PAUL ELMER MORE

JOHN SINGER SARGENT, R.A.TWO HEADSFROM A PENCIL DRAWING

JOHN SINGER SARGENT, R.A.

TWO HEADS

FROM A PENCIL DRAWING

Letme say forthwith that this is a book which I shall read with deep interest, but to which I contribute reluctantly. There is gloom enough in the air, and I see no profit in adding the scruples and doubts of my troubled mind to the general sum. For I can find little reason for hope in the evils that have fallen upon the world; and where are the signs of the wisdom that is to be born of these calamitous times? When all is over and in the hush of desolation we have leisure to reckon up the cost of our madness, will it appear that we have learned the meaning of the sentimental shirking of realities? Or shall we continue, as we have done for a century and more, to place sympathy above justice, and to forget the responsibility of the individual in our insistence on the obligations of society; inflaming the passions of men by rebellious outcries against the unequal dealings of Fate, relaxing the immediate bonds of duty by vague dreams of the brotherhood of man, weakening character by reluctance to pursue crime with punishment, preparing the way for outbursts of hatred by fostering the emotions at the expense of reason; and then, in alarm at our effeminacy, rushing to the opposite glorification of sheer force and efficiency? One naturally hesitates to add this note of discouragement to a book in which others of clearer vision will no doubt record the signs of returning balance and sanity among men.

Meanwhile, I have found, if not hope, at least moments of tragic purgation in another sort of reading. By chance I have been going through some of the plays of Euripides this summer, particularly those that deal with the disasters of Troy and Troy’s besiegers, and the pathos of these scenes has blended strangely with the news that reaches me once a day from the city. Inevitably the imagination turns to comparisons between the present and the remote past. So, for instance, the very day that brought me the request to contribute to the Belgian relief I was reading the storyof Iphigenia, sacrificed in order that the Greek army might sail from Aulis and reach its destination:

O father! were the tongue of Orpheus mine,To charm the stones with song to follow me,And throw the spell of words on whom I would,So should I speak. But now, as I am wiseIn tears, and only tears, I speak through these.This body which my mother bore to thee,Low at thy knees I lay, imploring thusTo spare my unripe youth. Sweet is the lightTo human eyes; oh! force me not to seeThose dark things under earth! I first of allCalled thee by name of “father”; heard “my child”;I first here on thy knees gave and receivedThe little, dear, caressing joys of love.And I recall thy words: “O girl,” thou saidst,“Shall ever I behold thee in thy homeHappy and prosperous as becomes thy sire?”And my words too, while then my tiny handClung to thy beard, as now I cling: “And I,Some day when thou art old, within my halls,Dearer for this, shall I receive thee, father;And with such love repay thy fostering care?”These words still in my memory lodge; but thouMust have forgotten, willing now my death.By Pelops and thy father Atreus, oh,And by my mother, who a second timeMust travail for my life, oh, hear my prayer!Why should the wrongs of Helen fall on me,Or why came Paris for my evil fate?Yet turn thine eyes upon me, look and kiss,That dying I at least may have of theeThis pledge of memory, if my prayer is vain.O brother, little and of little aid,Yet add thy tears to mine, and with them pleadTo save thy sister. For in children stillSome sense of coming evil moves the heart.See, father, how he pleads who cannot speak;Thou wilt have mercy and regard my youth.

From this passage, which furnished Landor with the theme of one of the most beautiful, in some respects the most classical, of modern poems, it is natural to turn to the still more exquisite account of the death of Polyxena, the youngest daughter of Hecuba, slain as a peace-offering to the shade of Achilles. The brave words and self-surrender of the girl are related to the stricken mother by the herald Talthybius:

“O Argives, ye have brought my city low,And I will die; yet, for I bare my throat,Myself unflinching, touch me not at all.As ye would please your gods, let me die freeWho have lived free; and slay me as ye will.For I am queenly born, and would not goAs a slave goes to be among the dead.”Then all the people shouted, and the kingCalled to the youths to set the maiden free;And at the sheer command the young men heard,And drew their hands away, and touched her not.And she too heard the cry and the command;Then straightway grasped her mantle at the knot,And rent it downwards to the middle waist,So standing like a statue, with her breastAnd bosom bared, most beautiful, a moment;Then kneeling spoke her last heroic words:“This is my breast, O youth, if here the blowMust fall; or if thou choose my neck,Strike; it is ready.”And Achilles’ son,Willing and willing not, for very ruth,Cleft with his iron blade the slender throat,And let the life out there. And this is true,That even in death she kept her maiden shame,And falling drew her robe against men’s eyes.

These pathetic scenes, we should remember, were enacted before the people of Athens at a time when the lust of empire and the greed of expanding commerce had thrown Greece into a war which was to leave the land distracted and impoverished of its men, to be a prey to the ambitions of Alexander and the armies of Rome. What deep and poignant emotions Euripides stirred in the breasts of the spectators those can guess who have seen hisIphigeniaandTrojan Womenacted in English in these similar days of trial. And thecatharsis, or tragic purgation, was the same then as now, only more perfect, no doubt, and purer. By these echoes of cruel deeds, ancient even in the years of the Peloponnesian war, the mind is turned from immediate calamities and apprehensions to reflecting on the fatality of sin and madness that rests on mankind, not now alone but at all times. With the tears shed for strange, far-off things, some part of the bitterness of our personal grief is carried away; the constriction of resentment, as if somehow Fate were our special enemy, is loosened, and the hatred of cruel men that clutches the heart is relaxed in pity for the everlasting tragedy of human life. Instead of rebellion we learn resignation. When at last Iphigenia surrenders herself to be a victim for the host, the chorus commend her act and draw this moral:

Noble and well, it is with thee, O child;The will of fortune and the god is sick.

In later times Lucretius was to take up this thought, and in repeating the story of Iphigenia was to denounce the very notion of divine interference in perhaps the most terrible line that ever poet wrote:

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

That is one way of regarding the evils of human destiny, as if they were the work of blind chance, but not the wise way; for at the end of such atheism only madness lies. The truer counsel is in that humility which faces the facts, yet acknowledges the impotence of man’s reason to act as judge in these high matters. Christianity and paganism come close together in the lesson taught by Euripides:

O daughter, God is strange and all his waysPast finding out. So for his own good willHe turns the fortunes of mankind about,And hither thither moves.

That is the element of religious purgation which Euripides brought to the people of Athens when their whole horizon was darkened by war. But this is not all. Indeed, were this all, we should reject such consolation indignantly, as being akin to that form of humanitarianism which has been disintegrating modern society by throwing the responsibility for crime anywhere except on the individual delinquent. Euripides may have found alleviation in the universal mystery of evil, but neither he, in his better moments, nor any other of the true Greeks turned consolation into license, or doubted that a sure nemesis followed the infractions of justice, or the insolence of pride, or the errors of guilty ignorance:

Strong are the gods, and stronger yet the lawThat sways them; even as by the law we knowThe gods exist, and in our life divideThe bounds of right and wrong.

The madness of Troy and the Achaean army may have been the work of heaven, but no small part of Greek tragedy, from theAgamemnonofAeschylus to theHecubaof Euripides, is taken up with the tale of retribution that came to this man and that for his arrogance or folly. So are consolation and admonition bound together. If their union in ancient ethics seems paradoxical, or even contradictory, it is nevertheless confirmed by the teaching of Christianity: For evil must come into the world, but woe unto him through whom it comes.

It is a curious and disquieting fact that the poet who was able to compress the moral of Greek tragedy into a single memorable stanza, belongs to the people who, if there is any truth in that moral, must shortly reckon with the nemesis appointed for sins of presumption and cruelty.

Ihr zieht ins Leben uns hinein;Ihr lasst den armen schuldig werden;Dann überlasst ihr ihn der Pein;Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden.Paul Elmer More

JACQUES-ÉMILE BLANCHEPORTRAIT OF GEORGE MOOREFROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING

JACQUES-ÉMILE BLANCHE

PORTRAIT OF GEORGE MOORE

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING

Thedevastating war in Europe has robbed the United States of one familiar figure, of one cherished illusion. In the stage setting of the nations, we have long expected Russia to play the villain’s rôle. We have depended on her for dark deeds, we have owed to her our finest thrills of virtuous indignation. From the days when Mr. George Kennan worked the prolific Siberian prison vein (our own prison system was not then calculated to make us unduly proud), down to the summer of 1914, we have never failed to respond to any outcry against a nation about which we were reliably misinformed. It was quite the fashion, when I was young, for some thousands, or perhaps some millions of modest American citizens to sign a protest to the Czar, whenever we disapproved of the imperial policy. What became of these protests, nobody knew; the chance of the Czar’s reading the millions of names seemed, even to us, unlikely; but it was our nearest approach to intimacy with the great and wicked ones of earth, and we felt we were doing our best to stem the tide of tyranny.

A great deal of this popular sentiment came to us from England, where hostility to Russia was bred of national fear. A great deal of it was fostered by Jewish immigrants in the United States. But the dislike of democracy for autocracy was responsible for our most cherished illusions.

Some god this severance rules.

A well-told story like Mr. Kipling’s “The Man Who Was” seemed to us an indictment of a nation. Popular magazines cultivated a school of fiction in which Russian nobles were portrayed as living the unfettered lives, and enjoying the unfettered pastimes, of Dahomey chiefs. Popular melodrama showed us the heads of the Russian police department devoting themselves unreservedly to the persecution of innocent maidenhood. The only good Russian ever presented to us was the nihilist, some one who, like Mademoiselle Ixe, spent her time in pursuit of a nameless official, and shot him for a nameless crime. Even our admiration for Count Tolstoy was founded on his revolt from the established order of things in his own country. It seldom occurred to us that the established order of things in any other country would have been equally obnoxious to this thorough-paced reformer. New York would have been as little to his taste as was St. Petersburg.

The exigencies of a political alliance have impelled England to lay aside her former animosities, and bury them in oblivion. For many months she has tried hard to reinstate Russia in popular opinion, chiefly by means of serious papers in serious periodicals, which the populace never reads. Mr. Bernard Shaw is perhaps the only man left in the United Kingdom who clings desperately to the good old Russian bogyman, as we cling to the ogre of our infancy, and the pirate of our tender youth. Mr. Shaw’s Russia is not merely a land where pure-minded, noble-hearted disturbers of the peace are subject to shameful captivity. It is a land where “people whose worst crime is to find the Daily News a congenial newspaper are hanged, flogged, or sent to Siberia, as a matter of daily routine.” This is worse than Dahomey, where the perils of the press are happily unknown. Most of us would change our morning paper rather than be hanged. Few of us would find any journal “congenial,” which paved the long way to Siberia.

England sympathized with Japan in the Japanese-Russian war from interested motives. We did the same out of pure unadulterated sentiment. Japan was an unfriendly power, given to hostile mutterings. Russia was a friendly power, which had done us more than one good turn. But Japan was little, and Russia was big. “How,” asks the experienced Mr. Vincent Crummles, “are you to get up the sympathies of an audience in a legitimate manner, if there isn’t a little man contending against a big one?” Japan, moreover, was the innocent land of cherry blossoms, and Russia was the land of knouts, and spies, and Cossacks. Russia worshipped God with rites and ceremonies, displeasing to pious Americans. Japan belonged to Heathendom, and merited enlightened tolerance.

A fresh deal in international policy may at any time sever and re-unite the troubled powers of Europe. Their boundary lines are hostages to fortune. But we, with two oceans sweeping our shores, have lost our bogyman beyond all hope of recovery. It is not with us a question of altered interests, but of altered values. Germany’s campaign in Belgium has changed forever our standards of perfidy and of frightfulness. We can never go back to the old ones. Once we spoke of Russia as a nation

Which to the good old maxim clings,That treaties are the pawns of Kings.

Now we know that Germany outstrips her far in faithlessness. Once we called Russia oppressive, cruel, unjust. Now the devastated homes of Flanders teach us the meaning of those words. Once we reproached Russia for being the least civilized of Christian nations. Now we have seen a potent civilization crash down into pure savagery, its flimsy restraints of no avail before the loosened passions of men.

And for our own share of injury and insult? Is it possible that a few years ago we deeply resented Russia’s disrespect for American passports; that we abrogated a treaty because she dared to turn back from her frontiers American citizens armed with these sacred guarantees? To-day our dead lie under the ocean; and Germany, who sent them there, sings comic songs in her music halls to celebrate the rare jest of their drowning. Our sensitive pride which could brook no slight from the friendly hand of Russia, is now humbled to the dust by Germany’s mailed fist. She has spared us no hurt, and she has spared us no jibe. Bleeding and bewildered, we have come to a realization of things as they are, we have seen the naked truth, and we can never go back to our illusions. We enjoyed our old bogyman, our shivers of horror, our exalted sentiments, our comfortable conviction of superiority. Now nothing is left but sorrow for our dead, and shame for the wrongs which have been done us. As long as historyis taught, the tale of this terrible year will silence all other tales of horror. Not for us only, but for the listening world, the standard of uttermost evil has been forever changed.

Agnes Repplier

EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELDA WOMAN’S HEADFROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING

EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELD

A WOMAN’S HEAD

FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING

Voicique le soir tombe, avec l’orage. Et le soleil passionné descend, comme un blessé se traîne avec lenteur sur la colline: il descend sur la mer, avec un sourire, tout en sang. Et tout à l’heure, le divin Héros sera couché sur le lit qu’il préfère.

Voici que le soir tombe. Les jeunes filles de l’Ouest viennent sur la prairie; et viennent aussi les jeunes femmes de la douce terre. Elles sont deux chœurs qui se rencontrent dans l’herbe fleurie et l’odeur du blé noir, qui sont le miel et la vanille.

Elles s’avancent les unes vers les autres, les vierges et celles qui le furent, les nids à baisers et celles qui voudraient l’avoir été. Elles désireraient de danser: mais ni les amants, ni les fiancés ne sont plus là. Est-ce qu’ils sont tous morts? Ils sont tous partis pour l’œuvre dure et pour la guerre. Elles ne pourront plus fouler le raisin de la joie dans la danse. Et elles ne veulent pas danser aux bras l’une de l’autre. Il ne leur reste qu’à lancer leur âme dans le chant.

Chantez, les belles! L’heure du chant sonne pour vous, sur la prairie brûlante, entre le mur des chênes et les lèvres de l’océan. Allez, mes belles! Mettez-vous, les libres jeunes filles, au bord de la vague verte. Et vous, les jeunes femmes, contre la haie des feuilles au cœur déchiqueté, qui vous sépare de l’Orient.

Amour! un an de guerre! et les treize mois sont révolus! O fiancées que nous sommes! Douloureuses, pleines de sourires, avides de danser et tant déçues, où êtes-vous, nos fiancés?

Notre voix est toute chaude. Notre voix vient du feu, pour vousappeler. Beaux fiancés, où êtes-vous, si doux, si chers à celles qui vous attendent?

Nous ne danserons plus. Nous chanterons notre peine.

Une sœur, hier, a frappé dans la nuit, toc toc, sur nos portes, à la chambre des vierges.

Et vierge comme nous, elle est entrée tout en pleurs et nous a dit: “Je suis Poleska, la jeune fille de Pologne. Sœurs de Bretagne, sœurs galloises, savez-vous la danse et le chant, cet été, de vos sœurs polonaises? Elles sont la couronne et le tombeau. Elles vont, coquelicots de deuil et bleuets, par la plaine; et la bêche à la main, du matin au soir, elles creusent des fosses. Elles mettent dans la terre leurs fiancés et leurs amants. Voilà l’été de la Pologne, et nos couches nuptiales, ô sœurs de l’Occident.”

Ayant dit son message, elle a pâli, la brune jeune fille de l’Orient, aux yeux si bleus, au visage si blanc; et baissant son col souple sur sa gorge, elle est morte en pleurant.

Et vous, qui êtes contre la haie, après ce long hiver dans la brume, ô tendres veuves du baiser, quel fut votre printemps? et quel est votre été? Vers nous levez les yeux, belles émeraudes mouillées. Répondez, blondes orphelines du soleil, chères sœurs galloises.

Nous sommes les amantes et les jeunes femmes. Petites sœurs, vous n’êtes que les fiancées.

Un an de dévorante amour et de regret! Une année dans le gouffre de l’ombre sèche! Un an de solitude et de douleur.

O petites sœurs, vous espérez la vie, même quand vous la pleurez. Mais nous, elle nous dévore.

Nous voici prêtes à mourir d’amour. Et vainement. Et nul ne veut notre don. Et notre cœur est inutile. Ah! C’est bien là le pis. Nous mourons de nous-mêmes et de tout.

Au plus tendre de nous, le désespoir ronge ce que le souvenir déchire. Fiancées, fiancées, vous ne savez pas les ardeurs des amantes, et que leurs larmes sont du sang.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vous ne savez pas non plus, tu l’ignores encore, toi qui chantes, suave jeune fille, quelle moisson nous avons faite, et quel est ce cortège, là-bas, ouvrant la haie, qui s’avance sur la prairie, portant un trésor caché, comme une châsse dans les blés.

O ma sœur, toi qui es si chaude et la plus pâle, viens dans mes bras, si tu ne veux tomber.

Celui que ces jeunes femmes promènent sur leurs épaules, parmi les fleurs, c’est ton beau fiancé.

Il est mort d’amour pour Notre Dame, entre la mer et la Marne.

Il aimait.

Comme le soleil rougit, d’une dernière effusion, toute la mer verte, on couche le beau jeune homme dans les seigles.

Il est mort. Il est nu, il est blanc dans les épis. Blanche est sa bouche, et ses yeux sont clos comme les portes du jour: silence éternel sur le rire, la lumière et le bruit.

Ses lèvres sont de cendres. La double flamme est morte. Plus de tison. Et la fleur virile est à jamais fauchée. Qu’il est beau, le jeune corps de l’homme! Et le héros est toujours pur.

Elles le baisent toutes, cent fois, suavement, comme on mange le raisin à la grappe; et les unes pleurent; les autres sourient, telles de tendres folles.

C’est moi, l’amant! C’est moi le fiancé, que vous portez ainsi, mes belles. C’est moi, le soc de la terre et le coutre d’amour que vous allez ensevelir dans l’herbe.

Et celle qui eût été mon champ, mourra sans fleurs et sans épis.

Du moins, sauvez-moi de la mort froide et de l’oubli.

Prenez moi dans votre paradis de femmes, entre vos lèvres.

Une heure encore, tenez moi et me serrez dans votre doux giron qui sent la menthe fraîche, le miel, le romarin et la brûlante giroflée.

Gardez moi, je vous prie, dans la chambre des baisers. Je me suis séparé de mes autres armes: immortelles, elles n’ont pas besoin de moi.

Et puisqu’il faut un linceul, cousez moi dans vos cheveux avec vos larmes. Cousez moi, à longues aiguillées de pleurs, dans vos ardents cheveux.

Si nous ne sommes amour, que sommes nous? Toutes, ici, nous voici vouées, adieu semailles! au soleil qui s’en va chaque soir et aux cruelles pluies.

Amants, nos bien aimés, tel est donc l’amour pour qui nous sommes nées? Mères, pourquoi fîtes-vous ces filles malheureuses? Nos âmes bondissent en révolte. Et tous nos cœurs qui veulent sortir de nous!

Baisons nous, sœurs chéries, au nom de l’amour et de la mort: et du Seigneur qui aime, qui ouvre au ciel les sources, et les parcs d’amour, pour tous les Aimés, au paradis.

—O belles, ô douloureuses, chantent les jeunes filles, vous qui êtes séparées de votre chair et de vos baisers, venez.

—Et vous, petites filles, disent les jeunes femmes, ô délicieuses, divisées de vos désirs, privées de votre attente et des caresses, venez.

—Chers cœurs!

—Chères femmes!

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Elles pleurent, et se baisent doucement aux lèvres, avec un sourire.

Puis elles se sont saluées, en chantant, sous le portique de la nuit, tandis que l’océan dévorait les derniers tisons et les œillets suprêmes du couchant.

André Suarès

Herecomes the night, with the storm. Slowly the passionate sun goes down; like a wounded man he drags himself over the hill; swimming in blood he sinks toward the sea. Soon the divine Hero will be laid on the bed of his choice.

Here comes the night. The maidens of the West come out across the meadows, and the young women of the land come out to meet them. Two singing choirs, they mingle in the flowered grass, and in the smell of the black wheat that is like the smell of honey and vanilla.

Forward they go to meet each other, maids and they that once were maids—nests of kisses, and those that willingly would be so. They long to dance, but lovers and bridegrooms are far away: all have gone out to the stern work of war. No more can the women tread the red wine of joy in the dance; they have no mind to dance with one another, and so they sing instead.

Begin, fair women! The hour of your song has come, in the hot meadows between the dark wall of oaks and the pale lips of ocean. Come! Take your places, you free-limbed maidens, by the green wave, and you, young women, by the hedge-rows with fretted leaves that stand between you and the east.

Love!—and a year of war! The twelvemonth has fulfilled itself, and one month more! Sorrowful and full of smiles, eager to dance and pale with waiting—tell us, our lovers, where you linger!

Our voices are warm, our voices come from the fire to call you. Where are you, our lovers, you that are so dear to those who wait?

We have forsworn the dance, and grief shall be the burden of our song.

Yesterday, in the night, a sister came knock-knocking at our door, the door of the virgins. A maid as we are maids, she came in to us, all weeping, and said:

“I am the daughter of Poland. Sisters of Britain, sisters of Wales, do you know the dance that your Polish sisters dance, and the songs they sing? The grave and the funeral garland are their song. Like black poppies and dark corn-flowers sprinkled on the plain, they move in sad lines, from night to morning digging graves; and in those graves they lay their bridegrooms and their lovers. This, my sisters, has the summer brought to Poland, and these have been our bridal beds.”

And having spoken, the daughter of the East grew pale, and drooped her dark head upon her neck and died.

And you who stand beside the hedge-rows, what was your spring-time, what your heavy summer? Turn toward us the wet emeralds of your eyes: answer, golden daughters of the sun—our sisters of Wales!

We are the young women and the beloved. Little sisters, what are you but the betrothed?

A year of devouring love, a year of longing; long year in the valley of parched shadow—year of loneliness and grief!

See, we are dying of love, and none to slake us. Worst waste of all, our hearts are useless; we are dying of ourselves and of all life. O young girls, little do you know of the hearts of women beloved, and lovers’ tears like blood!

Little do you know of the harvest we have reaped, or of the meaning of that funeral train that comes across the meadows, parting the hedges to right and left and bearing a hidden treasure like a monstrance born across the wheat.

O my sister, burning hot and palest, come to me lest you fall, and let me hold you.

He whom the young women carry on their shoulders, knee-deep in flowers, was your once lover.

Between the sea and the Marne he died for love of our Lady, the Blessed Virgin. He loved....

As the last flush of sunset suffuses the green ocean the young man is laid amid the wheat.

He is dead. White and naked he lies among the wheat-ears. White are his lips, and his eyes are closed like the eyes of the day. His laughter, the light and sound of him, are gone.

His mouth is ashes. The double flame of his lips is dead. In its flower his manhood is cut down. How beautiful is the young man’s body! And stainless is the body of the hero.

The women bend to kiss him one by one, slowly, lingeringly, as grapes are eaten from the vine; and some weep, and others laugh, beside themselves for grieving.

I am the lover, whom you thus bear upon your shoulders; young maidens, I am the betrothed. I am the ploughshare in the wheatfield, whom thus you lay down for burial. And she who should have been my field and my harvest shall die without flower and without ripening.

Save me at least, O pitying women, from the cold earth and from oblivion. Keep me warm in the paradise of your lips, an hour longer keep me among you, in the sweet air that smells of honey and rosemary, of clove-pinks and the flowering mint.

Build about me the warm chamber of your kisses. My sword and my shield are gone from me; deathless, they have no need of the dead.

And for my shrouding, women, wind me about with your long hair,and sew my shroud with your tears. With the long needles of your tears sew me fast into your burning hair.

If we are not Love and the food of Love, what are we? Our blossoming cut down, we follow the setting sun into darkness and the night of rain.

Lovers, our beloved, is this the love for which our mothers bore us? O mothers, why bring us forth to such grieving? Our souls leap up against our fate, and our hearts break from our bosoms.

Kiss us, young sisters, in the name of Love and Death; and of the Lord of Love, who is King of its fountains and gardens, and opens their gates to the Beloved in Paradise.

O fair and stricken and undone—the young maids answer—come to us, you who are parted from the lips that cherished you and the flesh of your flesh.

And you, young maidens—the mourning women reply to them—you, who have missed your dream and your fruition, come to us, dear hearts.

Poor wives.... Poor maids!

They weep, and kiss each other, and clasp each other smiling through their sorrow.

Then, singing, they part beneath the roof of night, while Ocean consumes the last embers of day, and darkens under the sky incarnadine.

André Suarès

ÉMILE-RENÉ MÉNARDFIGUREFROM A SKETCH IN COLOURED CRAYON

ÉMILE-RENÉ MÉNARD

FIGURE

FROM A SKETCH IN COLOURED CRAYON

August8ᵗʰ, 1915. It is now four days since, in this village of Grasmere, at my feet, we attended one of those anniversary meetings, marking the first completed year of this appalling war, which were being called on that night over the length and breadth of England. Our meeting was held in the village schoolroom; the farmers, tradesmen, innkeeper and summer visitors of Grasmere were present, and we passed the resolution which all England was passing at the same moment, pledging ourselves, separately and collectively, to help the war and continue the war, till the purposes of England were attained, by the liberation of Belgium and northern France, and the chastisement of Germany.

A year and four days, then, since the war began, and in a remote garden on the banks of the Forth, my husband and I passed, breathless, to each other, the sheets of the evening paper brought from Edinburgh by the last train, containing the greater part of Sir Edward Grey’s speech delivered in the House of Commons that afternoon—War for Belgium—for national honour—and, in the long run, for national existence! War!—after these long years of peace; war, with its dimly foreseen horrors, and its unfathomed possibilities:—England paused and shivered as the grim spectre stepped across her path.

And I stand to-night on this lovely mountain-side, looking out upon the harvest fields of another August, and soon another evening newspaper sent up from the village below will bring the latest list of our dead and our maimed, for which English mothers and wives have looked in terror, day after day, through this twelve months.

And yet, but for the brooding care in every English mind, how could one dream of war in this peaceful Grasmere?

Is it really true that somewhere in this summer world, beyond those furthest fells, and the Yorkshire moors behind them, beyond the silver sea dashing its waves upon our Eastern coasts, there is still going on theruin, the agony, the fury, of this hideous struggle into which Germany plunged the world, a year ago? It is past eight o’clock; but the sun which is just dipping behind Silver How is still full on Loughrigg, the beautiful fell which closes in the southern end of the lake. Between me and these illumined slopes lies the lake—shadowed and still, broken by its one green island. I can just see the white cups of the water-lilies floating above the mirrored woods and rocks that plunge so deep into the infinity below.

The square tower of the church rises to my left. The ashes of Wordsworth lie just beyond it—of Wordsworth, and that sister with the “wild eyes,” who is scarcely less sure of immortality than himself, of Mary Wordsworth too, the “perfect woman, nobly planned,” at whose feet, in her white-haired old age, I myself as a small child of five can remember sitting, nearly sixty years ago. A little further, trees and buildings hide what was once the grassy margin of the lake, and the old coach road from Ambleside, with Wordsworth’s cottage upon it. Dove Cottage, where “mighty poets” gathered, and poetry that England will never let die was written, is now, as all the world knows, a national possession, and is full of memorials not only of Wordsworth, his sister and his wife, but of all the other famous men who haunted there—De Quincey, who lived there for more than twenty years, Southey and Coleridge; or of Wordsworth’s younger contemporaries and neighbours in the Lakes, such as Arnold of Rugby, and Arnold’s poet son Matthew. Generally the tiny house and garden are thronged by Americans in August, who crowd—in the Homeric phrase—about the charming place, like flies about the milk pails in summer.

But this year there are no Americans, there are few visitors, indeed, of any kind as yet, though the coaches are beginning to bring them—scantily. But Grasmere does not distress itself as it would in other years, Wordsworth’s village is thinking too much about the war. Before the war—so I learn from a gentle lady, who is one of the most eager guardians of Grasmere traditions, and has made remarkable and successful efforts,through the annual “Grasmere play,” which is her creation, to maintain the rich old dialect of the dales—there weretwoGrasmere men in the Navy,twosoldiers in the Regular army, andthreeReservists—out of a total male population of all ages of three hundred and eighty-nine. No one ever saw a soldier, and wages, as all over the north, were high. There was some perplexity of mind among the dale-folk when war broke out. France and Belgium seemed a long way off—more than “t’oother side o’ Kendal,” a common measure of distance in the mind of the old folks, whose schooling lies far behind them; and fighting seemed a strange thing to these men of peace. “What!—there’ll be nea fightin’!” said an old man in the village, the day before war was declared. “There’s nea blacks amongst ’em [meaning the Germans]—they’se civilised beings!” But the fighting came, and Grasmere did as Grasmere did in 1803, when Pitt called for volunteers for Home Defence. “At Grasmere,” wrote Wordsworth, “we have turned out almost to a man.” Last year, within a few months of the outbreak of war, seventy young men from the village offered themselves to the army; over fifty are serving. Their women left behind have been steadily knitting and sewing since they left. Every man from Grasmere got a Christmas present of two pairs of socks. Two sisters, washerwomen, and hard worked, made a pair each, in four consecutive weeks, getting up at four in the morning to knit. Day after day, women from the village have gone up to the fells to gather the absorbent sphagnum moss, which they dry and clean, and send to a manufacturing chemist to be prepared for hospital use. Half a ton of feather-weight moss has been collected and cleaned by women and school-children. One old woman who could not give money gathered the tufts of wool which the sheep leave behind them on the brambles and fern, washed them, and made them into the little pillows which prop wounded limbs in hospital. The cottages and farms send eggs every week to the wounded in France. The school-children alone bring fifty a week. One woman, whose main resource was her fowls, offered twelve eggs a week; which meant starving herself. And all the time, two pence, three pence, six pence a week wasbeing collected by the people themselves, from the poorest homes, towards the support of the Belgian colony in the neighbouring village of Ambleside.

One sits and ponders these things, as the golden light recedes from Loughrigg, and that high crag above Wordsworth’s cottage. Little Grasmere has indeed done all she could, and in this lovely valley, the heart of Wordsworth’s people, the descendants of those dalesmen and daleswomen whom he brought into literature, is one—passionately one—with the heart of the Allies. Lately the war has bitten harder into the life of the village. Of its fifty young sons, many are now in the thick of the Dardanelles struggle; three are prisoners of war, two are said to have gone down in the Royal Edward, one officer has fallen, others are wounded. Grasmere has learnt much geography and history this last year; and it has shared to the full in the general deepening and uplifting of the English soul, which the war has brought about. France, that France which Wordsworth loved in his first generous youth, is in all our hearts,—France, and the sufferings of France; Belgium, too, the trampled and outraged victim of a Germany eternally dishonoured. And where shall we find nobler words in which to clothe the feeling of England towards a France which has lost Rheims, or a Belgium which has endured Louvain, than those written a hundred years ago in that cottage across the lake?

Air, earth and skies—There’s not a breathing of the common windThat will forget thee; thou hast great allies;Thy friends are exultations, agonies,And love, and man’s unconquerable mind!

To Germany, then, the initial weight of big battalions, the initial successes of a murderous science: to the nations leagued against her, the unconquerable power of those moral faiths which fire our clay, and in the end mould the history of men!

... Along the mountain-side, the evening wind rises. The swell and beat of it among the rocks and fern, as the crags catch it, echo it, and throw it back reverberate, are as the sound of marching feet....

I hear it in the tread—irresistible, inexorable—of an avenging Humanity. The living and the dead are there, and in their hands they bear both Doom and Comforting.

Mary A. Ward

Of this book, in addition to the regular edition, there have been printed and numbered one hundred and seventy-five copies de luxe, of larger format.

Numbers 1-50 on French hand-made paper, containing four facsimiles of manuscripts and a second set of illustrations in portfolio.

Numbers 51-175 on Van Gelder paper.

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