THE CHILDREN OF APOLLO
THE CHILDREN OF APOLLO
'He is atruepoet,' or 'He is agenuineartist,' are phrases which irritate one day after day in modern criticism. One had thought that 'poet' and 'artist' were enough; but there must be a need, we regretfully suppose, for these re-enforcing qualifications; and there can be but the one, that the false in each kind do so exceedingly abound, that none can be taken as genuine without such special certificate. The widespread confusion with the poet of the rhetorician and sentimentalist in verse, and again of the mere rhymer without even rhetoric, not to refer to finer differentiation of error, is also a fruitful source of bewilderment. The misuse of the word has parallels: for instance, the spurious generic use of the word 'man' for 'male,' the substitution of 'artist' for 'painter.' But here we have only to deal with that one particular abuse. Some rules how to know a poet may conceivably be of interest, though of no greater value.
Of course, the one first and last test is his work, but 'how to know poetry' is another matter, which I do not propose treating of here; my intention rather being to dot down a few personal characteristics—not so much his 'works' as his 'ways.' I write as they come into my head; and to any Reader about to cry out against digression, let me add: I write thinking of Narcissus; for know all men, friend or Philistine, if you have yet to learn it, my Narcissus is a poet!
First, as to the great question of 'garmenting.' The superstition that the hat and the cloak 'does it' has gone out in mockery, but only that the other superstition might reign in its stead—that the hat and cloak cannot do it. Because one great poet dispensed with 'pontificals,' and yet brought the fire from heaven, henceforward 'pontificals' are humbug, and the wearer thereof but charlatan, despite—'the master yonder in the isle.' Pegasus must pack in favour of a British hunter, and even the poet at last wear the smug regimentals of mediocrity and mammon. Ye younger choir especially have a care, for, though you sing with the tongues of men and angels, and wear not a silk hat, it shall avail you nothing. Neither Time, which is Mudie, nor Eternity, which is Fame, will know you, and your verses remain till doom in an ironicaleditio princeps, which not even the foolish bookman shall rescue from the threepenny box. It is very unlikely that you will escape as did Narcissus, for though, indeed,
'He swept a fine majestic sweepOf toga Tennysonian,Wore strange soft hat, that such as youWould tremble to be known in,'
nevertheless, he somehow won happier fates, on which, perhaps, it would be unbecoming in so close a friend to dilate.
The 'true' poet is, first of all, a gentleman, usually modest, never arrogant, and only assertive when pushed. He does not by instinct take himself seriously, as the 'poet-ape' doth, though if he meets with recognition it becomes, of course, his duty to acknowledge his faculty, and make good Scriptural use of it.
He is probably least confident, however, when praised; and never, except in rare moments, especially of eclipse, has he a strong faith in the truth that is in him. Therefore crush him, saith the Philistine, as we crush the vine; strike him, as one strikes the lyre. When young, he imagines the world to be filled with one ambition; later on, he finds that so indeed it is—but the name thereof is not Poesy. Strange! sighs he. And if, when he is seventeen, he writes a fluent song, and his fellow-clerk admire it, why, it is nothing; surely the ledger-man hath such scraps in his poke, or at least can roll off better. 'True bards believe all able to achieve what they achieve,' said Naddo. But lo! that ambition is a word that begins with pounds and ends with pence—like life, quoth the ledger-man, who, after all, had but card-scores, a tailor's account, and the bill for his wife's confinement in his pocket.
All through his life he loves his last-written most, and no honey of Hybla is so sweet as a new rhyme. Let no maid hope to rival it with her lips—she but interrupts: for the travail of a poet is even as that of his wife—after the pain comes that dear joy of a new thing born into the world, which doting sipping dream beware to break. Fifty repetitions of the new sweetness, fifty deliberate rollings of it under the tongue, is, I understand, the minimum duration of such, before the passion is worked off, and the dream-child really breathing free of its dream-parent. I have occasionally come upon Narcissus about the twenty-fifth, I suppose, and wondered at my glum reception. 'Poetry gone sour,' he once gave as the reason. Try it not, Reader, if, indeed, in thy colony of beavers a poet really dwells.
He is a born palaeontologist: that is, he can build up an epic from a hint. And, despite modern instances, the old rule obtains for him, he need not be learned—that is, not deeply or abundantly, only at points—superficially, the superficial would say. Well, yes, he has an eye for knowing what surfaces mean, the secret of the divining rod. Take it this way. We want an expression, say, of the work of Keats, want to be told wherein lies his individuality. You take Mr. Buxton Forman's four volumes, and 'work at' Keats! and, after thirty nights and days, bring your essay. On the morning of the thirtieth the poet read again theGrecian Urn, and at eventide wrote a sonnet; and on the morning of the thirty-first, essay and sonnet are side by side. But, by the evening, your essay is in limbo—or in type, all's one—while the sonnet is singing in our heart, persistently haunting our brain. Some day the poet, too, writes an essay, and thus plainly shows, says the essayist, how little he really knew of the matter—he didn't actually know of the so-and-so—and yet it was his ignorance that gave us that illuminating line, after all.
I doubt if one would be on safe ground in saying: Take, now, the subject of wine. We all know how abstemious is the poetical habit; and yet, to read these songs, one would think 'twas Bacchus' self that wrote, or that Clarence who lay down to die in a butt of Malmsey. Though the inference is open to question,
'I often wonder if old Omar drankOne half the quantity he bragged in song.'
Doubtless he sat longest and drank least of all the topers of Naishapur, and the bell for Saki rang not from his corner half often enough to please mine host. Certainly the longevity of some modern poets can only be accounted for by some such supposition in their case. The proposition is certainly proved inversely in the case of Narcissus, for he has not written one vinous line, and yet—well, and yet! Furthermore, it may interest future biographers to know that in his cups he was wont to recite Hamlet's advice to the players, throned upon a tram-car.
The 'true' poet makes his magic with the least possible ado; he and the untrue are as the angler who is born to the angler who is made at the tackle-shop. One encumbers the small of his back with nameless engines, talks much of creels, hath a rod like a weaver's beam; he travels first class to some distant show-lake among the hills, and he toils all day as the fishermen of old toiled all night; while Tom, his gardener's son, but a mile outside the town, with a willow wand and a bent pin, hath caught the family supper. So is it with him who is proverbially born not made. His friends say: 'O, you should go to such-and-such falls; you 'd write poetry there, if you like. We all said so'; or, 'What are you doing in here scribbling? Look through the window at the moonlight; there's poetry for you. Go out into that if you want sonnets.' Of course, he never takes his friends' advice; he has long known that they know nothing whatever about it. He is probably quite ignorant of metrical law, but one precept instinct taught him from the beginning, and he finds it expressed one day in Wordsworth (with a blessed comfort of assurance—like in this little, O, may be like, somehow, in the great thing too!): 'Poetry is emotion remembered in tranquillity.' The wandlike moments, he remembers, always came to him in haunts all remote indeed from poetry: a sudden touch at his heart, and the air grows rhythmical, and seems a-ripple with dreams; and, albeit, in whatever room of dust or must he be, the song will find him, will throw her arms about him, so it seems, will close his eyes with her sweet breath, that he may open them upon the hidden stars.
'Impromptus' are the quackery of the poetaster. One may take it for granted, as a general rule, that anything written 'on the spot' is worthless. A certain young poet, who could when he liked do good things, printed some verses, which he declared in a sub-title were 'Written on the top of Snowdon in a thunderstorm.' He asked an opinion, and one replied: 'Written on the top of Snowdon in a thunderstorm.' The poet was naturally angry—and yet, what need of further criticism?
The poet, when young, although as I said, he is not likely to fall into the foolishness of conceit which belongs to the poetaster, is yet too apt in his zeal of dedication to talk much of his 'art,' or, at least, think much; also to disparage life, and to pronounce much gratuitous absolution in the name of Poetry:—
Did Burns drink and wench?—yet he sang!
Did Coleridge opiate and neglect his family?—yet he sang!!
Did Shelley—well, whatever Shelley did of callous and foolish, the list is long—yet he sang!!!
As years pass, however, he grows out of this stage, and, while regarding his art in a spirit of dedication equally serious, and how much saner, he comes to realise that, after all, art but forms one integral part, however great, of a healthy life, and that for the greatest artist there are still duties in life more imperative than any art can lay upon him. It is a great hour when he rises up in his resolution first to be a man, in faith that, if he be such, the artist in him will look after itself—- first a man, and surely all the greater artist for being that; though if not, still a man. That is the duty that lies' next' to all of us. Do that, and, as we are told, the other will be clearer for us. In that hour that earlier form of absolution will reverse itself on his lips into one of commination. Did they sing?—yet they sinned here and here; and as a man soweth, so shall he reap, singer or sot. Lo! his songs are stars in heaven, but his sins are snakes in hell: each shall bless and torment him in turn.
Pitiable, indeed, will seem to him in that hour the cowardice that dares to cloak its sinning with some fine-spun theory, that veils the gratification of its desires in some shrill evangel, and wrecks a woman's life in the names of—Liberty and Song! Art wants no such followers: her bravest work is done by brave men, and not by sneaking opium-eaters and libidinous 'reformers.' We all have sinned, and we all will go on sinning, but for God's sake, let us be honest about it. There are worse things than honest sin. If, God help you, you have ruined a girl, do penance for it through your life; pay your share; but don't, whatever you do, hope to make up for a bad heart by a good brain. Foolish art-patterers may suffer the recompense to pass, for likely they have all the one and none of the other; but good men will care nothing about you or your work, so long as bad trees refuse to bring forth good fruit, or figs to grow on thistles.
We have more to learn from Florentine artists than any 'craft mystery.' If the capacity for using the blossom while missing the evil fruit, of which Mr. Pater speaks in the case of Aurelius, were only confined to those evil-bearing trees: alas! it is all blossom with us moderns, good or bad alike, and purity or putrescence are all one to us, so that they shine. I suppose few regard Giotto's circle as his greatest work: would that more did. The lust of the eye, with Gautier as high-priest, is too much with us.
The poet, too, who perhaps began with the simple ambition of becoming a 'literary man,' soon finds how radically incapable of ever being merely that he is. Alas! how soon the nimbus fades from the sacred name of 'author.' At one time he had been ready to fall down and kiss the garment's hem, say, of—of a 'Canterbury' editor (this, of course, when very, very young), as of a being from another sphere; and a writer inThe Fortnightlyhad swam into his ken, trailing visible clouds of glory. But by and by he finds himself breathing with perfect composure in that rarefied air, and in course of time the grey conviction settles upon him that these fabled people are in no wise different from the booksellers and business men he had found so sordid and dull—no more individual or delightful as a race; and he speedily comes to the old conclusion he had been at a loss to understand a year or two ago, that, as a rule, the people who do not write books are infinitely to be preferred to the people who do. When he finds exceptions, they occur as they used to do in shop and office—the charm is all independent of the calling; for just as surely as a man need not grow mean, and hard, and dried up, however prosperous be his iron-foundry, so sure is it that a man will not grow generous, rich-minded, loving, and all that is golden by merely writing of such virtues at so much a column. The inherent insincerity, more or less, of all literary work is a fact of which he had not thought. I am speaking of the mere 'author,' the writer-tradesman, the amateur's superstition; not of men of genius, who, despite cackle, cannot disappoint. If they seem to do so, it must be that we have not come close enough to know them. But the man of genius is rarer, perhaps, in the ranks of authorship than anywhere: you are far more likely to find him on the exchange. They are as scarce as Caxtons: London possesses hardly half-a-dozen examples.
Narcissus enjoyed the delight of calling one of these his friend, 'a certain aristocratic poet who loved all kinds of superiorities,' again to borrow from Mr. Pater. He had once seen him afar off and worshipped, as it is the blessedness of boys to be able to worship; but never could he have dreamed in that day of the dear intimacy that was to come. 'If he could but know me as I am,' he had sighed; but that was all. With the almost childlike naturalness which is his greatest charm he confessed this sigh long after, and won that poet's heart. Well I remember his bursting into our London lodging late one afternoon, great-eyed and almost in tears for joy of that first visit. He had pre-eminently the capacity which most fine men have of falling in love with men—as one may be sure of a subtle greatness in a woman whose eye singles out a woman to follow on the stage at the theatre—and certainly, no other phrase can express that state of shining, trembling exaltation, the passion of the friendships of Narcissus. And although he was rich in them—rich, that is, as one can be said to be rich in treasure so rare—saving one only, they have never proved that fairy-gold which such do often prove. Saving that one, golden fruit still hangs for every white cluster of wonderful blossom.
'I thought you must care for me if you could but know me aright,' Narcissus had said.
'Care for you! Why, you beautiful boy! you seem to have dropped from the stars,' the poet had replied in the caressing fashion of an elder brother.
He had frankly fallen in love, too: for Narcissus has told me that his great charm is a boyish naturalness of heart, that ingenuous gusto in living which is one of the sure witnesses to genius. This is all the more piquant because no one would suspect it, as, I suppose, few do; probably, indeed, a consensus would declare him the last man in London of whom that is true. No one would seem to take more seriously thebeau mondeof modern paganism, with its hundred gospels ofLa Nuance; no one, assuredly, were moreblaséthan he, with his languors of pose, and face of so wan a flame. The Oscar Wilde of modern legend were not more as a dweller in Nirvana. But Narcissus maintained that all this was but a disguise which the conditions of his life compelled him to wear, and in wearing which he enjoyed much subtle subterranean merriment; while underneath the real man lived, fresh as morning, vigorous as a young sycamore, wild-hearted as an eagle, ever ready to flash out the 'password primeval' to such as alone could understand. How else had he at once taken the stranger lad to his heart with such a sunlight of welcome? As the maid every boy must have sighed for but so rarely found, who makes not as if his love were a weariness which she endured, and the kisses she suffered, cold as green buds, were charities, but frankly glows to his avowal with 'I love you, too, dear Jack,' and kisses him from the first with mouth like a June rose—so did thatblasépoet cast away his conventional Fahrenheit, and call Narcissus friend in their first hour. Men of genius alone know that fineabandonof soul. In such is the poet confessed as unmistakably as in his verse, for the one law of his life is that he be an elemental, and the capacity for great simple impressions is the spring of his power. Let him beware of losing that.
I sometimes wonder as I come across the last frivolous gossip concerning that poet in the paragraphs of the new journalism, or meet his name in some distinguished bead-roll inThe Morning Post, whether Narcissus was not, after all, mistaken about him, and whether he could still, season after season, go through the same stale round of reception, private view, first night, and all the various drill of fashion and folly, if that boy's heart were alive still. One must believe it once throbbed in him: we have his poems for that, and a poem cannot lie; but it is hard to think that it could still keep on its young beating beneath such a choking pressure of convention, and in an air so 'sunken from the healthy breath of morn.' But, on the other hand, I have almost a superstitious reliance on Narcissus' intuition, a faculty in him which not I alone have marked, but which I know was the main secret of his appeal for women. They, as the natural possessors of the power, feel a singular kinship with a man who also possesses it, a gift as rarely found among his sex as that delicacy which largely depends on it, and which is the other sure clue to a woman's love. She is so little used, poor flower, to be understood, and to meet with other regard than the gaze of satyrs.
However, be Narcissus' intuition at fault or not in the main, still it was very sure that the boy's heart in that man of the world did wake from its sleep for a while at the wandlike touch of his youth; and if, after all, as may be, Narcissus was but a new sensation in his jaded round, at least he was a healthy one. Nor did the callous ingratitude of forgetfulness which follows so swiftly upon mere sensation ever add another to the sorrows of my friend: for, during the last week before he left us, came a letter of love and cheer in that poet's wonderful handwriting—handwriting delicious with honeyed lines, each word a flower, each letter rounded with the firm soft curves of hawthorn in bud, or the delicate knobs of palm against the sky.
GEORGE MUNCASTER
GEORGE MUNCASTER
When I spoke of London's men of genius I referred, of course, to such as are duly accredited, certificated, so to say, by public opinion; but of those others whose shining is under the bushel of obscurity, few or many, how can one affirm? That there are such, any man with any happy experience of living should be able to testify; and I should say, for fear of misunderstanding, that I do not use the word genius in any technical sense, not only of men who candoin the great triumphal way, but also of those who canbein their quiet, effective fashion, within their own 'scanty plot of ground'; men who, if ever conscious of it, are content with the diffusion of their influence around the narrow limits of their daily life, content to bend their creative instincts on the building and beautifying of home. It is no lax use of the word genius to apply it to such, for unless you profess the modern heresy that genius is but a multiplied talent, a coral-island growth, that earns its right to a new name only when it has lifted its head above the waters of oblivion, you must agree. For 'you saw at once,' said Narcissus, in reference to that poet, 'that his writing was so delightful because he was more so.' His writings, in fact, were but the accidental emanations of his personality. He might have given himself out to us in fugues, or canvases, or simply, like the George Muncaster of whom I am thinking, in the sweet breath and happy shining of his home. Genius is a personal quality, and if a man has it, whatever his hand touches will bear the trace of his power, an undying odour, an unfading radiance. When Rossetti wrote 'Beauty like hers is genius,' he was not dealing in metaphor, and Meissonier should have abolished for ever the superstition of large canvases.
These desultory hints of the development of Narcissus would certainly be more incomplete than necessity demands, if I did not try to give the Reader some idea of the man of genius of this unobtrusive type to whom I have just alluded. Samuel Dale used to call himself 'an artist in life,' and there could be no truer general phrase to describe George Muncaster than that. His whole life possesses a singular unity, such as is the most satisfying joy of a fine work of art, considering which it never occurs to one to think of the limitation of conditions or material. So with his life, the shortness of man's 'term' is never felt; one could win no completer effect with eternity than he with every day. Hurry and false starts seem unknown in his round, and his little home is a microcosm of the Golden Age.
It would even seem sometimes that he has an artistic rule over his 'accidents,' for 'surprises' have a wonderful knack of falling into the general plan of his life, as though but waited for. Our first meeting with him was a singular instance of this. I say 'our,' for Narcissus and I chanced to be walking a holiday together at the time. It fell on this wise. At Tewkesbury it was we had arrived, one dull September evening, just in time to escape a wetting from a grey drizzle then imminent; and in no very buoyant spirits we turned intoThe Swan Inn. A more dismal coffee-room for a dismal evening could hardly be—gloomy, vast, and thinly furnished. We entered sulkily, seeming the only occupants of the sepulchre. However, there was a small book on the table facing the door, sufficiently modern in appearance to catch one's eye and arouse a faint ripple of interest. 'A Canterbury,' we cried. 'And a Whitman, more's the wonder,' cried Narcissus, who had snatched it up. 'Why, some one's had the sense, too, to cut out the abominable portrait. I wonder whose it is. The owner must evidently have some right feeling.'
Then, before there was time for further exclamatory compliment of the unknown, we were half-startled by the turning round of an arm-chair at the far end of the room, and were aware of a manly voice of exquisite quality asking, 'Do you know Whitman?'
And moving towards the speaker, we were for the first time face to face with the strong and gentle George Muncaster, who since stands in our little gallery of types as Whitman's Camarado and Divine Husband made flesh. I wish, Reader, that I could make you see his face; but at best I have little faith in pen portraits. It is comparatively easy to write a graphic description ofaface; but when it has been read, has the reader realisedtheface? I doubt it, and am inclined to believe that three different readers will carry away three different impressions even from a really brilliant portrait. Laborious realism may, at least, I think, be admitted as hopeless. The only chance is in a Meredithian lightning-flash, and those fly but from one or two bows. I wonder if an image will help at all here. Think on a pebbly stream, on a brisk, bright morning; dwell on the soft, shining lines of its flowing; and then recall the tonic influence, the sensation of grip, which the pebbles give it. Dip your hand into it again in fancy; realise how chaste it is, and then again think how bright and good it is. And if you realise these impressions as they come to me, you will have gained some idea of George Muncaster's face—the essential spirit of it, I mean, ever so much more important than the mere features. Such, at least, seemed the meaning of his face even in the first moment of our intercourse that September dusk, and so it has never ceased to come upon us even until now.
And what a night that was! what a talk! How soon did we find each other out! Long before the maid knocked at the door, and hinted by the delicate insinuation of a supposed ring that there was 'a budding morrow' in the air. But our passionate generosity of soul was running in too strong a tide just then to be stemmed by any such interference; it could but be diverted, and Muncaster's bedroom served us as well wherein to squat in one of those close, rapt circles of talk such as, I think, after all, men who love poetry can alone know—men, anyhow, withapoetry.
Bed, that had for some time been calling us, unheeded as Juliet's nurse, had at last to be obeyed; but how grudgingly; and how eagerly we sprang from it at no late hour in the morning, at the first thought of the sweet new thing that had come into the world—like children who, half in a doze before waking, suddenly remember last night's new wonder of a toy, to awake in an instant, and scramble into clothes to look at it again. Thus, like children we rose; but it was shy as lovers we met at the breakfast-table, as lovers shy after last night's kissing. (You may not have loved a fellow-man in this way, Reader, but we are, any one of us, as good men as you; so keep your eyebrows down, I beseech you.)
One most winsome trait of our new friend was soon apparent—as, having, to our sorrow, to part at the inn door right and left, we talked of meeting again at one or the other's home: a delicate disinclination to irreverently 'make sure' of the new joy; a 'listening fear,' as though of a presiding good spirit that might revoke his gift if one stretched out towards it with too greedy hands. 'Rather let us part and say nought. You know where a letter will find me. If our last night was a real thing, we shall meet again, never fear.' With some such words as those it was that he bade us good-bye.
Of course, letters found all three of us before a fortnight had gone by, and in but a short time we found his home. There it is that George should be seen. Away he is full of precious light, but home is his setting. To Narcissus, who found it in that green period when all youngsters take vehement vows of celibacy, and talk much of 'free love,' all ignorant, one is in charity persuaded, of what they quite mean, that home was certainly as great and lasting a revelation as the first hour of 'Poetry's divine first finger-touch.' It was not that his own home-life had been unhappy, for it was the reverse, and rich indeed in great and sweet influences; but it was rather, I think, that the ideal of a home is not so easily to be reached from that home in which one is a child, where one is too apt to miss the whole in consideration of one's own part in it, as from another on which we can look from the outside.
Our parents, even to the end, partake too much of the nature of mythology; it always needs an effort to imagine them beings with quite the same needs and dreams as ourselves. We rarely get a glimpse of their poetry, for the very reason that we ourselves are factors in it, and are, therefore, too apt to dwell on the less happy details of the domestic life, details which one ray of their poetry would transfigure as the sun transfigures the motes in his beam. Thus, in that green age I spoke of, one's sickly vision can but see the dusty, world-worn side of domesticity, the petty daily cares of living, the machinery, so to say, of 'house and home.' But when one stands in another home, where these are necessarily unseen by us, stands with the young husband, the poetry-maker, how different it all seems. One sees the creation bloom upon it; one ceases to blaspheme, and learns to bless. Later, when at length one understands why it is sweeter to say 'wife' than 'sweetheart,' how even one may be reconciled to calling one's Daffodilia 'little mother'—because of the children, you know; it would never do for them to say Daffodilia—then he will understand too how those petty details, formerly so 'banal,' are, after all, but notes in the music, and what poetry can flicker, like its own blue flame, around even the joint purchase of a frying-pan.
That Narcissus ever understood this great old poetry he owes to George Muncaster. In the very silence of his home one hears a singing—'There lies the happiest land.' It was one of his own quaint touches that the first night we found his nest, after the maid had given us admission, there should be no one to welcome us into the bright little parlour but a wee boy of four, standing in the doorway like a robin that has hopped on to one's window-sill. But with what a dear grace did the little chap hold out his hand and bid us good evening, and turn his little morsel of a bird's tongue round our names; to be backed at once by a ring of laughter from the hidden 'prompter' thereupon revealed. O happy, happy home! may God for ever smile upon you! There should be a special grace for happy homes. George's set us 'collecting' such, with results undreamed of by youthful cynic. Take courage, Reader, if haply you stand with hesitating toe above the fatal plunge. Fear not, you can swim if you will. Of course, you must take care that your joint poetry-maker be such a one as George's. One must not seem to forget the loving wife who made such dreaming as his possible. He did not; and, indeed, had you told him of his happiness, he would but have turned to her with a smile that said, 'All of thee, my love'; while, did one ask of this and that, how quickly 'Yes! that was George's idea,' laughed along her lips.
While we sat talking that first evening, there suddenly came three cries, as of three little heads straining out of a nest, for 'Father'; and obedient, with a laugh, he left us. This, we soon learnt, was a part of the sweet evening ritual of home. After mother's more practical service had been rendered the little ones, and they were cosily 'tucked in,' then came 'father's turn,' which consisted of his sitting by their bedside—Owen and Geoffrey on one hand, and little queen Phyllis, maidenlike in solitary cot, on the other—and crooning to them a little evening song. In the dark, too, I should say, for it was one of his wise provisions that they should be saved from ever fearing that; and that, whenever they awoke to find it round them in the middle of the night, it should bring them no other association but 'father's voice.'
A quaint recitative of his own, which he generally contrived to vary each night, was the song, a loving croon of sleep and rest. The brotherhood of rest, one might name his theme for grown-up folk; as in the morning, we afterwards learnt, he is wont to sing them another little song of the brotherhood of work; the aim of his whole beautiful effort for them being to fill their hearts with a sense of the brotherhood of all living things—flowers, butterflies, bees and birds, the milk-boy, the policeman, the man at the crossing, the grocer's pony, all within the circle of their little lives, as living and working in one greatcamaraderie. Sometimes he would extemporise a little rhyme for them, filling it out with his clear, happy voice, and that tender pantomime that comes so naturally to a man who not merely loves children—for who is there that does not?—but one born with the instinct for intercourse with them. To those not so born it is as difficult to enter into the life and prattle of birds. I have once or twice crept outside the bedroom door when neither children nor George thought of eavesdroppers, and the following little songs are impressions from memory of his. You must imagine them chanted by a voice full of the infinite tenderness of fatherhood, and even then you will but dimly realise the music they have as he sings them. I run the risk of his forgiving my printing them here:—
MORNING SONG.Morning comes to little eyes,Wakens birds and butterflies,Bids the flower uplift his head,Calls the whole round world from bed.Up jump Geoffrey!Up jump Owen!!Then up jump Phyllis!!!And father's going!EVENING SONG.The sun is weary, for he ranSo far and fast to-day;The birds are weary, for who sangSo many songs as they?The bees and butterflies at lastAre tired out; for just think, too,How many gardens through the dayTheir little wings have fluttered through.And so, as all tired people do,They've gone to lay their sleepy headsDeep, deep in warm and happy beds.The sun has shut his golden eye,And gone to sleep beneath the sky;The birds, and butterflies, and beesHave all crept into flowers and trees,And all lie quiet, still as mice,Till morning comes, like father's voice.So Phyllis, Owen, Geoffrey, youMust sleep away till morning too;Close little eyes, lie down little heads,And sleep, sleep, sleep in happy beds.
As the Reader has not been afflicted with a great deal of verse in these pages, I shall also venture to copy here another little song which, as his brains have grown older, George has been fond of singing to them at bedtime, and with which the Reader is not likely to have enjoyed a previous acquaintance:—
REST.[1]When the Sun and the Golden DayHand in hand are gone away,At your door shall Sleep and NightCome and knock in the fair twilight;Let them in, twin travellers blest;Each shall be an honoured guest,And give you rest.They shall tell of the stars and moon,And their lips shall move to a glad sweet tune,Till upon your cool, white bedFall at last your nodding head;Then in dreamland fair and blest,Farther off than East and West,They give you rest.Night and Sleep, that goodly twain,Tho' they go, shall come again;When your work and play are done,And the Sun and Day are goneHand in hand thro' the scarlet West,Each shall come, an honoured guest,And bring you rest.Watching at your window-sill,If upon the Eastern hillSun and Day come back no more,They shall lead you from the doorTo their kingdom calm and blest,Farther off than East or West,And give you rest.
Arriving down to breakfast earlier than expected next morning, we discovered George busy at some more of his loving ingenuity. He half blushed in his shy way, but went on writing in this wise, with chalk, upon a small blackboard: 'Thursday—Thor's-day—Jack the Giant Killer's day'. Then, in one corner of the board, a sun was rising with a merry face and flaming locks, and beneath him was written, 'Phoebus-Apollo';while in the other corner was a setting moon, 'Lady Cynthia. There were other quaint matters, too, though they have escaped my memory; but these hints are sufficient to indicate George's morning occupation. Thus he endeavoured to implant in the young minds he felt so sacred a trust an ever-present impression of the full significance of life in every one of its details. The days of the week should mean for them what they did mean, should come with a veritable personality, such as the sun and the moon gained for them by thus having actual names, like friends and playfellows. This Thor's-day was an especially great day for them; for, in the evening, when George had returned from business, and there was yet an hour to bedtime, they would come round him to hear one of the adventures of the great Thor—adventures which he had already contrived, he laughingly told us, to go on spinning out of the Edda through no less than the Thursdays of two years. Certainly his ingenuity of economy with his materials was no little marvel, and he confessed to often being at his wits' end. For Thursday night was not alone starred with stories; every night there was one to tell; sometimes an incident of his day in town, which he would dress up with the imaginative instinct of a born teller of fairy-tales. He had a knack, too, of spreading one story over several days which would be invaluable to a serial writer. I remember one simple instance of his device.
He sat in one of those great cane nursing chairs, Phyllis on one knee, Owen on the other, and Geoffrey perched in the hollow space in the back of the chair, leaning over his shoulder, all as solemn as a court awaiting judgment. George begins with a preliminary glance behind at Geoffrey: 'Happy there, my boy? That's right. Well, there was once a beautiful garden.'
'Yes-s-s-s,' go the three solemn young heads.
'And it was full of the most wonderful things.'
'Yes-s-s-s.'
'Great trees, so green, for the birds to hide and sing in; and flowers so fair and sweet that the bees said that, in all their flying hither and thither, they had never yet found any so full of honey in all the world. And the birds, too, what songs they knew; and the butterflies, were there ever any so bright and many-coloured?' etc., etc.
'But the most wonderful thing about the garden was that everything in it had a wonderful story to tell.'
'Yes-s-s s.'
'The birds, and bees, and butterflies, even the trees and flowers, each knew a wonderful fairy-tale.'
'Oh-h-h-h.'
'But of all in the garden the grasshopper knew the most. He had been a great traveller, for he had such long legs.'
Again a still deeper murmur of breathless interest.
'Now, would you like to hear what the grasshopper had to tell?'
'Oh, yes-s-s-s.'
'Well, you shall—to-morrow night!'
So off his knees they went, as he rose with a merry, loving laugh, and kissed away the long sighs of disappointment, and sent them to bed, agog for all the morrow's night should reveal.
Need one say that the children were not the only disappointed listeners? Besides, they have long since known all the wonderful tale, whereas one of the poorer grown-up still wonders wistfully what that grasshopper who was so great a traveller, and had such long legs, had to tell.
But I had better cease. Were I sure that the Reader was seeing what I am seeing, hearing as I, I should not fear; but how can I be sure of that? Had I the pen which that same George will persist in keeping for his letters, I should venture to delight the Reader with more of his story. One underhand hope of mine, however, for these poor hints is, that they may by their very imperfection arouse him to give the world 'the true story' of a happy home. Narcissus repeatedly threatened that, if he did not take pen in hand, he would some day 'make copy' of him; and now I have done it instead. Moreover, I shall further presume on his forbearance by concluding with a quotation from one of his letters that came to me but a few months back:—
'You know how deeply exercised the little ones are on the subject of death, and how I had answered their curiosity by the story that after death all things turn into flowers. Well, what should startle the wife's ears the other day but "Mother, I wish you would die." "O why, my dear?" "Because I should so like to water you!" was the delicious explanation. The theory has, moreover, been called to stand at the bar of experience, for a week or two ago one of Phyllis' goldfish died. There were tears at first, of course, but they suddenly dried up as Geoffrey, in his reflective way, wondered "what flower it would come to." Here was a dilemma. One had never thought of such contingencies. But, of course, it was soon solved. "What flower would you like it to be, my boy?" I asked. "A poppy!" he answered; and after consultation, "a poppy!" agreed the others. So a poppy it is to be. A visit to the seedsman's procured the necessary surreptitious poppy seed; and so now poor Sir Goldfish sleeps with the seed of sleep in his mouth, and the children watch his grave day by day, breathless for his resplendent resurrection. Will you write us an epitaph?'
Ariel forgive me! Here is what I sent:
'Five inches deep Sir Goldfish lies;Here last September was he laid;Poppies these, that were his eyes,Of fish-bones are these blue-bells made;His fins of gold that to and froWaved and waved so long ago,Still as petals wave and waveTo and fro above his grave.Hearken, too! for so his knellTolls all day each tiny bell.'
FOOTNOTES:
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: From a tiny privately-printed volume of deliciously original lyrics by Mr. R.K. Leather, since republished by Mr. Fisher Unwin, 1890, and at present published by Mr. John Lane.]
THAT THIRTEENTH MAID
THAT THIRTEENTH MAID
'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.'—Merchant of Venice.
It occurs to me here to wonder whether there can be any reader ungrateful enough to ask with grumbling voice, 'What of the book-bills? The head-line has been the sole mention of them now for many pages; and in the last chapter, where a book was referred to, the writer was perverse enough to choose one that never belonged to Narcissus at all.' To which I would venture to make humble rejoinder—Well, Goodman Reader, and what did you expect? Was it accounts, with all their thrilling details, with totals, 'less discount,' and facsimiles of the receipt stamps? Take another look at our first chapter. I promised nothing of the sort there, I am sure. I promised simply to attempt for you the delineation of a personality which has had for all who came into contact with it enduring charm, in hope that, though at second-hand, you might have some pleasure of it also; and I proposed to do this mainly from the hints of documents which really are more significant than any letters or other writings could be, for the reason that they are of necessity so unconscious. I certainly had no intention of burdening you with the original data, any more than, should you accept the offer I made, also in that chapter, and entrust me with your private ledger for biographical purposes, I would think of printing itin extenso, and calling it a biography; though I should feel justified, after the varied story had been deduced and written out, in calling the product, metaphorical wise, 'The private ledger of Johannes Browne, Esquire'—a title which, by the way, is copyright and duly 'entered.' Such was my attempt, and I maintain that I have so far kept my word. Because whole shelves have been disposed of in a line, and a ninepenny 'Canterbury' has rustled out into pages, you have no right to complain, for that is but the fashion of life, as I have endeavoured to show. And let me say in passing that that said copy of Mr. Rhys's Whitman, though it could not manifestly appear in his book-bills, does at the present moment rest upon his shelf—'a moment's monument.'
Perhaps it would be well, before proceeding with this present 'place in the story,' to set out with a statement of the various 'authorities' for it; as, all this being veritable history, perhaps one should. But then, Reader, here again I should have to catalogue quite a small library. However, I will enumerate a few of the more significant ones.
'Swinburne'sTristram of Lyonesse, 9/-, less dis., 6/9.'
All that this great poem of 'springtide passion with its fire and flowers' meant to Narcissus and his 'Thirteenth Maid' in the morning of their love, those that have loved too will hardly need telling, while those who have not could never understand, though I spake with the tongue of the poet himself. In this particular copy, which, I need hardly say, does not rest upon N.'s shelves, but on another in a sweet little bedchamber, there is a tender inscription and a sonnet which aimed at acknowledging how the hearts of those young lovers had gone out to that poet 'with mouth of gold and morning in his eyes.' The latter I have begged leave to copy here:—
'Dear Heart, what thing may symbolise for usA love like ours; what gift, whate'er it be,Hold more significance 'twixt thee and meThan paltry words a truth miraculous,Or the poor signs that in astronomyTell giant splendours in their gleaming might?Yet love would still give such, as in delightTo mock their impotence—so this for thee.'This book for thee; our sweetest honeycombOf lovesome thought and passion-hearted rhyme,Builded of gold, and kisses, and desire,By that wild poet whom so many a timeOur hungering lips have blessed, until a fireBurnt speech up, and the wordless hour had come.'
'Meredith'sRichard Feverel, 6/-, less dis., 4/6.'
Narcissus was never weary of reading those two wonderful chapters where Lucy and Richard meet, and he used to say that some day he would beg leave from Mr. Meredith to reprint at his own charges just those two chapters, to distribute to all true lovers in the kingdom. It would be hard to say how often he and his maid had read them aloud together, with amorous punctuation—caresses for commas, and kisses for full-stops.
'Morris'Sigurd the Volsung, 12/-, less dis., 9/-.'
This book they loved when their love had grown to have more of earnest purpose in it, and its first hysteric ecstasy had passed into the more solemn ardours of the love that goes not with spring, but loves even unto the winter and beyond. It is marked all through in pencil by Narcissus; but on one page, where it opens easily, there are written initials, in a woman's hand, against this great passage:—