“Wie Lieb’ und Treu’ und GlaubenVerschwunden aus der Welt,Und wie so teuer der Kaffee,Und wie so rar das Geld!”
“Wie Lieb’ und Treu’ und GlaubenVerschwunden aus der Welt,Und wie so teuer der Kaffee,Und wie so rar das Geld!”
“Wie Lieb’ und Treu’ und GlaubenVerschwunden aus der Welt,Und wie so teuer der Kaffee,Und wie so rar das Geld!”
“Wie Lieb’ und Treu’ und Glauben
Verschwunden aus der Welt,
Und wie so teuer der Kaffee,
Und wie so rar das Geld!”
And over all this scene, and through this talk, there would hang an indefinable wrapping of cosiness and warmth andGemüthlichkeit, and one had the same sense of utter simplicity and intimate comfort that a fairy-tale of Grimm gives one. I wonder whether the charm and the simplicity have disappeared from Germany, and whether, in spite of Imperialism, the war, frightfulness, or anything else, the same thing goes on in the same way, in hundreds of houses and families!
In any case, whether it exists now or not, it existed then; and I was privileged to experience it, to enjoy it to the full, and to look back on it now, after so many years and when so much that is irreparable has come between it and me, with undying affection and gratitude, and with an infinitely sad regret.
Once during the war, I had luncheon with one of the R.F.C. Squadron Messes, where I met a pilot who had learnt German at the Timmes’. We talked of them, of Atho and of Kurt, whom he had known grown-up, and at the end of luncheon that pilot, who was just off to fight the Germans in the air, and who was so soon to meet with death in the air fighting the Germans, said to me: “Prosit Timmes.”
In the summer, we would have tea in a little arbour in the garden, and in the mornings, both in winter and in the summer, towards eleven o’clock, when I was hungry, I would go and tell Frau Doktor, and she would take me to the kitchen and fry me herself someSpiegeleierandSpeck. Towards the beginning of my first summer at Hildesheim a new lodger arrived in the shape of a German boy called Hans Wippern, the son of a neighbouring landowner, who had a large farm just outside Hildesheim. Hans was at the school and was alwayshungry. One day he had a slight bilious attack and didn’t come down toMittagessen, although he was much better. Frau Doktor said she thought Hans might fancy a pigeon. “Nein,” said Timme, “Er soll hungern” (“He must fast”). But Frau Doktor surreptitiously sent up three pigeons to his bedroom. The food was delicious at the Timmes’, and the great days were when we hadKartoffeln-pufferforMittagessen, a sort of pancake made of potatoes, or as a great treat “Gänzebraten.” I used to go to the market in the lovely oldMarkt-platzwith Frau Doktor on the days when she would buy a goose, and on the way back we would stop at Frau Brandes’ confectionery and have a slice ofApfeltorte. Frau Brandes was a warm, welcoming saleswoman, and her confectionery was perfect.
When the long holidays began it was settled that I would do best to go on aRundreiseand see what I could of Germany. Dr. Timme arranged my itinerary and I took aRundreise Billet. I was to go to Frankfort, Nuremberg, Dresden, Leipzig, and perhaps Berlin, and so home again. I went back to Heidelberg first and found Hubert Cornish had become an expert fencer. We attended many aKneipeand saw a lot of the students, and once more I stayed with Professor Ihne.
My recollections of this second visit to Heidelberg are merged with those of my first visit, and I cannot distinguish between the two. Hubert Cornish had to go home, and we settled to go to Cologne by steamer down the Rhine. We went past Bingen and Coblenz and Bonn and the rocks of the Lorelei, and we stayed a night at Cologne. There Hubert left me and went home, and I went back by train to Frankfort. Hubert had fired me with the desire to hear Wagner. He had heard many operas at Dresden. The result of his talk was that I decided to go to Bayreuth. We went one night to Mannheim to the opera, but I cannot recollect what we saw. At Frankfort I heard theMikado, and theCavalleria Rusticana, which I had already heard at Hanover. From Frankfort I went to Nuremberg, and from Nuremberg to Bayreuth. I had tickets for one series of performances of the Bayreuth Festival, but when I arrived I found that there was a performance of theMeistersingerthat very day, and I got a ticket for it at the station. I took lodgings in a little room in the town. I went off to the theatre, and the first notes of the orchestra enlarged one’s conception of what an orchestra could be. It was awonderful experience to hear these operas for the first time, at the age of eighteen before hearing any discussions about them, before knowing what they were about, when every note of the music and every scene of the drama were a revelation and a surprise. I heard theMeistersinger,Parsifal,Tristan und Isolda, andTannhäuser. After theMeistersingerandTristan,Tannhäuserseemed tawdry and thin. These operas were all of them magnificently performed that year. Scheidemantel, Malten, Materna, and other stars from Vienna and Dresden were taking part in the Festival, but even then I thought the scenery ugly, especially the garden scene inParsifal, which was made of crude vermilion and yellow tulips; in the other operas,Tristanand theMeistersinger, the scenery was sober and adequate, and the lighting effects were wonderfully well managed, but all that was lost sight of in the orchestra conducted by Mottl. I do not suppose there has ever been any finer orchestra playing in the world than that which I heard whenTristanwas performed that year. It seemed a pity the curtain ever went up, for Tristan, although he sang well, was an old man (Heinrich Vogt), and Isolda (Rose Sucher) was a little too massive. At Bayreuth, during the first series I attended, there were some people I knew, and during that series and the others I made friends with many other people whom I had never seen before. One day, during the entr’acte, the crowd automatically divided as two people passed by—a lady and her husband—and a space was made round them. The lady had a small, flowerlike head, and the dividing crowd near her looked, as she passed, more commonplace and commoner than it did already. On one of the off-days I saw the same lady again sitting at a table in a restaurant garden and reading aloud out of a Tauchnitz novel. At my table there were a Frenchman and his wife. “Dieu qu’elle est belle,” said the Frenchman, staring. “Je ne dis pas qu’elle ne soit pas jolie,” said the French lady, rather nettled. My best friend at Bayreuth was one of the second violins in the orchestra. He thought the operas were far too long, especially the second act ofTristan and Isolda, which he said was for the players more than flesh and blood could bear. He said it would be no offence to Wagner to cut it, and after the performance he used to come out from the theatre terribly exhausted. We often had dinner together, and he told me a great deal about musical life in Germany. Ialso made friends with an English musician who lived at Sydenham, and we spent the off-days in the country together. I think I must have stayed for three series of performances, and I heard each of these operas three times. I went after this to Dresden, where I enjoyed the picture gallery, and so back to Hildesheim. In September I received a letter from Professor Ihne asking me to go back there. The Duke of York was with him, learning German, so I went once more to Heidelberg and stayed there over a fortnight. I went back to Hildesheim, and I had not been there long when I got a telegram telling me to come home at once. I knew my mother was ill, but a letter giving me details just missed me, as it went to Heidelberg. I found my brother-in-law, Bobby Spencer, in London. He took a special to Bristol, as we had missed the ordinary night train, and we got to Membland next morning. Never had Membland looked more beautiful. The days were cloudless and breathless; the foliage was intact but turned to gold, and bathed in the quiet October sunshine. I arrived just in time. A specialist came down from London, but there was nothing to be done. Chérie came down from Hampshire, and D., who had married Mr. Crosbie, came back and stayed in the house, but it was only for a few days.
I went to London and stayed a day or two in Charles Street with my brother John. I spent a night at King’s College, Cambridge, and then I went to Hildesheim on my way to Berlin, where it was settled I was to go.
I was only a day or two at Hildesheim. Nothing could have been kinder than the Timmes were to me then, and Onkel Adolph, when he heard I had lost my coat, said: “Wenn alle Menschen so harmlos wie Sie wären, Herr Baring, so würde die Welt ein reines Paradies sein, aber! aber!”
In Berlin I stayed at first at an hotel, and then I took two rooms on the top floor of a house in the Unter den Linden. I knew no one in the town at first, but a few days after I was settled in my rooms I met my cousin, Arthur Ponsonby, who was learning German there too, and who was staying at a pension in the Potsdamer Strasse. Although I had seen him all my life I had not known him before, and we gradually made each other’s acquaintance. As we were both fond of the theatre we went to plays together and saw a great manyinteresting things. Ibsen’sDoll’s House, which was admirably played at the Berliner Theater, and Sudermann’sDie Ehre, some Shakespeare performances, in which Ludwig Barnay played, and many plays translated from the French. At the Residenz Theater there was an excellent comic actor called Alexander. One night we went to seeFaust, Goethe’sFaust, not Gounod’s, performed at theSchauspielhaus, and when the opening speech, “Habe nun, ach, philosophie,” was declaimed the effect was tremendous. The scenes which followed were less effective on the stage, except those where Gretchen appears. One day we heard that a famous Italian actress was to perform in Berlin. Her name was Eleonora Duse. We had never heard her name mentioned, but the man who sold theatre tickets said she was a rival of Sarah Bernhardt. She was to open in theDame aux Camélias. We took tickets, read the play beforehand in German, as we neither of us knew Italian, and we went on the first night. To see a play in a language you do not understand, however well you know the story, takes away half the pleasure, but we never had a doubt about the quality of her art. The beauty and pathos of her death scene were so great as to be independent of words and speech. Had she been acting in Chinese the effect would have been just as great. We saw her afterwards in theDoll’s House, in which she was equally remarkable, and the scathing irony with which she lashed Helmer, the husband, was unforgettable.
We also went to concerts, and once or twice to the opera, but the opera in Berlin was not a good one.
I knew hardly any Germans while I was at Berlin. I had a letter of introduction to a Frau von Arnim, and one night I had dinner at her house. There were five or six officers present, all in uniform, and one of them described a day’s hunting in England, and said that the meet was crowded withbildschöne Frauen. The Ambassador at Berlin was Sir Edward Mallet, and he asked us to dinner sometimes.
It had been my intention to attend the lectures of the Berlin University, and I was formally enrolled as a student. I matriculated at the University, but the formalities before this was accomplished were so long, that by the time they were finished, I had little time left for a University career. However, I received a card which placed me outside the jurisdiction of the Berlin police and under the jurisdiction of the University authorities,but I only went to one lecture. I had private lessons in German throughout my stay.
I read a good many miscellaneous books during my stay in Berlin, and Arthur Ponsonby introduced me to many new things, and opened many doors for me, especially in French literature. He gave me Tolstoy and Loti to read, and we both had a passion for Ibsen. I, on the other hand, plied him with Pater, Stevenson, and Swinburne. I was just at the age when one can digest anything in the way of books, and the sweeter it is the more one enjoys it. Afterwards much of the stuff I was greedily devouring then was to seem like the almond paste on the top of a wedding-cake. But in those days nothing was too luscious or too sweet. Arthur’s taste was already more sober and grown-up; the drama appealed to both of us, and we would spend hours discussing plays and players, and deploring the state of the English stage.
At the end of December I went back to England and spent the last Christmas but one at Membland I was ever to spend there.
After Christmas I stayed a few days with Chérie at her house at Cosham and with the Ponsonbys at the Isle of Wight. Uncle Henry Ponsonby said he had taken one book with him in the Crimean War, and he had read it through. This wasParadise Lost. The conversation arose from his quoting the lines:
“The mind is its own place, and in itselfCan make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,”
“The mind is its own place, and in itselfCan make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,”
“The mind is its own place, and in itselfCan make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,”
“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,”
and I happened to know where the quotation came from. I stayed for a few days with the Bensons at Addington. Arthur and Fred Benson were there, but none of the rest of the family. Fred Benson had just finished his novel,Dodo, and was correcting the proofs of it. I read the proofs. Arthur Benson had written a great many poems, which he read out to me. They were published later in the year. During the time I had spent at Hildesheim I had continued to write verse every now and then, and I used to send my efforts to Arthur Benson for his criticism. I had also written what must have been a childish play, a modern drama, but I had published nothing except a little verse in a Plymouth newspaper. While I was staying at Osborne with the Ponsonbys and also at Addington with the Bensons I heard a great deal about a Miss Ethel Smyth. Arthur Benson had told me about her at Eton. She was a friend of his family, and he used often to hear from her. She was a newer friend of my aunts and my cousins, and they talked a great deal about her. I heard about her wonderful singing, her energy, her vitality, her talk, how she had said that Mrs. Benson was “as good as God and as clever as the Devil”; how I must hear her sing “l’Anneau d’argent,” and her own Mass. It was arranged that I was to make her acquaintance.Her Mass was to be given at the Albert Hall, and I was invited by Mrs. Charles Hunter (Miss Smyth’s sister) to hear it from her box. The box was full of Miss Smyth’s hunting friends, who gave the music a respectful hearing, and when it was over we went to the Bachelors’ Club and had supper. I sat next to Miss Smyth and we made friends at once. The next night I had dinner at Dover Street, where Mrs. Hunter was staying, and there I met General Smyth, Miss Smyth’s father, and Mr. Brewster, an American by birth, a Frenchman by education, an Italian by residence. His appearance was striking; he had a fair beard and the eyes of a seer;à contre jour, someone said he looked like a Rembrandt. His manner was suave, and at first one thought him inscrutable—a person whom one could never know, surrounded as it were by a hedge of roses. When I got to know him better I found the whole secret of Brewster was this: he was absolutely himself: he said quite simply and calmly what he thought. Nothing leads to such misunderstandings as the truth. Bismarck said the best of all diplomatic policies was to tell the truth, as nobody believed you. But even when you are not prepared to disbelieve, and suspect no diplomatic wiles, the truth is sometimes disconcerting when calmly expressed. I recollect my first conversation with Mr. Brewster. We talked of books, and I was brimful of enthusiasm for Swinburne and Rossetti. “No,” said Brewster, “I don’t care for Rossetti; it all seems to me like an elaborate exercise. I prefer Paul Verlaine.” I knew he was not being paradoxical, but I thought he was lacking in catholicity, narrow in comprehension. Why couldn’t one like both? I thought he was being Olympian and damping. When I got to know him well, I understood how completely sincere he had been, and how utterly unpretentious; how impossible it was for him to pretend he liked something he did not like, and how true it was that Rossetti seemed to him as elaborate as an exercise.
That night we went to a concert at St. James’s Hall, and I saw again the familiar green benches where for so many years my mother had seats in Row 2. “You remind me,” said a lady I was introduced to that night, “of a lady who used to come and sit here at the Pops in the second row, a long time ago.”
I can’t remember where it was I first heard Ethel Smyth sing,whether it was in Dover Street or in her own little house, “One Oak.” I remember the songs she sang—some Brahms, some Schubert, among others “Pause” and “Der Doppelgänger,” “l’Anneau d’argent,” and “Come o’er the Sea,” and I knew at once that I had opened a window on a new and marvellous province. The whole performance was so complete and so poignantly perfect: the accompaniment, the way the words and the music were blended, and the composer’s inmost and most intimate intention and meaning seemed to be revealed and interpreted as if he were singing the song himself for the first time; the rare and exquisite quality and delicacy of her voice, the strange thrill and wail, the distinction and distinct clear utterance, where every word and every note told without effort, and the whirlwind of passion and feeling she evoked in a song such as “Come o’er the Sea” or Brahms’ “Botschaft.”
It was settled that I was to learn Italian, and for that purpose I went to Florence. I stayed in Paris a few days on the way at the Hôtel St. Romain, Rue St. Roch, and I went to several plays and saw Bartet at the Théâtre français, inLe Père Prodigue. Then I travelled to Florence in a crowded second-class carriage. I had expected Florence to be a dismal place, full of buildings like Dorchester House, grey and cold. It was cold when the Tramontana blew, but I had forgotten or rather I had not imagined the Italian sun. I arrived late, at one in the morning, and when I got up and saw the sun streaming from a cloudless blue sky on warm, yellow, sun-baked houses with red flat roofs, I was amazed. I stayed the first night I arrived at an hotel, and then moved into a pension at Lung’Arno della Borsa 2 bis, which belonged to Signora Agnese Traverso. I began to learn Italian at once, and had lessons from a charming old Italian called Signor Benelli. Signor Benelli had been a soldier in Garibaldi’s Army; he was an intense enthusiast both in politics and literature—a Dante scholar and an admirer of the moderns: Carducci, and Gabriele d’Annunzio’s early poems, which were not well known then. I never had a better master before or afterwards. He knew English well and revelled in English poetry, especially in Shelley and Keats. As soon as I got to understand Italian we read Dante, and I read the whole of theDivina Commediaaloud with Signor Benelli, all Leopardi, and a great deal of Tasso and Ariosto. I also made other discoveries formyself in other branches of literature. There was a large lending library at Florence, full of books in every European literature. I there discovered by myself the works of Anatole France and readThaïs,Balthazar, andL’Etui de Nacre,le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, andLa Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque.I read a great deal of Maupassant as well, the complete works of Merimée, some Balzac, and the plays of Dumas fils, and all the Sardou I could get hold of. I also had a few Russian lessons from a lady, but I did not go on with them as I had not the time. I made the acquaintance of Miss Violet Paget (Vernon Lee), who lived in a lovely little villa called “The Palmerino” on the Fiesole side of the town.
The spring in Florence is a wonderful pageant. At first you do not see where there can be any room for it. The trees seem all evergreen—cypresses and silvery olives. The landscape seems complete as it is. Then suddenly the brown hills are alive with wild, fluttering, red jagged-edged tulips. Large bunches of anemones, violets, and lilies of the valley are sold in the streets, and soon roses. Then the young corn shoots up, and all the hills become green and the cornfields are fringed with wild dog-roses, and soon the tall red and white lilies come out, and then the wistaria, and the Judas trees—a dense mass of blossom against the solid, speckless blue sky.
In May I met Hubert Cornish at Naples and spent a few days with him, and we went for a night to Sorrento, and in June I went to Venice by myself and stayed there for one long and deliciously hot week. I saw the pictures, drifted about on the lagoon, and bathed at the Lido in the Adriatic, the only sea that is really hot enough.
At the end of June I was back again in England. I was to go to Oxford or Cambridge, but to do either of these things it is necessary to pass an examination in which sums had to be done. At first I was going to Oxford, but it was thought that I would never be able to pass Smalls, so it was decided I should go to Cambridge, but in order to pass the examination before matriculating I had to go to a crammer’s to brush up my Latin and Greek and try to learn Arithmetic.
At the end of July I went to Eton and stayed with the Cornishes. Mr. Cornish had just been made Vice-Provost, and was moving into the Cloisters from Holland House. It was a hot, beautiful August and we spent most of our days on theriver. One day there was a regatta going on at Datchet. As we passed it we made triolets on the events of the regatta. “My shirt is undone, here comes the regatta,” one of them began. The incident that struck us most was the passage of Miss Tarver in a boat. She appeared to be in distress, and was weeping. This incident was at once put to verse in this triolet:
“Oh! there’s Lily TarverIn oceans of tears,Like streams of hot lava,Oh! there’s Lily Tarver!The regatta’s loudbravaStill rings in her ears.Oh! there’s Lily TarverIn oceans of tears!”
“Oh! there’s Lily TarverIn oceans of tears,Like streams of hot lava,Oh! there’s Lily Tarver!The regatta’s loudbravaStill rings in her ears.Oh! there’s Lily TarverIn oceans of tears!”
“Oh! there’s Lily TarverIn oceans of tears,Like streams of hot lava,Oh! there’s Lily Tarver!The regatta’s loudbravaStill rings in her ears.Oh! there’s Lily TarverIn oceans of tears!”
“Oh! there’s Lily Tarver
In oceans of tears,
Like streams of hot lava,
Oh! there’s Lily Tarver!
The regatta’s loudbrava
Still rings in her ears.
Oh! there’s Lily Tarver
In oceans of tears!”
At Arthur Benson’s one night I met Mr. Gosse, who was kind to me, and from that moment became a lifelong friend.
I had written an essay on Collins, and Arthur Benson had sent it for me toMacmillan’s Magazine. The editor did not print it, but he wrote me a letter about it, urging me to go on writing. While I had been at Florence I had written a complete novel, which I had sent to the publishers. The publishers’ reader reported that it was worth printing, and offered to publish it on the half-profits system. I had the sense to put it in the fire. Everyone, said Vernon Lee to me once, should write a novel once, if only so as never to want to do it again.
In August I went to Mr. Tatham, who lived near Abingdon, to prepare for my examination. At his house several boys were struggling with the same task and preparing to go to Oxford. Mr. Tatham did not teach me arithmetic—nobody could do that—but he taught me some Greek and Latin. We read thePlutusof Aristophanes, and some Catullus, and he led me into new fields in English literature. I enjoyed myself at his house quite immensely. Sometimes at dinner Mr. Tatham would laugh till tears poured down his cheeks, and once he laughed so much that he was almost ill and had to go upstairs to his room to recover.
We used to make up triolets at meals, and at all times of the day, and while I was at Abingdon I had two little books of them printed calledNorthcourt Nonsense.One of them was written while dressing for dinner and after having been stung by a fly, and addressed to Mr. Tatham and sent to him by the maid. It ran thus:
“May I wear a silk tieTo-night at the table?I’ve been stung by a fly,May I wear a silk tie?I will bind it as highAnd as low as I’m able,May I wear a silk tieTo-night at the table?”
“May I wear a silk tieTo-night at the table?I’ve been stung by a fly,May I wear a silk tie?I will bind it as highAnd as low as I’m able,May I wear a silk tieTo-night at the table?”
“May I wear a silk tieTo-night at the table?I’ve been stung by a fly,May I wear a silk tie?I will bind it as highAnd as low as I’m able,May I wear a silk tieTo-night at the table?”
“May I wear a silk tie
To-night at the table?
I’ve been stung by a fly,
May I wear a silk tie?
I will bind it as high
And as low as I’m able,
May I wear a silk tie
To-night at the table?”
to which Mr. Tatham at once sent this answer:
“The tie that you wearMay be wholly of silk,Or of stuff or mohair,The tie that you wear;If the pain you can’t bear,Better bathe it with milk,The tie that you wearMay be wholly of silk.”
“The tie that you wearMay be wholly of silk,Or of stuff or mohair,The tie that you wear;If the pain you can’t bear,Better bathe it with milk,The tie that you wearMay be wholly of silk.”
“The tie that you wearMay be wholly of silk,Or of stuff or mohair,The tie that you wear;If the pain you can’t bear,Better bathe it with milk,The tie that you wearMay be wholly of silk.”
“The tie that you wear
May be wholly of silk,
Or of stuff or mohair,
The tie that you wear;
If the pain you can’t bear,
Better bathe it with milk,
The tie that you wear
May be wholly of silk.”
One of the boys who was preparing for Oxford was called Ralli, and he had great facility as a planchette writer. He could not write by himself, but as soon as anyone else put their hands on planchette at the same time as he did, it would write like mad. The things it wrote seemed to be nearly always what he had read and forgotten, sometimes an article from theFigaro, sometimes a passage from a French novel. Sometimes it wrote verse. Ralli was a fluent poet, but wrote better verse without the aid of planchette than with. Sometimes the planchette board answered his questions, but with a flippant inconsequence.
In October I went to Cambridge and passed into Trinity, leaving theLittle Goto be tackled later. I had rooms in Trinity Street. Hubert Cornish was at King’s. I was to go in for the Modern Language Tripos, which meant languages about as modern asLe Roman de la Roseand Chaucer. I went to a coach for mathematics, but this was sheer waste of time, as not one word of what I was taught ever entered my brain, nor did I improve one jot.
I belonged to two debating societies—the Magpie and Stump, and the Decemviri—and used to speak at both of them quite often; and to a society where one read out papers, calledthe Chit-Chat. I also belonged to the A.D.C., and played the part of the butler inParents and Guardians, and that of the footman in theDuchess of Bayswater.
In the summer term, during the May week, Hubert Cornish, R. Austen Leigh, and myself edited an ephemeral newspaper called theCambridge A B C, which had four numbers and which contained an admirable parody of Kipling by Carr-Bosanquet.
Here are some lines from it:
“By Matyushin and Wilczek-land he is come to the Northern Pole,Whose tap-roots bite on the Oolite and Palæozoic coal:He set his hand and his haunch to the tree, he plucked it up by the root,And the lines of longitude upward sprang like the broken chords of a lute;And over against the Hills of Glass he came to the spate of stars,And the Pole it sank, but he swam to bank and warmed himself on Mars;Till he came to the Reeling Beaches between the night and the day,Where the tall king crabs like hansom cabs and the black bull lobsters lay.”
“By Matyushin and Wilczek-land he is come to the Northern Pole,Whose tap-roots bite on the Oolite and Palæozoic coal:He set his hand and his haunch to the tree, he plucked it up by the root,And the lines of longitude upward sprang like the broken chords of a lute;And over against the Hills of Glass he came to the spate of stars,And the Pole it sank, but he swam to bank and warmed himself on Mars;Till he came to the Reeling Beaches between the night and the day,Where the tall king crabs like hansom cabs and the black bull lobsters lay.”
“By Matyushin and Wilczek-land he is come to the Northern Pole,Whose tap-roots bite on the Oolite and Palæozoic coal:He set his hand and his haunch to the tree, he plucked it up by the root,And the lines of longitude upward sprang like the broken chords of a lute;And over against the Hills of Glass he came to the spate of stars,And the Pole it sank, but he swam to bank and warmed himself on Mars;Till he came to the Reeling Beaches between the night and the day,Where the tall king crabs like hansom cabs and the black bull lobsters lay.”
“By Matyushin and Wilczek-land he is come to the Northern Pole,
Whose tap-roots bite on the Oolite and Palæozoic coal:
He set his hand and his haunch to the tree, he plucked it up by the root,
And the lines of longitude upward sprang like the broken chords of a lute;
And over against the Hills of Glass he came to the spate of stars,
And the Pole it sank, but he swam to bank and warmed himself on Mars;
Till he came to the Reeling Beaches between the night and the day,
Where the tall king crabs like hansom cabs and the black bull lobsters lay.”
Aubrey Beardsley was just becoming known as an artist, and we wrote to him and asked him to design a cover, never thinking he would consent to do so. He did, for the modest sum of ten guineas, and many people thought it was a clever parody of his draughtsmanship.
At Trinity, Carr-Bosanquet was the shining light of the Decemviri Debating Society. At Eton he had edited theParachute, which was far the best schoolboy periodical that had appeared there for years, and had written, in collaboration with two other boys, a book calledSeven Summers, about Eton, which was afterwards withdrawn from circulation because for some reason or other the authorities objected to it. Next toA Day of my Life at Etonit is the best book about Eton life that has ever been written, and the only book of its kind. It certainly ought to be republished. The curious thing is that the objections to it, which to the lay mind are not perceptible (for a more harmless book was never written), were only made after it had been published for some time.
Carr-Bosanquet used often to contribute poems of a light kind about topical events to theEton Chronicle, and at Cambridge he wrote as wittily as he talked and spoke. He had rather a dry, kind sense of humour, saltlike sense, and an Atticwit, which pervaded his talk, his speeches, his finished and scholarly verse. We thought he was certain to be a bright star in English literature, a successor to Praed and Calverley, and perhaps to Charles Lamb; but his career was distinguished in another line—archæology—and he allowed himself no rival pursuit. Had he opted for literature, and the province of the witty essay and the light rhyme, he certainly could have achieved great things, as he had already done far more than show promise. His performance as far as it went was already mature, finished, and of a high order. There was at Trinity and at King’s at this time, as I suppose there is at all times, a small but highly intellectual world, of which the apex was the mysterious Society of the Apostles, who discussed philosophy in secret. I skirted the fringe of this world, and knew some of its members: Bertrand Russell, the mathematician; Robert Trevelyan, the poet; and others. One day, one of these intellectuals explained to me that I ought not to go to Chapel, as it was setting a bad example. Christianity was exploded, a thing of the past; nobody believed in it really among the young and the advanced, but for the sake of the old-fashioned and the unregenerate I was bidden to set an example of sincerity and courage, and soon the world would follow suit. I remember thinking that although I was much younger in years than these intellectuals, and far inferior in knowledge, brains, and wits, no match for them in argument or in achievement, I was none the less older than they were in a particular kind of experience—the experience that has nothing to do either with the mind, or with knowledge, and that is independent of age, but takes place in the heart, and in which a child may be sometimes more rich than a grown-up person. I do not mean anything sentimental. I am speaking of the experience that comes from having been suddenly constrained to turn round and look at life from a different point of view. So when I heard the intellectuals reason in the manner I have described, I felt for the moment an old person listening to young people. I felt young people must always have talked like that. It was not that I had then any definite religious creed. I seldom went to Chapel, but that was out of laziness. I seldom went to church in London, and never of my own accord.
While I was at Heidelberg the religious tenets which I had kept absolutely intact since childhood, without question andwithout the shadow of doubt or difficulty, suddenly one day, without outside influence or inward crisis, just dropped away from me. I shed them as easily as a child loses a first tooth. In the winter of 1893, when I came back from Berlin, someone asked me why I didn’t go to church. I said it was because I didn’t believe in a Christian faith, and that if I were ever to again I would be a Catholic. That seemed to me the only logical and indeed the inevitable consequence of such a belief. In spite of this, dogmatic disbelief was to me always an intolerable thing, and when I heard the intellectuals talk in the manner I have described, I used to feel that people like Dr. Johnson had known better than they, but that in his day it was probable that the young and he himself talked like that; it was one of the privileges of youth. I did not say this, however. I kept my thoughts to myself. I remember my spoken answer being that I did not care if my landlady thought an upright poker placed in front of the fire made it burn or not. If she liked to believe that, it was her affair. I didn’t mind if she worshipped the poker.
At King’s my great friends were Hubert Cornish, Ramsay, who was afterwards Lower Master at Eton, and R⸺ A⸺, the son of a distinguished soldier. A. was the most original of all the undergraduates I knew. He was a real scholar, with the most eclectic and rather austere taste in literature, and a passion for organ music. He was shy and fastidious beyond words. He could not endure being shaved at Cambridge, and used to go up to London twice a week for that purpose. He took no part in any of the clubs or societies. At the same time he was a devoted friend and a fiery patriot. He was so difficult to please about his own work that when he went up for his Tripos and had to do a set of Latin hexameters, he showed up a series of unfinished lines, “pathetic half-lines,” a suggested end of hexameter, a possible beginning, the hint of a cæsura, a few epithets, and here and there an almost perfect line, with a footnote to say “these verses are not meant to scan.” He was a bibliophile, but collected faded second editions and never competed. He had a passionate admiration for Thomas Hardy’s works, and a great deference for the opinion of his friends. One day when he was discussing literature with Hubert Cornish, Hubert said he liked a book which A. disliked. When A. heard this he said gently: “Of course if you like it, Hubert, I like it too.”
This all happened in the period of the ’nineties. When people write about the ’nineties now, which they often do, they seem to me to weave a baseless legend and to create a fantastic world of their own creation. The ’nineties were, from the point of view of art and literature, much like any other period. If you want to know what literary conversation was like in the ’nineties you can hear it any day at the Reform Club. If you compare the articles on literature or art that appeared in theSpeakerof 1892-3 with the articles in theNew Statesmanof 1921, you will find little difference between the two. The difference between theYellow Bookand periodicals of the same kind (The Owl, for instance), which were started years later, was chiefly in the colour of the cover. The fact is there are only a certain number of available writers in London, and whenever a new periodical is started, all the available writers are asked to contribute; so in theYellow Bookyou had practically the available writers of the time contributing—Henry James, Edmund Gosse, George Moore, Crackenthorpe, William Watson, John Davidson, John Oliver Hobbes, Vernon Lee, Le Gallienne, Arthur Benson, Arthur Symons, and Max Beerbohm. I think there is seldom any startling difference between the literature of one decade and another. When I was at Cambridge, England was said by the newspapers to be a nest of singing birds; again the same thing was said when the Georgian poets began to publish their work; but the same thing might be said of any epoch. Throughout the whole of English history there never has been a period, as yet, when England was not a nest of singing birds, and when a great quantity of verse, good, bad, and indifferent, was not being poured out. But it was said in the ’nineties that poetry was a paying business; second-hand booksellers were speculating in the first editions of the new poets, just as they do now; and to get the complete works of one poet, who had published little, one had to pay a hundred pounds. A society called the Rhymers’ Club published two books called respectively theBook of the Rhymers’ Club, and theSecond Book of the Rhymers’ Club, both of which were anthologies by living authors, and somewhat the same in intention as theBooks of Georgian Poetry. Both these books are now rare and sought after by collectors. It is interesting to look at them now, and to look back in general on the poets of that day, and to see what has survived and whathas been forgotten. These two anthologies by no means represented the whole of the poetic output and production of the day. They were not comprehensive anthologies of all the living poets, but the manifesto of one small Poetical Club. Taking a general bird’s-eye view of literature and the literary world of that day, this is what you would have noted. Tennyson was just dead. Swinburne was still writing, and published some of the finer poems of his later manner in a volume calledAstrophel, in 1894. Stevenson was alive, and had just publishedThe Ebb Tide. Meredith had but lately come into his own, and was hailed by old and young.Tess of the D’Urbervilleshad enlarged the public of Thomas Hardy. Robert Bridges was issuing fastidious pamphlets of verse printed by Mr. Beeching at Oxford. Christina Rossetti was alive. Mr. Kipling published what are perhaps his greatest achievements in the short story inLife’s Handicapin 1891, and hisMany Inventionscame out in 1892. HisBarrack Room Balladswere published in 1892. His loud popularity among the public was endorsed by critics such as Henry James, Edmund Gosse, and Andrew Lang. Andrew Lang was still writing “books likeGenesisand sometimes for theDaily News,” besides a monthly causerie inLongman’s Magazine, and a weekly causerie in theIllustrated London News. Mrs. Humphry Ward’sDavid Grievewas published in 1892 and acclaimed by the whole press. Edmund Gosse was collecting and preparing a volume of the verse of his maturity (published in 1894), and once a year produced a volume of delicate and perspicuous prose. Henley was writing patriotic verse and barbed prose in theNational Observer, which was full of spirited, scholarly and brilliant writing. Charles Whibley was making a name. Max Beerbohm was making his début. William Watson was discovered as a real new poet, and his “Wordsworth’s Grave,” and his “Lachrymæ Musarum” won praise from the older critics, and attracted, for verse, great attention. He was named as a possible laureate. John Davidson was said to have inspiration and fire, and to have written a fine ballad; Norman Gale’sCountry Lyricswere praised; Arthur Benson represented the extreme right of English poetry, and Arthur Symons the extreme left. Wilde had published a play in French, and hisLady Windermere’s Fanwas hailed as the best comedy produced on the English stage since Congreve. Pinero had startled London with hisSecond Mrs. Tanquerayand the discovery of Mrs. Patrick Campbell. In theSpeakerQuiller-Couch wrote a weekly causerie, and George Moore put some of his best work in weekly articles on art, and Mr. Walkley some of his wittiest writing in weekly articles on the stage. Henry James was struggling with the stage, and John Oliver Hobbes was making a name as a coiner of epigrams. Harry Cust was editing thePall Mall Gazetteand concocting delightful leaders out of the classics, with fantastic titles. E. F. Benson had publishedDodo. Turning from the general to the particular, and to theBook of the Rhymers’ Club, published in 1892, the names of the contributors were: Ernest Dowson, Edwin Ellis, C. A. Greene, Lionel Johnson, Richard le Gallienne, Victor Plarr, Ernest Radford, Ernest Rhys, T. W. Rolleston, Arthur Symons, John Todhunter, and W. B. Yeats. In the second series the same names occur with an additional one—Arthur Cecil Hillier.
A reaction against supposed foreign influences was started and preached, and Richard le Gallienne called his book of verseEnglish Lyricsto accentuate this; but it is difficult to find any trace of this foreign influence in the verse of that day, except in some of the poems of Arthur Symons. When people write of the ’nineties now, they say that the verse of that period is all about pierrots, powder, and patchouli. The reason is perhaps that the most startling feature in the creative art of the period was the genius of Aubrey Beardsley, whose perfect draughtsmanship seemed to be guided by a malignant demon. I have looked through theBooks of the Rhymers’ Clubcarefully, and I cannot find a single allusion to a pierrot, or even to a powder-puff. Here are the titles of some of the subjects: “Carmelite Nuns of Perpetual Adoration”; “Love and Death”; “The Pathfinder”; “The Broken Tryst”; “A Ring’s Secret”; “A Burden of Easter Vigil”; “Father Gilligan”; “In Falmouth Harbour”; “Mothers of Men”; “Sunset in the City”; “Lost”; “To a Breton Beggar”; “Song in the Labour Movement”; “Saint Anthony”; “Lady Macbeth”; “Midsummer Day”; “The Old Shepherd”; “The Night Jar”; “The Song of the Old Mother”; “The First Spring Day”; “An Ode to Spring.” These subjects seem to me singularly like those that have inspired poets of all epochs; it is difficult to detect anything peculiar to the ’nineties in a title such as “The First Spring Day,” or “A Ring’s Secret.”
The firstRhymers’ Bookcontains Yeats’ exquisite poem on the Lake of Innisfree, and some dignified verse by Lionel Johnson; the second series contains a well-known poem by Ernest Dowson: “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.” But I think I am right in saying that it was neither Yeats nor Lionel Johnson nor Dowson’s work in these anthologies that attracted the greatest attention, but a lyric of Le Gallienne’s called “What of the Darkness?” which I remember one critic said wiped out Tennyson’s lyrics. Tennyson’s lyrics, however, went on obstinately existing, no doubt so as to give another generation the pleasure of thinking that they had wiped them out. While these singing birds were twittering, I remember one day at Cambridge buying a new book of verse by a man called Francis Thompson. Here, I thought, is another of the hundreds of new poets, but directly I caught sight of the “Hound of Heaven,” I thought to myself “Here is something different.” I remember showing Hubert Cornish a poem called “Daisy,” and saying to him, “Isn’t this very good?” It begins:
“Where the thistle lifts a purple crownSix foot out of the turf,And the harebell shakes on the windy hill,O the breath of the distant surf.”
“Where the thistle lifts a purple crownSix foot out of the turf,And the harebell shakes on the windy hill,O the breath of the distant surf.”
“Where the thistle lifts a purple crownSix foot out of the turf,And the harebell shakes on the windy hill,O the breath of the distant surf.”
“Where the thistle lifts a purple crown
Six foot out of the turf,
And the harebell shakes on the windy hill,
O the breath of the distant surf.”
“Yes,” said Hubert, “but the trouble is that everyone writes so well nowadays that it is hardly worth while for any new poet to write well. All can raise the flower because all have got the seed.”
The undergraduates had no great enthusiasm for any of these new writers. I mean the intellectuals among the undergraduates. But the booksellers were always urging us to buy them on the plea that they would go up. Some of them did, and those who speculated in Francis Thompson and Yeats did well. The curious thing is that the prose writers and the poets were supposed to be great sticklers for form, to be absorbed by the theory of art for art’s sake, and to be aiming at impeccable craftsmanship. Looking back on the work of those poets now, their technique, compared to that of more modern poets, seems almost ludicrously feeble, but they seem to have had just what they were supposed to be without: a burning ideal to serve literature; to have been consumed with the desire to bring about a renaissance inEnglish literature and anEnglishrenaissance. There was one poet’s name which was sometimes mentioned then, and which had come down to the ’nineties from other and older generations. The name has gone on being mentioned since, and will one day, I think, reach the safe harbour of lasting fame, and this was Michael Field. Michael Field was a pseudonym which covered the remarkable personalities of two ladies, an aunt and a niece, who were friends of Robert Browning and of all the literary lights of their day, and who wrote a series of most remarkable dramas in verse and some extremely beautiful lyrics.
John Lane, the publisher, used to come down to Cambridge sometimes, and I made his acquaintance and, through him and Mr. Gosse, that of many of the writers I have mentioned: John Davidson, Le Gallienne, and others. There was a society at this time in London called the Cemented Bricks, to which some of thelittérateursand poets belonged, which met at Anderton’s Hotel in Fleet Street, and I was made a member, and on one occasion made a speech, and was down to read a paper, but I had to go abroad and this never came off. But what I chiefly remember about it is one occasion when Le Gallienne read a paper in which he passionately attacked the theory of art for art’s sake, and insisted on the relative unimportance of art compared with Nature, saying that a branch of almond blossom against the sky was worth all the pictures in the world. His paper was answered a month later by a young man who said this was the most Philistine sentiment he had ever heard expressed. This was while I was at Cambridge.
I did little work at Cambridge, and from the Cambridge curriculum I learnt nothing. I attended lectures on mathematics which might just as well have been, for the good they did me, in Hebrew. I spent hours with a coach who wearily explained to me things which I didn’t and couldn’t understand. I went to some lectures on French literature, but all I remember of them is that the lecturer demonstrated at some length that the French written by many well-known authors was often ungrammatical and sometimes full of mistakes. The lecturer cited to support his case pages of Georges Ohnet. One hardly needed a lecturer to point out that Georges Ohnet was not a classical writer. The lecturer’s aim was not to show the badness of certain authors, but to prove that the French of modern current literature was an independent livingorganism that was growing and developing heedless of classical models, grammatical rules, and academic authority. I think he would have done better had he pointed out how certain other authors were writing prose and verse of so great an excellence that in the course of time their works might become classics. Boileau was one of the books to be read for the Tripos, and I had already read a great deal of Boileau and learnt his verse by heart as a child. I copied out the following lines in 1888: