide;
Pierce me, my love, or kiss me, my love,
But keep me close to your side.
I know not your kiss from your scorn, my love,Your breast from your thorn, my rose,And if you must kill me, well, kill me, my love!But—say 'twas the death I chose.
I know not your kiss from your scorn, my love,
Your breast from your thorn, my rose,
And if you must kill me, well, kill me, my love!
But—say 'twas the death I chose.
'Is it true?' asked the Rose.
'As I am a nightingale,' I replied; and as we bade each other good-night, I whispered:
'When may I expect the Answer of the Rose?'
When I say that my friend Matthew lay dying, I want you so far as possible to dissociate the statement from any conventional, and certainly from any pictorial, conceptions of death which you may have acquired. Death sometimes shows himself one of those impersonal artists who conceal their art, and, unless you had been told, you could hardly have guessed that Matthew was dying, dying indeed sixty miles an hour, dying of consumption, dying because some one else had died four years before, dying too of debt.
Connoisseurs, of course, would have understood; at a glance would have named the sculptor who was silently chiselling those noble hollows in the finely modelled face,—that Pygmalion who turns all flesh to stone,—at a glance would have named the painter who was cunningly weighting the brows withdarkness that the eyes might shine the more with an unaccustomed light. Matthew and I had long been students of the strange wandering artist, had begun by hating his art (it is ever so with an art unfamiliar to us), and had ended by loving it.
'Let us see what the artist has added to the picture since yesterday,' said Matthew, signing to me to hand him the mirror.
'H'm,' he murmured, 'he's had one of his lazy days, I'm afraid. He's hardly added a touch—just a little heightened the chiaroscuro, sharpened the nose a trifle, deepened some little the shadows round the eyes....
'O why,' he presently sighed, 'does he not work a little overtime and get it done? He's been paid handsomely enough....
'Paid,' he continued, 'by a life that is so much undeveloped gold-mine, paid by all my uncashed hopes and dreams....'
'He works fast enough for me, old fellow,' I interrupted; 'there was a time, was there not, when he worked too fast for you and me?'
There are moments, for certain people,when such fantastic unreality as this is the truest realism. Matthew and I talked like this with our brains, because we hadn't the courage to allow our hearts to break in upon the conversation. Had I dared to say some real emotional thing, what effect would it have had but to set poor tired Matthew a-coughing? and it was our aim that he should die with as little to-do as practicable. The emotional in such situations is merely the obvious. There was no need for either of us to state the elementary feelings of our love. I knew that Matthew was going to die, and he knew that—I was going to live, and we pitied each other accordingly; though I confess my feeling for him was rather one of envy,—when it was not congratulation.
Thus, to tell the truth, we never mentioned 'the hereafter.' I don't believe it even occurred to us. Indeed, we spent the few hours that remained of our friendship in retailing the latest gathered of those good stories with which we had been accustomed to salt our intercourse.
One of Matthew's anecdotes was, no doubt, somewhat suggested by the occasion,and I should add that he had always somewhat of an ecclesiastical bias—would, I believe, have ended some day as a Monsignor, a notable 'Bishop Blougram.'
His story was of an evangelistic preacher who desired to impress his congregation with the unmistakable reality of hell-fire. 'You know the Black Country, my friends,' he had declaimed,' you have seen it, at night, flaring with a thousand furnaces, in the lurid incandescence of which myriads of unhappy beings, our fellow-creatures (God forbid!), snatch a precarious existence—you have seen them silhouetted against the yellow glare, running hither and thither, as it seemed from afar, in the very jaws of the awful fire. Have you realised that the burdens with which they thus run hither and thither are molten iron, iron to which such a stupendous heat has been applied that it has melted, melted as though it had been sugar in the sun?—well! returning to hell-fire, let me tell you this, that in hell they eat this fiery molten metal for ice-cream!—yes! and are glad to get anything so cool.'
It was thus we talked while Matthew laydying, for why should we not talk as we had lived? We both laughed long and heartily over this story; perhaps it would have amused us less had Matthew not been dying; and then his kind old nurse brought in our lunch. We had both excellent appetites, and were far from indifferent to the dainty little meal which was to be our last but one together. I brought my table as close to Matthew's pillow as was possible, and he stroked my hand with tenderness in which there was a touch of gratitude.
'You are not frightened of the bacteria!' he laughed sadly; and then he told me, with huge amusement, how a friend (and a true, dear friend for all that) had come to see him a day or two before, and had hung over the end of the bed to say farewell, daring to approach no nearer, mopping his fear-perspiring brows with a handkerchief soaked in 'Eucalyptus'!
'He had brought an anticipatory elegy too,' said my friend, 'written against my burial. I wish you'd read it for me,' and he fidgeted for it in the nervous manner of the dying. Finding it among his pillows, he handed itto me saying, 'You needn't be frightened of it. It is well dosed with Eucalyptus.'
We laughed even more over this poem than over our stories, and then we discussed the terms of three cremation societies to which, at the express request of my friend, I had written a day or two before.
Then having smoked a cigar and drunk a glass of port together (for the assured dying are allowed to 'live well'), Matthew grew sleepy, and, tucking him beneath the counterpane, I left him, for, after all, he was not to die that day.
Circumstances prevented my seeing him again for a week. When I did so, entering the room poignantly redolent of the strange sweet odour of antiseptics, I saw that the great artist had been busy in my absence. Indeed, his work was nearly at an end. Yet to one unfamiliar with his methods there was still little to alarm in Matthew's face. In fact, with the exception of his brain, and his ice-cold feet, he was alive as ever. And even to his brain had come a certain unnatural activity, a life as of the grave, a sort of vampire vitality, which would assuredlyhave deceived any who had not known him. He still told his stories, laughed and talked with the same unconquerable humour, was in every way alert and practical, with this difference, that he had forgotten he was going to die, that the world in which he exercised his various faculties was another world to that in which, in spite of his delirium, we ate our last boiled fowl, drank our last wine, smoked our last cigar together. His talk was so convincingly rational, dealt with such unreal matters in so every-day a fashion, that you were ready to think that surely it was you and not he whose mind was wandering.
'You might reach that pocket-book, and ring for Mrs. Davies,' he would say in so casual a way that of course you would ring. On Mrs. Davies's appearance he would be fumbling about among the papers in his pocket-book, and presently he would say, with a look of frustration that went to one's heart—'I've got a ten-pound note somewhere here for you, Mrs. Davies, to pay you up till Saturday, but somehow I seem to have lost it. Yet it must be somewhere about. Perhaps you'll find it as you make the bed in themorning. I'm so sorry to have troubled you....'
And then he would grow tired and doze a little on his pillow.
Suddenly he would be alert again, and with a startling vividness tell me strange stories from the dreamland into which he was now passing.
I had promised to see him on Monday, but had been prevented, and had wired to him accordingly. This was Tuesday.
'You needn't have troubled to wire,' he said. 'Didn't you know I was in London from Saturday to Monday?'
'The doctor and Mrs. Davies didn't know,' he continued with the creepy cunning of the dying: 'I managed to slip away to look at a house I think of taking—in fact I've taken it. It's in—in—now, where is it? Now isn't that silly? I can see it as plain as anything—yet I cannot, for the life of me, remember where it is, or the number.... It was somewhere St. John's Wood way ... never mind, you must come and see me there, when we get in....'
I said he was dying in debt, and thus theheaven that lay about his deathbed was one of fantastic Eldorados, sudden colossal legacies, and miraculous windfalls.
'I haven't told you,' he said presently, 'of the piece of good luck that has befallen me. You are not the only person in luck. I can hardly expect you to believe me, it sounds so like the Arabian Nights. However, it's true for all that. Well, one of the little sisters was playing in the garden a few afternoons ago, making mud-pies or something of that sort, and she suddenly scraped up a sovereign. Presently she found two or three more, and our curiosity becoming aroused, a turn or two with the spade revealed quite a bed of gold; and the end of it was, that on further excavating, the whole garden proved to be one mass of sovereigns. Sixty thousand pounds we counted ... and then, what do you think?—it suddenly melted away....'
He paused for a moment, and continued, more in amusement than regret—
'Yes—the Government got wind of it, and claimed the whole lot as treasure-trove!
'But not,' he added slyly, 'before I'd paidoff two or three of my biggest bills. Yes—and—you'll keep it quiet, of course,—there's another lot been discovered in the garden, but we shall take good care the Government doesn't get hold of it this time, you bet.'
He told this wild story with such an air of simple conviction that, odd as it may seem, one believed every word of it. But the tale of his sudden good-fortune was not ended.
'You've heard of old Lord Osterley,' he presently began again. 'Well, congratulate me, old man: he has just died and left everything to me. You know what a splendid library he had—to think that that will all be mine—and that grand old park through which we've so often wandered, you and I! Well, we shall need fear no gamekeeper now, and of course, dear old fellow, you'll come and live with me—like a prince—and just write your own books and say farewell to journalism for ever. Of course I can hardly believe it's true yet. It seems too much of a dream, and yet there's no doubt about it. I had a letter from my solicitors this morning, saying that they were engaged in goingthrough the securities, and—and—but the letter's somewhere over there; you might read it. No? can't you find it? It's there somewhere about, I know. Never mind, you can see it again....' he finished wearily.
'Yes!' he presently said, half to himself, 'it will be a wonderful change! a wonderful change!'
At length the time came to say good-bye, a good-bye I knew must be the last, for my affairs were taking me so far away from him that I could not hope to see him for some days.
'I'm afraid, old man,' I said, 'that I mayn't be able to see you for another week.'
'O never mind, old fellow, don't worry about me. I'm much better now—and by the time you come again we shall know all about the securities.'
The securities! My heart had seemed like a stone, incapable of feeling, all those last unreal hours together; but the pathos of that sad phrase, so curiously symbolic, suddenly smote it with overwhelming pity, and the tears sprang to my eyes for the first time.As I bent over him to kiss his poor damp forehead, and press his hand for the last farewell, I murmured—
'Yes—dear, dear old friend. We shall know all about the securities....'
Green must always have a large following among artists and art lovers; for, as has been pointed out, an appreciation of it is a sure sign of a subtle artistic temperament. There is something not quite good, something almost sinister, about it—at least, in its more complex forms, though in its simple form, as we find it in outdoor nature, it is innocent enough; and, indeed, is it not used in colloquial metaphor as an adjective for innocence itself? Innocence has but two colours, white or green. But Becky Sharp's eyes also were green, and the green of the aesthete does not suggest innocence. There will always be wearers of the green carnation; but the popular vogue which green has enjoyed for the last ten or fifteen years is probably passing. Even the æsthete himself would seem to be growing a little weary ofits indefinitely divided tones, and to be anxious for a colour sensation somewhat more positive than those to be gained from almost imperceptiblenuances, of green. Jaded with over-refinements and super-subtleties, we seem in many directions to be harking back to the primary colours of life. Blue, crude and unsoftened, and a form of magenta, have recently had a short innings; and now the triumph of yellow is imminent. Of course, a love for green implies some regard for yellow, and in our so-called aesthetic renaissance the sunflower went before the green carnation—which is, indeed, the badge of but a small schism of aesthetes, and not worn by the great body of the more catholic lovers of beauty.
Yellow is becoming more and more dominant in decoration—in wall-papers, and flowers cultivated with decorative intention, such as chrysanthemums. And one can easily understand why: seeing that, after white, yellow reflects more light than any other colour, and thus ministers to the growing preference for light and joyous rooms. A few yellow chrysanthemums will make asmall room look twice its size, and when the sun comes out upon a yellow wall-paper the whole room seems suddenly to expand, to open like a flower. When it falls upon the pot of yellow chrysanthemums, and sets them ablaze, it seems as though one had an angel in the room. Bill-posters are beginning to discover the attractive qualities of the colour. Who can ever forget meeting for the first time upon a hoarding Mr. Dudley Hardy's wonderful Yellow Girl, the pretty advance-guard ofTo-Day? But I suppose the honour of the discovery of the colour for advertising purposes rests with Mr. Colman; though its recent boom comes from the publishers, and particularly from the Bodley Head.The Yellow Bookwith any other colour would hardly have sold as well—the first private edition of Mr. Arthur Benson's poems, by the way, came caparisoned in yellow, and with the identical name,Le Cahier Jaune; and no doubt it was largely its title that made the success ofThe Yellow Aster. In literature, indeed, yellow has long been the colour of romance. The word 'yellow-back' witnesses its close associationwith fiction; and in France, as we know, it is the all but universal custom to bind books in yellow paper. Mr. Heinemann and Mr. Unwin have endeavoured to naturalise the custom here; but, though in cloth yellow has emphatically 'caught on,' in paper it still hangs fire. The ABC Railway Guide is probably the only exception, and that, it is to be hoped, is not fiction. Mr. Lang has recently followed the fashion with hisYellow Fairy Book; and, indeed, one of the best known figures in fairydom is yellow—namely, the Yellow Dwarf. Yellow, always a prominent Oriental colour, was but lately of peculiar significance in the Far East; for were not the sorrows of a certain high Chinese official intimately connected with the fatal colour? The Yellow Book, the Yellow Aster, the Yellow Jacket!—and the Yellow Fever, like 'Orion' Home's sunshine, is always with us' somewhere in the world.' The same applies also, I suppose, to the Yellow Sea.
Till one comes to think of it, one hardly realises how many important and pleasant things in life are yellow. Blue and green,no doubt, contract for the colouring of vast departments of the physical world. 'Blue!' sings Keats, in a fine but too little known sonnet—
'... 'Tis the life of heaven—the domainOf Cynthia—the wide palace of the sun—The tent of Hesperus, and all his train—The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun.Blue! 'Tis the life of waters ...Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest green,Married to green in all the sweetest flowers.'
'... 'Tis the life of heaven—the domain
Of Cynthia—the wide palace of the sun—
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train—
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters ...
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers.'
Yellow might retort by quoting Mr. Grant Allen, in his book onThe Colour Sense, to the effect that the blueness of sea and sky is mainly poetical illusion or inaccuracy, and that sea and sky are found blue only in one experiment out of fourteen. At morning and evening they are usually in great part stained golden. Blue certainly has one advantage over yellow, in that it has the privilege of colouring some of the prettiest eyes in the world. Yellow has a chance only in cases of jaundice and liver complaint, and his colour scheme in such cases is seldom appreciated. Again, green has the contract for the greater bulk of the vegetable life of the globe; but his is amonotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees,ad infinitum; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such monotonous labour. The sands of Sahara are probably the only conspicuous instance of yellow thus working by the piece. It is in the quality, in the diversity of the things it colours, rather than in their mileage or tonnage, that yellow is distinguished; though, for that matter, we suppose, the sun is as big and heavy as most things, and that is yellow. Of course, when we say yellow we include golden, and all varieties of the colour—saffron, orange, flaxen, tawny, blonde, topaz, citron, etc.
If the sun may reasonably be described as the most important object in the world, surely money is the next. That, as we know, is, in its most potent metallic form, yellow also. The 'yellow gold' is a favourite phrase in certain forms of poetry; and 'yellow-boys' is a term of natural affection among sailors. Following the example of their lord the sun, most fires and lights are yellowor golden, and it is only in times of danger or superstition that they burn red or blue. And, if yellow be denied entrance to beautiful eyes, it enjoys a privilege which—except in the case of certain indigo-staining African tribes, who cannot be said to count—blue has never claimed: that of colouring perhaps the loveliest thing in the world, the hair of woman. Hair is naturally golden—unnaturally also. When Browning sings pathetically of 'dear dead women—with such hair too!' he continues:—
'What's become of all thegoldUsed to hang and brush their bosoms'—
'What's become of all thegold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms'—
not 'all the blue' or 'all the brown,' though some of us, it is true, are condemned to wear our hair brown or blue-black. But such are only unhappy exceptions. Yellow or gold is the rule. The bravest men and the fairest women have had golden hair, and, we may add, in reference to another distinction of the colour we are celebrating, golden hearts. Hair at the present time is doing its best to conform to its normal conditions of colour. Numerous instances might be adduced of its changing from black to gold, in obedience tochemical law. 'Peroxide of hydrogen!' says the cynic. 'Beauty!' says the lover of art.
And it might be argued, in a world of inevitable compromise, that the damage done to the physical health and texture of the hair thus playing the chameleon may well be overbalanced by the happiness, and consequent increased effectiveness, of the person thus dyeing for the sake of beauty. Thaumaturgists lay much stress on the mystic influence of colours; and who knows but that, if we were only allowed to dye our hair what colour we chose, we might be different men and women? Strange things are told of women who have dyed their hair the colour of blood or of wine, and we know from Christina Rossetti that golden hair is negotiable in fairyland—
'"You have much gold upon your head,"They answered all together:"Buy from us with a golden curl."'
'"You have much gold upon your head,"
They answered all together:
"Buy from us with a golden curl."'
Whether Laura could have done business with the goblin merchantmen with an oxidised curl is a difficult point, for fairies have sharp eyes; and, though it be impossible for a mortal to tell the real gold from the falsegold hair, the fairies may be able to do so, and might reject the curl as counterfeit.
Again, if in the vegetable world green almost universally colours the leaves, yellow has more to do with the flowers. The flowers we love best are yellow: the cowslip, the daffodil, the crocus, the buttercup, half the daisy, the honeysuckle, and the loveliest rose. Yellow, too, has its turn even with the leaves; and what an artist he shows himself when, in autumn, he 'lays his fiery finger' upon them, lighting up the forlorn woodland with splashes—pure palette-colour of audacious gold! He hangs the mulberry with heart-shaped yellow shields—which reminds one of the heraldic importance of 'or,'—and he lines the banks of the Seine with phantasmal yellow poplars. And other leaves still dearer to the heart are yellow likewise; leaves of those sweet old poets whose thoughts seem to have turned the pages gold. Let us dream of this: a maid with yellow hair, clad in a yellow gown, seated in a yellow room, at the window a yellow sunset, in the grate a yellow fire, at her side a yellow lamplight, on her knee a Yellow Book. And the letterswe love best to read—when we dare—are they not yellow too? No doubt some disagreeable things are reported of yellow. We have had the yellow-fever, and we have had pea-soup. The eyes of lions are said to be yellow, and the ugliest cats—the cats that infest one's garden—are always yellow. Some medicines are yellow, and no doubt there are many other yellow disagreeables; but we prefer to dwell upon the yellow blessings. I had almost forgotten that the gayest wines are yellow. Nor has religion forgotten yellow. It is to be hoped yellow will not forget religion. The sacred robe of the second greatest religion of the world is yellow, 'the yellow robe' of the Buddhist friar; and when the sacred harlots of Hindustan walk in lovely procession through the streets, they too, like the friars, are clad in yellow. Amber is yellow; so is the orange; and so were stage-coaches and many dashing things of the old time; and pink is yellow by lamplight. But gold-mines, it has been proved, are not so yellow as is popularly supposed. Hymen's robe is Miltonically 'saffron,' and the dearest petticoat in all literature—not forgetting the 'tempestuous' garment of Herrick's Julia—was 'yaller.' Yes!—
''Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,An' er name was Supi-yaw-lat, jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen.'
''Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' er name was Supi-yaw-lat, jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen.'
Is it possible to say anything prettier for yellow than that?
My Dear Sir,—I agree with every word you say. You have my entire sympathy. The world is indeed hard, hard to the sad—particularly hard to the unsuccessful. A sure five hundred a year covers a multitude of sorrows. It is ever an ill wind for the shorn lamb. If it be true that nothing succeeds like success, it is no less sadly true that nothing fails like failure. And when one thinks of it, it is only natural, for every failure is an obstruction in the stream of life. Metaphorical writers are fond of saying that the successful ride to success on the back of the failures. It is true that many rise on stepping-stones of their dead relations—but that is because their relations have been financial successes.In truth, instead of the failure making the fortune of the successful, it is just the reverse. A very successful man would be the more successful were it not for the failures—on whom he has either to spend his money to support, or his time to advise. The strong are said to be impatient towards the weak—and is it to be wondered at, in a world where even the strongest need all their strength, in a sea where the best swimmer needs all his wind and muscle and skill to keep afloat? If success is sometimes 'unfeeling' towards failure, failure is often unfair to success. Of course, 'it is He that hath made us and not we ourselves,' but that is a text that cuts both ways; and when all is said and done, the failure detracts from the force in the universe; he is the clog on the wheel of fortune. To say that the successful man benefits by the failure of others is as true as it would be to say that the ratepayer benefits by the poor-rates. You use the word 'charlatan' somewhat profusely of several successful writers, and no doubt you are right. But you must remember that itis a favourite charge against the gifted and the fortunate. Because we have failed by fair means, we are sure the other fellows have succeeded by foul. And, moreover, one is apt to forget how much talent is needed to be a charlatan. Never look down upon a charlatan. Courage, skill, personal force or charm, great knowledge of human nature, dramatic instinct, and industry—few charlatans succeed (and no one is called a charlatan till hedoessucceed, be his success as low or high as you please) without possessing a majority of these qualities; how many of which—it would be interesting to know—do you possess?
Indeed, it would seem to need more gifts to be a rogue than an honest man, and there is a sense in which every great man may be described as a charlatan—plusgreatness; greatness being an almost indefinable quality, a quality, at any rate, on which there is a bewildering diversity of opinion.
You seem a little cross with publishers and editors. They have not proved the distinguished, brilliant, and sympathetic beings you imagined them in your boyishdreams. No doubt, publishers and editors enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven. But then, you see, they don't care so much about that; they are much more interested in the next election at certain fashionable clubs. It is really a little hard on them that they should suffer from the ignorant misconception of the literary amateur. It is only those who have had no dealings with them who would be unfair enough to expect publishers or editors to be literary men. They are business men—business menpar excellence—and a good thing, too, for their papers and their authors. You lament their mercenary view of life; but, judging by your letter, even you are not disposed to regard money as the root of all evil.
You cannot understand why you have failed where others have succeeded. You have far more Greek than Keats, more history than Scott, and you know nineteen languages—ten of them to speak. With so many accomplishments, it must indeed be hard to fail—though you do not seem to have found it difficult. You have travelledtoo—have been twice round the world, and have a thorough knowledge of the worst hotels. Certainly, it is singular. Nevertheless, I must confess that the dullest men I have ever met have been professors of history; the worst poets have not only known Greek, but French as well; and, generally speaking the most tiresome of my acquaintances have more degrees than I have Latin to name them in. Alas! it is not experience, or travel, or language, but the use we make of them, that makes literary success, which, one may add, is particularly dependent—perhaps not unnaturally—on the use we make of language. A book may be a book, although there is neither Latin nor Greek, nor travel, nor experience—in fact 'nothing' in it; and though, like myself, you may pay an Oxford professor a thousand a year to correct your proofs, you may still miss immortality.
To these intellectual and general equipments you add goodness of heart, sincerity of conviction, and martyrdom for your opinions; you are, it would seem, like many others of us, the best fellow andgreatest man of your acquaintance. Permit me to remind you that we are not talking of goodness of heart, of strength or beauty of character, but of success, which is a thing apart, a fine art in itself.
You confess that you are somewhat unpractical: you expect others—hard-worked journalists who never met you—to tell you what to read, how to form your style, and how 'to get into the magazines.' You are, you say, with something of pride, but a poor business man. That is a pity, for nearly every successful literary man of the day, and particularly the novelists, are excellent business men. Indeed, the history of literature all round has proved that the men who have been masters of words have also been masters of things—masters of the facts of life for which those words stand. Many writers have mismanaged their affairs from idleness and indifference, but few from incapacity. Leigh Hunt boasted that he could never master the multiplication-table. Perhaps that accounts for his comparative failure as a writer. Incompetence in one art is far from being a guarantee of competency in another, and aman is all the more likely to make a name if he is able to make a living—though, judging from Coleridge, it seems a good plan to let another hard-worked man support one's wife and children. On the other hand, though business faculty is a great deal, it is not everything: for a man may be as punctual and methodical as Southey, and yet miss the prize of his high calling, or as generally 'impossible' as Blake, and yet win his place among the immortals.
In fact, after all, success in literature has something to do with writing. In temporary success, industry and business faculty, and an unworked field—be it Scotland, Ireland, or the Isle of Man (any place but plain England!)—are the chief factors. For that more lasting success which we call fame other qualities are needed, such qualities as imagination, fancy, and magic and force in the use of words. Can you honestly say, O beloved, though tiresome, correspondent, that these great gifts are yours? Judging from your letter—but Heaven forbid that I should be unkind! For, need I say I love you with a fellow-feeling? Do you think that youare the only unappreciated genius on the planet—not to speak of all the other unappreciated geniuses on all the other planets? Thank goodness, the postal arrangements with the latter are as yet defective! Others there are with hearts as warm, minds as profound, and style at least as attractive, who languish in unmerited neglect—Miltons inglorious indeed, though far from mute.
Believe me, you are not alone. In fact, there are so many like you that it would be quite easy for you to find society without worrying me. And, for all of us, there is the consolation that, though we fail as writers, we may still succeed as citizens, as husbands and fathers and friends. As Whitman would say—because you are not Editor ofThe Times, do you give in that you are less than a man? There are poets that have never entered into the Bodley Head, and great prose-writers who have never sat in an editorial chair. Be satisfied with your heavenly crowns, O you whining unsuccessful, and leave to your inferiors the earthly five-shilling pieces.
'In the midway of this our mortal life,I found me in a gloomy wood, astray.'
'In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray.'
I (and when I say I, I must be understood to be speaking dramatically) only venture into the City once a year, for the very pleasant purpose of drawing that twelve-pound-ten by which the English nation, ever so generously sensitive to the necessities, not to say luxuries, of the artist, endeavours to express its pride and delight in me. It would be a very graceful exercise of gratitude for me here to stop and parenthesise the reader on the subject of all that twelve-pound-ten has been to me, how it has quite changed the course of my life, given me that long-desired opportunity of doing my best work in peace, for which so often I vainly sighed in Fleet Street, and even allowed me an indulgence in minor luxuries which Icould not have dreamed of enjoying before the days of that twelve-pound-ten. Now not only peace and plenty, but leisure and luxury are mine. There is nothing goes so far as—Government money.
Usually on these literally State occasions, I drive up in state, that is in a hansom. There is only one other day in the year on which I am so splendid, but that is another beautiful story. It, too, is a day and an hour too joyous to be approached otherwise than on winged wheels, too stately to be approached in merely pedestrian fashion. To go on foot to draw one's pension seems a sort of slight on the great nation that does one honour, as though a Lord Mayor should make his appearance in the procession in his office coat.
So I say it is my custom to go gaily, and withal stately, to meet my twelve-pound-ten in a hansom. For many reasons the occasion always seems something of an adventure, and I confess I always feel a little excited about it—indeed, to tell the truth, a little nervous. As I glide along in my state barge (which seems a much moreproper and impressive image for a hansom than 'gondola,' with its reminiscences of Earl's Court) I feel like some fragile country flower torn from its roots, and bewilderingly hurried along upon the turbid, swollen stream of London life.
The stream glides sweetly with a pleasant trotting tinkle of bells by the green parkside of Piccadilly, and sweet is it to hear the sirens singing, and to see them combing their gilded locks, on the yellow sands of Piccadilly Circus—so called, no doubt, from the number of horses and the skill of their drivers. Here are the whirling pools of pleasure, merry wheels of laughing waters, where your hansom glides along with a golden ease—it is only when you enter the First Cataract of the Strand that you become aware of the far-distant terrible roar of the Falls! They are yet nearly two miles away, but already, like Niagara, thou hearest the sound thereof—the fateful sound of that human Niagara, where all the great rivers of London converge: the dark, strong floods surging out from the gloomy fastnesses of the East End, the quick-running streams from the palacesof the West, the East with its wagons, the West with its hansoms, the four winds with their omnibuses, the horses and carriages under the earth jetting up their companies of grimy passengers, the very air busy with a million errands.
You are in the rapids—metaphorically speaking—as you crawl down Cheapside; and here where the Bank of England and the Mansion House rise sheer and awful from, shall we say, this boiling caldron, this 'hell' of angry meeting waters—Threadneedle Street and Cornhill, Queen Victoria Street and Cheapside, each 'running,' again metaphorically, 'like a mill-race'—here in this wild maelstrom of human life and human conveyances, here is the true 'Niagara in London,' here are the most wonderful falls in the world—the London Falls.
'Yes!' I said softly to myself, and I could see the sly sad smile on the face of the dead poet, at the thought of whose serene wisdom a silence like snow seemed momentarily to cover up the turmoil—'Yes!' I said softly, 'there is still the same old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street!'
By this time I had disbursed one of my two annual cab-fares, and was standing a little forlorn at that very corner. It was a March afternoon, bitter and gloomy; lamps were already popping alight in a desolate way, and the east wind whistled mournfully through the ribs of the passers-by. A very unflowerlike man was dejectedly calling out 'daffadowndillies' close by. The sound of the pretty old word, thus quaintly spoken, brightened the air better than the electric lights which suddenly shot rows of wintry moonlight along the streets. I bought a bunch of the poor pinched flowers, and asked the man how he came to call them 'daffadowndillies.'
'D'vunshur,' he said, in anything but a Devonshire accent, and then the east wind took him and he was gone—doubtless to a neighbouring tavern; and no wonder, poor soul! Flowers certainly fall into strange hands here in London.
Well, it was nearing four, and if I wanted a grateful country's twelve-pound-ten, I must make haste; so presently I found myself in a great hall, of which I have no clearerimpression than that there were soft little lights all about me, and a soft chime of falling gold, like the rippling of Pactolus. I have a sort of idea, too, of a great number of young men with most beautiful moustaches, playing with golden shovels; and as I thus stood among the soft lights and listened to the most beautiful sound in the world, I thought that thus must Danæ have felt as she stood amid the falling shower. But I took care to see that my twelve sovereigns and a half were right number and weight for all that.
Once more in the street, I lingered a while to take a last look at the Falls. What a masterful alien life it all seemed to me! No single personality could hope to stand alone amid all that stress of ponderous, bullying forces. Only public companies, and such great impersonalities, could hope to hold their own, to swim in such a whirlpool—and even they, I had heard it whispered, far away in my quiet starlit garret, sometimes went down. 'How,' I cried, 'would—
'... my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your deeps and heights ...Rush of suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery clash of meteorites,'
'... my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your deeps and heights ...
Rush of suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery clash of meteorites,'
again quoting poetry. I always quote poetry in the City, as a protest—moreover, it clears the air.
The more people buffeted against me the more I felt the crushing sense of almost cosmic forces. Everybody was so plainly an atom in a public company, a drop of water in a tyrannous stream of human energy—companies that cared nothing for their individual atoms, streams that cared nothing for their component drops; such atoms and drops, for the most part, to be had for thirty shillings a week. These people about me seemed no more like individual men and women than individual puffs in a mighty rushing wind, or the notes in a great scheme of music, are men and women—to the banker so many pens with ears whereon to perch them, to the capitalist so many 'hands,' and to the City man generally so many 'helpless pieces of the game he plays' up there in spidery nooks and corners of the City.
As I listened to the throbbing of the great human engines in the buildings about me, a rising and a falling there seemed as of thosegreat steel-limbed monsters, weird contortionists of metal, that jet up and down, and writhe and wrestle this way and that, behind the long glass windows of great water-towers, or toil like Vulcan in the bowels of mighty ships. An expression of frenzy seems to come up even from the dumb tossing steel; sometimes it seems to be shaking great knuckled fists at one and brandishing threatening arms, as it strains and sweats beneath the lash of the compulsive steam. As one watches it, there seems something of human agony about its panic-stricken labours, and something like a sense of pity surprises one—a sense of pity that anything in the world should have to work like that, even steel, even, as we say, senseless steel. What, then, of these great human engine-houses! Will the engines always consent to rise and fall, night and day, like that? or will there some day be a mighty convulsion, and this blind Samson of labour pull down the whole engine-house upon his oppressors? Who knows? These are questions for great politicians and thinkers to decide, not for a poet, who is too much terrified by suchforces to be able calmly to estimate and prophesy concerning them.
Yes! if you want to realise Tennyson's picture of 'one poor poet's scroll' ruling the world, take your poet's scroll down to Fenchurch Street and try it there. Ah, what a powerless little 'private interest' seems poetry there, poetry 'whose action is no stronger than a flower.' In days of peace it ventures even into the morning papers; but, let only a rumour of war be heard, and it vanishes like a dream on doomsday morning. A County Council election passeth over it and it is gone.
Yet it was near this very spot that Keats dug up the buried beauty of Greece, lying hidden beneath Finsbury Pavement! and in the deserted City churches great dramatists lie about us. Maybe I have wronged the City—and at this thought I remembered a little bookshop but a few yards away, blossoming like a rose right in the heart of the wilderness.
Here, after all, in spite of all my whirlpools and engine-houses, was for me the greatest danger in the City. Need I say,therefore, that I promptly sought it, hovered about it a moment—and entered? How much of that grateful governmental twelve-pound-ten came out alive, I dare not tell my dearest friend.
At all events I came out somehow reassured, more rich in faith. There was a might of poesy after all. There were words in the little yellow-leaved garland, nestling like a bird in my hand, that would outlast the bank yonder, and outlive us all. I held it up. How tiny it seemed, how frail amid all this stone and iron! A mere flower—a flower from the seventeenth century—long-lived for a flower! Yes, animmortelle.
'Well, I never thought to see this day, sir,' said Gibbs, with something like tears in his voice, as he reluctantly plied his scissors upon Hyacinth Rondel's distinguished curls.
'Nor I, Gibbs—nor I!' said Rondel sadly, relapsing into silence again, with his head meekly bent over the white sheet spread to catch his shorn beauty.
'To think of the times, sir, that I have dressed your head,' continued Gibbs, whose grief bore so marked an emphasis, 'and to think that after to-day ...'
'But you forget, my dear Gibbs, that I shall now be a more constant customer than ever!'
'Ah, sir, but that will be different. It will be mere machine-cutting, lawn-mowing, steam-reaping, if you understand me; there'llbe no pleasure in it, no artistic pleasure, I mean.'
'Yes, Gibbs, and you are an artist—I have often told you that.'
'Ah, sir, but I am coming to the conclusion that it is better not to be an artist, better to be born just like every one else. In these days one suffers too much. Why, sir, I haven't in the whole of my business six heads like yours, and I go on cutting all the rest week in and week out, just for the pleasure of dressing those six—and now there'll only be five.'
'It looks like a winding-sheet,' mused Rondel presently, after a long silence, broken only by the soft crunch and click of the fatal scissors, as they feasted on the beautiful brown silk.
'It do indeed, sir,' said Gibbs, with a shudder, as another little globe of golden brown rolled down into Rondel's lap.
'Poor brown roses!' sighed the poet, after another silence; 'they are just like brown roses, aren't they, Gibbs?'
'They are indeed, sir!'
'Brown roses scattered over the winding-sheet of one's youth—eh, Gibbs?'
'They are indeed, sir.'
'That's rather a pretty image, don't you think, Gibbs?'
'Indeed I do, sir!'
'Well, well, they have bloomed their last; and when Juliet's white hands come seeking with their silver fingers, white maidens lost in the brown enchanted forest, there will not be a rose left for her to gather.'
'Believe me, sir, I would more gladly have cut off your head than your hair—that is, figuratively speaking,' sobbed the artist-in-hair-oils.
'Yes, my head would hardly be missed—you are quite right, Gibbs; but my hair! What will they do without it at first nights and private views? It was worth five shillings a week to many a poor paragraph-writer. Well, I must try and make up for it by my beard!'
'Your beard, sir?' exclaimed Gibbs in horror.
'Yes, Gibbs; for some years I have been a Nazarene—that is, a Nazarite, with the tophalf of my head; now I am going to change about and be a Nazarite with the lower. The razor has kissed my cheeks and my chin and the fluted column of my throat for the last time.'
'You cannot mean it, sir!' said Gibbs, suspending his murderous task a moment.
'It's quite true, Gibbs.'
'Does she wish that too, sir?'
'Yes, that too.'
'Well, sir, I have heard of men making sacrifices for their wives, but of all the cruel....'
'Please don't, Gibbs. It does no good. And Mrs. Rondel's motive is a good one.'
'Of course, sir, I cannot presume—and yet, if it wouldn't be presuming, I should like to know why you are making this great, I may say this noble, sacrifice?'
'Well, Gibbs, we're old friends, and I'll tell you some day, but I hardly feel up to it to-day.'
'Of course not, sir, of course not—it's only natural,' said Gibbs tenderly, while the scissors once more took up the conversation.
'That is how the donkey tells his love!' I said one day, with intent to be funny, as the prolonged love-whoop of a distant donkey was heard in the land.
'Don't be too ready to laugh at donkeys,' said my friend. 'For,' he continued, 'even donkeys have their dreams. Perhaps, indeed, the most beautiful dreams are dreamed by donkeys.'
'Indeed,' I said, 'and now that I think of it, I remember to have said that most dreamers are donkeys, though I never expected so scientific a corroboration of a fleeting jest.'
Now, my friend is an eminent scientist and poet in one, a serious combination; and he took my remarks with seriousness at once scientific and poetic.
'Yes,' he went on, 'that is where you clever people make a mistake. You think that because a donkey has only two vowel-sounds wherewith to express his emotions, he has no emotions to express. But let me tell you, sir ...'
But here we both burst out laughing—
'You Golden Ass!' I said,'take a munch of these roses; perhaps they will restore you.'
'No,' he resumed, 'I am quite serious. I have for many years past made a study of donkeys—high-stepping critics call it the study of Human Nature—however, it's the same thing—and I must say that the more I study them the more I love them. There is nothing so well worth studying as the misunderstood, for the very reason that everybody thinks he understands it. Now, to take another instance, most people think they have said the last word on a goose when they have called it "a goose"!—but let me tell you, sir ...'
But here again we burst out laughing—
'Dear goose of the golden eggs,' I said, 'pray leave to discourse on geese to-night—though lovely and pleasant would the discourse be;—to-night I am all agog for donkeys.'
'So be it,' said my friend,' and if that be so, I cannot do better than tell you the story of the donkey that loved a star—keeping for another day the no less fascinating story of the goose that loved an angel.'
By this time I was, appropriately, all ears.
'Well,' he once more began, 'there was once a donkey, quite an intimate friend of mine—and I have no friend of whom I am prouder—who was unpractically fond of looking up at the stars. He could go a whole day without thistles, if night would only bring him stars. Of course he suffered no little from his fellow-donkeys for this curious passion of his. They said well that it did not become him, for indeed it was no little laughable to see him gazing so sentimentally at the remote and pitiless heavens. Donkeys who belonged to Shakespeare Societies recalled the fate of Bottom, the donkey who had loved a fairy; but our donkey paid little heed. There is perhaps only one advantagein being a donkey—namely, a hide impervious to criticism. In our donkey's case it was rather a dream that made him forget his hide—a dream that drew up all the sensitiveness from every part, from hoof, and hide, and ears, so that all the feeling in his whole body was centred in his eyes and brain, and those, as we have said, were centred on a star. He took it for granted that his fellows should sneer and kick-out at him—it was ever so with genius among the donkeys, and he had very soon grown used to these attentions of his brethren, which were powerless to withdraw his gaze from the star he loved. For though he loved all the stars, as every individual man loves all women, there was one star he loved more than any other; and standing one midnight among his thistles, he prayed a prayer, a prayer that some day it might be granted him to carry that star upon his back—which, he recalled, had been sanctified by the holy sign—were it but for ever so short a journey. Just to carry it a little way, and then to die. This to him was a dream beyond the dreams of donkeys.
'Now, one night,' continued my friend,taking breath for himself and me, 'our poor donkey looked up to the sky, and lo! the star was nowhere to be seen. He had heard it said that stars sometimes fall. Evidently his star had fallen. Fallen! but what if it had fallen upon the earth? Being a donkey, the wildest dreams seemed possible to him. And, strange as it may seem, there came a day when a poet came to his master and bought our donkey to carry his little child. Now, the very first day he had her upon his back, the donkey knew that his prayer had been answered, and that the little swaddled babe he carried was the star he had prayed for. And, indeed, so it was; for so long as donkeys ask no more than to fetch and carry for their beloved, they may be sure of beauty upon their backs. Now, so long as this little girl that was a star remained a little girl, our donkey was happy. For many pretty years she would kiss his ugly muzzle and feed his mouth with sugar—and thus our donkey's thoughts sweetened day by day, till from a natural pessimist he blossomed into a perfectly absurd optimist, and dreamed the donkiest of dreams. But, oneday, as he carried the girl who was really a star through the spring lanes, a young man walked beside her, and though our donkey thought very little of his talk—in fact, felt his plain "hee-haw" to be worth all its smart chirping and twittering—yet it evidently pleased the maiden. It included quite a number of vowel-sounds—though, if the maiden had only known, it didn't mean half so much as the donkey's plain monotonous declaration.
'Well, our donkey soon began to realise that his dream was nearing its end; and, indeed, one day his little mistress came bringing him the sweetest of kisses, the very best sugar in the very best shops, but for all that our donkey knew that it meant good-bye. It is the charming manner of English girls to be at their sweetest when they say good-bye.
'Our dreamer-donkey went into exile as servant to a woodcutter, and his life was lenient if dull, for the woodcutter had no sticks to waste upon his back; and next day his young mistress who was once a star took a pony for her love, whom some timeafter she discarded for a talented hunter, and, one fine day, like many of her sex, she pitched her affections upon a man—he too being a talented hunter. To their wedding came all the countryside. And with the countryside came the donkey. He carried a great bundle of firewood for the servants' hall, and as he waited outside, gazing up at his old loves the stars, while his master drank deeper and deeper within, he revolved many thoughts. But he is only known to have made one remark—in the nature, one may think, of a grim jest—
'"After all!" he was heard to say, "she has married a donkey—after all!"
'No doubt it was feeble; but then our donkey was growing old and bitter, and hope deferred had made him a cynic.'
Like all people who live apart from it, the Founder of the Christian religion was possessed of a profound knowledge of the world. As, according to the proverb, the woodlander sees nothing of the wood for its trees, so those who live in the world know nothing of it. They know its gaudy, glittering surface, its Crystal Palace fireworks, and the paste-diamonds with which it bedecks itself; they know its music-halls and its night clubs, its Piccadillys and its politics, its restaurants and its salons; but of the bad—or good?—heart of it all they know nothing. In more meanings than one, it takes a saint to catch a sinner; and Christ certainly knew as well as saved the sinner.
But none of His precepts show a truer knowledge of life and its conditions thanHis commandment that we should love our enemies. He realised—can we doubt?—that, without enemies, the Church He bade His followers build could not hope to be established. He knew that the spiritual fire He strove to kindle would spread but little, unless the four winds of the world blew against it. Well, indeed, may the Christian Church love its enemies, for it is they who have made it.
Indeed, for a man, or a cause, that wants to get on, there is nothing like a few hearty, zealous enemies. Most of us would never be heard of if it were not for our enemies. The unsuccessful man counts up his friends, but the successful man numbers his enemies. A friend of mine was lamenting, the other day, that he could not find twelve people to disbelieve in him. He had been seeking them for years, he sighed, and could not get beyond eleven. But, even so, with only eleven he was a very successful man. In these kind-hearted days enemies are becoming so rare that one has to go out of one's way to make them. The true interpretation, therefore, of the easiest of the commandments is—make your enemies, and your enemies will make you.
So soon as the armed men begin to spring up in our fields, we may be sure that we have not sown in vain.
Properly understood, an enemy is but a negative embodiment of our personalities or ideas. He is an involuntary witness to our vitality. Much as he despises us, greatly as he may injure us, he is none the less a creature of our making. It was we who put into him the breath of his malignity, and inspired the activity of his malice. Therefore, with his very existence so tremendous a tribute, we can afford to smile at his self-conscious disclaimers of our significance. Though he slay us, wemadehim—to 'make an enemy,' is not that the phrase?
Indeed, the fact that he is our enemy is his oneraison d'être. That alone should make us charitable to him. Live and let live. Without us our enemy has no occupation, for to hate us is his profession. Think of his wives and families!
The friendship of the little for the great is an old-established profession; there is butone older—namely, the hatred of the little for the great; and, though it is perhaps less officially recognised, it is without doubt the more lucrative. It is one of the shortest roads to fame. Why is the name of Pontius Pilate an uneasy ghost of history? Think what fame it would have meant to be an enemy of Socrates or Shakespeare!Blackwood's MagazineandThe Quarterly Reviewonly survive to-day because they once did their best to strangle the genius of Keats and Tennyson. Two or three journals of our own time, by the same unfailing method, seek that circulation from posterity which is denied them in the present.
This is particularly true in literature, where the literary enemy is as organised a tradesman as the literary agent. Like the literary agent, he naturally does his best to secure the biggest men. No doubt the time will come when the literary cut-throat—shall we call him?—will publish dainty little books of testimonials from authors, full of effusive gratitude for the manner in which they have been slashed and bludgeoned into fame. 'Butcher to Mr. Grant Allen' may then become a familiar legend over literary shop-fronts:—