XLVFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
XLV
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
May the Weird Sisters preserve me from another such experience! I was walking in the Park in the evening, and the first warm odours of spring floating up from the earth troubled me with a feeling of vague unrest. Some jarring dissonance between the death in my heart and the new promise of life all about me ran along my nerves and set them palpitating harshly. Then I came upon a pair of lovers lingering in the shadow of a tree, holding to each other with outstretched hands. As I approached them I saw the woman was weeping quietly. There was no outcry; no kiss even passed between them; only a long gaze, a quivering of the hands, and he was gone. I saw the woman stand a moment looking hungrilyafter him and then walk away still weeping. And the sight stung me with madness. What is the meaning of these endless meetings and partings—meeting and parting till the last great separation comes and then no more? Are our lives no better than glinting pebbles that are tossed on the beach and never rest? Suddenly the blood surged up into my head. It was as if all the forces of my physical being had concentrated into one frenzied desire to possess the thing I loved. For a moment I reeled as if smitten with a stroke, and then without reasoning, scarcely knowing what I did, started into a stumbling run. Only the evident amazement of the strollers on the Avenue when I left the Park brought me back partially to my senses, yet the madness still surged through my veins. All my philosophy was gone, all my remoteness from life; I was stung by that fury that comes to beast and man alike; I was bewildered by the feeling that my emotions were no longer my own, but wereshared by the mob of strangers in the street. It was the passion of love, pure and simple, unsophisticated by questioning; and it had turned my brain. Withal there ran through me an insane desire to commit some atrocious crime, to waylay and strike, to speak words of outrageous insult. I do verily believe that only the opportunity was wanting, some chance conflict of the street or temptation of solitude, to have changed these demoniac impulses to action—I whose most violent physical achievement has been to cross over Broadway. It is good that I am home and the blood has left my brain. What shall I think of this if I read it ten years hence?
XLVIJACK TO PHILIP
XLVI
JACK TO PHILIP
Dear Sir:
I have not wrote you before. This is a beautiful place. I like it, especially the young lady. The old man have been acting wild, like a cop when he can’t find out who done it. The difference is that it is the bible in the old man and the devil in the cop. He says you have hoodooed the young lady, and he says let you be enathermered. This is a religious cuss word. The young lady don’t cry. She is dead game, and have lost her colour.
So good by,
Yours trewly,Jack O’Meara.
Yours trewly,
Jack O’Meara.
P.S.—The young lady have quit the family prayers, but me and the old man have to say ours just the same, only more so.
XLVIIFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
XLVII
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
A wise man of the sect of Simon Magus has replied to an assault of mine on humanitarianism by trying to show that in this one faith of modern days are summed up all the varying ideals of past ages,—renunciation, self-development, religion, chivalry, humanism, pantheistic return to nature, liberty. Ah, my dear sir, I envy you your easy, kindly vision. Indeed, all these do persist in a dim groping way, empty echoes of great words that have been, bare shadows without substance. What made them something more than graceful acts of materialism was that each and all ended not in themselves or in worldly accommodation, but in some purpose outside of human nature as our humanitarians comprehendthat nature. Renunciation was practised, not that my neighbour might have a morsel more of bread, but that one hungry soul might turn from the desires of the flesh to its own purer longings. Self-development looked to the purging and making perfect of the bodily faculties, that within the chamber of a man’s own breast might dwell in sweet serenity the eternal spirit of beauty and joy. Even humanism, which by its name would seem to be brother to its present-day parody, perceived an ideal far above the vicious circle in which humanitarianism gyrates. My dear foe might read Castiglione’s book ofThe Courtierand learn how high the Platonic ideal of the better humanists floated above the charitable mockery of its name to-day. As for religion—go to almost any church in the land and hear what exhortations flow from the pulpit. The intellectual contention of dogmas is forgotten—and better so, possibly. But more than that: for one word on the spirit or on the way and necessity ofthe soul’s individual growth, you will hear a thousand on the means of bettering the condition of the poor; for one word on the personal relation of man to his God, you will hear a thousand on the duties of man to man. Woe unto you, preachers of a base creed, hypocrites! These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone! You have betrayed the faith and forgotten your high charge; you have made of religion a mingling for this world’s use of materialism and altruism, while the spirit hungers and is not fed. Like your father of old, that Simon Magus, you have sought to buy the gift of God with a price; like Judas Iscariot you have betrayed the Lord with a kiss of brotherhood! Now might the Keeper of the Keys cry out to-day with other meaning:
“How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such, as for their bellies’ sake
Creep and intrude and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearer’s feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths!”
XLVIIIFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
XLVIII
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
Reading a foolish book on the Literature of Indiana (!) and find this sentence on the first page: “It is not of so great importance that a few individuals within a State shall, from time to time, show talent or genius, as that the general level of cultivation in the community shall be continually raised.” Whereupon the author proceeds to glorify the “general level” through a whole volume. Now the noteworthy thing about this particular sentence is the fact that it was set down as a mere truism needing no proof, and that it was no doubt so accepted by most readers of the book. In reality the sentiment is so far from a truism that it would have excited ridicule in any previous age; it might almost besaid to contain the fundamental error which is responsible for the low state of culture in the country. Unfortunately the point cannot be profitably argued out, for it resolves itself at last into a question of taste. There are those who are chiefly interested in the life of the intellect and the imagination. They measure the value of a civilisation by the kind of imaginative and intellectual energy it displays, by its top growth in other words. They crave to see life express itself thus,sub specie œernitatis, and apart from this conversion of human energy and emotion into enduring forms they perceive in the weltering procession of transient human lives no more significance or value than in the endless fluctuation of the waves of the sea. For them, therefore, the creation of one masterpiece of genius has more meaning than the physical or mental welfare of a whole generation; they can, indeed, discern no genuine intellectual welfare of a people except in so far as the peoplelook up reverently to the products of the higher imagination. There are others for whom this life of the imagination has only a lukewarm interest, for the reason that their own faculties are weak and stunted. Naturally they think it a slight matter whether genius appear to create what they and their kind can only dimly enjoy; on the contrary, they hold it of prime importance that material welfare and the form of mental cunning which subdues material forces should be widely diffused among the people.
Now no one would say a word against raising “the general level of cultivation”; the higher it is raised the better. Only the cherishing of this ideal becomes pernicious when it is made more sacred than the appearance of individual genius. Nor is it proper to say that the appearance of genius is itself contingent on the level of cultivation. There is much confusion of thought here. The influence of the people on literature is invariably attended with danger. It has itselement of good, for the people cherish those instinctive passions and notions of morality which keep art from falling into artificiality. But refinement, distinction, form, spirituality—all that makes of art a transcript of lifesub specie œernitatis—are commonly opposed to the popular interest and are even distrusted by the people. The attitude of the Elizabethan playwrights toward their audiences gives food for reflection on this head. Just so sure as the ideal of general cultivation is made paramount, just so sure will the higher culture become degraded to this consideration, and with its degradation the general cultivation itself will grow base and material.
XLIXFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
XLIX
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
I lead a strange dual existence, the intensity of whose contrast is almost uncanny. After sitting for hours at my desk working on my History of Humanitarianism, I throw myself wearily on the sofa and smoke. And as the grey fumes float above my face, slowly they lay a spell upon me like the waving of mesmeric hands. I lose consciousness of the objects about me, the very walls dissolve away in a mist, and I am lifted as it were on softly beating pinions and borne swift and far like a bird. The sensation is curiously familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, yet it never causes me surprise. Sometimes I am carried out into the wide sky and soar as it seems for hours without everalighting, until I am brought to myself with a sense of rapid falling. At other times I am borne to the blessed forest where my love walks, and always then the same thing happens. I know not whether it is my spirit or some emanation of my body, but, however it is, I am there always pursuing her as once I did in reality, until at last I lay hold of her and draw her into my arms beneath that ancient oak. I kiss her once and twice and a third time, gazing the while into her startled eyes. Then an inexpressible sweetness takes possession of me, a shudder runs through my veins, and of a sudden all is dark; I am sinking down, down, in unfathomable abysses, until abruptly I awake. No words can convey the mingled reality and remoteness of these sensations. Jessica, Jessica, you have troubled the very sources of my being; you have abandoned me to contend with shadows and the fear of shadows.
LJACK TO PHILIP
L
JACK TO PHILIP
Dear Mr. Towers:
You have not wrote to me yet. The weather is fine and things come up here and bloom out doors. But the old gentleman says we are out of the ark of safety. He have made up his mind to be damned any how. He says the Lord have turned his face against us. But I guess really it is the young lady that is showing off. She stands on her hind legs ’most all the time now. She have back slid out of nearly everything and have quit going to church. She does the same kind of meanness I do now, and don’t care. She is jolly all the time, but she aint really glad none. She have got a familiar spirit in the forest that you can’t see with your eyes. But shemeets him under a big tree, and sometimes she cries. She don’t let me come, but I creep after her and hide, so as to be there if he changes her into something else. The old gentleman have quit his religious cussing now and have took to fussing. But he can do either one according to the bible. He knows all the abusing scripture by heart. But the young lady have hardened her heart. She is dead game, and she aint skert of him, nor of the bible, nor nothing. And she aint sweet to nobody now but me. If you answer this, I will show it to her.
Your trew friend,Jack O’Meara.
Your trew friend,
Jack O’Meara.
P.S.—She wore your letter all one day inside her things before she give it to the old man.
LIFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
LI
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
Humanitarians are divided into two classes—those who have no imagination, and those who have a perverted imagination. The first are the sentimentalists; their brains are flaccid, lumpish like dough, and without grip on reality. They are haunted by the vague pathos of humanity, and, being unable to visualise human life as it is actually or ideally, they surrender themselves to indiscriminate pity, doing a little good thereby and a vast deal of harm. The second class includes the theoretical socialists and other regenerators of society whose imagination has been perverted by crude vapours and false visions. They are ignorant of the real springs of human action; they have wilfully turned their faces awayfrom the truth as it exists, and their punishment is to dwell in a fantastic dream of their own creating which works a madness in the brain. They are to-day what the religious fanatics were in the Middle Ages, having merely substituted a paradise on this earth for the old paradise in the heavens. They are as cruel and intolerant as the inquisitors, though they mask themselves in formulæ of universal brotherhood.
LIIFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
LII
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
I have been reading too much in this tattered old note-book of O’Meara’s. It is my constant companion these widowed days, and the mystic vapour that exhales from his thought has gone to my head like opium. I must get rid of the obsession by publishing the book as a psychological document or by destroying it once for all. With its quotations and original reflections it alternates from page to page between the sullen despair of a man who has hoped too often in vain and a rare form of inverted exaltation. As with me, it was apparently his custom, when the loneliness of fate oppressed him, to go out and wander up and down Broadway, seeking the regions by night or day where the people throngedmost busily and steeping his fancy in the turmoil of its illusion. I can see his ill-clad figure with bowed head moving slowly amid the jostling multitude, and I smile to think how surprised the brave folk would be, who passed him as he shuffled along and who no doubt drew their skirts away lest they should be polluted by rubbing against him, if they could hear some of the meditations in his book and learn the pride of this despised tramp. Many times he repeats the proverb:Rem carendo non fruendo cognoscimus—By losing not by enjoying the world we make it ours. Out of the utter ruin and abandonment of his life he seems to have won for himself a spiritual possession akin to that of the saints, only inverted as it were. The impersonal detachment they gained by rising above human affairs, he found by sinking below them. He looked upon the world as one absolutely set apart from it, and through that isolation attained a strange insight into its significance, and even a kind of intoxicatingjoy. On me in my state of bewildered loneliness his mood exerts an alarming fascination. It is dangerous to surrender one’s self too submissively to this perception of universal illusion unless a strong will is present or some master passion as a guide; for without these the brain is dizzied, and barely does a man escape the temptation to throw away all effort and sink gradually into the stupor of indifference or something worse. I have felt the madness creep upon me too often of late and I am afraid. Ah, Jessica, in withdrawing the hope of your blessing from me you know not into what perils of blank indifference you have cast my soul. Shall I drift away into the hideous nightmare that pursued O’Meara? I will seal up his book, and make strong my determination to work and in work achieve my own destiny.
LIIIPHILIP TO JACK
LIII
PHILIP TO JACK
It seems very lonesome in the big city without you, little Jack, and often I wish that some of this pile of books around me were carried away and you were brought back to me in their place. But it is better for you where you are.
You must listen to everything Miss Jessica tells you about the trees and birds, and learn to love all the beautiful things growing around you. I remember there were four or five great trees in my father’s garden when I was a boy living in the country, and I loved them, each in a different way, and had names for them and talked to them. One was an oak tree that grew up almost to the clouds, and its boughs stood out stiff and square as if nothing could bend them.That was the tree I went to when I had some hard task to do and wanted strength. Another was an elm that always whispered comfort to me when I was in trouble. I used to go to it as some boys run to their mother, for I grew up like you without a mother’s love, and I did not even have any sweet lady like Miss Jessica to be fond of me. You must ask Miss Jessica to teach you all she knows about the trees in Morningtown, and you must listen to what she says to them. Perhaps she will tell you about the famous oaks that grew in a place called Dodona, and were wiser than any man or woman in the world. People used to talk with them as Miss Jessica does with her favourite tree.
And now, dear Jack, I am going to tell you a story which I have made up just for you. It isn’t about trees exactly, but it all took place in a deep forest that spread around a wonderful city. From the high white walls of the town one could look out over the green tops of the trees as you lookdown on the grass, and that was a marvellous sight. There was a single road that ran through the forest right up to the gate of the city; but it was a hard road to travel, dark most of the time because the sun could not shine through the leaves, and very lonely, and so still that you could hear your heart beat except when the winds blew, and then sometimes the boughs clashed together overhead and roared and moaned until you longed for the silence again. It was a long road too, and the men who walked through the forest to the city all had great packs on their shoulders. And what do you suppose was in their packs? Why, every traveller carried with him a gorgeous suit of clothes heavy with velvet and gold and silver; for so the people dressed in the beautiful city, and no one could enter the gate unless he too bore with him the royal robes. But you see, while they were walking in the rough forest, they wore their old clothes of course.
Now in one place a wonderful womansat by the roadside. She was a maga, or witch, named Simona. She was beautiful if you did not see her too close, with large round eyes that looked very gentle and kind. And when any traveller came by, the big tears would begin to roll down her cheeks and she would cry out to him as if she pitied him and wanted to help him.
“Dear traveller,” she would say, “why do you trudge along this gloomy road, and why do you carry that bundle which bends your shoulders and tires your back? Don’t you know that it is all a lie about the city you are seeking? There is no city of palaces at your journey’s end. Indeed, you will never get to the end of the woods, but will walk on and on, stumbling and falling, and growing weaker and weaker, until at last you fall and never rise. And the wild beasts that you hear at night howling in the bushes will rend and gnaw your body until only your bones are left.”
At this the travellers would stop and say: “But what shall we do, wise witch, and whither shall we go?”
Then she would say to them: “Turn aside by this pleasant path, and in a little while you will come to my beautiful garden which is named Philanthropia. There you will find many others whom I have wept for and saved as I do you; and there amid the open glades you may live with them in everlasting peace and love. Houses are there which you need only to enter and call your own. And when you are hungry you have only to speak, and immediately all that you desire to eat will appear on the tables. And when you are tired, soft beds will rise up to receive you. And clothes will be spread before you—not stiff and uncomfortable robes like those you carry in your pack, but soft garments suited to that land of comfort.”
Most of the travellers believed the witch and turned into the by-path. But, alas! it was soon worse for them than it had beenon the road; for they were led, not to a garden, but into a great sandy desert, where nothing grew and no rain or dew ever fell. And somehow they could find no way out of the desert, but wandered to and fro in the endless fields of dust, while the hot sun beat upon their heads and their hearts failed them for hunger and thirst.
But now and then a wary traveller did not believe the witch and laughed at her tears and soft voice. And then, unless he got away very quick, something dreadful happened to him. The witch suddenly changed into a huge monster with a hundred flaming eyes, and a hundred mouths with which she raved and bellowed, and a hundred long arms that coiled about like serpents. She was so terrible that most men who saw her in her true form fell down fainting at her feet; and these she lifted up and threw into deep dark holes, hidden from the road, where the poor wretches soon died of sheer loneliness.
And now comes the heart of the story,dear Jack, if you are not too tired to read to the end.
One day a knight and a lady came riding up the road. The knight was not very strong, nor was his armour much to look at,—just an ordinary knight, but he was brave, and there was a mighty determination in his heart to slay the false, wicked witch whose deeds he had heard of. And as he rode he turned often to look into his lady’s eyes, and always he seemed to drink new courage from those clear pools, as a thirsty man drinks refreshment from a well of cool water, for the lady was young and passing fair—as fair as Miss Jessica, and she, you know, is the loveliest woman in all the world. And so at last they came to where the witch was sitting and weeping. Without a word the knight drew his sword and rushed upon her. Of course she changed instantly to the monster with the hundred eyes and mouths and arms. The air was filled with the fire from her eyes and with the dreadful bellowing fromher mouths, and her arms swung frantically about on every side to seize the knight and crush him. But this was the strange thing about the battle: as often as the knight looked at the lady, who stood near him, he gained new strength and the witch could not harm him.
He was cutting off her arms one by one and victory was almost his, when down the road came an old man wagging his grey beard dolefully and muttering into his breast. And when he reached the three there at the roadside, he stood for a moment watching the battle and still muttering in his beard. Then without a word he beckoned to the lady. She hesitated, sighed, and turned away, leaving the poor knight to struggle alone without the blessing of her eyes. And immediately his strength seemed to abandon him and his sword dropped at his side. You may be sure the witch shouted with triumph at this, and the noise of her bellowing sounded like the clanging of a hundred discordantbells. It was almost over with the knight. But suddenly he too uttered a great cry. Despair came to give him strength where hope had been before. “For love and the world!” he cried out and drove at the monster once again with his uplifted sword.
And, dear Jack, do you wish to know how the battle ended? I am very, very sorry, but I can’t tell you, for when I came through the forest the knight and the witch were still fighting. There was a look of desperate determination in the knight’s eyes, but, to tell you the truth, I think his heart was with the lady who had left him, and it is not easy to fight without a heart in this world, you know.
Write to me soon, a long, long letter and tell me about the trees of Morningtown. Some day when you are grown up and live with men, you will be glad to remember the friendship and the wise conversation of those brothers of the forest. Good-bye for a time, my boy.
Affectionately,Philip Towers.
Affectionately,Philip Towers.
LIVFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
LIV
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
A wan beggar, seated on the coping that surrounds St. Paul’s and exploiting his misery before the world. A strange scene calculated to give one pause,—the poor waif crying his distress on the curb, within the iron fence the ancient sleeping dead, and along the thoroughfare of Broadway the ceaseless unheeding stream of humanity. As I walked up the street with this image in my mind, the lines of an old Oriental poem kept time with my steps until I had converted them into English:
I heard a poor man in the grave-yard cry:
“Arise, oh friend! a little hour assume
My weight of cares, whilst I,
Long weary, learn thy respite in the tomb.”
I listened that the corpse should make reply;
Who, knowing sweeter death than penury,
Broke not his silent doom.
I am reminded of that joke, rather grim forsooth, which Lowell thought the best ever made. It is inThe Frogsof Aristophanes. The god Dionysus and his slave Xanthias are travelling the road to Hades, the slave as a matter of course carrying the pack for the two. They meet a procession bearing a corpse to the tomb. Xanthias begs the dead man to take the pack with him as he is borne so comfortably on the same road to the nether world. Whereupon they dicker over the portage. “Two shillings for the job,” says the corpse, sitting up on his bier. “Too much,” says Xanthias. “Two shillings,” insists the corpse. “One and sixpence,” cries Xanthias. “I’d see myself alive first!” says the corpse, sinking down on the bier.
LVJACK TO PHILIP
LV
JACK TO PHILIP
Dear Mr. Towers:
The young lady have the letter you wrote me and I cant get it. But you needent bother about writing any more tales. I guess you done the best you could, but we dont neither one like what you told about the witch and them young people in the forest. Why do the knight stand there fighting the witch when the old man have run off with his girl? Why dont he take out after them and leave the witch to bleed to death? And the young lady thinks of it worse than I do. She went on awful when she read it, and cried. I guess she was sorry about the way the knight kept on cutting off that woman’s legs and arms even if she was bad. She don’t saynothing else nice about you now, nor let me. But she says you are the crewelest man she have known. And she cries a heap when there aint nothing the matter, and blames at every thing. The old gentleman feels bad about it but he dont know what to do. I guess now he wishes he hadent fooled with the young lady’s salvation none. Because she have told him one day when he was trying to talk pious at her, not to say nothing, that she dident believe in nothing now but damnation. And he say “Dont talk that way before the child.” But I aint come to neither one of them things yet.
Your trew Frend,Jack O’Meara.
Your trew Frend,
Jack O’Meara.
P.S.—She goes to see her tree spirit every day. But she dont talk to him no more. She just lays down on her face and cries.
LVIPHILIP TO JACK
LVI
PHILIP TO JACK
I am afraid, little Jack, that my long story about the lady and the knight in the woods did not interest you very much; and that is a pity, for, if I cannot amuse you, how shall I do when I come to write stories for grown-up folk? Well, anyway, I am going to tell you what happened after the lady and the old man went away into the forest.
For awhile they walked side by side in silence. But the road was long and it was already late, and by and by the night fell and wrapped all the trees in solemn shadows. It was not easy to keep the path in the darkness, and pretty soon they were quite lost and found themselves wandering helplessly in the black tangled aisles of theforest. That was bad, for the lady was tired in body and discomforted in heart. But worse happened when the old man left her to seek out the path alone, for he only lost himself more completely in the treacherous shadows and could not get back to her. Ah, Jack, if the lady was beautiful when the sunlight shone upon her, how lovely do you suppose she was here in the night with the white beams of the moon sifting down through the swaying boughs upon her blanched face? But her beauty merely frightened her the more in her terrible loneliness, where the only sound she heard was the stealthy whisperings of the breeze among the leaves, as if all the shadows up yonder were weaving some plot against her, while at times a low inarticulate moan or some sudden crackling of dry twigs floated to her out of the impenetrable gloom of the forest. At last she threw herself on her face under a great tree, and wept and wept for very terror and loneliness.
Now wonderful things may happen in the night, dear Jack. The trees then have a life of their own, and sometimes when the sun, which belongs to man only, is gone they have power to do what they please to foolish people who come into their circle. And so this tree that stood leaning over the prostrate lady whispered and whispered to itself in a strange language. Then out of the boughs there came creeping a dark cold shadow. It dropped down noiselessly to the ground and covered the lady all about. It moved and swayed in the faint moonlight like a column of wind-blown smoke. You will hardly believe the rest, but it seemed slowly to take the very shape of the lady herself, as if it were her own shadow that had found her; and so it began to creep into her body. And as it melted into her flesh, she grew cold and ever colder as if her blood were turning to ice. Pretty soon it would have reached her heart and then—I shudder to think what would have becomeof her. But when the first chill touched her heart, she uttered a loud cry of fear: “Dear knight, dear knight,” she called out, “where are you? Save me! save me!”
Then another wonderful thing happened in the darkness, for at such times our spoken words may take on a life of their own just as the trees and shadows do. And so these words of the lady, instead of scattering in the air, were changed into a marvellous little fairy elf that went stealing away through the forest. And as the elf ran swiftly under the trees and over the long grass, so lightly indeed that the flowers and weeds only bowed under his feet as when a gentle breeze passes over them,—as the elf sped on, I say, everywhere the earth sent up a lisping whisper, “Save me, dear knight! save me!”
Now the knight was far away, resting from his battle with the old witch. He had wounded her in many places, and might perhaps have killed her, had not thesly wicked creature suddenly slipt away from him into some hiding place of hers in the desert. And so, as he could not reach her, he was resting, very tired and very sad. Then suddenly, as he sat with his head hanging down, the little elf came tripping over the grass and plucked him by the arm, and the faint whisper stole into his ear, “Save me, dear knight! save me!”
Do you suppose he was long in rising and following the clever little elf back to their mistress? Ah, Jack, there was a happy hour and a happy year and a blissful life for the lady and her knight then, was there not?
And now, Jack, I will not bother you with any more stories after this. Write to me and tell me all you are doing. Be good, little Jack, and listen to the wise words of the trees and other growing things; and, above all, love that sweet lady, Miss Jessica.
Affectionately,Philip Towers.
Affectionately,
Philip Towers.
LVIIFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
LVII
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
There are two paths of consolation and we have strayed from both. There is the way of theImitationtrod by those who have perceived the illusion of this life and the reality of the spirit,—the way over whose entrance stand written the words: “The more nearly a man approacheth unto God, the further doth he recede from all earthly solace.” And truly he who hath boldly entered on this path shall be free in heart, neither shall shadows trample him down—tenebrœ non conculcabunt te. There is also that other way pointed out by Pindar to the Greek world in his Hymns of Victory,—the way of honour and glory, of seeking the sweet things of the day without grasping after the impossible, ofjoys temperate withal yet gilded with the golden light of song; the way of the strong will and clear judgment and purged imagination, with reverence for the destiny that is hereafter to be; of the man who is proudly sufficient unto himself yet modest before the gods; the way summed up by a rival of Pindar’s in the phrase: “Doing righteousness, make glad your heart!” There is not much room for pity here or in theImitation, for compassion after all is a perilous guest, and only too often drags down a man to the level of that which he pities.
And now instead of these twin paths of responsibility to God and to a man’s own self, we have sought out another way—the way of all-levelling human sympathy, the way celebrated by Edwin Markham! Oh, if it were possible to cry out on the street corners where all men might hear and know that there is no salvation for literature and art, no hope for the harvest of the higher life, no joy or meaning in our civilisation,until we learn to distinguish between the manly sentiment of such work as Millet’s painting and the mawkishness of such a poem asThe Man with the Hoe! The one is the vigorous creation of a craftsman who builded his art with noble restraint on the great achievements of the past, and who respected himself and the material he worked in; the other is the disturbing cry of one who is intellectually an hysterical parvenu.
LVIIIFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
LVIII
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
The new volumes of Letters have carried me back to Carlyle, who has always rather repelled me by his noisy voluminousness. But one message at least he had to proclaim to the world,—the ancient imperishable truth that man lives, not by surrender of himself to his kind, but by following the stern call of duty to his own soul. Do thy work and be at peace. Make thyself right and the world will take care of itself. There lies the everlasting verity we are rapidly forgetting. And he saw, too, as no one to-day seems to perceive, the intimate connection between the preaching of false reform and the gripe of a sordid plutocracy. He saw that most reformers, by presenting materialism to the world inthe disguise of a sham ideal, were really playing into the hands of those who find in the accumulation of riches the only aim of life, that they are in fact one of the chief obstacles in the path of any genuine reformation. The humanitarianism that attains its utterance in Mr. Markham’s rhapsodic verse loses sight of judgment in its cry for justice. It ceases to judge in accordance with the virtue and efficiency of character, and seeks to relieve mankind by a false sympathy. Such pity merely degrades by obscuring the sense of personal responsibility. From it can grow only weakness and in the end certain decay.
LIXFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
LIX
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
Finivi. The last word of myHistory of Humanitarianismis written, and it only remains now to see this labour of months—of years, rather—through the press. I know not what your fate will be, little book, in this heedless, multitudinous-hurried world; I know but this, that I have spoken a true word as it has been given me to see the truth. That any great result will come of it, I dare not expect. Only I pray that, if the message falls unregarded, it will be because, as she said, my bells ring too high, and not for want of veracity and courage in the utterance. After all it is good to remember the brave words of William Penn to his friend Sydney: “Thou hast embarked thyself with them that seek,and love, and choose the best things; and number is not weight with thee.” I have tried to show how from one ideal to another mankind has passed to this present sham ideal, or no-ideal, wherein it welters as in a sea of boundless sentimentalism. I have tried to show that because men to-day have no vision beyond material comfort and the science of material things—that for this reason their aims and actions are divided between the sickly sympathies of Hull House and the sordid cruelties of Wall Street. And I have written that the only true service to mankind in this hour is to rid one’s self once for all of the canting unreason of “equality and brotherhood,” to rise above the coils of material getting, and to make noble and beautiful and free one’s own life. Sodom would have been saved had the angel of the Lord found therein only ten righteous men, and our hope to-day depends primarily, not on the elevation of the masses (though this too were desirable), but on the ability of afew men to hold fast the ancient truth and hand it down to those who come after. So shall beauty and high thought not perish from the earth—“Doing righteousness, make glad your heart!”
And for my own sake it is good that the work is finished. It has overmastered my understanding too long and caused me to judge all things by their relation to this one truth or untruth. It has debarred me from thatsereine contemplation de l’univers, wherein my peace and better growth were found. I am free once again to look upon things as they are in themselves.
LXFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
LX
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
I went yesterday afternoon to see the Warren collection of pictures which has been sent here for sale at auction, and one little landscape impressed me so deeply that all last night in my dreams I seemed to be walking unaccompanied in the waste places of the artist’s vision. It was a picture by Rousseau; aSunsetit was called, though something in the wide look of expectancy and the purity of the light reminded me more of early dawn than of evening; one waited before it for the unfolding of a great event. A flat, marshy land stretched back to the horizon, where it blended almost indistinguishably into the grey curtain of the sky. A deserted road wound into the distance, passing at onespot a low boulder and farther on a little expanse of dark water, and vanishing then into the far-off heavens. Overhead, through the level clouds, the light pierced at intervals, wan and cold, save near the horizon where a single spot of crimson gave hint of the rising or the setting sun. There lay over the whole a sense of inexpressible desertion, as if it were almost a trespass for the human eye to intrude upon the scene—as if some sacred powers of the hidden world had withdrawn hither for the accomplishment of a solemn mystery. As I stood before it, a great emotion broke over me, a feeling of extraordinary expansion, like that which comes to one in a close room when a broad window is thrown suddenly open to the fresh air and to far-vanishing vistas. I know little or nothing of the artist’s life, but I am sure that he had looked upon this desert scene with the same emotion of enlargement as mine, only far greater and purer. And I know that his heart in its loneliness hadcomprehended the infinite solitudes of nature and through that act of comprehension was lifted up with a strange and austere exultation. For, gazing upon these wide silences, he learned that the indignities and conflicts and weary ambitions of life meant little to him, as the storms and tumultuous forces of the earth mean nothing to the heart of Nature, and in that lesson was his peace. One concern only was his,—to wrest from the impenetrable mystery of the world an image of everlasting beauty, and to set forth this image to others whose vision was not yet purged of trouble.
LXIFROM PHILIP’S DIARY
LXI
FROM PHILIP’S DIARY
I can rest no more to-night, for I have been visited by strange dreams. It seemed to me in my sleep that I wandered desolate in a desolate land—not in wide waste places as I dreamed after seeing Rousseau’s picture, but in some wilderness of trees where the light from a thin moon drifted rarely through the slow-waving boughs. And always as I wandered, I knew that somewhere afar off in that dim forest my beloved whom I had deserted lay in an agony of suspense, waiting for me and calling to me through the night. It seemed almost as if the years of a lifetime passed, and still I sought and could not find her—only shadows met me and fantastic shapesout of the darkness greeted me with staring eyes. And, oh, I thought, if this long agony of solitude troubles her heart as it troubles mine and she perish in fear because I have forsaken her! My distress grew to be more than I could bear. And then in a loud voice I cried to her: “Fear not, beloved; be at peace until I come!” I think I must actually have called out in my sleep, for I awoke suddenly and started up with the sound still ringing in my ears. Ah, Jessica, Jessica, what have I done! My own misery has lain so heavily upon me that it has not occurred to me to imagine what you too must have suffered. Indeed, the wonder of your love has been to me so incomprehensibly sweet that the notion of any actual suffering on your part has never really entered my thought. My own need I understood—can it be that our separation has caused the same weary emptiness in your days that has made the word peace a mockery to me? Can it even be that while I have sought refuge and a kind offorgetfulness in the domination of my work, you have been left a prey to unrelieved despondency? You accused me once of conscientious selfishness—have I made you a victim of that sin? Idle questions all, for I have come to a great awakening and a sure determination. Dear Jessica, it was this very day one year ago that you walked into my office, bringing with you hope and joy like the scent of fresh flowers on the breath of summer—making as it were a dayspring within my sombre life more filled with glorious promise than the dawn that even now begins to break against my windows. It was doubtless the half-conscious recollection of this anniversary that troubled my dream—dream I call it, and yet there is a conviction strong upon me that somehow my spirit, or some emanation of my spirit, was actually abroad this night seeking yours, that somehow, when I cried aloud, the sound of my voice penetrated to you through the darkness and distance. Be at peace, beloved; for this rising sun shallnot set until I am with you; and no power of fanaticism, nor any brooding phantasy of mine, shall ever draw us apart. Fear not, beloved; be at peace till I come.