THE INN OF 
 TRANQUILLITY 
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
Cob 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Library i 
 
B Cornell University 
 M Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013615699 
 
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 VILLA EUBEIN and Other Stories 
 THE ISLAND PHARISEES 
 THE MAN OF PROPERTY 
 THE COUNTRY HOUSE 
 FRATERNITY 
 THE PATRICIAN 
 
 A COMMENTARY 
 A MOTLEY 
 
 PLAYS 
 
 MOODS, SONGS, and DOGGERELS 
 
THE 
 INN OF TRANQUILLITY 
 
 STUDIES AND ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 ' Je vous dirai que Texces est toujours un mal." 
 
 — Anatolb Feance. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1912 
 
copthight, 1912, by 
 Chaeieb Sceibnee's Sons 
 
 Published October, 1912 
 
TO 
 JOHN WALLER HILLS 
 
For permission to reprint these Studies the Author's 
 thanks are due to the Editors of the Fortnightly Review, 
 Seribner's Magazine, English Review, Atlantic Monthly, 
 Century Magazine, Nation, Eye-Witness, and Daily News. 
 
CONTENTS 
 CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 PAGB 
 
 THE INN OF TEANQUILLITT 3 
 
 QUALITY 14 
 
 MAGPIE OVER THE HILL 26 
 
 SHEEP-SHEAEING 33 
 
 EVOLUTION 40 
 
 EIDING IN MIST 47 
 
 THE PROCESSION 54 
 
 A CHRISTIAN 61 
 
 WIND EST THE ROCKS 70 
 
 MY DISTANT RELATIVE 77 
 
 THE BLACK GODMOTHER 89 
 
 THE GRAND JURY 97 
 
 GONE 113 
 
 THRESHING 120 
 
 THAT OLD-TIME PLACE 127 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 ROMANCE — THREE GLEAMS 132 
 
 MEMORIES 139 
 
 FELICITY ^ 163 
 
 CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 A novelist's allegory 171 
 
 SOME platitudes CONCERNING DRAMA . . 189 
 
 meditation on finality 203 
 
 wanted — schooling 212 
 
 on our dislike of things as they are . 220 
 
 the windlestraw 226 
 
 about censorship 236 
 
 vague thoughts on art 254 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 
 
 UNDER a burning blue sky, among the pine- 
 trees and junipers, the cypresses and oHves 
 of that Odyssean coast, we came one afternoon 
 on a pink house bearing the legend: "Osteria di 
 TranquiUita"; and, partly because of the name, 
 and partly because we did not expect to find a 
 house at all in those goat-haunted groves above 
 the waves, we tarried for contemplation. To the 
 famihar simplicity of that Itahan building there 
 were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual 
 change, for out of the oUve-grove which grew to 
 its very doors a skittle-aUey had been formed, 
 and two baby cypress-trees were cut into the 
 effigies of a cock and hen. The song of a gramo- 
 phone, too, was breaking forth into the air, as 
 it were the presiding voice of a high and cos- 
 mopoUtan mind. And, lost in admiration, we 
 became conscious of the odour of a full-flavoured 
 cigar. Yes — ^in the skittle-alley a gentleman was 
 standing who wore a bowler hat, a bright brown 
 suit, pink tie, and very yeUow boots. His head 
 was round, his cheeks fat and well-coloured, his 
 
 3 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 lips red and full under a black moustache, and 
 he was regarding us through very thick and half- 
 closed eyeUds. 
 
 Perceiving him to be the proprietor of the high 
 and cosmopohtan mind, we accosted him. 
 
 "Good-day!" he repUed: "I spik English. 
 Been in Ammrica — ^yes." 
 
 "You have a lovely place here." 
 
 Sweeping a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent 
 forth a long puff of smoke; then, turning to my 
 companion (of the politer sex) with the air of one 
 who has made himself perfect master of a foreign 
 tongue, he smiled, and spoke. 
 
 "Too— quiet!" 
 
 "Precisely; the name of your inn, perhaps, sug- 
 gests " 
 
 "I change all that — soon I call it Anglo-Ameri- 
 can hotel." 
 
 "Ah! yes; you are veiy up-to-date already." 
 
 He closed one eye and smiled. 
 
 Having passed a few more compliments, we 
 saluted and walked on; and, coming presently to 
 the edge of the cliff, lay down on the thyme and 
 the crumbled leaf-dust. All the small singing 
 birds had long been shot and eaten; there came 
 to us no sound but that of the waves swimming 
 in on a gentle south wind. The wanton creatures 
 
 4 
 
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 
 
 seemed stretching out white arms to the land, 
 flying desperately from a sea of such stupendous 
 serenity; and over their bare shoulders their hair 
 floated back, pale in the sunshine. If the air was 
 void of sound, it was full of scent — ^that deUcious 
 and enlivening perfume of mingled gum, and 
 herbs, and sweet wood being burned somewhere 
 a long way off; and a silky, golden warmth slanted 
 on to us through the oHves and umbrella pines. 
 Large wine-red violets were growing near. On 
 such a cliff might Theocritus have lain, spinning 
 his songs; on that divine sea Odysseus should 
 have passed. And we felt that presently the 
 goat-god must put his head forth from behind 
 a rock. 
 
 It seemed a Httle queer that our friend in the 
 bowler hat should move and breathe within one 
 short flight of a cuckoo from this home of Pan. 
 One could not but at first feelingly remember the 
 old Boer saying: "0 God, what things man sees 
 when he goes out without a gun!" But soon the 
 infinite incongruity of this juxtaposition began to 
 produce within one a curious eagerness, a sort of 
 half-philosophical dehght. It began to seem too 
 good, almost too romantic, to be true. To think 
 of the gramophone wedded to the thin sweet sing- 
 ing of the olive leaves in the evening wind; to 
 
 5 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 remember the scent of his rank cigar marrying 
 with this wild incense; to read that enchanted 
 name, "Inn of Tranquillity/' and hear the bland 
 and affable remark of the gentleman who owned 
 it — such were, indeed, phenomena to stimulate 
 souls to speculation. And aU unconsciously one 
 began to justify them by thoughts of the other 
 incongruities of existence — the strange, the pas- 
 sionate incongruities of youth and age, wealth and 
 poverty, life and death; the wonderful odd bed- 
 fellows of this world; aU those lurid contrasts 
 which ha;mt a man's spirit till sometimes he is 
 ready to cry out: "Rather than live where such 
 things can be, let me die!" 
 
 Like a wild bird tracking through the air, one's 
 meditation wandered on, following that trail of 
 thought, tiQ the chance encounter became spirit- 
 ually luminous. That Italian gentleman of the 
 world, with his bowler hat, his skittle-alley, his 
 gramophone, who had planted himself down in 
 this temple of wild harmony, was he not Progress 
 itself— the bhnd figure with the stomach full of 
 new meats and the brain of raw notions? Was 
 he not the very embodiment of the wonderful 
 child, Civilisation, so possessed by a new toy each 
 day that she has no time to master its use — 
 naive creature lost amid her own discoveries! 
 
 6 
 
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 
 
 Was he not the very symbol of that which was 
 making economists thin, thinkers pale, artists hag- 
 gard, statesmen bald — ^the symbol of Indigestion 
 Incarnate! Did he not, delicious, gross, xmcon- 
 scious man, personify beneath his Americo-Italian 
 pohsh all those rank and primitive instincts, whose 
 satisfaction necessitated the million miseries of his 
 feUows; aU those thick rapacities which stir the 
 hatred of the humane and thin-skinned! And yet, 
 one's meditation could not stop there — it was not 
 convenient to the heart! 
 
 A httle above us, among the olive-trees, two 
 blue-clothed peasants, man and woman, were 
 gathering the fruit — ^from some such couple, no 
 doubt, our friend in the bowler hat had sprung; 
 more "virile" and adventurous than his brothers, 
 he had not stayed in the home groves, but had 
 gone forth to drink the waters of hustle and com- 
 merce, and come back — ^what he was. And he, 
 in turn, would beget children, and having made 
 his pile out of his 'Anglo-American hotel' would 
 place those children beyond the coarser influences 
 of hfe, tiU they became, perhaps, even as our- 
 selves, the salt of the earth, and despised him. 
 And I thought: "I do not despise those peasants 
 — ^far from it. I do not despise myself — ^no more 
 than reason; why, then, despise my friend in the 
 
 7 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 bowler hat, who is, after all, but the necessary 
 link between them and me?" I did not despise 
 the olive-trees, the warm sun, the pine scent, all 
 those material things which had made him so 
 thick and strong; I did not despise the golden, 
 tenuous imaginings which the trees and rocks and 
 sea were starting in my own spirit. Why, then, 
 despise the skittle-alley, the gramophone, those 
 expressions of the spirit of my friend in the billy- 
 cock hat? To despise them was ridiculous! 
 
 And suddenly I was visited by a sensation only 
 to be described as a sort of smiling certainty, 
 emanating from, and, as it were, still tingling 
 within every nerve of myself, but yet vibrating 
 harmoniously with the world around. It was as 
 if I had suddenly seen what was the truth of things; 
 not perhaps to anybody else, but at all events to 
 me. And I felt at once tranquil and elated, as 
 when something is met with which rouses and 
 fascinates in a man all his faculties. 
 
 "For," I thought, "if it is ridiculous in me to 
 despise my friend — ^that perfect marvel of dis- 
 harmony—it is ridiculous in me to despise any- 
 thing. If fee is a little bit of continuity, as per- 
 fectly logical an expression of a necessary phase or 
 mood of existence as I myself am, then, surely, 
 there is nothing in all the world that is not a little 
 
 8 
 
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 
 
 bit of continuity, the expression of a little neces- 
 sary mood. Yes," I thought, "he and I, and 
 those olive-trees, and this spider on my hand, and 
 everything in the Universe which has an individual 
 shape, are aU fit expressions of the separate moods 
 of a great underlying Mood or Principle, which 
 must be perfectly adjusted, volving and revolving 
 on itself. For if It did not volve and revolve on 
 Itself, It would peter out at one end or the other, 
 and the image of this petering out no man with 
 his mental apparatus can conceive. Therefore, 
 one must conclude It to be perfectly adjusted and 
 everlasting. But if It is perfectly adjusted and 
 everlasting, we are aU httle bits of continuity, and 
 if we are all little bits of continuity it is ridicu- 
 lous for one of us to despise another. So," I 
 thought, "I have now proved it from my friend 
 in the billy-cock hat up to the Universe, and from 
 the Universe down, back again to my friend." 
 
 And I lay on my back and looked at the sky. 
 It seemed friendly to my thought with its smile, 
 and few white clouds, saffron-tinged like the 
 plumes of a white duck in sunlight. "And yet," 
 I wondered, "though my friend and I may be 
 equally necessary, I am certainly irritated by him, 
 and shall as certainly continue to be irritated, 
 not only by him, but by a thousand other men and 
 
 9 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 things. And as to the things that I love and ad- 
 mire, am I to suppress these loves and admirations 
 because I know them merely to be the necessary- 
 expressions of the moods of an underlying Prin- 
 ciple that turns and turns on ItseK? Does not 
 this way nullity he? " But then I thought : " Not 
 so; for you cannot beHeve in the great adjusted 
 Mood or Principle without believing in each httle 
 and iadividual part of It. And you are yourself 
 a Uttle individual part; therefore you must be- 
 heve in that Uttle individual part which is you, 
 with all its natural likings and dislikings, and, 
 indeed, you cannot show your behef except by 
 expression of those likings and dishkings. And 
 so, with a hght heart, you may go on being irri- 
 tated with your friend in the bowler hat, you may 
 go on loving those peasants and this sky and sea. 
 But, since you have this theory of life, you may 
 not despise any one or any thing, not even a skittle- 
 alley, for they are all threaded to you, and to de- 
 spise them would be to blaspheme against contin- 
 uity, and to blaspheme against continuity would 
 be to deny Eternity. Love you cannot help, and 
 hate you cannot help; but contempt is — ^for you 
 — ^the sovereign idiocy, the irrehgious fancy!" 
 
 There was a bee weighing down a blossom of 
 thyme close by, and underneath the stalk a very 
 
 10 
 
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 
 
 ugly little centipede. The wild bee, with his 
 little dark body and his busy bear's legs, was lovely 
 to me, and the creepy centipede gave me shud- 
 derings; but it was a pleasant thing to feel so sure 
 that he, no less than the bee, was a little mood 
 expressing himself out in harmony with Design — 
 a tiny thread on the miraculous quilt. And I 
 looked at him with a sudden zest and curiosity; 
 it seemed to me that in the mystery of his queer 
 little creepings I was enjoying the Supreme Mys- 
 tery; and I thought: "If I knew aU about that 
 wriggling beast, then, indeed, I might despise him; 
 but, truly, if I knew aU about him I should know 
 all about everything — Mystery would be gone, 
 and I could not bear to Hve!" 
 
 So I stirred him with my finger and he went 
 away. 
 
 "But how" — ^I thought — "about such as do 
 not feel it ridiculous to despise; how about those 
 whose temperaments and religions show them all 
 things so plainly that they know they are right 
 and others wrong? They must be in a bad way ! " 
 And for some seconds I felt sorry for them, and 
 was discouraged. But then I thought: "Not 
 at all — obviously not! For if they do not find 
 it ridiculous to feel contempt, they are perfectly 
 right to feel contempt, it being natural to them; 
 
 11 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 and you have no business to be sony for them, 
 for that is, after all, only your euphemism for 
 contempt. They are all right, being the expres- 
 sions of contemptuous moods, having religions 
 and so forth, suitable to these moods; and the 
 religion of your mood would be Greek to them, 
 and probably a matter for contempt. But this 
 only makes it the more interesting. For though 
 to you, for instance, it may seem impossible to 
 worship Mystery with one lobe of the brain, and 
 with the other to explain it, the thought that this 
 may not seem impossible to others should not 
 discourage you; it is but another little piece of 
 that Mystery which makes life so wonderful and 
 sweet." 
 
 The Sim, fallen now almost to the level of the 
 cliff, was slanting upward on to the burnt-red 
 pine boughs, which had taken to themselves a 
 quaint resemblance to the great brown limbs of 
 the wild men Titian drew in fiis pagan pictures, 
 and down below us the searuymphs, stHl swim- 
 ming to shore, seemed eager to embrace them in 
 the enchanted groves. All was fused in that 
 golden glow of the sun going down — sea and land 
 gathered into one transcendent mood of light and 
 colour, as if Mystery desired to bless us by show- 
 ing how perfect was that worshipful adjustment, 
 
 12 
 
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 
 
 whose secret we could never know. And I said 
 to myself: "None of those thoughts of yours are 
 new, and in a vague way even you have thought 
 them before; but all the same, they have given 
 you some httle feeling of tranquiUity." 
 
 And at that word of fear I rose and invited my 
 companion to return toward the town. But as 
 we stealthily crept by the "Osteria di Tranquil- 
 lita," otu" friend in the bowler hat came out with 
 a gun over his shoulder and waved his hand 
 toward the Inn. 
 
 "You come again in two week — ^I change all 
 that! And now," he added, "I go to shoot little 
 bird or two," and he disappeared into the golden 
 haze tmder the olive-trees. 
 
 A minute later we heard his gun go off, and re- 
 turned homeward with a prayer. 
 
 1910. 
 
 13 
 
QUALITY 
 
 I KNEW him from the days of my extreme 
 youth, because he made my father's boots; 
 inhabiting with his elder brother two httle shops 
 let into one, in a small by-street — ^now no more, 
 but then most fashionably placed in the West End. 
 That tenement had a certain qmet distinction; 
 there was no sign upon its face that he made for 
 any of the Royal Family — ^merely his own Ger- 
 man name of Gessler Brothers; and in the win- 
 dow a few pairs of boots. I remember that it 
 always troubled me to account for those unvary- 
 ing boots in the window, for he made only what 
 was ordered, reaching nothing down, and it seemed 
 so inconceivable that what he made could ever 
 have failed to fit. Had he bought them to put 
 there? That, too, seemed inconceivable. He 
 would never have tolerated in his house leather 
 on which he had not worked himself. Besides, 
 they were too beautiful — ^the pair of pumps, so 
 inexpressibly slim, the patent leathers with cloth 
 tops, making water come into one's mouth, the tall 
 brown riding boots with marvellous sooty glow, 
 
 14 
 
QUALITY 
 
 as if, though new, they had been worn a hundred 
 years. Those pairs could only have been made 
 by one who saw before him the Soul of Boot — so 
 truly were they prototypes incarnating the very 
 spirit of all foot-gear. These thoughts, of course, 
 came to me later, though even when I was pro- 
 moted to him, at the age of perhaps fourteen, 
 some inkling haunted me of the dignity of himself 
 and brother. For to make boots — such boots as 
 he made — seemed to me then, and still seems to 
 me, mysterious and wonderful. 
 
 I remember weU my shy remark, one day, while 
 stretching out to him my youthful foot: 
 
 "Isn't it awfully hard to do, Mr. Gessler?" 
 
 And his answer, given with a sudden smile 
 from out of the sardonic redness of his beard: 
 "Id is an Ardt!" 
 
 Himself, he was a Httle as if made from leather, 
 with his yellow crinkly face, and crinkly reddish 
 hair and beard, and neat folds slanting down his 
 cheeks to the comers of his mouth, and his gut- 
 tural and one-toned voice; for leather is a sardonic 
 substance, and stiff and slow of purpose. And 
 that was the character of his face, save that his 
 eyes, which were grey-blue, had in them the sim- 
 ple gravity of one secretly possessed by the Ideal. 
 His elder brother was so very like him — ^though 
 
 15 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 watery, paler in every way, with a great industry 
 — ^that sometimes in early days I was not quite 
 sure of him until the interview was over. Then 
 I knew that it was he, if the words, "I will ask 
 my brudder," had not been spoken; and that, if 
 they had, it was his elder brother. 
 
 When one grew old and wild and ran up bills, 
 one somehow never ran them up with Gessler 
 Brothers, It would not have seemed becoming 
 to go in there and stretch out one's foot to that 
 blue iron-spectacled glance, owing him for more 
 than — say — ^two pairs, just the comfortable re- 
 assurance that one was still his client. 
 
 For it was not possible to go to him very often 
 — ^his boots lasted terribly, having something 
 beyond the temporary — some, as it were, essence 
 of boot stitched into them. 
 
 One went in, not as into most shops, in the 
 mood of: "Please serve me, and let me go!" but 
 restfuUy, as one enters a church; and, sitting on 
 the single wooden chair, waited — ^for there was 
 never anybody there. Soon, over the top edge 
 of that sort of well — ^rather dark, and smeUing 
 soothingly of leather — which formed the shop, 
 there would be seen his face, or that of his elder 
 brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and 
 the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow 
 
 16 
 
QUALITY 
 
 wooden stairs, and he would stand before one 
 without coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with 
 sleeves turned back, bUnking — as if awakened 
 from some dream of boots, or like an owl sur- 
 prised in daylight and annoyed at this inter- 
 ruption. 
 
 And I woiild say: "How do you do, Mr. Gess- 
 ler? Could you make me a pair of Russia leather 
 boots?" 
 
 Without a word he would leave me, retiring 
 whence he came, or into the other portion of the 
 shop, and I would continue to rest in the wooden 
 chair, inhaling the incense of his trade. Soon he 
 would come back, holding in his thin, veined hand 
 a piece of gold-brown leather. With eyes fixed 
 on it, he would remark: "What a beaudiful 
 biece!" When I, too, had ad^aired it, he would 
 speak again. "When do you wand dem?" And 
 I would answer: "Oh! As soon as you conve- 
 niently can." And he would say: "To-morrow 
 fordnighd?" Or if he were his elder brother: "I 
 wiU ask my brudder!" 
 
 Then I would murmur: "Thank you! Good- 
 morning, Mr. Gessler." "Goot-moming!" he 
 would reply, stiU looking at the leather in his 
 hand. And as I moved to the door, I would hear 
 the tip-tap of his bast slippers restoring him, up 
 
 17 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 the stairs, to his dream of boots. But if it were 
 some new kind of foot-gear that he had not yet 
 made me, then indeed he would observe ceremony 
 — divesting me of my boot and holding it long 
 in his hand, looking at it with eyes at once criti- 
 cal and loving, as if recalling the glow with which 
 he had created it, and rebuking the way in which 
 one had disorganized this masterpiece. Then, 
 placing my foot on a piece of paper, he would two 
 or three times tickle the outer edges with a pen- 
 cil and pass his nervous fingers over my toes, 
 feeling himself into the heart of my requirements. 
 
 I cannot forget that day on which I had oc- 
 casion to say to him: "Mr. Gessler, that last pair 
 of town walking-boots creaked, you know." 
 
 He looked at me for a time without repljung, 
 as if expecting me to withdraw or qualify the 
 statement, then said: 
 
 "Id shouldn'd 'ave greaked." 
 
 "It did, I'm afraid." 
 
 "You goddem wed before dey found demselves?" 
 
 "I don't think so." 
 
 At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for 
 memory of those boots, and I felt sorry I had 
 mentioned this grave thing. 
 
 "Zend dem back!" he said; "I will look at 
 dem." 
 
 18 
 
QUALITY 
 
 A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots 
 surged up in me, so well could I imagine the sor- 
 rowful long curiosity of regard which he would 
 bend on them. 
 
 "Zome boods," he said slowly, "are bad from 
 birdt. If I can do noding wid dem, I dake dem 
 off your bill." 
 
 Once (once only) I went absent-mindedly into 
 his shop in a pair of boots bought in an emer- 
 gency at some large firm's. He took my order 
 without showing me any leather, and I could feel 
 his eyes penetrating the inferior integument of 
 my foot. At last he said: 
 
 "Dose are nod my boods." 
 
 The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, 
 not even of contempt, but there was in it some- 
 thing qiiiet that froze the blood. He put his 
 hand down and pressed a finger on the place 
 where the left boot, endeavouring to be fashion- 
 able, was not quite comfortable. 
 
 "Id 'urds you dere," he said. "Dose big 
 virms 'ave no self-respect. Drash!" And then, 
 as if something had given way within him, he 
 spoke long and bitterly. It was the only time 
 I ever heard him discuss the conditions and hard- 
 ships of his trade. 
 
 "Dey get id all," he said, "dey get id by ad- 
 19 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 verdisement, nod by work. Dey dake it away 
 from us, who lofe our boods. Id gomes to this 
 — ^bresently I haf no work. Every year id gets 
 less — ^you will see." And looking at his lined 
 face I saw things I had never noticed before, bit- 
 ter things and bitter struggle — and what a lot 
 of grey hairs there seemed suddenly in his red 
 beard! 
 
 As best I could, I explained the circumstances 
 of the purchase of those ill-omened boots. But 
 his face and voice made so deep impression that 
 during the next few minutes I ordered many 
 pairs. Nemesis fell! They lasted more terribly 
 than ever. And I was not able conscientiously 
 to go to him for nearly two years. 
 
 When at last I went I was surprised to find that 
 outside one of the two Uttle windows of his shop 
 another name was painted, also that of a boot- 
 maker—making, of course, for the Royal Family. 
 The old familiar boots, no longer in dignified 
 isolation, were huddled in the single window. 
 Inside, the now contracted well of the one httle 
 shop was more scented and darker than ever. 
 And it was longer than usual, too, before a face 
 peered down, and the tip-tap of the bast slippers 
 began. At last he stood before me, and, gazing 
 through those rusty iron spectacles, said: 
 
 20 
 
QUALITY 
 
 "Mr. , isn'd it?" 
 
 "Ah! Mr. Gessler," I stammered, "but your 
 boots are really too good, you know! See, these 
 are quite decent still!" And I stretched out to 
 him my foot. He looked at it. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "beople do nod wand good 
 boods, id seems." 
 
 To get away from his reproachful eyes and 
 voice I hastily remarked: "What have you done 
 to your shop?" 
 
 He answered quietly: "Id was too exbensif. 
 Do you wand some boods?" 
 
 I ordered three pairs, though I had only wanted 
 two, and quickly left. I had, I do not know quite 
 what feeling of being part, in his mind, of a con- 
 spiracy against him; or not perhaps so much 
 against him as against his idea of boot. One 
 does not, I suppose, care to feel like that; for it 
 was again many months before my next visit to 
 his shop, paid, I remember, with the feehng: "Oh! 
 well, I can't leave the old boy — so here goes! 
 Perhaps it'U be his Qlder brother!" 
 
 For his elder brother, I knew, had not char- 
 acter enough to reproach me, even dumbly. 
 
 And, to my rehef, in the shop there did appear 
 to be his elder brother, handling a piece of leather. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Gessler," I said, "how are you?" 
 21 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 He came close, and peered at me. 
 
 "I am breddy well," he said slowly "but my 
 elder brudder is dead." 
 
 And I saw that it was indeed himself — ^but 
 how aged and wan! And never before had I 
 heard him mention his brother. Much shocked, 
 I murmured: "Oh! I am sorry!" 
 
 "Yes," he answered, "he was a good man, he 
 made a good bood; but he is dead." And he 
 touched the top of his head, where the hair had 
 suddenly gone as thin as it had been on that of 
 his poor brother, to indicate, I suppose, the cause 
 of death. "He could nod ged over losing de 
 oder shop. Do you wand any boods?" And he 
 held up the leather in his hand: "Id's a beaudi- 
 ful biece." 
 
 I ordered several pairs. It was very long be- 
 fore they came — ^but they were better than ever. 
 One simply could not wear them out. And soon 
 after that I ■v?ent abroad. 
 
 It was over a year before I was again in Lon- 
 don. And the first shop I went to was my old 
 friend's. I had left a man of sixty, I came back 
 to one of seventy-five, pinched and worn and 
 tremulous, who genuinely, this time, did not at 
 first know me. 
 
 "Oh! Mr. Gessler," I said, sick at heart; "how 
 22 
 
QUALITY 
 
 splendid your boots are! See, I've been wearing 
 this pair nearly all the time I've been abroad; 
 and they're not half worn out, are they?" 
 
 He looked long at my boots — a pair of Russia 
 leather, and his face seemed to regain steadiness. 
 Putting his hand on my instep, he said: 
 
 " Do dey vid you here? I 'ad drouble wid dat 
 bair, I remember." 
 
 I assured him that they had fitted beautifully. 
 
 "Do you wand any boods?" he said. "I can 
 make dem quickly; id is a slack dime." 
 
 I answered: "Please, please! I want boots all 
 round — every kind!" 
 
 "I win make a vresh model. Your food must 
 be bigger." And with utter slowness, he traced 
 round my foot, and felt my toes, only once look- 
 ing up to say: 
 
 "Did I dell you my brudder was dead?" 
 
 To watch him was painful, so feeble had he 
 grown; I was glad to get away. 
 
 I had given those boots up, when one evening 
 they came. Opening the parcel, I set the four 
 pairs out in a row. Then one by one I tried them 
 on. There was no doubt about it. In shape and 
 fit, in finish and quality of leather, they were the 
 best he had ever made me. And in the mouth of 
 one of the Town walking-boots I found his bill. 
 
 23 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 The amount was the same as usual, but it gave me 
 quite a shock. He had never before sent it in till 
 quarter day. I flew down-stairs, and wrote a 
 cheque, and posted it at once with my own hand. 
 
 A week later, passing the httle street, I thoijght 
 I would go in and tell him how splendidly the new 
 boots fitted. But when I came to where his shop 
 had been, his name was gone. Still there, in the 
 window, were the slim pimaps, the patent leathers 
 with cloth tops, the sooty riding boots. 
 
 I went ia, very much disturbed. In the two 
 little shops — again made iato one — ^was a young 
 man with an English face. 
 
 "Mr. Gesslerin?"Isaid. 
 
 He gave me a strange, ingratiating look. 
 
 "No, su-," he said, "no. But we can attend 
 to anything with pleasure. We've taken the shop 
 over. You've seen our name, no doubt, next 
 door. We make for some very good people." 
 
 "Yes, yes," I said; "but Mr. Gessler?" 
 
 "Oh!" he answered; "dead." 
 
 "Dead! But I only received these boots from 
 him last Wednesday week." 
 
 "Ah!" he said; "a shockin' go. Poor old man 
 starved 'imself." 
 
 "Good God!" 
 
 "Slow starvation, the doctor called it! You 
 24 
 
QUALITY 
 
 see he went to work in such a way! Would keep 
 the shop on; wouldn't have a soul touch his boots 
 except himself. When he got an order, it took 
 him such a time. People won't wait. He lost 
 everybody. And there he'd sit, goin' on and on 
 — I will say that for him — ^not a man in London 
 made a better boot ! But look at the competition ! 
 He never advertised ! Would 'ave the best leather, 
 too, and do it all 'imself . Well, there it is. What 
 could you expect with his ideas?" 
 
 "But starvation !" 
 
 "That may be a bit flowery, as the sayin' is — 
 but I know myself he was sittin' over his boots 
 day and night, to the very last. You see I used 
 to watch him. Never gave 'imself time to eat; 
 never had a penny in the house. All went in rent 
 and leather. How he Uved so long I don't know. 
 He regular let his fire go out. He was a character. 
 But he made good boots." 
 
 "Yes," I said, "he made good boots." 
 
 And I turned and went out quickly, for I did 
 not want that youth to know that I could hardly 
 see. 
 
 1911. 
 
 25 
 
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL 
 
 I LAY often that summer on a slope of sand 
 and coarse grass, close to the Cornish sea, try- 
 ing to catch thoughts; and I was trying very hard 
 when I saw them coming hand in hand. 
 
 She was dressed in blue Hnen, and a httle cloud 
 of honey-coloured hair; her small face had serious 
 eyes the colom- of the chicory flowers she was hold- 
 ing up to sniff at — a clean sober httle maid, with 
 a very touching upward look of trust. Her com- 
 panion was a strong, active boy of perhaps four- 
 teen, and he, too, was serious — ^his deep-set, black- 
 lashed eyes looked down at her with a queer 
 protective wonder, the while he explained in a 
 soft voice broken up between two ages, that exact 
 process which bees adopt to draw honey out of 
 flowers. Once or twice this hoarse but charm- 
 ing voice became quite fervent, when she had 
 evidently failed to follow; it was as if he would 
 have been impatient, only he kne\<> he must not, 
 because she was a lady and younger than himself, 
 and he loved her. 
 
 They sat down just below my nook, and began 
 26 
 
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL 
 
 to count the petals of a chicory flower, and slowly 
 she nestled in to him, and he put his arm round 
 her. Never did I see such sedate, sweet lovering, 
 so trusting on her part, so guardianlike on his. 
 They were Hke, in miniature — though more dewy, 
 — ^those sober couples who have long lived to- 
 gether, yet whom one still catches looking at each 
 other with confidential tenderness, and in whom, 
 one feels, passion is atrophied from never having 
 been in use. 
 
 Long I sat watching them in their cool com- 
 munion, half-embraced, talking a httle, smiling 
 a httle, never once kissing. They did not seem 
 shy of that; it was rather as if they were too much 
 each other's to think of such a thing. And then 
 her head shd lower and lower down his shoulder, 
 and sleep buttoned the Uds over those chicory- 
 blue eyes. How careful he was, then, not to 
 wake her, though I could see his arm was getting 
 stiff ! He stUl sat, good as gold, holding her, till it 
 began quite to hurt me to see his shoulder thus 
 in chancery. But presently I saw him draw his. 
 arm away ever so carefully, lay her head down' 
 on the grass, and lean forward to stare at some- 
 thing. Straight in front of them was a rriagpie, 
 balancing itself on a stripped twig of thorn-tree. 
 The agitating bird, painted of night and day, was 
 
 27 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 making a queer noise and flirting one wing, as if 
 trying to attract attention. Rising from the 
 twig, it circled, vivid and stealthy, twice round 
 the tree, and flew to another a dozen paces off. 
 The boy rose; he looked at his httle mate, looked 
 at the bird, and began quietly to move toward 
 it; but uttering again its queer call, the bird 
 gUded on to a third thorn-tree. The boy hesi- 
 tated then — ^but once more the bird flew on, and 
 suddenly dipped over the lull. I saw the boy 
 break into a run; and getting up quickly, I ran 
 too. 
 
 When I reached the crest there was the black 
 and white bird flying low into a dell, and there 
 the boy, with hair streaming back, was rushing 
 helter-skelter down the hiU. He reached the bot- 
 tom and vanished into the dell. I, too, ran down 
 the hiU. For all that I was prying and must not 
 be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in among 
 the trees to the edge of a pool that could know 
 but Httle sunlight, so thickly arched was it by 
 willows, birch-trees, and wild hazel. There, in 
 a swing of boughs above the water, was perched 
 no pied bird, but a young, dark-haired girl with 
 dangling, bare, brown legs. And on the brink of 
 the black water goldened with fallen leaves, the 
 boy was crouching, gaziag up at her with all his 
 
 28 
 
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL 
 
 soul. She swung just out of reach and looked 
 down at him across the pool. How old was she, 
 with her brown limbs, and her gleaming, slanting 
 eyes? Or was she only the spirit of the dell, this 
 elf-thing swinging there, entwined with boughs 
 and the dark water, and covered with a shift of 
 wet birch leaves. So strange a face she had, wild, 
 almost wicked, yet so tender; a face that I could 
 not take my eyes from. Her bare toes just 
 touched the pool, and flicked up drops of water 
 that feU on the boy's face. 
 
 From him all the sober steadfastness was gone; 
 already he looked as wild as she, and his arms 
 were stretched out trying to reach her feet. I 
 wanted to cry to him: "Go back, boy, go back!" 
 but could not; her elf eyes held me dumb — they 
 looked so lost in their tender wUdness. 
 
 And then my heart stood still, for he had slipped 
 and was strugghng in deep water beneath her 
 feet. What a gaze was that he was turning up 
 to her — ^not frightened, but so longing, so des- 
 perate; and hers — ^how triimiphant, and how 
 happy! 
 
 And then he clutched her foot, and clung, and 
 climbed; and bending down, she drew him up to 
 her, all wet, and clasped him in the swing of 
 boughs. 
 
 29 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 I took a long breath then. An orange gleam 
 of sunlight had flamed in among the shadows 
 and fell round those two where they swung over 
 the dark water, with hps close together and spirits 
 lost in one another's, and in their eyes such drown- 
 ing ecstasy! And then — ^they kissed! All round 
 me pool, and leaves, and air seemed suddenly to 
 swirl and melt — I could see nothing plain! . . . 
 What time passed — ^I do not know — ^before their 
 faces slowly again became visible! His face — 
 the sober boy's — ^was turned away from her, and 
 he was listening; for above the whispering of 
 leaves a sound of weeping came from over the 
 hill. It was to that he hstened. 
 
 And even as I looked he sUd down from out of 
 her arms, back into the pool, and began strugghng 
 to gain the edge. What grief and longing in her 
 wild face then! But she did not wail. She did 
 not try to pull him back; that elfish heart of dig- 
 nity could reach out to what was coming, it could 
 not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the 
 boughs and water, she watched him abandon her. 
 
 Slowly the struggling boy gained land, and 
 lay there, breathless. And still that soimd of 
 lonely weeping came from over the hill. 
 
 Listening, but looking at those wild, mourning 
 eyes that never moved from him, he lay. Once 
 
 30 
 
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL 
 
 he turned back toward the water, but fire had 
 died within him; his hands dropped, nerveless — 
 his young face was all bewilderment. 
 
 And the quiet darkness of the pool waited, and 
 the trees, and those lost eyes of hers, and my 
 heart. And ever from over the hill came the 
 httle fair maiden's lonely weeping. 
 
 Then, slowly dragging his feet, stumbling, half- 
 blinded, turning and turning to look back, the 
 boy groped his way out through the trees toward 
 that sound; and, as he went, that dark spirit-elf, 
 abandoned, clasping her own lithe body with her 
 arms, never moved her gaze from him. 
 
 I, too, crept away, and when I was safe outside 
 in the pale evening sunhght, peered back into the 
 dell. There under the dark trees she was no 
 longer, but round and round that cage of passion, 
 fluttering and wailing through the leaves, over the 
 black water, was the magpie, flighting on its twi- 
 light wings. 
 
 I turned and ran and ran tiU I came over the 
 hiU and saw the boy and the little fair, sober 
 maiden sitting together once more on the open 
 slope, under the high blue heaven. She was 
 nestling her tear-stained face against his shoulder 
 and speaking already of indifferent things. And 
 he — ^he was holding her with his arm and watch- 
 
 31 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 ing over her with eyes that seemed to see some- 
 thing else. 
 
 And so I lay, hearing their sober talk and gaz- 
 ing at their sober little figures, till I awoke and 
 knew I had dreamed all that little allegory of 
 sacred and profane love, and from it had returned 
 to reason, knowing no more than ever which was 
 which. 
 
 1912. 
 
 32 
 
SHEEP-SHEARING 
 
 FROM early morning there had been bleating 
 of sheep in the yard, so that one knew the 
 creatures were being sheared, and toward evening 
 I went along to see. Thirty or forty naked-look- 
 ing ghosts of sheep were penned against the barn, 
 and perhaps a dozen stiU inhabiting their coats. 
 Into the wool of one of these bulky ewes the far- 
 mer's small, yellow-haired daughter was twisting 
 her fist, hustling it toward Fate; though pulled 
 almost off her feet by the frightened, stubborn 
 creature, she never let go, till, with a despairing 
 cough, the ewe had passed over the threshold 
 and waa fast in the hands of a shearer. At the 
 far end of the bam, close by the doors, I stood a 
 Doinute or two before shifting up to watch the 
 shearing. Into that dim, beautiful home of age, 
 with its great rafters and mellow stone archways, 
 the June sunHght shone through loopholes and 
 chinks, in thin glamour, powdering with its very 
 strangeness the dark cathedraled air, where, high 
 up, clung a fog of old grey cobwebs so thick as 
 ever were the stalactites of a huge cave. At 
 
 33 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 this end the scent of sheep and wool and men had 
 not yet routed that home essence of the bam, 
 Uke the savour of acorns and withering beech 
 leaves. 
 
 They were shearing by hand this year, nine of 
 them, counting the postman, who, though farm- 
 bred, "did'n putt much to the shearin'," but had 
 come to round the sheep up and give general aid. 
 
 Sitting on the creatures, or with a leg firmly 
 crooked over their heads, each shearer, even the 
 two boys, had an air of going at it in his own way. 
 In their white canvas shearing suits they worked 
 very steadily, almost in silence, as if drowsed by 
 the "cUck-cUp, chck-clip" of the shears. And 
 the sheep, but for an occasional wriggle of legs 
 or head, lay quiet enough, having an inborn sense 
 perhaps of the fitness of things, even when, once 
 in a way, they lost more than wool; glad too, 
 mayhap, to be rid of their matted vestments. 
 From time to time the Uttle damsel offered each 
 shearer a jug and glass, but no man drank till 
 he had finished his sheep; then he would get up, 
 stretch his cramped muscles, drink deep, and 
 almost instantly sit down again on a fresh beast. 
 And always there was the buzz of flies swarming 
 in the simlight of the open doorway, the dry 
 rustle of the pollarded lime-trees in the sharp wind 
 
 34 
 
SHEEP-SHEARING 
 
 outside, the bleating of some released ewe, upset 
 at her own nakedness, the scrape and shuffle of 
 heels and sheep's Umbs on the floor, together with 
 the "click-clip, chck-clip" of the shears. 
 
 As each ewe, finished with, struggled up, helped 
 by a friendly shove, and bolted out dazedly into 
 the pen, I could not help wondering what was 
 passing in her head — ^in the heads of all those 
 imceremoniously treated creatures; and, moving 
 nearer to the postman, I said: 
 
 "They're really very good, on the whole." 
 
 He looked at me, I thought, queerly. 
 
 "Yaas," he answered; "Mr. Molton's the best 
 of them." 
 
 I looked askance at Mr. Molton; but, with his 
 knee crooked round a young ewe, he was shearing 
 calmly. 
 
 "Yes," I admitted, "he is certainly good." 
 
 "Yaas," replied the postman. 
 
 Edging back into the darkness, away from that 
 uncomprehending youth, I escaped into the air, 
 and passing the remains of last year's stacks imder 
 the tall, toppling elms, sat down in a field under 
 the bank. It seemed to me that I had food for 
 thought. In that httle misunderstanding between 
 me and the postman was all the essence of the 
 difference between that state of civilisation in 
 
 35 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 which sheep could prompt a sentiment, and that 
 state in which sheep could not. 
 
 The heat from the dropping sun, not far now 
 above the moorline, struck full into the ferns and 
 long grass of the bank where I was sitting, and 
 the midges rioted on me in this last warmth. 
 The wind was barred out, so that one had the full 
 sweetness of the clover, fast becoming hay, over 
 which the swallows were wheeUng and swooping 
 after flies. And far up, as it were the crown of 
 Nature's beautiful devouring circle, a buzzard 
 hawk, almost stationary on the air, floated, in- 
 tent on something pleasant below him. A num- 
 ber of little hens crept through the gate one by 
 one, and came round me. It seemed to them that 
 I was there to feed them; and they held their 
 neat red or yellow heads to one side and the 
 other, inquiring with their beady eyes, surprised 
 at my stillness. They were pretty with their 
 speckled feathers, and as it seemed to me, plump 
 and young, so that I wondered how many of them 
 would in time feed me. Finding, however, that 
 I gave them nothing to eat, they went away, and 
 there arose, in place of their clucking, the thin 
 singing of air passing through some long tube. 
 I knew it for the whining of my dog, who had 
 nosed me out, but could not get through the pad- 
 
 36 
 
SHEEP-SHEARING 
 
 locked gate. And as I lifted him over, I was glad 
 the postman covild not see me — ^for I felt that to 
 lift a dog over a gate would be against the princi- 
 ples of one for whom the connection of sheep with 
 good behaviour had been too strange a thought. 
 And it suddenly rushed into my mind that the 
 time would no doubt come when the conduct of 
 apples, being plucked from the mother tree, would 
 inspire us, and we should say: "They're really 
 very good!" And I wondered, were those future 
 watchers of apple-gathering farther from me than 
 I, watching sheep-shearing, from the postman? 
 I thought, too, of the pretty dreams being dreamt 
 about the land, and of the people who dreamed 
 them. And I looked at that land, covered with 
 the sweet pinkish-green of the clover, and con- 
 sidered how much of it, through the medium of 
 sheep, would find its way into me, to enable me to 
 come out here and be eaten by midges, and specu- 
 late about things, and conceive the sentiment of 
 how good the sheep were. And it aU seemed 
 queer, I thought, too, of a world entirely com- 
 posed of people who could see the sheen rippling 
 on that clover, and feel a sort of sweet elation at 
 the scent of it, and I wondered how much clover 
 would be sown then? Many things I thought of, 
 sitting there, till the sim sank below the moor- 
 
 37 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 line, the wind died off the clover, and the midges 
 slept. Here and there in the iris-coloured sky a 
 star crept out; the soft-hooting owls awoke. But 
 still I lingered, watching how, one after another, 
 shapes and colours died into twiUght; and I won- 
 dered what the postman thought of twilight, that 
 inconvenient state, when things were neither dark 
 nor light; and I wondered what the sheep were 
 thinking this first night without their coats. 
 Then, slinking along the hedge, noiseless, unheard 
 by my sleeping spaniel, I saw a tawny dog steal- 
 ing by. He passed without seeing us, licking his 
 lean chops. 
 
 "Yes, friend," I thought, "you have been after 
 something very unholy; you have been digging up 
 buried lamb, or some desirable person of that kind ! " 
 
 Sneaking past, in this sweet night, which stirred 
 in one such sentiment, that ghouhsh cur was like 
 the omnivorousness of Nature. And it came to 
 me, how wonderful and queer was a world which 
 embraced within it, not only this red gloating 
 dog, fresh from his feast on the decaying flesh of 
 lamb, but all those hundreds of beings in whom 
 the sight of a fly with one leg shortened produced 
 a quiver of compassion. For in this savage, slink- 
 ing shadow, I knew that I had beheld a manifes- 
 tation of divinity no less than in the smile of the 
 
 38 
 
SHEEP-SHEARING 
 
 sky, each minute growing more starry. With 
 what Hannony — ^I thought — can these two be 
 enwrapped in this round world so fast that it 
 cannot be moved! What secret, marvellous, all- 
 pervading Principle can harmonise these things! 
 And the old words good' and 'evil' seemed to 
 me more than ever quaint. 
 
 It was almost dark, and the dew falhng fast; 
 I roused my spaniel to go in. 
 
 Over the high-walled yard, the bams, the moon- 
 white porch, dusk had brushedats velvet. Through 
 an open window came a roaring sound. Mr. 
 Molton was singing "The Happy Warrior," to 
 celebrate the finish of the shearing. The big 
 doors into the garden, passed through, cut off the 
 full sweetness of that song; for there the owls were 
 already masters of night with their music. 
 
 On the dew-whitened grass of the lawn, we came 
 on a little dark beast. My spaniel, liking its 
 savoiu-, stood with his nose at point; but, being 
 called off, I could feel him obedient, still quiver- 
 ing, under my hand. 
 
 In the field, a wan huddle in the blackness, the 
 dismantled sheep lay under a holly hedge. The 
 wind had died; it was mist-warm. 
 
 1910. 
 
 39 
 
EVOLUTION 
 
 COMING out of the theatre, we fo\ind it ut- 
 terly impossible to get a taxicab; and, 
 though it was raining slightly, walked through 
 Leicester Square in the hope of picking one up as it 
 returned down Piccadilly. Numbers of hansoms 
 and four-wheelers passed, or stood by the curb, 
 haihng us feebly, or not even attempting to at- 
 tract our attention, but every taxi seemed to have 
 its load. At Piccadilly Circus, losing patience, 
 we beckoned to a four-wheeler and resigned our- 
 selves to a long, slow journey. A sou'-westerly 
 air blew through the open windows, and there was 
 in it the scent of change, that wet scent which 
 visits even the hearts of towns and inspires the 
 watcher of their myriad activities with thought 
 of the jestless Force that forever cries: "On, on!" 
 But gradually the steady patter of the horSe's 
 hoofs, the rattling of the' windows, the slow thud- 
 ding of the wheels, pressed on us so drowsily that 
 when, at last, we reached home we were more 
 than half asleep. The fare was two shillings, and, 
 standing in the lamplight to make sure the coin 
 
 40 
 
EVOLUTION 
 
 was a haK-crown before handing it to the driver, 
 we happened to look up. This cabman appeared 
 to be a man of about sixty, with a long, thin face, 
 whose chin and drooping grey moustaches seemed 
 in permanent repose on the up-turned collar of 
 his old blue overcoat. But the remarkable fea^ 
 tures of his face were the two furrows down his 
 cheeks, so deep and hoUow that it seemed as 
 though that face were a collection of bones without 
 coherent flesh, among which the eyes were sunk 
 back so far that they had lost their lustre. He 
 sat quite motionless, gazing at the tail of his horse. 
 And, almost tmconsciously, one added the rest 
 of one's silver to that half-crown. He took the 
 coins without speaking; but, as we were turning 
 into the garden gate, we heard him say: 
 "Thank you; you've saved my life." 
 Not knowing, either of us, what to reply to 
 such a curious speech, we closed the gate again 
 and came back to the cab. 
 "Are things so very bad?" 
 "They are," rephed the cabman. "It's done 
 with — ^is this job. We're not wanted now." And, 
 taking up his whip, he prepared to drive away. 
 "How long have they been as bad as this?" 
 The cabman dropped his hand again, as though 
 glad to rest it, and answered incoherently: 
 
 41 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 "Thirty-five year I've been drivin' a cab." 
 And, sunk again in contemplation of his horse's 
 tail, he could only be roused by many questions 
 to express himself, having, as it seemed, no knowl- 
 edge of the habit. 
 
 "I don't blame the taxis, I don't blame nobody. 
 It's come on us, that's what it has. I left the wife 
 this morning with nothiag in the house. She 
 was sajdng to me only yesterday: 'What have 
 you brought home the last four months?' 'Put 
 it at six shillings a week,' I said. 'No,' she said, 
 'seven.' Well, that's right — she enters it all down 
 in her book." 
 "You are really going short of food?" 
 The cabman smiled; and that smile between 
 those two deep hoUows was surely as strange as 
 ever shone on a human face. 
 
 "You may say that," he said. "Well, what 
 does it amoimt to? Before I picked you up, I 
 had one eighteenpenny fare to-day; and yesterday 
 I took five shillings. And I've got seven bob a 
 day to pay for the cab, and that's low, too. 
 There's many and many a proprietor that's broke 
 and gone— every bit as bad as us. They let us 
 down as easy as ever they can; you can't get 
 blood from a stone, can you?" Once again he 
 smiled. "I'm sorry for them, too, and I'm sorry 
 
 42 
 
EVOLUTION 
 
 for the horses, though they come out best of the 
 three of us, I do believe." 
 
 One of us muttered something about the 
 Pubhc. 
 
 The cabman turned his face and stared down 
 through the darkness. 
 
 "The Pubhc?" he said, and his voice had in it 
 a faint surprise. "Well, they all want the taxis. 
 It's natural. They get about faster in them, and 
 time's money. I was seven hours before I picked 
 you up. And then you was lookin' for a taxi. 
 Them as take us because they can't get better, 
 they're not in a good temper, as a rule. And 
 there's a few old ladies that's frightened of the 
 motors, but old ladies aren't never very free with 
 their money — can't afford to be, the most of them, 
 I expect." 
 
 "Everybody's sorry for you; one would have 
 thought that " 
 
 He interrupted quietly: "Sorrow don't buy 
 bread. ... I never had nobody ask me about 
 things before." And, slowly moving his long face 
 from side to side, he added: "Besides, what could 
 people do? They can't be expected to support 
 you; and if they started askin' you questions 
 they'd feel it very awkward. They know that, I 
 suspect. Of course, there's such a lot of us; the 
 
 43 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 hansoms are pretty nigh as bad off as we are. 
 Well, we're gettin' fewer every day, that's one 
 thing." 
 
 Not knowing whether or no to manifest sym- 
 pathy with this extinction, we approached the 
 horse. It was a horse that "stood over" a good 
 deal at the knee, and in the darkness seemed to 
 have innumerable ribs. And suddenly one of us 
 said: "Many people want to see nothing but taxis 
 on the streets, if only for the sake of the horses," 
 
 The cabman nodded. 
 
 "This old fellow," he said, "never carried a deal 
 of flesh. His grub don't put spirit into him nowa- 
 days; it's not up to much in quahty, but he gets 
 enough of it." 
 
 "And you don't?" 
 
 The cabman again took up his whip. 
 
 "I don't suppose," he said without emotion, 
 "any one could ever find another job for me now. 
 I've been at this too long. It'U be the workhouse, 
 if it's not the other thing." 
 
 And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he 
 smiled for the third time. 
 
 "Yes," he said slowly, "it's a bit 'ard on us, be- 
 cause we've done nothing to deserve it. But 
 things are Uke that, so far as I can see. One 
 thing comes pushin' out another, and so you go 
 
 44 
 
EVOLUTION 
 
 on. I've thought about it — ^you get to thinkin' 
 and worryin' about the rights o' things, sittin' up 
 here all day. No, I don't see anything for it. 
 It'll soon be the end of us now — can't last much 
 longer. And I don't know that I'll be sorry to 
 have done with it. It's pretty weU broke my 
 spirit." 
 
 "There was a fxmd got up." 
 
 "Yes, it helped a few of us to learn the motor- 
 drivin' ; but what's the good of that to me, at my 
 time of life? Sixty, that's my age; I'm not the 
 only one — ^there's hundreds Hke me. We're not 
 fit for it, that's the fact; we haven't got the nerve 
 now. It'd want a mint of money to help lis. 
 And what you say's the truth — ^people want to see 
 the end of us. They want the taxis — our day's 
 over. I'm not complaining; you asked me about 
 it yourself." 
 
 And for the third time he raised his whip. 
 
 "Tell me what you would have done if you had 
 been given your fare and just sixpence over?" 
 
 The cabman stared downward, as though puz- 
 zled by that question. 
 
 "Done? Why, nothing. What could I have 
 done?" 
 
 "But you said that it had saved your Hfe." 
 
 "Yes, I said that," he answered slowly; "I was 
 45 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 feelin' a bit low. You can't help it sometimes; 
 it's the thing comin' on you, and no way out of it 
 — ^that's what gets over you. We try not to think 
 about it, as a rule." 
 
 And this time, with a "Thank you, kindly!" he 
 touched his horse's flank with the whip. Like a 
 thing aroused from sleep the forgotten creature 
 started and began to draw the cabman away 
 from us. Very slowly they travelled down the 
 road among the shadows of the trees broken by 
 lamplight. Above us, white ships of cloud were 
 sailing rapidly across the dark river of sky on the 
 wind which smelled of change. And, after the 
 cab was lost to sight, that wind still brought to us 
 the dying sound of the slow wheels. 
 
 1910. 
 
 46 
 
RIDING IN MIST 
 
 WET and hot, having her winter coat, the 
 mare exactly matched the drenched fox- 
 coloured beech-leaf drifts. As was her wont on 
 such misty days, she danced along with head held 
 high, her neck a little arched, her ears pricked, 
 pretending that things were not what they seemed, 
 and now and then vigorously trying to leave me 
 planted on the air. Stones which had rolled out 
 of the lane banks were her especial goblins, for 
 one such had maltreated her nerves before she 
 came into this ball-room world, and she had not 
 forgotten. 
 
 There was no wind that day. On the beech- 
 trees were still just enough of coppery leaves to 
 look like fires Hghted high-up to air the eeriness; 
 but most of the twigs, pearled with water, were 
 patterned very naked against universal grey. 
 Berries were few, except the pink spindle one, so 
 far the most beautiful, of which there were more 
 than Earth generally vouchsafes. There was no 
 sound in the deep lanes, none of that sweet, over- 
 head sighing of yesterday at the same hour, but 
 there was a quahty of silence — a dumb mist mur- 
 
 47 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 muration. We passed a tree with a proud pigeon 
 sitting on its top spire, quite too heavy for the 
 twig delicacy below; undisturbed by the mare's 
 hoofs or the creaking of saddle leather, he let us 
 pass, absorbed in his world of tranquil turtle- 
 doves. The mist had thickened to a white, in- 
 finitesimal rain-dust, and in it the trees began to 
 look strange, as though they had lost one another. 
 The world seemed inhabited only by quick, sound- 
 less wraiths as one trotted past. 
 
 Close to a farm-house the mare stood stiU with 
 that extreme suddenness pecuhar to her at times, 
 and four black pigs scuttled by and at once be- 
 came white air. By now we were both hot and 
 inclined to cling closely together and take liber- 
 ties with each other; I telling her about her na- 
 ture, name, and appearance, together with com- 
 ments on her manners; and she giving forth that 
 sterterous, sweet snuffle, which begins under the 
 star on her forehead. On such days she did not 
 sneeze, reserving those expressions of her joy for 
 sunny days and the crisp winds. At a forking of 
 the ways we came suddenly on one grey and three 
 brown ponies, who shied round and flung away 
 in front of us, a vision of pretty heads and haunches 
 tangled in the thin lane, tiU, conscious that they 
 were beyond their beat, they faced the bank and, 
 
 48 
 
RIDING IN MIST 
 
 one by one, scrambled over to join the other 
 ghosts out on the dim common. 
 
 Dipping down now over the road, we passed 
 hounds going home. Pied, dumb-footed shapes, 
 padding along in that soft-eyed, remote world of 
 theirs, with a tall riding splash of red in front, 
 and a tall splash of riding red behind. Then 
 through a gate we came on to the moor, amongst 
 whitened furze. The mist thickened. A curlew 
 was whistling on its invisible way, far up; and 
 that wistful, wild calling seemed the very voice 
 of the day. Keeping in view the glint of the 
 road, we galloped; rejoicing, both of us, to be 
 free of the jog-jog of the lanes. 
 
 And first the voice of the curlew died; then the 
 glint of the road vanished; and we were quite 
 alone. Even the furze was gone; no shape of 
 anything left, only the black, peaty ground, and 
 the thickening mist. We might as well have been 
 that lonely bird crossing up there in the blind 
 white nothingness, hke a human spirit wandering 
 on the undiscovered moor of its own future. 
 
 The mare jumped a pile of stones, which ap- 
 peared, as it were, after we had passed over; and 
 it came into my mind that, if we happened to 
 strike one of the old quarry pits, we should in- 
 fallibly be killed. Somehow, there was pleasure 
 
 -49 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 in this thought, that we might, or might not, 
 strike that old quarry pit. The blood in us being 
 hot, we had pure joy in charging its white, im- 
 palpable solidity, which made way, and at once 
 closed in behind us. There was great fun in this 
 yard-by-yard discovery that we were not yet dead, 
 this flying, shelterless challenge to whatever might 
 Ue out there, five yards in front. We felt su- 
 premely above the wish to know that our necks 
 were safe; we were happy, panting in the vapour 
 that beat against our faces from the sheer speed of 
 our galloping. Suddenly the ground grew lumpy 
 and made up-hill. The mare slackened pace; we 
 stopped. Before us, behind, to right and left, 
 white vapour. No sky, no distance, barely the 
 earth. No wind in our faces, no wind anywhere. 
 At first we just got our breath, thought nothiag, 
 talked a little. Then came a chillness, a faint 
 clutching over the heart. The mare snufiled; we 
 turned and made down-hill. And still the mist 
 thickened, and seemed to darken ever so little; 
 we went slowly, suddenly doubtful of all that was 
 in front. There came into our minds visions, so 
 distant in that darkening vapour, of a warm stall 
 and manger of oats; of tea and a log fire. The 
 mist seemed to have fingers now, long, dark- 
 white, crawling fingers; it seemed, too, to have in 
 
 50 
 
RIDING IN MIST 
 
 its sheer silence a sort of muttered menace, a 
 shuddery lurkingness, as if from out of it that 
 spirit of the unknown, which in hot blood we had 
 just now so gleefully mocked, were creeping up 
 at us, intent on its vengeance. Since the ground 
 no longer sloped, we could not go down-hill; there 
 were no means left of teUing in what direction we 
 were moving, and we stopped to Usten. There 
 was no sound, not one tiny noise of water, wind 
 in trees, or man; not even of birds or the moor 
 ponies. And the mist darkened. The mare 
 reached her head down and walked on, smelling 
 at the heather; every time she sniffed, one's heart 
 quivered, hoping she had found the way. She 
 threw up her head, snorted, and stood still ; and 
 there passed just in front of us a pony and her 
 foal, shapes of scampering dusk, whisked like 
 blurred shadows across a sheet. Hoof-silent in 
 the long heather — as ever were visiting ghosts — 
 they were gone in a flash. The mare plunged 
 forward, following. But, in the feel of her gallop, 
 and the feel of my heart, there was no more that 
 ecstasy of facing the unknown; there was only 
 the cold, hasty dread of loneliness. Far asunder 
 as the poles were those two sensations, evoked 
 by this same motion. The mare swerved vio- 
 lently and stopped. There, passing within three 
 
 51 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 yards, Jrmi the same direction as before, the sound- 
 less shapes of the pony and her foal flew by again, 
 more intangible, less dusky now against the darker 
 screen. Were we, then, to be haunted by those 
 bewildering uncanny ones, flitting past ever from 
 the same direction? This time the mare did not 
 follow, but stood still; knowiug as well as I that 
 direction was quite lost. Soon, with a whimper, 
 she picked her way on again, smelling at the 
 heather. And the mist darkened! 
 
 Then, out of the heart of that dusky whiteness, 
 came a tiny sound; we stood, not breathing, turn- 
 ing our heads. I could see the mare's eye fixed 
 and straining at the vapour. The tiny sound 
 grew till it became the muttering of wheels. The 
 mare dashed forward. The muttering ceased un- 
 timely; but she did not stop; turning abruptly 
 to the left, she shd, scrambled, and dropped into 
 a trot. The mist seemed whiter below us; we 
 were on the road. And involuntarily there came 
 from me a sotmd, not quite a shout, not quite an 
 oath. I saw the mare's eye turn back, faintly 
 derisive, as who should say: Alone I did it! Then 
 slowly, comfortably, a Httle ashamed, we jogged 
 on, in the mood of men and horses when danger 
 is over. So pleasant it seemed now, in one short 
 half-hour, to have passed through the circle-swing 
 
 52 
 
RIDING IN MIST 
 
 of the emotions, from the ecstasy of hot reckless- 
 ness to the clutching of chill fear. But the meet- 
 ing-point of those two sensations we had left out 
 there on the mysterious moor! Why, at one mo- 
 ment, had we thought it finer than anything on 
 earth to risk the breaking of our necks; and the 
 next, shuddered at being lost in the darkening 
 mist with winter night fast coming on? 
 
 And very luxuriously we turned once more into 
 the lanes, enjojdng the past, scenting the future. 
 Close to home, the first little eddy of wind stirred, 
 and the song of dripping tmgs began; an owl 
 hooted, honey-soft, in the fog. We came on two 
 farm hands mending the lane at the turn of the 
 avenue, and, curled on the top of the bank, then- 
 cosy red colhe pup, waiting for them to finish 
 work for the day. He raised his sharp nose and 
 looked at us dewily. We turned down, padding 
 softly in the wet fox-red drifts under the beech- 
 trees, whereon the last leaves still flickered out in 
 the darkening whiteness, that now seemed so Ht- 
 tle eerie. We passed the grey-green skeleton of 
 the farm-yard gate. A hen ran across us, cluck- 
 ing, into the dusk. The mare drew her long, 
 home-coming snuffle, and stood still. 
 
 1910. 
 
 53 
 
THE PROCESSION 
 
 IN one of those comers of our land canopied by 
 the fumes of blind industry, there was, on that 
 day, a luU in darkness. A fresh wind had split the 
 customary heaven, or roof of hell; was sweeping 
 long drifts of creamy clouds across a blue stiU pal- 
 lid with reek. The sun even shone — a sun whose 
 face seemed white and wondering. And under 
 that rare sun all the Httle town, among its slag 
 heaps and few tall chimneys, had an air of Uving 
 faster. In those continuous courts and alleys, 
 where the women worked, smoke from each httle 
 forge rose and dispersed into the wind with strange 
 alacrity; amongst the women, too, there was that 
 same eagerness, for the sunshine had crept in and 
 was making pale all those dark-raftered, sooted 
 ceilings which covered them in, together with 
 their immortal comrades, the small open furnaces. 
 About their work they had been busy since seven 
 o'clock; their feet pressing the leather lungs 
 which fanned the conical heaps of glowing fuel, 
 their hands poking into the glow a thin iron rod 
 till the end could be curved into a fieiy hook; 
 snapping it with a mallet; threading it with tongs 
 
 54 
 
THE PROCESSION 
 
 on to the chain; hammering, closing the link; and, 
 without a second's pause, thrusting the iron rod 
 again into the glow. And while they worked 
 . they chattered, laughed sometimes, now and then 
 sighed. They seemed of all ages and all types; 
 from her who looked Uke a peasant of Provence, 
 broad, brown, and strong, to the weariest white 
 consumptive wisp; from old women of seventy, 
 with straggling grey hair, to fifteen-year-old girls. 
 In the cottage forges there would be but one 
 worker, or two at most; in the shop forges four, 
 or even five, Httle glowing heaps; four or five of 
 the grimy, pale lung-bellows; and never a moment 
 without a fiery hook about to take its place on 
 the growing chains, never a second when the thin 
 smoke of the forges, and of those lives consuming 
 slowly in front of them, did not escape from out 
 of the dingy, whitewashed spaces past the dark 
 rafters, away to freedom. 
 
 But there had been in the air that morning 
 something more than the white sunlight. There 
 had been anticipation. And at two o'clock began 
 fulfilment. The forges were stilled, and from 
 court and alley forth came the women. In their 
 ragged working clothes, in their best clothes — 
 so little different; in boimets, in hats, bareheaded; 
 with babies bom and unborn, they swarmed into 
 
 55 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 the high street and formed across it behind the 
 band. A strange, magpie, jay-Uke flock; black, 
 white, patched with brown and green and blue, 
 shifting, chattering, laughing, seeming uncon- 
 scious of any purpose. A thousand and more of 
 them, with faces twisted and scored by those 
 myriad deformings which a desperate town-toil- 
 ing and little food fasten on human visages; yet 
 with hardly a single evil or brutal face. Seem- 
 ingly it was not easy to be evil or brutal on a wage 
 that scarcely boxmd soul and body. A thousand 
 and more of the poorest-paid and hardest-worked 
 human beings in the world. 
 
 On the pavement alongside this strange, acqui- 
 escing assembly of revolt, about to march in pro- 
 test against the conditions of their lives, stood a 
 yoimg woman without a hat and in poor clothes, 
 but with a sort of beauty in her rough-haired, high- 
 cheek-boned, dark-eyed face. She was not one 
 of them; yet, by a stroke of Nature's irony, there 
 was graven on her face alone of all those faces, 
 the true look of rebelhon; a haughty, almost fierce, 
 uneasy look — an untamed look. On all the other 
 thousand faces one could see no bitterness, no 
 fierceness, not even enthusiasm; only a half-stolid, 
 half-vivacious patience and eagerness as of chil- 
 dren going to a party. 
 
 56 
 
THE PROCESSION 
 
 The band played; and they began to march. 
 Laughing, talking, waving flags, trying to keep 
 step; with the same expression slowly but surely 
 coming over every face; the future was not; only 
 the present — ^this happy present of marching be- 
 hind the discordance of a brass band; this strange 
 present of crowded movement and laughter in 
 open air. 
 
 We others — some dozen accidentals like my- 
 self, and the taU, grey-haired lady interested in 
 "the people," together with those few kind spirits 
 in charge of "the show" — ^marched too, a httle 
 self-conscious, desiring with a vague military sen- 
 sation to hold our heads up, but not too much, 
 under the eyes of the curious bystanders. These 
 — ^nearly all men — ^were well-wishers, it was said, 
 though their faces, pale from their own work in 
 shop or furnace, expressed nothing but apathy. 
 They wished well, very dxmably, in the presence 
 of this new thing, as if they found it queer that 
 women should be doing something for themselves; 
 queer and rather dangerous. A few, indeed, shuf- 
 fled along between the column and the httle hope- 
 less shops and grimy factory sheds, and one or 
 two accompanied their women, carrying the baby. 
 Now and then there passed us some better-to-do 
 citizen — a housewife, or lawyer's clerk, or iron- 
 
 57 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 monger, with lips pressed rather tightly together 
 and an air of taking no notice of this disturb- 
 ance of traffic, as though the whole thing were a 
 rather poor joke which they had already heard 
 too often. 
 
 So, with laughter and a continual crack of 
 voices our jay-like crew swung on, swajong and 
 thumping in the strange ecstasy of irreflection, 
 happy to be moving they knew not where, nor 
 greatly why, under the visiting sun, to the sound 
 of murdered music. Whenever the band stopped 
 playing, discipline became as tatterdemalion as 
 the very flags and garments; but never once did 
 they lose that look of essential order, as if indeed 
 they knew that, being the worst-served creatures 
 in the Christian world, they were the chief guard- 
 ians of the inherent dignity of man. 
 
 Hatless, in the very front row, marched a tall 
 slip of a girl, arrow-straight, and so thin, with 
 dirty fair hair, in a blouse and skirt gaping behind, 
 ever turning her pretty face on its pretty slim 
 neck from side to side, so that one coidd see her 
 blue eyes sweeping here, there, everywhere, with 
 a sort of flower-like wildness, as if a secret em- 
 bracing of each moment forbade her to let them 
 rest on anything and break this pleasure of just 
 marching. It seemed that in the never-still eyes 
 
 58 
 
THE PROCESSION 
 
 of that ansemic, happy girl the spirit of our inarch 
 had elected to enshrine itself and to make thence 
 its httle excursions to each ecstatic follower. Just 
 behind her marched a little old woman — a maker 
 of chains, they said, for forty years — ^whose black 
 slits of eyes were sparkling, who fluttered a bit of 
 ribbon, and reeled with her sense of the exquisite 
 humour of the world. Every now and then she 
 would make a rush at one of her leaders to demon- 
 strate how immoderately glorious was Hfe. And 
 each time she spoke the woman next to her, laden 
 with a heavy baby, went off into squeals of laugh- 
 ter. Behind her, again, marched one who beat 
 time with her head and waved a Uttle bit of stick, 
 intoxicated by this noble music. 
 
 For an hour the pageant wound through the 
 dejected street, pursuing neither method nor set 
 route, tiU it came to a deserted slag-heap, selected 
 for the speech-making. Slowly the motley regi- 
 ment swung into that grim amphitheatre under 
 the pale sunshine; and, as I watched, a strange 
 fancy visited my brain. I seemed to see over 
 every ragged head of those marching women a 
 Uttle yeUow flame, a thin, flickering gleam, spir- 
 ing upward and blown back by the wind. A trick 
 of the sunlight, maybe? Or was it that the life 
 in their hearts, the inextinguishable breath of 
 
 59 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 happiness, had for a moment escaped prison, and 
 was fluttering at the pleasure of the breeze? 
 
 Silent now, just enjoying the sound of the words 
 thrown down to them, they stood, xmimaginably 
 patient, with that happiness of they knew not 
 what gilding the air above them between the 
 patchwork ribands of their poor flags. If they 
 could not tell very much why they had come, nor 
 believe very much that they would gain anything 
 by coming; if their demonstration did not mean 
 to the world quite all that oratory would have 
 them think; if they themselves were but the poor- 
 est, humblest, least learned women in the land — 
 for all that, it seemed to me that in those tattered, 
 wistful figures, so still, so trustful, I was looking 
 on such beauty as I had never beheld. , AH the 
 elaborated glory of things made, the perfected 
 dreams of aesthetes, the embroideries of romance, 
 seemed as nothing beside this sudden vision of 
 the wild goodness native in humble hearts. 
 
 1910. 
 
 60 
 
A CHRISTIAN 
 
 ONE day that summer, I came away from a 
 limcheon in company of an old College 
 chum. Always exciting to meet those one hasn't 
 seen for years; and as we walked across the Park 
 together I kept looking at him askance. He had 
 altered a good deal. Lean he always was, but 
 now very lean, and so upright that his parson's 
 coat was overhung by the back of his long and 
 narrow head, with its dark grizzled hair, which 
 thought had not yet loosened on his forehead. 
 His clean-shorn face, so thin and oblong, was re- 
 markable only for the eyes: dark-browed and 
 lashed, and coloured like bright steel, they had a 
 fixity in them, a sort of absence, on one couldn't 
 tell what business. They made me think of tor- 
 ture. And his mouth always gently smiling, as if 
 its pinched curly sweetness had been commanded, 
 was the mouth of a man crucified — ^yes, crucified! 
 Tramping silently over the parched grass, I felt 
 that if we talked, we must infallibly disagree; his 
 straight-up, narrow forehead so suggested a nature 
 divided within itself into compartments of iron. 
 
 61 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 It was hot that day, and we rested presently 
 beside the Serpentine. On its bright waters were 
 the usual young men, sculling themselves to and 
 fro with their usual sad energy, the usual prome- 
 naders loitering and watching them, the usual dog 
 that swam when it did not bark, and barked when 
 it did not swim; and my friend sat smiling, twist- 
 ing between his thin fingers the Httle gold cross 
 on his silk vest. 
 
 Then all of a sudden we did begin to talk; and 
 not of those matters of which the well-bred nat- 
 urally converse — ^the habits of the rarer kinds of 
 ducks, and the careers of our College friends, 
 but of something never mentioned in polite so- 
 ciety. 
 
 At lunch our hostess had told me the sad story 
 of an unhappy marriage, and I had itched spirit- 
 ually to find out what my friend, who seemed so 
 far away from me, felt about such things. And 
 now I determined to find out. 
 
 "Tell me," I asked him, "which do you con- 
 sider most important — ^the letter or the spirit of 
 Christ's teachings?" 
 
 "My dear fellow," he answered gently, "what 
 a question! How can you separate them?" 
 
 "Well, is it not the essence of His doctrine that 
 the spirit is all important, and the forms of Uttle 
 
 62 
 
A CHRISTIAN 
 
 value? Does not that run through all the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "If, then/' I said, "Christ's teaching is con- 
 cerned with the spirit, do you consider that Chris- 
 tians are justified in holding others bound by for- 
 mal rules of conduct, without reference to what 
 is passing in their spirits?" 
 
 " If it is for their good." 
 
 "What enables you to decide what is for their 
 good?" 
 
 "Stu-ely, we are told." 
 
 "Not to judge, that ye be not judged." 
 
 "Oh! but we do not, oiu-selves, judge; we are 
 but impersonal ministers of the rules of God." 
 
 " Ah ! Do general rules of conduct take account 
 of the variations of the individual spirit?" 
 
 He looked at me hard, as if he began to scent 
 heresy. 
 
 "You had better explain yourself more fully," 
 he said. "I really don't follow." 
 
 "Well, let us take a concrete instance. We 
 know Christ's sajdng of the married that they are 
 one flesh! But we know also that there are wives 
 who continue to live the married life with dread- 
 ful feelings of spiritual revolt — ^wives who have 
 found out that, in spite of all their efforts, they 
 
 63 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 have no spiritual aflSnity with their husbands. 
 Is that in accordance with the spirit of Christ's 
 teaching, or is it not?" 
 
 "We are told — " he began. 
 
 "I have admitted the definite commandment: 
 'They twain shall be one flesh.' There could not 
 be, seemingly, any more rigid law laid down; how 
 do yqu reconcile it with the essence of Christ's 
 teaching? Frankly, I want to know: Is there or 
 is there not a spiritual coherence in Christianity, 
 or is it only a gathering of laws and precepts, with 
 no inherent connected spiritual philosophy?" 
 
 "Of course," he said, in his long-suflfering voice, 
 "we don't look at things like that — ^for us there is 
 no questioning." 
 
 "But how do you reconcile such marriages as 
 I speak of, with the spirit of Christ's teaching? 
 I think you ought to answer me." 
 
 "Oh! I can, perfectly," he answered; "the 
 reconciliation is through suffering. What a poor 
 woman in such a case must suffer makes for the 
 salvation of her spirit. That is the spiritual ful- 
 filment, and in such a case the justification of the 
 law." 
 
 "So then," I said, "sacrifice or siiffering is the 
 coherent thread of Christian philosophy?" 
 
 "Suffering cheerfully borne," he answered. 
 64 
 
A CHRISTIAN 
 
 "You do not think," I said, "that there is a 
 touch of extravagance in that? Would you say, 
 for example, that an unhappy marriage is a more 
 Christian thing than a happy one, where there is 
 no suffering, but only love?" 
 
 A line came between his brows. "Well!" he 
 said at last, "I would say, I think, that a woman 
 who crucifies her flesh with a cheerful spirit in 
 obedience to God's law, stands higher in the eyes 
 of God than one who undergoes no such sacrifice 
 in her married Ufe." And I had the feeling that 
 his stare was passing through me, on its way to 
 an unseen goal. 
 
 "You would desire, then, I suppose, suffering 
 as the greatest blessing for yourself?" 
 
 "Humbly," he said, "I would try to." 
 
 "And naturally, for others?" 
 
 "God forbid!" 
 
 "But surely that is inconsistent." 
 
 He murmured: "You see, I have suffered." 
 
 We were silent. At last I said: "Yes, that 
 makes much which was dark quite clear to me." 
 
 "Oh?" he asked. 
 
 I answered slowly: "Not many men, you know, 
 even in your profession, have really suffered. 
 That is why they do not feel the difficulty which 
 you feel in desiring suffering for others." 
 
 65 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 He threw up his head exactly as if I had hit 
 him on the jaw: "It's weakness in me, I know," 
 he said. 
 
 "I should have rather called it weakness in 
 them. But suppose you are right, and that it's 
 weakness not to be able to desire promiscuous 
 suffering for others, would you go further and say 
 that it is Christian for thjfci l;, who have not expe- 
 rienced a certain kind of suffering, to force that 
 particular Idnd on others?" 
 
 He sat silent for a full minute, tiying evidently 
 to reach to the bottom of my thought. 
 
 "Surely not," he said at last, "except as min- 
 isters of God's laws." 
 
 "You do not then think that it is Christian for 
 the husband of such a woman to keep her in that 
 state of suffering — ^not being, of course, a minister 
 of God?" 
 
 He began stammering at that: "I — ^I — " he 
 said. "No; that is, I think not — ^not Christian. 
 No, certainly." 
 
 "Then, such a marriage, if persisted in, makes 
 of the wife indeed a Christian, but of the husband 
 — ^the reverse." 
 
 "The answer to that is clear," he said quietly: 
 "The husband must abstain." 
 
 "Yes, that is, perhaps, coherently Christian, 
 66 
 
A CHRISTIAN 
 
 on your theory: They would then both suffer. 
 But the marriage, of course, has become no mar- 
 riage. They are no longer one flesh." 
 
 He looked at me, almost impatiently, as if to 
 say: Do not compel me to enforce silence on you! 
 
 "But, suppose," I went on, "and this, you 
 know, is the more frequent case, the man refuses 
 to abstain. Would you then say it was more 
 Christian to allow him to become daily less Chris- 
 tian through his unchristian conduct, than to re- 
 lieve the woman of her suffering at the expense 
 of the spiritual benefit she thence derives? Why, 
 in fact, do you favour one case more than the 
 other?" 
 
 "All question of relief," he repUed, "is a matter 
 for Caesar; it cannot concern me." 
 
 There had come into his face a rigidity — ^as if 
 I might hit it -with my questions till my tongue 
 was tired, and it be no more moved than the 
 bench on which we were sitting. 
 
 "One more question," I said, "and I have done. 
 Since the Christian teaching is concerned with the 
 spirit and not forms, and the thread in it which 
 binds all together and makes it coherent, is that 
 of suffering " 
 
 "Redemption by suffering," he put in. 
 
 "If you will — ^in one word, self-crucifixion — I 
 67 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 must ask you, and don't take it personally, be- 
 cause of what you told me of yourself: In life gen- 
 erally, one does not accept from people any teach- 
 ing that is not the result of first-hand experience 
 on their parts. Do you beUeve that this Chris- 
 tian teaching of yours is valid from the mouths 
 of those who have not themselves suffered — ^who 
 have not themselves, as it were, been crucified?" 
 
 He did not answer for a minute; then he said, 
 with painful slowness: "Christ laid hands on his 
 apostles and sent them forth; and they in turn, 
 and so on, to our day." 
 
 "Do you say, then, that this guarantees that 
 they have themselves suffered, so that in spirit 
 they are identified with their teaching?" 
 
 He answered bravely: "No — I do not — ^I can- 
 not say that in fact it is always so." 
 
 "Is not then their teaching born of forms, and 
 not of the spirit?" 
 
 He rose; and with a sort of deep sorrow at my 
 stubbornness said: "We are not permitted to 
 know the way of this; it is so ordained; we must 
 have faith." 
 
 As he stood there, turned from me, with his hat 
 off, and his neck painfully flushed under the sharp 
 outcurve of his dark head, a feeling of pity surged 
 up in me, as if I had taken an xmfair advantage. 
 
 68 
 
A CHRISTIAN 
 
 "Reason— coherence— philosophy," he said sud- 
 denly. "You don't understand. All that is noth- 
 ing to me — ^nothing — nothing!" 
 
 1911. 
 
 69 
 
WIND IN THE ROCKS 
 
 THOUGH dew-dark when we set forth, there 
 was stealing into the frozen air an invisible 
 white host of the wan-winged light — bom beyond 
 the mountains, and already, like a drift of doves, 
 harbouring grey-white high up on the snowy sky- 
 caves of Monte CristaUo; and within us, tramping 
 over the vaUey meadows, was the incredible ela- 
 tion of those who set out before the sun has risen; 
 every minute of the precious day before us — we 
 had not lost one! 
 
 At the mouth of that enchanted chine, across 
 which for a million years the howdahed rock ele- 
 phant has marched, but never yet passed from 
 sight, we crossed the stream, and among the trees 
 began our ascent. Very far away the first cow- 
 bells chimed; and, over the dark heights, we saw 
 the thin, sinking moon, looking like the white 
 horns of some devotional beast watching and wait- 
 ing up there for the god of Ught. That god came 
 slowly, stalking across far over our heads from 
 top to top; then, of a sudden, his flame-white form 
 was seen standing in a gap of the valley walls; the 
 
 70 
 
WIND IN THE ROCKS 
 
 trees flung themselves along the ground before 
 him, and censers of pine gum began swinging in 
 the dark aisles, releasing their perfumed steam. 
 Throughout these happy ravines where no man 
 hves, he shows himself naked and xmashamed, the 
 colour of pale honey; on his golden hair such shin- 
 ing as one has not elsewhere seen; his eyes like old 
 wine on fire. And already he had swept his hand 
 across the invisible strings, for there had arisen 
 the music of uncurling leaves and flitting things. 
 
 A legend runs, that, driven from land to land 
 by Christians, ApoUo hid himself in Lower Aus- 
 tria, but those who aver they saw him there in the 
 thirteenth century were wrong; it was to these 
 enchanted chines, frequented only by the moun- 
 tain shepherds, that he certainly came. 
 
 And as we were Ijong on the grass of the first 
 alp, with the star gentians — ^those fallen drops of 
 the sky — and the biunt-brown dandehons, and 
 scattered shrubs of alpen-rose roimd us, we were 
 visited by one of these very shepherds, passing 
 with his flock — ^the fiercest-looking man who ever 
 spoke in a gentle voice; six feet high, with an 
 orange cloak, bare knees, bimit as the very dan- 
 delions, a beard blacker than black, and eyes more 
 glorious than if sun and night had dived and were 
 lying imprisoned in their depths. He spoke in 
 
 71 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 an unknown tongue, and could certainly not under- 
 stand any word of ours; but he smelled of the good 
 earth, and only through interminable watches 
 under sun and stars could so great a gentleman 
 have been perfected. 
 
 Presently, while we rested outside that Alpine 
 hut which faces the three sphinx-like mountains, 
 there came back, from climbing the smallest and 
 most dangerous of those peaks, one, pale from 
 heat, and trembUng with fatigue; a tall man, with 
 long brown hands, and a long, thin, bearded face. 
 And, as he sipped cautiously of red wine and water, 
 he looked at his little conquered mountain. His 
 kindly, screwed-up eyes, his kindly, bearded lips, 
 even his limbs seemed smiling; and not for the 
 world would we have jarred with words that rapt, 
 smiling man, enjoying the sacred hour of him who 
 has just proved himself. In silence we watched, 
 in silence left him smiling, knowing somehow that 
 we should remember him all our days. For there 
 was in his snule the glamoiu* of adventure just for 
 the sake of danger; aU that high instinct which 
 takes a man out of his chair to brave what he 
 need not. 
 
 Between that hut and the three mountains lies 
 a saddle — astride of all beauty and aU colour, 
 master of a titanic chaos of deep clefts, tawny 
 
 72 
 
WIND IN THE ROCKS 
 
 heights, red domeS; far snow, and the purple of 
 long shadows; and, standing there, we compre- 
 hended a httle of what Earth had been through 
 in her time, to have made this playground for 
 most glorious demons. Mother Earth! What 
 travail undergone, what long heroic throes, had 
 brought on her face such majesty! 
 
 Hereabout edelweiss was clinging to the 
 smoothed-out rubble; but a Httle higher, even 
 the everlasting plant was lost, there was no more 
 life. And presently we lay down on the moun- 
 tain side, rather far apart. Up here above trees 
 and pasture the wind had a strange, bare voice, 
 free from all outer influence, sweeping along with 
 a cold, whififling sound. On the warm stones, in 
 full sunhght, uplifted over aU the beauty of Italy, 
 one felt at first only deHght in space and wild love- 
 liness, in the unknown valleys, and the strength 
 of the sun. It was so good to be ahve; so ineffably 
 good to be Hving in this most wonderful world, 
 drinking air nectar. 
 
 Behind us, from the three mountains, came the 
 frequent thud and scuffle of falling rocks, loosened 
 by rains. The wind, mist, and winter snow had 
 ground the powdery stones on which we lay to a 
 pleasant bed, but once on a time they, too, had 
 clung up there. And very slowly, one could not 
 
 73 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 say how or when, the sense of joy began changing 
 to a sense of fear. The awful impersonaUty of 
 those great rock-creatures, the terrible impar- 
 tiality of that cold, clinging wind which swept 
 by, never an inch lifted above ground! Not one 
 tiny soul, the size of a midge or rock flower, 
 lived here. Not one httle "I" breathed here, 
 and loved! 
 
 And we, too, some day would no longer love, 
 having become part of this monstrous, lovely 
 earth, of that cold, whiffling air. To be no longer 
 able to love! It seemed incredible, too grim to 
 bear; yet it was true! To become powder, and 
 the wind; no more to feel the sunhght; to be loved 
 no more! To become a whiffling noise, cold, with- 
 out one's self! To drift on the breath of that 
 noise, homeless! Up here, there were not even 
 those little velvet, grey-white flower-comrades we 
 had plucked. No life! Nothing but the creeping 
 wind, and those great rocky heights, whence came 
 the sound of faUing — symbols of that cold, un- 
 timely state into which we, too, must pass. Never 
 more to love, nor to be loved! One could but 
 turn to the earth, and press one's face to it, away 
 from the wild loveliness. Of what use loveliness 
 that must be lost; of what use loveliness when one 
 could not love? The earth was warm and firm 
 
 74 
 
WIND IN THE ROCKS 
 
 beneath the pahns of the hands; but there still 
 came the sound of the impartial wind, and the 
 careless roar of the stones falling. 
 
 Below, in those valleys amongst the living trees 
 and grass, was the comradeship of unnumbered 
 life, so that to pass out into Peace, to step beyond, 
 to die, seemed but a brotherly act, amongst all 
 those others; but up here, where no creatm-e 
 breathed, we saw the heart of the desert that 
 stretches before each httle human soul. Up here, 
 it froze the spirit; even Peace seemed mocking — 
 hard as a stone. Yet, to try and hide, to tuck one's 
 head vmder one's own wing, was not possible in 
 this air so crystal clear, so far above incense and 
 the narcotics of set creeds, and the fevered breath 
 of prayers and protestations. Even to know that 
 between organic and inorganic matter there is no 
 guU fixed, was of no peculiar comfort. The jealous 
 wind came creeping over the lifeless limestone, 
 removing even the poor solace of its warmth; one 
 t;imed from it, desperate, to look up at the sky, 
 the blue, burning, wide, ineffable, far sky. 
 
 Then slowly, without reason, that icy fear 
 passed into a feeling, not of joy, not of peace, but 
 as if Life and Death were exalted into what was 
 neither life nor death, a strange and motionless 
 vibration, in which one had been merged, and 
 
 75 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 rested; utterly content, equipoised, divested of de- 
 sire, endowed with life and death. 
 
 But since this moment had come before its time, 
 we got up, and, close together, marched on rather 
 silently, in the hot sun. 
 
 1910. 
 
 76 
 
MY DISTANT RELATIVE 
 
 THOUGH I had not seen my distant relative 
 for years — ^not, in fact, since he was obliged 
 to give Vancouver Island up as a bad job — I knew 
 him at once, when, with head a Httle on one side, 
 and tea-cup held high, as if to confer a blessing, 
 he said: "Hallo!" across the Club smoking-room. 
 
 Thin as a lath — ^not one oimce heavier — ^tall, 
 and very upright, with his pale forehead, and pale 
 eyes, and pale beard, he had the air of a ghost of 
 a man. He had always had that air. And his 
 voice — ^that matter-of-fact and slightly nasal 
 voice, with its thin, pragmatical tone — was Kke a 
 wraith of optimism, issxiing between pale Hps. I 
 noticed, too, that his town habiliments still' had 
 their unspeakable pale neatness, as if, poor things, 
 they were trying to stare the daylight out of 
 countenance. 
 
 He brought his tea across to my bay window, 
 with that wistful sociability of his, as of a man 
 who cannot always find a listener. 
 
 " But what are you doing in town? " I said. " I 
 thought you were in Yorkshire with your aimt." 
 
 Over his round, light eyes, fixed on something 
 77 
 
■CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 in the street, the hds fell quickly twice, as the 
 film falls over the eyes of a parrot. 
 
 "I'm after a job," he answered. "Must be on 
 the spot just now." 
 
 And it seemed to me that I had heard those 
 words from him before. 
 
 "Ah, yes," I said, "and do you think you'll 
 get it?" 
 
 But even as I spoke I felt sorry, remembering 
 how many jobs he had been after in his time, and 
 how soon they ended when he had got them. He 
 answered: 
 
 "Oh, yes! They ought to give it me," then 
 added rather suddenly: "You never know, though. 
 People are so funny!" 
 
 And crossing his thin legs, he went on to tell 
 me, with quaint impersonality, a nimiber of in- 
 stances of how people had been funny in connec- 
 tion with jobs he had not been given. 
 
 "You see," he ended, "the country's in such a 
 state — capital going out of it every day. Enter- 
 prise being killed all over the place. There's prac- 
 tically nothing to be had!" 
 
 "Ah!" I said, "you think it's worse, then, than 
 it used to be?" 
 
 He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of 
 patronage. 
 
 78 
 
MY DISTANT RELATIVE 
 
 "We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can. 
 National character's losing all its backbone. No 
 wonder, with all this moUy-coddling going on!" 
 
 "Oh!" I murmured, "moUy-coddling? Isn't 
 that excessive?" 
 
 "Well! Look at the way eveiything's being 
 done for them! The working classes are losing 
 their self-respect as fast as ever they can. Their 
 independence is gone already!" 
 
 "You think?" 
 
 "Sure of it! I'll give you an instance — " and 
 he went on to describe to me the degeneracy of 
 certain working men employed by his aunt and his 
 eldest brother Claud and his youngest brother Alan. 
 
 "They don't do a stroke more than they're 
 obliged," he ended; "they know jolly well they've 
 got their Unions, and their pensions, and this 
 Insurance, to fall back on." 
 
 It was evidently a subject on which he felt 
 strongly. 
 
 "Yes," he muttered, "the nation is being 
 rotted down." 
 
 And a faint thrill of surprise passed through 
 me. For the affairs of the nation moved him so 
 much more strongly than his own. His voice 
 already had a different ring, his eyes a different 
 look. He eagerly leaned forward, and his long, 
 
 79 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 straight backbone looked longer and straighter 
 tlian ever. He was less the ghost of a man. A 
 faint flush even had come into his pale cheeks, 
 and he moved his well-kept hands emphatically. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" he said: "The country is going to 
 the dogs, right enough; but you can't get them to 
 see it. They go on sapping and sapping the inde- 
 pendence of the people. If the working man's 
 to be looked after, whatever he does — ^what on 
 earth's to become of his go, and foresight, and 
 perseverance?" 
 
 In his rising voice a certain piquancy was left 
 to its accent of the ruling class by that faint 
 twang, which came, I remembered, from some 
 sUght defect in his tonsils. 
 
 "Mark my words! So long as we're on these 
 lines, we shall do nothing. It's going against 
 evolution. They say Darwin's getting old-fash- 
 ioned; all I know is, he's good enough for me. 
 Competition is the only thing." 
 
 "But competition," I said, "is bitter cruel, and 
 some people can't stand against it!" And I 
 looked at him rather hard: "Do you object to 
 putting any sort of floor vmder the feet of people 
 like that?" 
 
 He let his voice drop a little, as if in deference 
 to my scruples. 
 
 80 
 
MY DISTANT RELATIVE 
 
 "Ah!" he said; "but if you once begin this sort 
 of thing, there's no end to it. It's so insidious. 
 The more they have, the more they want; and 
 all the time they're losing fighting power. I've 
 thought pretty deeply about this. It's short- 
 sighted; it really doesn't do!" 
 
 "But," I said, "surely you're not against sav- 
 ing people from being knocked out of time by old 
 age, and accidents Hke illness, and the fluctua- 
 tions of trade?" 
 
 "Oh!" he said, "I'm not a bit against charity. 
 Aunt Emma's splendid about that. And Claud's 
 awfully good. I do what I can, myself." He 
 looked at me, so queerly deprecating, that I quite 
 liked him at that moment. At heart — ^I felt — 
 he was a good fellow. "AH I think is," he went 
 on, "that to give them something that they can 
 rely on as a matter of course, apart from their 
 own exertions, is the wrong principle altogether," 
 and suddenly his voice began to rise again, and his 
 eyes to stare. "I'm convinced that aU this doing 
 things for other people, and bolstering up the weak, 
 is rotten. It stands to reason that it must be." 
 
 He had risen to his feet, so preoccupied with 
 the wrongness of that principle that he seemed 
 to have forgotten my presence. And as he stood 
 there in the window the Kght was too strong for 
 
 81 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 him. AH the thin incapacity of that shadowy- 
 figure was pitilessly displayed; the desperate nar- 
 rowness in that long, pale face; the wambling look 
 of those pale, well-kept hands — ^aU that made him 
 such a ghost of a man. But his nasal, dogmatic 
 voice rose and rose. 
 
 "There's nothing for it but bracing up! We 
 must cut away aU this State support; we must 
 teach them to rely on themselves. It's all sheer 
 pauperisation." 
 
 And suddenly there shot through me the fear 
 that he might burst one of those little blue veins 
 in his pale forehead, so vehement had he become; 
 and hastily I changed the subject. 
 
 "Do you like living up there with your aunt?" 
 I asked: "Isn't it a bit quiet?" 
 
 He turned, as if I had awakened him from a 
 dream. 
 
 "Oh, well!" he said, "it's only till I get this 
 job." 
 
 "Let me see — ^how long is it since you ?" 
 
 "Four years. She's very glad to have me, of 
 course." 
 
 "And how's your brother Claud?" 
 
 "Oh! All right, thanks; a bit worried with the 
 estate. The poor old gov'nor left it in rather a 
 mess, you know." 
 
 82 
 
MY DISTANT RELATIVE 
 
 "Ah! Yes. Does he do other work?" 
 
 "Oh! Always busy in the parish." 
 
 "And your brother Richard?" 
 
 "He's all right. Came home this year. Got 
 just enough to live on, with his pension — ^hasn't 
 saved a rap, of course." 
 
 "And Willie? Is he stiU delicate?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I'm sorry." 
 
 "Easy job, his, you know. And even if his 
 health does give out, his college pals will always 
 find him some sort of sinecure. So jolly popular, 
 old Willie!" 
 
 "And Alan? I haven't heard anything of him 
 since his Peruvian thing came to grief. He mar- 
 ried, didn't he?" 
 
 "Rather! One of the Burleys. Nice girl — 
 heiress; lot of property in Hampshire. He looks 
 after it for her now." 
 
 "Doesn't do anything else, I suppose?" 
 
 "Keeps up his antiquarianism." 
 
 I had exhausted the members of his family. 
 
 Then, as though by eliciting the good fortxmes 
 of his brothers I had cast some slur upon himself, 
 he said suddenly: "If the railway had come, as it 
 ought to have, while I was out there, I should 
 have done quite well with my fruit farm." 
 
 83 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 "Of course," I agreed; "it was bad luck. But 
 after all, you're sure to get a job soon, and — so 
 long as you can live up there with your aunt — ^you 
 can afford to wait, and not bother." 
 
 "Yes," he murmured. And I got up. 
 
 "Well, it's been very jolly to hear about you 
 all!" 
 
 He followed me out. 
 
 "Awfully glad, old man," he said, "to have 
 seen you, and had this talk. I was f eeUng rather 
 low. Waiting to know whether I get that ^ob 
 — ^it's not lively." 
 
 He came down the Club steps with me. By the 
 door of my cab a loafer was standing; a tall tatter- 
 demaUon with a pale, bearded face. My distant 
 relative fended him away, and leaning through 
 the window, murmured: "Awful lot of these chaps 
 about now!" 
 
 For the life of me I could not help looking at 
 him very straight. But no flicker of apprehen- 
 sion crossed his face. 
 
 "Well, good-by again!" he said: "You've 
 cheered me up a lot!" 
 
 I glanced back from my moving cab. Some 
 monetary transaction was passing between him 
 and the loafer, but, short-sighted as I am, I found 
 it difficult to decide which of those tall, pale, 
 
 84 
 
MY DISTANT RELATIVE 
 
 bearded figures was giving the other one a penny. 
 And by some strange freak an awful vision shot 
 up before me — of myself, and my distant relative, 
 and Claud, and Richard, and WnUe, and Alan, 
 all suddenly reljdng on ourselves. I took out my 
 handkerchief to mop my brow; but a thought 
 struck me, and I put it back. Was it possible for 
 me, and my distant relatives, and their distant 
 relatives, and so on to infinity of those who be- 
 longed to a class provided by birth with a certain 
 position, raised by Providence on to a platform 
 made up of money inherited, of interest, of educa- 
 tion fitting us for certain privileged pursuits, of 
 friends similarly endowed, of substantial homes, 
 and substantial relatives of some sort or other, 
 on whom we could fall back — was it possible for 
 any of us ever to be in the position of having to 
 rely absolutely on ourselves? For several min- 
 utes I pondered that question; and slowly I came 
 to the conclusion that, short of crime, or that un- 
 likely event, marooning, it was not possible. 
 Never, never — ^try as we might — could any single 
 one of us be quite in the position of one of those 
 whose approaching pauperisation my distant rela- 
 tive had so vehemently deplored. We were al- 
 ready pauperised. If we served our country, we 
 were pensioned. If we inherited land, it could not 
 
 85 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 be taken from us. If we went into the Church, 
 we were there for Ufe, whether we were suitable 
 or no. If we attempted the more hazardous occu- 
 pations of the law, medicine, the arts, or business, 
 there were always those homes, those relations, 
 those friends of ours to fall back on, if we failed. 
 No! We could never have to rely entirely on 
 ourselves; we could never be pauperised — ^more 
 than we were already! And a Ught burst in on 
 me. That explained why my distant relative felt 
 so keenly. It bit him, for he saw, of course, how 
 dreadful it would be for these poor people of the 
 working classes when legislation had succeeded in 
 placing them in the hmniliating position in which 
 we already were — ^the dreadful position of having 
 something to depend on apart from our own exer- 
 tions, some sort of security in our hves. I saw 
 it now. It was his secret pride, gnawing at him 
 aU the time, that made him so rabid on the point. 
 He was longing, doubtless, day and night, not to 
 have had a father who had land, and had left a 
 sister well enough off to keep him while he was 
 waiting for his job. He must be feehng how hor- 
 ribly degrading was the position of Claud— in- 
 heriting that land; and of Richard, who, just be- 
 cause he had served in the Indian Civil Service, 
 had got to Uve on a pension all the rest of his days; 
 
 86 
 
MY DISTANT RELATIVE 
 
 and of Willie, who was in danger at any moment, 
 if his health — always deUcate — ^gave out, of hav- 
 ing a sinecure found for him by his college friends; 
 and of Alan, whose educated charm had enabled 
 him to marry an heiress and Uve by managing her 
 estates. All, all sapped of go and foresight and 
 perseverance by a cruel Providence! That was 
 what he was really feeling, and concealing, be- 
 cause he was too well-bred to show his secret 
 grief. And I felt suddenly quite warm toward 
 him, now that I saw how he was suffering. I 
 understood how bound he felt in honour to com- 
 bat with all his force this attempt to place others 
 in his own distressing situation. At the same 
 time I was honest enough to confess to myself — 
 sitting there in the cab — ^that I did not personally 
 share that pride of his, or feel that I was being 
 rotted by my own position; I even felt some dim 
 gratitude that if my powers gave out at any time, 
 and I had not saved anything, I should still not 
 be left destitute to face the prospect of a bleak 
 and impoverished old age; and I could not help a 
 weak pleasure in the thought that a certain rela- 
 tive security was being guaranteed to those peo- 
 ple of the working classes who had never had it 
 before. At the same moment I quite saw that 
 to a prouder and stronger heart it must indeed be 
 
 87 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 bitter to have to sit still imder your own security, 
 and even more bitter to have to watch that pau- 
 perising security coming closer and closer to others 
 — ^for the generous soul is always more concerned 
 for others than for himself. No doubt, I thought, 
 if truth were known, my distant relative is con- 
 sumed with longing to change places with that 
 loafer who tried to open the door of my cab — ^for 
 surely he must see, as I do, that that is just what 
 he himself — Shaving failed to stand the pressure of 
 competition in his life — ^would be doing if it were 
 not for the accident of his birth, which has so lam- 
 entably insured him against coming to that. 
 
 "Yes," I thought, "you have learnt something 
 to-day; it does not do, you see, hastily to despise 
 those distant relatives of yours, who talk about 
 pauperising and molly-coddling the lower classes. 
 No, no! One must look deeper than that! One 
 must have generosity ! " 
 
 And with that I stopped the cab and got out. 
 for I wanted a breath of air. 
 
 1911. 
 
 88 
 
THE BLACK GODMOTHER 
 
 SITTING out on the lawn at tea with our 
 friend and his retriever, we had been dis- 
 cussing those massacres of the helpless which had 
 of late occurred, and wondering that they should 
 have been committed by the soldiery of so civi- 
 lised a State, when, in a momentary pause of our 
 astonishment, our friend, who had been Hstening 
 in silence, crumpling the drooping soft ear of his 
 dog, looked up and said, "The cause of atrocities 
 is generally the violence of Fear. Panic's at the 
 back of most crimes and folUes." 
 
 Knowing that his philosophical statements were 
 always the result of concrete instance, and that 
 he would not teU us what that instance was if we 
 asked him — such being his nature — ^we were care- 
 ful not to agree. 
 
 He gave us a look out of those eyes of his, so 
 like the eyes of a mild eagle, and said abruptly: 
 "What do you say to this, then? ... I was out 
 in the dog-days last year with this feUow of mine, 
 looking for Osmimda, and stayed some days in a 
 village — ^never mind the name. Coming back one 
 
 89 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 evening from my tramp, I saw some boys stoning 
 a mealy-coloured dog. I went up and told the 
 young devUs to stop it. They only looked at 
 me in the injured way boys do, and one of them 
 called out, 'It's mad, guv'nor!' I told them to 
 clear off, and they took to their heels. The dog 
 followed me. It was a young, leggy, mild-looking 
 mongrel, cross — ^I should say — ^between a brown 
 retriever and an Irish terrier. There was froth 
 about its lips, and its eyes were watery; it looked 
 indeed as if it might be in distemper. I was 
 afraid of infection for this fellow of mine, and 
 whenever it came too close shooed it away, till at 
 last it slunk off altogether. Well, about nine 
 o'clock, when I was settling down to write by the 
 open window of my sitting-room — stiU daylight, 
 and very quiet and warm — ^there began that most 
 maddening sound, the barking of an unhappy dog. 
 I could do nothing with that continual 'Yap — 
 yap!' going on, and it was too hot to shut the win- 
 dow; so I went out to see if I could stop it. The 
 men were all at the pub, and the women just fin- 
 ished with their gossip; there was no sound at all 
 but the continual barking of this dog, somewhere 
 away out in the fields. I travelled by ear across 
 three meadows, till I came on a hay-stack by a 
 pool of water. There was the dog sure enough — 
 
 90 
 
THE BLACK GODMOTHER 
 
 the same mealy-coloured mongrel, tied to a stake, 
 yapping, and making frantic little runs on a bit 
 of rusty chain; whirling round and round the 
 stake, then standing quite still, and shivering. I 
 went up and spoke to it, but it backed into the 
 hay-stack, and there it stayed shrinking away from 
 me, with its tongue hanging out. It had been 
 heavily struck by something on the head; the 
 cheek was cut, one eye half-closed, and an ear 
 badly swollen. I tried to get hold of it, but the 
 poor thing was beside itself with fear. It snapped 
 and flew round so that I had to give it up, and sit 
 down with this fellow here beside me, to try and 
 quiet it — a strange dog, you know, will generally 
 form his estimate of you from the way it sees you 
 treat another dog. I had to sit there quite half 
 an hour before it would let me go up to it, pull the 
 stake out, and lead it away. The poor beast, 
 though it was so feeble from the blows it had re- 
 ceived, was stUl half-frantic, and I didn't dare to 
 touch it; and aU the time I took good care that 
 this fellow here didn't come too near. Then came 
 the question what was to be done. There was 
 no vet, of course, and I'd no place to put it except 
 my sitting-room, which didn't belong to me. But, 
 looking at its battered head, and its half-mad 
 eyes, I thought: 'No trusting you with these 
 
 91 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 bumpkins; you'll have to come in here for the 
 night!' Well, I got it in, and heaped two or 
 three of those hairy little red rugs landladies are 
 so fond of, up in a comer, and got it on to them, 
 and put down my bread and milk. But it 
 wouldn't eat — ^its sense of proportion was all gone, 
 fairly destroyed by terror. It lay there moaning, 
 and every now and then it raised its head with a 
 'yap' of sheer fright, dreadful to hear, and bit 
 the air, as if its enemies were on it again; and this 
 fellow of mine lay in the opposite comer, with 
 his head on his paw, watching it. I sat up for a 
 long time with that poor beast, sick enough, and 
 wondering how it had come to be stoned and 
 kicked and battered into this state; and next day 
 I made it my business to find out." Our friend 
 paused, scanned us a Kttle angrily, and then went 
 on: "It had made its first appearance, it seems, 
 following a bicyclist. There are men, you know 
 — save the mark — ^who, when their beasts get ill 
 or too expensive, jump on their bicycles and take 
 them for a quick run, taking care never to look 
 behind them. When they get back home they 
 say: 'Hallo! where's Fido?' Fido is nowhere, and 
 there's an end! Well, this poor puppy gave up 
 just as it got to our village; and, roaming about 
 in search of water, attached itself to a farm lar 
 
 92 
 
THE BLACK GODMOTHER 
 
 bourer. The man — ^with excellent intentions, as 
 he told me himself — ^tried to take hold of it, but 
 too abruptly, so that it was startled, and snapped 
 at him. Whereon he kicked it for a dangerous 
 cur, and it went drifting back toward the village, 
 and fell in with the boys coming home from school. 
 It thought, no doubt, that they were going to 
 kick it too, and nipped one of them who took it 
 by the collar. Thereupon they hullabalooed and 
 stoned it down the road to where I found them. 
 Then I put in my Httle bit of torture, and drove 
 it away, through fear of infection to my own dog. 
 After that it seems to have fallen in with a man 
 who told me: 'Well, you see, he came sneakin' 
 round my house, with the children playin', and 
 snapped at them when they went to stroke him, 
 so that they came running in to their mother, an' 
 she called to me in a fine takin' about a mad dog. 
 I ran out with a shovel and gave 'im one, and 
 drove him out. I'm sorry if he wasn't mad, he 
 looked it right enough; you can't be too careful 
 with strange dogs.' Its next acquaintance was 
 an old stone-breaker, a very decent sort. 'Well! 
 you see,' the old man explained to me, 'the dog 
 came smellin' roimd my stones, an' it wouldn' 
 come near, an' it wouldn' go away; it was all froth 
 and blood about the jaw, and its eyes glared green 
 at me. I thought to meself, bein' the dog-days 
 
 93 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 — I don't like the look o' you, you look funny! 
 So I took a stone, an' got it here, just on the ear; 
 an' it fell over. And I thought to meself: Well, 
 you've got to finish it, or it'll go bitin' somebody, 
 for svu-e! But when I come to it with my ham- 
 mer, the dog it got up — an' you know how it is 
 when there's somethin' you've 'alf killed, and you 
 feel sorry, and yet you feel you must finish it, an' 
 you hit at it blind, you hit at it agen an' agen. 
 The poor thing, it wriggled and snapped, an' I 
 was terrified it'd bite me, an' some'ow it got 
 away.'" Again our friend paused, and this time 
 we dared not look at him. 
 
 "The next hospitaUty it was shown," he went 
 on presently, "was by a farmer, who, seeing it all 
 bloody, drove it off, thinking it had been digging 
 up a lamb that he'd just buried. The poor home- 
 less beast came sneaking back, so he told his men 
 to get rid of it. Well, they got hold of it somehow 
 — there was a hole in its neck that looked as if 
 they'd used a pitchfork — ^and, mortally afraid of 
 its biting them, but not liking, as they told me, to 
 drown it, for fear the owner might come on them, 
 they got a stake and a chain, and fastened it up, 
 and left it in the water by the hay-stack where I 
 found it. I had some conversation with that 
 farmer. 'That's right,' he said, 'but who was to 
 know? I couldn't have my sheep worried. The 
 
 94 
 
THE BLACK GODMOTHER 
 
 brute had blood on his muzzle. These curs do 
 a lot of harm when they've once been blooded. 
 You can't run risks.'" Our friend cut viciously 
 at a dandeKon with his stick. "Run risks!" he 
 broke out suddenly: "That was it — ^from begin- 
 ning to end of that poor beast's sufferings, fear! 
 From that feUow on the bicycle, afraid of the 
 worry and expense, as soon as it showed signs of 
 distemper, to myself and the man with the pitch- 
 fork — ^not one of us, I daresay, would have gone 
 out of our way to do it a harm. But we felt fear, 
 and so — ^by the law of self-preservation, or what- 
 ever you like — ^it all began, till there the poor 
 thing was, with a battered head and a hole in its 
 neck, ravenous with hunger, and too distraught 
 even to lap my bread and milk. Yes, and there's 
 something uncanny about a suffering animal — ^we 
 sat watching it, and again we were afraid, look- 
 ing at its eyes and the way it bit the air. Fear! 
 It's the black godmother of all damnable things!" 
 Our friend bent down, crumphng and crump- 
 hng at his dog's ears. We, too, gazed at the 
 ground, thinking of that poor lost puppy, and the 
 horrible inevitabihty of all that happens, seeing 
 men are what they are; thinking of aU the foul 
 doings in the world, whose black godmother is 
 Fear. 
 
 95 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 "And what became of the poor dog?" one of 
 us asked at last. 
 
 "When," said our friend slowly, "I'd had my 
 fill of watching, I covered it with a rug, took this 
 fellow away with me, and went to bed. There 
 was nothing else to do. At dawn I was awakened 
 by three dreadful cries — ^not like a dog's at all. 
 I hiuried down. There was the poor beast — 
 wriggled out from under the rug — stretched on 
 its side, dead. This fellow of mine had followed 
 me ia, and he went and sat down by the body. 
 When I spoke to him he just looked round, and 
 wagged his tail along the groimd, but would not 
 come away; and there he sat tiU it was buried, 
 very interested, but not sorry at all." 
 
 Our friend was silent, looking angrily at some- 
 thing in the distance. 
 
 And we, too, were silent, seeing in spirit that 
 vigil of early morning: The thin, lifeless, sandy- 
 coloured body, stretched on those red mats; and 
 this black creature — ^now lying at our feet — 
 propped on its haunches like the dog in "The 
 Death of Procris," patient, curious, ungrieved, 
 staring down at it with his bright, interested eyes. 
 
 1912. 
 
 96 
 
THE GRAND JURY— IN TWO PANELS 
 AND A FRAME 
 
 I READ that piece of paper, which summoned 
 me to sit on the Grand Jury at the approach- 
 ing Sessions, lying in a scoop of the shore close to 
 the great rollers of the sea — that span of eternal 
 freedom, deprived just there of too great liberty 
 by the word "Atlantic." And I remember think- 
 ing, as I read, that in each breaking wave was 
 some particle which had visited every shore in all 
 the world — that in each sparkle of hot sunlight 
 stealing that bright water up into the sky, was 
 the microcosm of all change, and of all unity. 
 
 PANEL I 
 
 In answer to that piece of paper, I presented 
 myself at the proper place in due course and with 
 a certain trepidation. What was it that I was 
 about to do? For I had no experience of these 
 things. And, being too early, I walked a httle to 
 and fro, looking at all those my partners in this 
 matter of the purification of Society. Prosecutors, 
 witnesses, officials, poHcemen, detectives, un- 
 
 97 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 detected, pressmen, barristers, loafers, clerks, 
 cadgers, jurymen. And I remember having some- 
 thing of the feeling that one has when one looks 
 into a sink without holding one's nose. There 
 was such imeasy hurry, so strange a disenchanted 
 look, a sort of spiritual dirt, about all that place, 
 and there were — ^faces! And I thought: To them 
 my face must seem as their faces seem to me! 
 
 Soon I was taken with my accomplices to have 
 my name called, and to be sworn. I do not re- 
 member much about that process, too occupied 
 with wondering what these companions of mine 
 were like; but presently we aU came to a long 
 room with a long table, where nineteen lists of 
 indictments and nineteen pieces of blotting paper 
 were set alongside nineteen pens. We did not, 
 I recoUect, speak much to one another, but sat 
 down, and studied those nineteen Usts, We had 
 eighty-seven cases on which to pronounce whether 
 the bill was true or no; and the clerk assured us 
 we should get through them in two days at most. 
 Over the top of these indictments I regarded my 
 eighteen fellows. There was in me a hunger of 
 inquiry, as to what they thought about this busi- 
 ness; and a sort of sorrowful affection for them, as 
 if we were all a ship's company bound on some 
 strange and awkward expedition. I wondered, 
 
 98 
 
THE GRAND JURY 
 
 till I thought my wonder must be coming through 
 my eyes, whether they had the same curious sen- 
 sation that I was feeling, of doing something 
 illegitimate, which I had not been bom to do, to- 
 gether with a sense of self-importance, a sort of 
 unholy interest in thus dealing with the hves of 
 my fellow men. And slowly, watching them, I 
 came to the conclusion that I need not wonder. 
 All — with the exception perhaps of two, a painter 
 and a Jew — ^looked such good citizens. I became 
 gradually sure that they were not troubled with 
 the lap and wash of speculation; undogged by any 
 devastating sense of unity; pure of doubt, and 
 undefiled by an uneasy conscience. 
 
 But now they began to bring us in the evidence. 
 They brought it quickly. And at first we looked 
 at it, whatever it was, with a sort of solemn ex- 
 citement. Were we not arbiters of men's fates, 
 purifiers of Society, more important by far than 
 Judge or Common Jury? For if we did not bring 
 in a true bill there was an end; the accused would 
 be discharged. 
 
 We set to work, slowly at first, then faster and 
 still faster, bringing in true bills; and after every 
 one making a mark in our lists so that we might 
 know where we were. We brought in true bills 
 for burglary, and false pretences, larceny, and 
 
 99 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 fraud; we brought them in for manslaughter, rape, 
 and arson. When we had ten or so, two of us 
 would get up and bear them away down to the 
 Court below and lay them before the Judge. 
 "Thank you, gentlemen!" he would say, or words 
 to that effect; and we would go up again, and go 
 on bringmg in true bills. I noticed that at the 
 evidence of each fresh bill we looked with a httle 
 less excitement, and a Kttle less solemnity, mak- 
 ing every time a shorter tick and a shorter note 
 in the margin of our Usts. All the bills we had 
 — ^fifty-seven — we brought in true. And the 
 morning and the afternoon made that day, tiU 
 we rested and went to oiu" homes. 
 
 Next day we were all back in oior places at the 
 appointed hour, and, not greeting each other much, 
 at once began to bring in bUls. We brought 
 them in, not quite so fast, as though some lurking 
 megrim, some microbe of dissatisfaction with our- 
 selves was at work within us. It was as if we 
 wanted to throw one out, as if we felt our work 
 too perfect. And presently it came. A case of 
 defrauding one Sophie Liebermann, or Lauber- 
 mann, or some such foreign name, by giving her 
 one of those five-pound Christmas-card bank- 
 notes just then in fashion, and receiving from her, 
 as she alleged, three real sovereigns change. There 
 
 100 
 
THE GRAND JURY 
 
 was a certain piquancy about the matter, and I 
 well remember noticing how we sat a little forward 
 and turned in our seats when they brought in 
 the prosecutrix to give evidence. Pale, self-pos- 
 sessed, dressed in black, and rather comely, neither 
 brazen nor furtive, speaking but poor English, her 
 broad, matter-of-fact face, with its wide-set grey 
 eyes and thickish nose and hps, made on me, I 
 recollect, an impression of rather stupid honesty. 
 I do not think they had told us in so many words 
 what her calling was, nor do I remember whether 
 she actually disclosed it, but by our demeanour 
 I could tell that we had all reaUzed what was the 
 nature of the service rendered to the accused, in 
 return for which he had given her this worthless 
 note. In her rather guttural but pleasant voice 
 she answered aU our questions — ^not very far from 
 tears, I think, but saved by native stohdity, and 
 perhaps a httle by the fear that purifiers of So- 
 ciety might not be the proper audience for emo- 
 tion. When she had left us we recalled the detec- 
 tive, and stiU, as it were, touching the deHcate 
 matter with the tips of our tongues, so as not, 
 being men of the world, to seem biassed against 
 an3^hing, we definitely elicited from him her pro- 
 fession and these words: "If she's speaking the 
 truth, gentlemen; but, as you know, these women, 
 
 101 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 they don't always, specially the foreign ones!" 
 When he, too, had gone, we looked at each other 
 in unwonted silence. None of us quite liked, it 
 seemed, to be first to speak. Then our foreman 
 said: "There's no doubt, I think, that he gave 
 her the note — ^mean trick, of course, but we can't 
 have him on that alone — ^bit too irregvilar — ^no con- 
 sideration in law, I take it." 
 
 He smiled a Uttle at our smiles, and then went 
 on: "The question, gentlemen, really seems to 
 be, are we to take her word that she actually gave 
 him change?" Again, for quite half a minute, 
 we were silent, and then, the fattest one of us said, 
 suddenly: "Very dangerous — ^goin' on the word 
 of these women." 
 
 And at once, as if he had released something 
 in our souls, we all (save two or three) broke out. 
 It wouldn't do! It wasn't safe! Seeing what 
 these women were! It was exactly as if, without 
 word said, we had each been swearing the other 
 to some secret compact to protect Society. As 
 if we had been whispering to each other something 
 like this: "These women — of course, we need 
 them, but for all that we can't possibly recognise 
 them as within the Law; we can't do that without 
 endangering the safety of every one of us. In 
 this matter we are trustees for all men — ^indeed, 
 
 102 
 
THE GRAND JURY 
 
 even for ourselves, for who knows at what moment 
 we might not ourselves require their services, and 
 it would be exceedingly awkward if their word 
 were considered the equal of our own!" Not one 
 of us, certainly said anything so crude as this; none 
 the less did many of us feel it. Then the foreman, 
 looking slowly round the table, said: "Well, gen- 
 tlemen, I think we are all agreed to throw out 
 this biU" ; and all, except the painter, the Jew, and 
 one other, murmured: "Yes." And, as though, 
 in throwing out this biU we had cast some trouble 
 off our minds, we went on with the greater speed, 
 bringing in true bills. About two o'clock we fin- 
 ished, and trooped down to the Court to be 
 released. On the stairway the Jew came close, 
 and, having examined me a httle sharply with his 
 velvety shts of eyes, as if to see that he was not 
 making a mistake, said: "Ith fonny — we bring in 
 eighty-thix bills true, and one we throw out, and 
 the one we throw out we know it to be true, and 
 the dirtieth job of the whole lot. Ith fonny!" 
 "Yes," I answered him, "our sense of respecta- 
 bility does seem excessive." But just then we 
 reached the Court, where, in his red robe and 
 grey wig, with his clear-cut, handsome face, the 
 judge seemed to shine and radiate, like sun through 
 gloom. "I thank you, gentlemen," he said, in a 
 
 103 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 voice courteous and a little mocking, as though 
 he had somewhere seen us before: "I thank you 
 for the way in which you have performed your 
 duties. I have not the pleasiu-e of assigning to 
 you anything for your services except the privilege 
 of going over a prison, where you wiU be able to 
 see what sort of existence awaits many of those to 
 whose cases you have devoted so much of your 
 valuable time. You are released, gentlemen." 
 
 Looking at each other a Httle hurriedly, and 
 not taking too much farewell, for fear of having to 
 meet again, we separated. 
 
 I was, then, free — ^free of the injunction of that 
 piece of paper reposing in my pocket. Yet its 
 influence was stiU upon me. I did not hurry away, 
 but lingered in the courts, fascinated by the notion 
 that the fate of each prisoner had first passed 
 through my hands. At last I made an effort, and 
 went out into the corridor. There^ I passed a 
 woman whose figure seemed familiar. She was sit- 
 ting with her hands in her lap looking straight 
 before her, pale-faced and not uncomely, with 
 thickish mouth and nose — ^the woman whose bill 
 we had thrown out. Why was she sitting there? 
 Had she not then realised that we had quashed her 
 claim; or was she, like myself, kept here by mere 
 attraction of the Law? Following I know not 
 
 104 
 
THE GRAND JURY 
 
 what impulse, I said: "Your case was dismissed, 
 wasn't it?" She looked up at me stolidly, and a 
 tear, which had evidently been long gathering, 
 dropped at the movement. "I do nod know; I 
 waid to see," she said in her thick voice; "I tink 
 there has been mistake." My face, no doubt, be- 
 trayed something of my sentiments about her case, 
 for the thick tears began rolling fast down her 
 pasty cheeks, and her pent-up feeling suddenly 
 flowed forth in words: "I work 'ard; Gott! how I 
 work hard! And there gomes dis liddle beastly 
 man, and rob me. And they say: 'Ah! yes; but 
 you are a bad woman, we don' trust you — ^you 
 speak he.' But I speak druth, I am nod a bad 
 woman — I gome from Hamburg." "Yes, yes," 
 I murmured; "yes, yes." "I do not know this 
 country well, sir. I speak bad English. Is that 
 why they do not drust my word? " She was silent 
 for a moment, searching my face, then broke out 
 again : " It is all 'ard work in my profession, I make 
 very liddle, I cannot afford to be rob. Without 
 the men I cannod make my Uving, I must drust 
 them — and they rob me like this, it is too 'ard." 
 And the slow tears roUed faster and faster from her 
 eyes on to her hands and her black lap. Then 
 quietly, and looking for a moment singularly Hke a 
 big, xmhappy child, she asked: "WiU you blease 
 
 105 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 dell me, sir, why they will not give me the law of 
 that dirty Uttle man?" 
 
 I knew — and too well; but I could not tell her. 
 
 "You see, " I said, "it's just a case of your word 
 against his." 
 
 "Oh! no; but," she said eagerly, "he give me 
 the note — I would not have taken it if I 'ad not 
 thought it good, would I? That is sure, isn't it? 
 But five poimds it is not my price. It must that 
 I give 'im change! Those gentlemen that heard 
 my case, they are men of business, they must know 
 that it is not my price. If I could tell the judge 
 — ^I think he is a man of business too — ^he would 
 know that too, for sm-e. I am not so yovmg. I 
 am not so veree beautiful as aU that; he must see, 
 mustn't he, sir? " 
 
 At my wits' end how to answer that most strange 
 question, I stammered out : " But, you know, your 
 profession is outside the law. " 
 
 At that a slow anger dyed her face. She looked 
 down; then, suddenly lifting one of her dirty, un- 
 gloved hands, she laid it on her breast with the 
 gesture of one bariag to me the truth in her heart. 
 " I am not a bad woman, " she said : " Dat beastly 
 little man, he do the same as me — I am free-wom- 
 an, I am not a slave bound to do the same to-mor- 
 row night, no more than he. Such like him make 
 
 106 
 
THE GRAND JURY 
 
 me what I am; he have all the pleasure, I have all 
 the work. He give me noding — ^he rob my poor 
 money, and he make me seem to strangers a bad 
 woman. Oh, dear ! I am not happy ! " 
 
 The impulse I had been having to press on her 
 the money, died within me; I felt suddenly it 
 would be another insult. From the movement 
 of her fingers about her heart I could not but see 
 that this grief of hers was not about the money. 
 It was the inarticulate outburst of a bitter sense 
 of deep injustice; of all the dumb wondering at 
 her own fate that went about with her behind that 
 broad stohd face and bosom. This loss of the 
 money was but a symbol of the furtive, hopeless 
 insecurity she lived with day and night, now 
 forced into the Kght, for herself and all the world 
 to see. She felt it suddenly a bitter, unfair thing. 
 This beastly httle man did not share her inse- 
 curity. None of us shared it — ^none of us, who had 
 brought her down to this. And, quite unable to 
 explain to her how natural and proper it all was, 
 I only murmured: "I am sorry, awfully sony," 
 and fled away. 
 
 PANEL II 
 
 It was just a week later when, having for pass- 
 port my Grand Jury summons, I presented myself 
 
 107 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 at that prison where we had the privilege of seeing 
 the existence to which we had assisted so many of 
 the eighty-six. 
 
 "I'm afraid;" I said to the guardian of the gate, 
 "that I am rather late in availing myself — the 
 others, no doubt ?" 
 
 "Not at all, sir," he said, smiling. "You're 
 the first, and if you'll excuse me, I think you'll 
 be the last. Will you wait in here while I send 
 for the chief warder to take you over?" 
 
 He showed me then to what he called the Ward- 
 er's Library — an iron-barred room, more bare and 
 brown than any I had seen since I left school. 
 While I stood there waiting and staring out into 
 the prison court-yard, there came, rolling and 
 rumbUng in, a Black Maria. It drew up with a 
 clatter, and I saw through the barred door the 
 single prisoner — a young girl of perhaps eighteen 
 — dressed in rusty black. She was resting her 
 forehead against a bar and looking out, her quick, 
 narrow dark eyes taking in her new surroundings 
 with a sort of sharp, restless indifference; and her 
 pale, thin-hpped, oval face quite expressionless. 
 Behind those bars she seemed to me for all the 
 world like a Httle animal of the cat tribe being 
 brought in to her Zoo. Me she did not see, but 
 if she had I felt she would not shrink — only give 
 
 108 
 
THE GRAND JURY 
 
 me the same sharp, indifferent look she was giv- 
 ing all else. The policeman on the step behind 
 had disappeared at once, and the driver now got 
 down from his perch and, coming roimd, began to 
 gossip with her. I saw her slink her eyes and smile 
 at him, and he smiled back; a large man, not un- 
 kindly. Then he returned to his horses, and she 
 stayed as before, with her forehead against the 
 bars, just staring out. Watching her like that, 
 imseen, I seemed to be able to see right through 
 that tight-lipped, lynx-eyed mask. I seemed to 
 know that Uttle creature through and through, as 
 one knows anything that one surprises off its 
 guard, sunk in its most private moods. I seemed 
 to see her little restless, furtive, utterly unmoral 
 soul, so stripped of aU defence, as if she had taken 
 it from her heart and handed it out to me. I saw 
 that she was one of those whose hands sUp as 
 indifferently into others' pockets as into their own; 
 incapable of fidelity, and incapable of trusting; 
 quick as cats, and as devoid of appHcation; ready 
 to scratch, ready to purr, ready to scratch again; 
 quick to change, and secretly as unchangeable as 
 a little pebble. And I thought: "Here we are, 
 taking her to the Zoo (by no means for the first 
 time, if demeanour be any guide), and we shall 
 put her in a cage, and make her sew, and give her 
 
 109 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 good books which she will not read; and she will 
 sew, and walk up and down, until we let her out; 
 then she will return to her old haunts, and at once 
 go prowling and do exactly the same again, what- 
 ever it was, \intil we catch her and lock her up 
 once more. And in this way we shall go on 
 purifying Society until she dies. And I thought: 
 If indeed she had been created cat in body as well 
 as in soul, we should not have treated her thus, 
 but should have said: 'Go on, little cat, you 
 scratch us sometimes, you steal often, you are as 
 sensual as the night. All this we cannot help. It 
 is your nature. So were you made — ^we know you 
 cannot change — ^you amuse us! Go on, httle cat!' 
 Would it not then be better, and less savoury of 
 humbug if we said the same to her whose cat-soul 
 has chanced iato this human shape? For as- 
 suredly she will but pilfer, and scratch a little, and 
 be mildly vicious, in her httle life, and do no des- 
 perate harm, having but poor capacity for evil 
 behind that petty, thin-hpped mask. What is 
 the good of all this padlock business for such as 
 she ; are we not making mountains out of her mole- 
 hills? Where is our sense of proportion, and our 
 sense of humoiu-? Why try to alter the make and 
 shape of Nature with our petty chisels? Or, if we 
 must take care of her, to save ourselves, in the 
 
 110 
 
THE GRAND JURY 
 
 name of Heaven kt ws do it in a better way than 
 this! And suddenly I remembered that I was a 
 Grand Juryman, a purifier of Society, who had 
 brought her bill in true; and, that I might not 
 think these thoughts unworthy of a good citizen, 
 I turned my eyes away from her and took up my 
 list of indictments. Yes, there she was, at least 
 so I decided: Number 42, "PUson, Jenny: Lar- 
 ceny, pocket-picking. " And I turned my memory 
 back to the evidence about her case, but I could 
 not remember a single word. In the margin I had 
 noted: "Incorrigible from a child up; bad sur- 
 roundings. " And a mad impulse came over me to 
 go back to my window and call through the bars 
 to her: "Jenny Pilson! Jenny PUson! It was I 
 who bred you and surrounded you with evil! It 
 was I who caught you for being what I made you! 
 I brought your bill in true! I judged you, and I 
 caged you! Jenny Pilson! Jenny Pilson!" But 
 just as I reached the window, the door of my wait- 
 ing-room was fortunately opened, and a voice said: 
 "Now, sir; at your service!" . . . 
 
 I sat again in that scoop of the shore by the long 
 rolling seas, burying in the sand the piece of paper 
 which had summoned me away to my Grand Jmy ; 
 and the same thoughts came to me with the break- 
 
 111 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 ing of the waves that had come to me before: 
 How, in every wave was a particle that had known 
 the shore 'of every land; and in each sparkle of the 
 hot sunlight steahng up that bright water into the 
 sky, the microcosm of all change and of all imity! 
 
 1912. 
 
 112 
 
GONE 
 
 NOT possible to conceive of rarer beauty than 
 that which clung about the summer day 
 three years ago when first we had the news of the 
 poor Herds. Loveliness was a net of golden fila- 
 ments in which the world was caught. It was 
 gravity itself, so tranquil; and it was a sort of 
 intoxicating laughter. From the top field that we 
 crossed to go down to their cottage, all the far 
 sweep of those outstretched wings of beauty could 
 be seen. Very wonderful was the poise of the 
 sacred bird, that moved nowhere but in our hearts. 
 The lime-tree scent was just stealing out into air 
 for some days already bereft of the scent of hay; 
 and the sun was falling to his evening home be- 
 hind our pines and beeches. It was no more than 
 radiant warm. And, as we went, we wondered 
 why we had not been told before that Mrs. Herd 
 was so very ill. It was foolish to wonder — ^these 
 people do not speak of suffering till it is late. 
 To speak, when it means what this meant — ^loss 
 of wife and mother — ^was to flatter reality too 
 much. To be healthy, or — die! That is their 
 
 113 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 creed. To go on till they drop — ^then very soon 
 pass away! What room for states between — on 
 their poor wage, in their poor cottages? 
 
 We crossed the mill-stream in the hollow — ^to 
 their white, thatched dwelling; silent, already 
 awed, almost resentful of this so-varying Scheme 
 of Things. At the gateway Herd himself was 
 standing, just in from his work. For work in the 
 country does not wait on illness — even death 
 claims from its onlookers but a few hours, birth 
 none at all. And it is as well; for what must be 
 must, and in work alone man rests from grief. 
 Sorrow and anxiety had made strange alteration 
 already in Herd's face. Through every crevice 
 of the rough, stolid mask the spirit was peeping, 
 a sort of quivering supphant, that seemed to ask 
 all the time: "Is it true?" A regular cottager's 
 figure, this of Herd's — a labourer of these parts — 
 strong, slow, but active, with just a touch of the 
 untamed somewhere, about the swing and car- 
 riage of him, about the strong jaw, and wide thick- 
 lipped mouth; just that something independent, 
 which, in great variety, clings to the natives of 
 these stiU remote, half-pagan valleys by the moor. 
 
 We all moved silently to the lee of the outer 
 wall, so that our voices might not carry up to the 
 sick woman lying there under the eaves, almost 
 
 114 
 
GONE 
 
 within hand reach. "Yes, sir." "No, sir." "Yes, 
 ma'am." This, and the constant, unforgettable 
 suppUcation of his eyes, was all that came from 
 him; yet he seemed loath to let us go, as though he 
 thought we had some mysterious power to help 
 him — the magic, perhaps, of money, to those who 
 have none. Grateful at our promise of another 
 doctor, a specialist, he yet seemed with his eyes 
 to say that he knew that such were only em- 
 broideries of Fate. And when we had wrung his 
 hand and gone, we heard him coming after us. 
 His wife had said she would like to see us, please. 
 Would we come up? 
 
 An old woman and Mrs. Herd's sister were in 
 the sitting-room; they showed us to the crazy, 
 narrow stairway. Though we lived distant but 
 four hundred yards of a crow's iiight, we had never 
 seen Mrs. Herd before, for that is the way of things 
 in this land of minding one's own business — a slight, 
 dark, girHsh-looking woman, almost quite refined 
 away, and with those eyes of the dying, where the 
 spirit is coming through, as it only does when it 
 knows that all is over except just the passing. 
 She lay in a double bed, with clean white sheets. 
 A white-washed room, so low that the ceiling al- 
 most touched our heads, some flowers in a bowl, the 
 small lattice window open. Though it was hot 
 
 115 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 in there, it was better far than the rooms of most 
 famihes in towns, Uving on a wage of twice as much; 
 for here was no sign of defeat in decency or cleanU- 
 ness. In her face, as ia poor Herd's, was that same 
 strange minghng of resigned despair and almost 
 eager appeal, so terrible to disappoint. Yet, try- 
 ing not to disappoint it, one felt guilty of treachery. 
 What was the good, the kindness, in making this 
 poor bird flutter still with hope against the bars, 
 when fast prison had so surely closed in round her? 
 But what else could we do? We could not give 
 her those glib assurances that naive souls make 
 so easily to others concerning their after state. 
 
 Secretly, I think, we knew that her philosophy 
 of calm reality, that queer and unbidden growing 
 tranquilHty which precedes death, was nearer to 
 our own behef, than would be any gilt-edged ortho- 
 doxy; but nevertheless (such is the strength of 
 what is expected), we felt it dreadful that we could 
 not console her with the ordinary presumptions. 
 
 " You mustn't give up hope, " we kept on saying : 
 "The new doctor will do a lot for you; he's a 
 speciaUst — a very clever man. " 
 
 And she kept on answering: "Yes, sir. " "Yes, 
 ma'am." But stUl her eyes went on asking, as 
 if there were something else she wanted. And 
 then to one of us came an inspiration : 
 
 116 
 
GONE 
 
 "You mustn't let your husband worry about 
 expense. That will be all right. " 
 
 She smiled then, as if the chief cloud on her soul 
 had been the thought of the arrears her illness and 
 death would leave weighing on him with whom she 
 had shared this bed ten years and more. And 
 with that smUe warming the memory of those 
 spirit-haunted eyes, we crept down-stairs again, 
 and out into the fields. 
 
 It was more beautiful than ever, just touched 
 already with evening mystery — ^it was better than 
 ever to be ahve. And the immortal wonder that 
 has haunted man since first he became man, and 
 haunts, I think, even the animals — ^the tmanswer- 
 able question, why joy and beauty must ever be 
 walking hand in hand with ugliness and pain — 
 haunted us across those fields of Kfe and loveliness. 
 It was aU right, no doubt, even reasonable, since 
 without dark there is no Hght. It was part of 
 that unending sum whose answer is not given; the 
 merest httle swing of the great pendulum! And 
 yet — ! To accept this violent contrast without 
 a sigh of revolt, without a question! No sirs, it 
 was not so jolly as all that! That she should be 
 dying there at thirty, of a creeping malady which 
 she might have checked, perhaps, if she had not 
 had too many things to do for the children and 
 
 117 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 husband, to do anything for herself — ^if she had not 
 been forced to hold the creed: Be healthy, or die! 
 This was no doubt perfectly expUcable and in 
 accordance with the Supreme Equation; yet we, 
 enjoyiQg life, and health, and ease of money, felt 
 horror and revolt on this evening of such beauty. 
 Nor at the moment did we derive great comfort 
 from the thought that life sUps in and out of 
 sheath, like siui-sparks on water, and that of all 
 the cloud of summer midges dancing in the last 
 gleam, not one would be ahve to-morrow. 
 
 It was three evenings later that we heard un- 
 certain footfalls on the flagstones of the verandah, 
 then a sort of brushing sound against the wood of 
 the long, open window. Drawing aside the cur- 
 tain, one of us looked out. Herd was standing 
 there in the bright moonlight, bareheaded, with 
 roughened hair. He came in, and seeming not to 
 know quite where he went, took stand by the 
 hearth, and putting up his dark hand, gripped 
 the mantelshelf. Then, as if recollecting himself, 
 he said: "Gude evenin', sir; beg pardon, M'm." 
 No more for a full minute; but his hand, taking 
 some little china thing, turned it over and over 
 without ceasing, and down his broken face tears 
 ran. Then, very suddenly, he said: "She's 
 gone. " And his hand turned over and over that 
 
 118 
 
GONE 
 
 little china thing, and the tears went on rolling 
 down. Then, stumbling, and swaying like a man 
 in drink, he made his way out again into the 
 moonlight. We watched him across the lawn 
 and path, and through the gate, tiU his footfalls 
 died out there in the field, and his figure was 
 lost in the black shadow of the holly hedge. 
 
 And the night was so beautiful, so utterly, 
 glamourously beautiful, with its star-flowers, and 
 its silence, and its trees clothed in moonlight. 
 AH was tranquil as a dream of sleep. But it was 
 long before our hearts, wandering with poor Herd, 
 would let us remember that she had slipped away 
 into so beautiful a dream. 
 
 The dead do not suffer from their rest in beauty. 
 But the Uving ! 
 
 1911. 
 
 119 
 
THRESHING 
 
 WHEN the drone of the thresher breaks 
 through the autunm sighing of trees and 
 wind, or through that stillness of the first frost, I 
 get restless and more restless, till, throwing down 
 my pen, I have gone out to see. For there is 
 nothing like the sight of threshing for making one 
 feel good — ^not in the sense of comfort, but at 
 heart. There, under the pines and the already 
 leafless elms and beech-trees, close to the great 
 stacks, is the big, busy creature, with its small 
 black puffing engine astern; and there, aU aroxmd 
 it, is that conglomeration of unsentimental labour 
 which invests all the crises of farm work with such 
 fascination. The crew of the farm is only five all 
 told, but to-day they are fifteen, and none stran- 
 gers, save the owners of the travelling thresher. 
 
 They are working without respite and with 
 little speech, not at all as if they had been brought 
 together for the benefit of some one else's com, 
 but as though they, one and all, had a private 
 grudge against Time and a personal pleasure in 
 finishing this Job, which, while it lasts, is bringing 
 
 120 
 
THRESHING 
 
 them extra pay and most excellent free feeding. 
 Just as after a dilatory voyage a crew will brace 
 themselves for the run in, recording with sudden 
 energy their consciousness of triumph over the 
 elements, so on a farm the harvests of hay and 
 com, sheep-shearing, and threshing wiU bring out 
 in all a common sentiment, a kind of sporting 
 energy, a defiant spurt, as it were, to score off 
 Nature; for it is only a philosopher here and 
 there among them, I think, who sees that Nature 
 is eager to be scored off in this fashion, being anx- 
 ious that some one should eat her kindly fruits. 
 
 With ceremonial as grave as that which is at 
 work within the thresher itself, the tasks have been 
 divided. At the root of all things, pitchforking 
 from the stack, stands the farmer, moustached, 
 and always upright — ^was he not in the Yeomanry? 
 — dignified in a hard black hat, no waistcoat, and 
 his working coat so ragged that it would never 
 cling to him but for pure affection. Between him 
 and the body of the machine are five more pitch- 
 forks, directing the pale flood of raw material. 
 There, amongst them, is poor Herd, still so sad 
 from his summer loss, plodding doggedly away. 
 To watch him even now makes one feel how terri- 
 ble is that dumb grief which has never learned to 
 moan. And there is George Yeoford, almost too 
 
 121 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 sober; and Murdon plying his pitchfork with a 
 supernatural regularity that cannot quite dim his 
 queer brigand's face of dark, soft gloom shot with 
 sudden humours, his soft, dark corduroys and 
 battered hat. Occasionally he stops, and taking 
 off that hat, wipes his corrugated brow under 
 black hair, and seems to brood over his own regu- 
 larity. 
 
 Down here, too, where I stand, each separate 
 function of the thresher has its appointed slave. 
 Here Cedric rakes the chaff pouring from the side 
 down into the chaff-shed. Carting the straw 
 that streams from the thresher bows, are Michel- 
 more and Neck — ^the little man who cannot read, 
 but can milk and whistle the hearts out of his 
 cows till they follow him like dogs. At the thresh- 
 er's stern is Morris, the driver, selected because of 
 that utter reUability which radiates from his 
 broad, handsome face. His part is to attend the 
 sacking of the three kinds of grain for ever sieving 
 out. He murmurs: "Busy work, sir!" and opens 
 a little door to show me how "the machinery does 
 it all," holding a sack between his knees and some 
 string in his white teeth. Then away goes the 
 sack — four bushels, one hundred and sixty pounds 
 of "genuines, seconds, or seed" — ^wheeled by 
 Cedric on a little trolley thing, to where George- 
 
 122 
 
THRESHING 
 
 the-Gaul or Jim-the-Early-Saxon is waiting to 
 bear it on his back up the stone steps into the 
 corn-chamber. 
 
 It has been raining in the night; the ground is a 
 chum of straw and mud, and the trees still drip; 
 but now there is sunlight, a sweet air, and clear 
 sky, wine-coloured through the red, naked, beech- 
 twigs tipped with white untimely buds. Nothing 
 can be more lovely than this late autumn day, so 
 stiU, save for the droning of the thresher and the 
 constant tinny chuckle of the grey, thin-headed 
 Guinea-fowl, driven by this business away from 
 their usual haunts. 
 
 And soon the feeling that I knew would come 
 begins creeping over me, the sense of an extraor- 
 dinary sanity in this never-ceasing harmonious 
 labour pursued in the autumn air faintly perfumed 
 with wood-smoke, with the scent of chaff, and 
 whiffs from that black puffing-Billy; the sense that 
 there is nothing between this clean toil — ^not too 
 hard but hard enough — and the clean consumption 
 of its clean results; the sense that nobody except 
 myself is in the least conscious of how sane it all 
 is. The brains of these sane ones are all too busy 
 with the real affairs of fife, the disposition of their 
 wages, anticipation of dinner, some girl, some 
 junketing, some wager, the last rifle match, and, 
 
 123 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 more than all, with that pleasant rhythmic noth- 
 ingness, companion of the busy swing and play of 
 muscleS; which of all states is secretly most akin 
 to the deep unconsciousness of life itself. Thus 
 to work in the free air for the good of all and the 
 hurt of none, without worry or the breath of acri- 
 mony — surely no phase of human life so nears the 
 life of the truly civilised community — ^the life of 
 a hive of bees. Not one of these working so sanely 
 — unless it be Morris, who will spend his Sunday 
 afternoon on some high rock just watching sun- 
 light and shadow drifting on the moors — ^not one, 
 I think, is distraught by perception of his own 
 sanity, by knowledge of how near he is to Harmony, 
 not even by appreciation of the still radiance of 
 this day, or its innumerable fine shades of colour. 
 It is aU work, and no moody consciousness — all 
 work, and will end in sleep. 
 
 I leave them soon, and make my way up the 
 stone steps to the "com chamber," where tran- 
 quiUity is crowned. In the whitewashed room 
 the com hes in drifts and ridges, three to four feet 
 deep, all silvery-dim, like some remote sand des- 
 ert, lifeless beneath the moon. Here it Ues, and 
 into it, staggering imder the sacks, George-the- 
 Gaul and Jim-the-Early-Saxon tramp up to their 
 knees, spill the sacks over their heads, and out 
 
 124 
 
THRESHING 
 
 again; and above where their feet have plunged 
 the patient surface closes again, smooth. And as 
 I stand there in the doorway, looking at that 
 silvery corn drift, I think of the whole process, 
 from seed sown to the last sieving into this tran- 
 quil resting-place. I think of the slow, dogged 
 ploughman, with the crows above him on the wind ; 
 of the swing of the sower's arm, dark up against 
 grey sky on the steep field. I think of the seed 
 snug-burrowing for safety, and its mysterious 
 ferment under the warm Spring rain, of the soft 
 green shoots tapering up so shyly toward the first 
 sun, and hardening in air to thin wiry stalk. I 
 think of the unnumerable tiny beasts that have 
 jimgled in that pale forest; of the winged blue 
 jewels of butterfly risen from it to hover on the 
 wild-rustling blades; of that continual music 
 played there by the wind ; of the chicory and poppy 
 flowers that have,been its Hghts-o'-love, as it grew 
 tawny and fuU of life, before the appointed date 
 when it should return to its captivity, I think 
 of that slow-travelling hum and swish which laid 
 it low, of the gathering to stack, and the long wait- 
 ing under the rustle and drip of the sheltering 
 trees, until yesterday the hoot of the thresher 
 blew, and there began the falling into this dim 
 silvery peace. Here it will he with the pale sun 
 
 125 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 narrowly filtering in on it, and by night the pale 
 moon, till slowly, week by week, it is stolen away, 
 and its ridges and drifts sink and sink, and the 
 beasts have eaten it all. . . . 
 
 When the dusk is falling, I go out to them again. 
 They have neariy finished now; the chaff in the 
 chaff-shed is mounting hillock-high; only the 
 little bariey stack remains unthreshed. Mrs. 
 George-the-Gaxil is standing with a jug to give 
 drink to the tired ones. Some stars are already 
 netted in the branches of the pines; the Guinea- 
 fowl are silent. But still the harmonious thresher 
 hmns and showers from three sides the straw, the 
 chaff, the corn; and the men fork, and rake, and 
 cart, and carry, sleep growing in their muscles, 
 silence on their tongues, and the tranquillity of 
 the long day nearly ended in their souls. They 
 will go on till it is quite dark. 
 
 1911. 
 
 126 
 
THAT OLD-TIME PLACE 
 
 **^?^ES, suh — ^here we are at that old-time 
 
 A place!" And our dark driver drew up his 
 Httle victoria gently. 
 
 Through the open doorway, into a dim, cavern- 
 ous, ruined house of New Orleans we passed. The 
 mildew and dirt, the dark denuded dankness of 
 that old hostel, rotting down with damp and time! 
 
 And our guide, the tall, thin, grey-haired dame, 
 who came forward with such native ease and moved 
 before us, touching this fungused wall, that rusting 
 stairway, and telling, as it were, no one in her 
 soft, slow speech, things that any one could see — 
 what a strange and fitting figure! 
 
 Before the smell of the deserted, oozing rooms, 
 before that old creature leading us on and on, 
 negligent of all our questions, and talking to the 
 air, as though we were not, we felt such discom- 
 fort that we soon made to go out again into such 
 freshness as there was on that day of dismal heat. 
 Then realising, it seemed, that she was losing us, 
 our old guide turned; for the first time looking in 
 our faces, she smiled, and said in her sweet, weak 
 voice, hke the sound from the strings of a spinet 
 
 127 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 long unplayed on: "Don' you wahnd to see the 
 dome-room: an' all the other rooms right here, of 
 this old-time place?" 
 
 Again those words! We had not the hearts to 
 disappoint her. And as we followed on and on, 
 along the mouldering corridors and rooms where 
 the black peeling papers hung Uke stalactites, the 
 dominance of our senses gradually dropped from 
 us, and with our souls we saw its soul — ^the soul of 
 this old-time place; this mustering house of the 
 old South, bereft of all but ghosts and the grey 
 pigeons niched in the rotting gallery round a nar- 
 row courtyard open to the sky. 
 
 "This is the dome-room, suh and lady; right 
 over the slave-market it is. Here they did the 
 business of the State — sure; old-time heroes up 
 there in the roof — ^Washington, Hamilton, Jeffer- 
 son, Davis, Lee — ^there they are! All gone — 
 now! Yes, suh!" 
 
 A fine — ^yea, even a splendid room, of great 
 height, and carved grandeur, with hand-wrought 
 bronze sconces and a band of metal bordering, 
 aU blackened with oblivion. And the faces of 
 those old heroes encircling that domed ceiling 
 were blackened too, and scarred with damp, be- 
 yond recognition. Here, beneath their gaze, men 
 had banqueted and danced and ruled. The pride 
 
 128 
 
THAT OLD-TIME PLACE 
 
 and might and vivid strength of things still 
 fluttered their uneasy flags of spirit, moved dis- 
 herited wings! Those old-time feasts and grave 
 discussions — ^we seemed to see them printed on the 
 thick air, imprisoned in this great chamber built 
 above their dark foundations. The pride and the 
 might and the vivid strength of things — ^gone, all 
 gone! 
 
 We became conscious again of that soft, weak 
 voice. 
 
 "Not hearing very well, suh,I have it all printed, 
 lady — beautifully told here — ^yes, indeed ! " 
 
 She was putting cards into our hands; then, 
 impassive, maintaining ever her impersonal chant, 
 the guardian of past glory led us on. 
 
 "Now we shall see the slave-market — down- 
 stairs, underneath! It's wet for the lady — ^the 
 water comes in now — ^yes, suh!" 
 
 On the crumbling black and white marble floor- 
 ings the water indeed was trickling into pools. 
 And down in the halls there came to us wandering 
 — strangest thing that ever strayed through de- 
 serted grandeur — a brown, broken horse, lean, 
 with a sore flank and a head of tremendous age. 
 It stopped and gazej^at us, as though we might be 
 going to give it things to eat, then passed on, 
 stumbling over the ruined marbles. For a mo- 
 
 129 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 ment we had thought him ghost — one of the many. 
 But he was not, since his hoofs sounded. The 
 scrambling clatter of them had died out into si- 
 lence before we came to that dark, crjrpt-hke cham- 
 ber whose marble coliunns were ringed in iron, 
 veritable pillars of foundation. And then we saw 
 that our old guide's hands were full of newspapers. 
 She struck a match; they caught fire and blazed. 
 Holding high that torch, she said: "See! Up 
 there's his name, above where he stood. The 
 auctioneer. Oh yes, indeed! Here's where they 
 sold them!" 
 
 Below that name, decaying on the wall, we had 
 the slow, uncanny feeling of some one standing 
 there in the gleam and flicker from that paper 
 torch. For a moment the whole shadowy room 
 seemed full of forms and faces. Then the torch 
 died out, and our old guide, pointing through an 
 archway with the blackened stump of it, said: 
 "'Twas here they kept them — ^indeed, yes!" 
 We saw before us a sort of vault, stone-built, and 
 low, and long. The light there was too dim for 
 us to make out anything but walls and heaps of 
 rusting scrap-iron cast away there and mouldering 
 down. But trying to pierce that darkness we be- 
 came conscious, as it seemed, of innumerable eyes 
 gazing, not at us, but through the archway where 
 
 130 
 
THAT OLD-TIME PLACE 
 
 we stood; innumerable white eyeballs gleaming 
 out of blackness. From behiad us came a little 
 laugh. It floated past through the archway, 
 toward those eyes. Who was that? Who laughed 
 in there? The old South itself — ^that incredible, 
 fine, lost soul! That "old-time" thing of old 
 ideals, bhndfolded by its own history! That 
 queer proud blend of simple chivalry and tyranny, 
 of piety and the abhorrent thing! Who was it 
 laughed there in the old slave-market — ^laughed at 
 these white eyeballs glaring from out of the black- 
 ness of their dark cattle-pen? What poor departed 
 soul in this House of Melancholy? But there was 
 no ghost when we turned to look — only our old 
 guide with her sweet smile. 
 
 "Yes, suh. Here they all came — 'twas the 
 finest hotel — ^before the war-time; old Southern 
 famiUes — buyln' an' sellin' their property. Yes, 
 ma'am, very interesting! This way! And here 
 were the bells to aU the rooms. Broken, you see — 
 aU broken!" 
 
 And rather quickly we passed away, out of that 
 "old-time place"; where something had laughed, 
 and the drip, drip, drip of water down the walls 
 was as the sound of a spirit grieving. 
 
 1912. 
 
 131 
 
ROMANCE— THREE GLEAMS 
 
 ON that New Year's morning when I drew up 
 the blind it was still nearly dark, but for 
 the faintest pink flush glancing out there on the 
 horizon of black water. The far shore of the river's 
 mouth was just soft dusk; and the dim trees be- 
 low me were in perfect stillness. There was no 
 lap of water. And then — ^I saw her, drifting in on 
 the tide — ^the Uttle ship, passaging below me, a 
 happy ghost. Like no thing of this world she 
 came, ending her flight, with saU-wings closing and 
 her glowing lantern eyes. There was I know not 
 what of stealthy joy about her thus creeping in to 
 the unexpecting land. And I wished she would 
 never pass, but go on ghding by down there for ever 
 with her dark ropes, and her bright lanterns, and 
 her mysterious felicity, so that I might have for 
 ever in my heart the blessed feeling she brought 
 me, coming like this out of that great mystery the 
 sea. If only she need not change to solidity, but 
 ever be this visitor from the unknown, this sacred 
 bird, telling with her half-seen, traihng-down 
 plume-sails the story of uncharted w.onder. If 
 
 132 
 
ROMANCE— THREE GLEAMS 
 
 only I might go on trembling, as I was, with the 
 rapture of aU I did not know and covild not see, 
 yet felt pressing against me and touching my face 
 with its Hps! To think of her at anchor in cold 
 light was like flinging-to a door in the face of happi- 
 ness. And just then she struck her bell; the faint 
 silvery far-down sound fled away before her, and 
 to every side, out into the utter hush, to discover 
 echo. But nothing answered, as if fearing to 
 break the spell of her coming, to brush with reality 
 the dark sea dew from her sail-wings. But within 
 me, in response, there began the song of all un- 
 known things; the song so tenuous, so ecstatic, 
 that seems to sweep and quiver across such thin 
 golden striDgs, and like an eager dream dies too 
 soon. The song of the secret-knowing wind that 
 has peered through so great forests and over such 
 wild sea; blown on so many faces, and in the jun- 
 gles of the grass — ^the song of all that the wind has 
 seen and felt. The song of Uves that I should 
 never hve; of the loves that I should never love — 
 singing to me as though I should! And suddenly 
 I felt that I could not bear my Uttle ship of dreams 
 to grow hard and grey, her bright lanterns drowned 
 in the cold Hght, her dark ropes spidery and taut, 
 her sea-wan sails all furled, and she no more en- 
 chanted; and turning away I let fall the curtain. 
 
 133 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 II 
 
 Then what happens to the moon? She, who, 
 shy and veiled, slips out before dusk to take the 
 air of heaven, wandering timidly among the col- 
 umned clouds, and fugitive from the staring of 
 the sun; she, who, when dusk has come, rules the 
 sentient night with such chaste and icy spell — 
 whither and how does she retreat? 
 
 I came on her one morning — ^I surprised her. 
 She was stealing into a dark wintry wood, and five 
 little stars were chasing her. She was orange- 
 hooded, a light-o'-love dismissed — ^unashamed and 
 unfatigued, having taken all. And she was look- 
 ing back with her almond eyes, across her dark- 
 ivory shoulder, at Night where he still lay drowned 
 in the sleep she had brought him. What a strange, 
 slow, mocking look! So might Aphrodite herself 
 have looked back at some weary lover, remem- 
 bering the fire of his first embrace. Insatiate, 
 smiling creature, slipping down to the rim of the 
 world to her bath in the sweet waters of dawn, 
 whence emerging, pure as a water lily, she would 
 float in the cool sky till evening came again! 
 And just then she saw me looking, and hid be- 
 hind a holm-oak tree; but I could still see the 
 gleam of one shoulder and her long narrow eyes 
 
 134 
 
ROMANCE— THREE GLEAMS 
 
 pursuing me. I went up to the tree and parted 
 its dark boughs to take her; but she had slipped 
 behind another. I called to her to stand, if only 
 for one moment. But she smiled and went sHp- 
 ping on, and I ran thrusting through the wet 
 bushes, leaping the fallen trunks. The scent of 
 rotting leaves disturbed by my feet leaped out 
 into the darkness, and birds, surprised, fluttered 
 away. And still I ran — she slipping ever further 
 into the grove, and ever looking back at me. And 
 I thought: But I will catch you yet, you nymph 
 of perdition! The wood will soon be passed, you 
 will have no cover then! And from her eyes, and 
 the scanty gleam of her flying Hmbs, I never looked 
 away, not even when I stumbled or ran against 
 tree trunks in my blind haste. And at every clear- 
 ing I flew more furiously, thinking to seize all of 
 her with my gaze before she could cross the glade; 
 but ever she foimd some httle low tree, some bush 
 of birch ungrown, or the far top branches of the 
 next grove to screen her flying body and preserve 
 allurement. And all the time she was dipping, 
 dipping to the rim of the world. And then I 
 tripped; but, as I rose, I saw that she had lin- 
 gered for me; her long sliding eyes were full, it 
 seemed to me, of pity, as if she would have liked 
 for me to have enjoyed the sight of her. I stood 
 
 135 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 still, breathless, thinking that at last she would 
 consent; but flinging back, up into the air, one 
 dark-ivory arm, she sighed and vanished. And 
 the breath of her sigh stirred all the birch-tree 
 twigs just coloured with the dawn. Long I stood 
 in that thicket gazing at the spot where she had 
 leapt from me over the edge of the world — ^my 
 heart quivering. 
 
 Ill 
 
 /y 
 
 ^ We embarked on the estuary steamer that win- 
 ter morning just as daylight came full. The sun 
 was on the wing scattering little white clouds, as 
 an eagle might scatter doves. They scurried up 
 before him with their broken feathers tipped and 
 tinged with gold. In the air was a touch of frost, 
 and a smoky mist-drift clung here and there above 
 the reeds, blurring the shores of the lagoon so that 
 we seemed to be steaming across boundless water, 
 till some clump of trees would fling its top out of 
 the fog, then fall back into whiteness. 
 
 And then, in that thick vapour, rounding I sup- 
 pose some curve, we came suddenly into we knew 
 not what — ^all white and moving it was, as if the 
 mist were crazed; murmuring, too, with a sort of 
 restless beating. We seemed to be passing through 
 a ghost — ^the ghost of all the life that had sprung 
 
 136 
 
ROMANCE— THREE GLEAMS 
 
 from this water and its shores; we seemed to 
 have left reality, tojbe travelling through live 
 wonder. 
 
 And the fantastic thought sprang into my mind : 
 I have diea This is the voyage of my soul in the 
 wild. I am in the final wilderness of spirits — ^lost 
 in the ghost robe that wraps the earth. There 
 seemed in all this white murmuration to be mill- 
 ions of tiny hands stretching out to me, millions 
 of whispering voices, of wistful eyes. I had no 
 fear, but a curious baffled eagerness, the strangest 
 feeling of having lost myself and become part of 
 this around me; exactly as if my own hands and 
 voice and eyes had left me and were groping, and 
 whispering, and gazing out there in the eeriness. 
 I was no longer a man on an estuary steamer, but 
 part of sentient ghostliness. Nor did I feel un- 
 happy; it seemed as though I had never been any- 
 thing but this Bedouin spirit wandering. 
 
 We passed through again into the stillness of 
 plain mist, and all those eerie sensations went, 
 leaving nothing but curiosity to know what this 
 was that we had traversed. Then suddenly the 
 sun came flaring out, and we saw behind us thou- 
 sands and thousands of white gulls dipping, wheel- 
 ing, brushing the water with their wings, bewitched 
 with sun and mist. That was all. And yet — 
 
 137 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 that white-winged legion through whom we had 
 ploughed our way were not, could never be, to me 
 just guUs — ^there was more than mere sun-glamour 
 gilding their misty plumes; there was the wizardry 
 of my past wonder, the enchantment of romance. 
 
 1912. 
 
 138 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 WE set out to meet him at Waterloo Station 
 on a dull day of February — ^I, who had 
 owned his impetuous mother, knowing a little 
 what to expect, while to my companion he would 
 be all original. We stood there waiting (for the 
 Salisbury train was late), and wondering with a 
 warm, half-fearful eagerness what sort of new 
 thread Life was going to twine into our skein. I 
 think our chief dread was that he might have light 
 eyes — ^those yellow Chinese eyes of the common, 
 parti-coloured spaniel. And each new minute of 
 the train's tardiness increased our anxious com- 
 passion: His first journey; his first separation 
 from his mother; this black two-months' baby! 
 Then the train ran in, and we hastened to look for 
 him. " Have you a dog for us? " 
 
 "A dog! Not in this van. Ask the rear- 
 guard. " 
 
 "Have you a dog for us?" 
 
 "That's right. From SaUsbury. Here's your 
 wild beast, sir!" 
 
 From behind a wooden crate we saw a long black 
 139 
 
CONCERNING LIF? 
 
 muzzled nose poking round at us, and heard a 
 faint hoarse whimpering. 
 
 I remember my first thought: 
 
 "Isn't his nose too long?" 
 
 But to my companion's heart it went at once, 
 because it was swollen from crying and being 
 pressed against things that he could not see 
 through. We took him out — soft, wobbly, tear- 
 ful; set him down on his four, as yet not quite 
 simultaneous legs, and regarded him. Or, rather, 
 my companion did, having her head on one side, 
 and a quavering smile ; and I regarded her, knowing 
 that I should thereby get a truer impression of him. 
 
 He wandered a httle round our legs, neither 
 wagging his tail nor licking at our hands; then he 
 looked up, and my companion said: "He's an 
 angel!" 
 
 I was not so certain. He seemed hammer- 
 headed, with no eyes at all, and little connection 
 between his head, his body, and his legs. His 
 ears were very long, as long as his poor nose; and 
 gleaming down in the blackness of him I could see 
 the same white star that disgraced his mother's 
 chest. 
 
 Picking him up, we carried him to a four-wheeled 
 cab, and took his muzzle off. His Uttle dark- 
 brown eyes were resolutely fixed on distance, and 
 
 140 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 by his refusal to even smell the biscuits- we had 
 brought to make him happy, we knew that the 
 human being had not yet come into a life that had 
 contained so far only a mother, a wood-shed, and 
 four other soft, wobbly, black, hammer-headed 
 angels, smelling of themselves, and warmth, and 
 wood shavings. It was pleasant to feel that to us 
 he would surrender an untouched love, that is, 
 if he would surrender anything. Suppose he did 
 not take to us! 
 
 And just then something must have stirred in 
 him, for he turned up his swollen nose and stared 
 at my companion, and a little later rubbed the 
 dry pinkness of his tongue against my thumb. In 
 that look, and that unconscious restless lick, he 
 was trying hard to leave imliappiness behind, try- 
 ing hard to feel that these new creatures with 
 stroking paws and queer scents, were his mother; 
 yet all the time he knew, I am sure, that they were 
 something bigger, more permanently, desperately, 
 his. The first sense of being owned, perhaps 
 (who knows) of owning, had stirred in him. He 
 would never again be quite the same unconscious 
 creature. 
 
 A little way from the end of our journey we got 
 out and dismissed the cab. He could not too soon 
 know the scents and pavements of this London 
 
 141 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 where the chief of his Ufe must pass. I can see 
 now his first bumble down that wide, back-water 
 of a street, how continually and suddenly he sat 
 down to make sure of his own legs, how con- 
 tinually he lost our heels. He showed us then in 
 full perfection what was afterwards to be an incon- 
 venient — if endearing — characteristic: At any call 
 or whistle he would look in precisely the opposite 
 direction. How many times all through his hfe 
 have I not seen him, at my whistle, start violently . 
 and turn his tail to me, then, with nose thrown 
 searchingly from side to side, begin to canter 
 toward the horizon! 
 
 In that first walk, we met, fortunately, but one 
 vehicle, a brewer's dray; he chose that moment to 
 attend to the more serious affairs of life, sitting 
 quietly before the horses' feet and requiring to be 
 moved by hand. From the beginning he had his 
 dignity, and was extremely difiicult to lift, owing 
 to the length of his middle distance. 
 
 What strange feelings must have stirred in his 
 little white soul when he first smelled carpet! 
 But it was all so strange to him that day — ^I doubt 
 if he felt more than I did when I first travelled to 
 my private school, reading "Tales of a Grand- 
 father," and plied with tracts and sherry by my 
 father's man of business. 
 
 142 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 That night, indeed, for several nights, he slept 
 with me, keeping me too warm down my back, 
 and waking me now and then with quaint sleepy 
 whimperings. Indeed, all through his life he flew 
 a good deal in his sleep, fighting dogs and seeing 
 ghosts, running after rabbits and thrown sticks; 
 and to the last one never quite knew whether or 
 no to rouse him when his four black feet began to 
 j erk and quiver. His dreams were like our dreams, 
 both good and bad; happy sometimes, sometimes 
 tragic to weeping point. 
 
 He ceased to sleep with me the day we discovered 
 that he was a perfect little colony, whose settlers 
 were of an active species which I have never seen 
 again. After that he had many beds, for circum- 
 stance ordained that his Hfe should be nomadic, 
 and it is to this I trace that philosophic iudiffer- 
 ence to place or property, which marked him out 
 from most of his own kind. He learned early 
 that for a black dog with long silky ears, a feath- 
 ered tail, and head of great dignity, there was no 
 home whatsoever, away from those creatures with 
 special scents, who took Hberties with his name, 
 and alone of aU created things were privileged to 
 smack him with a slipper. He would sleep any- 
 where, so long as it was in their room, or so 
 close outside it as to make no matter, for it was 
 
 143 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 with him a principle that what he did not smell 
 did not exist. I would I could hear again those 
 long rubber-lipped snufflings of recognition under- 
 neath the door, with which each morning he would 
 regale and reassure a spirit that grew with age 
 more and more nervous and delicate about this 
 matter of propinquity! For he was a dog of 
 fixed ideas, things stamped on his mind were 
 indehble; as, for example, his duty toward cats, 
 for whom he had really a perverse affection, which 
 had led to that first disastrous moment of his life, 
 when he was brought up, poor bewildered puppy, 
 from a brief excursion to the kitchen, with one eye 
 closed and his cheek torn! He bore to his grave 
 that jagged scratch across the eye. It was in 
 dread of a repetition of this tragedy that he was 
 instructed at the word "Cats" to rush forward 
 with a special "tow-row-rowing," which he never 
 used toward any other form of creature. To the 
 end he cherished a hope that he would reach the 
 cat, but never did; and if he had, we knew he 
 would only have stood and wagged his tail; but 
 I well remember once, when he returned, impor- 
 tant, from some such sally, how dreadfully my 
 companion startled a cat-loving friend by murmur- 
 ing in her most honeyed voice : " Well, my darling, 
 have you been killing pussies in the garden? " 
 
 144 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 His eye and nose were impeccable in their sense 
 of form ; indeed, he was very EngUsh in that matter : 
 People must be just so; things smell properly; 
 and affairs go on in the one right way. He could 
 tolerate neither creatures in ragged clothes, nor 
 children on their hands and knees, nor postmen, 
 because, with their bags, they swelled-up on 
 one side, and carried lanterns on their stomachs. 
 He would never let the harmless creatures pass 
 without religious barks. Naturally a believer in 
 authority and routine, and distrusting spiritual 
 adventure, he yet had curious fads that seemed 
 to have nested in him, quite outside of all prin- 
 ciple. He would, for instance, follow neither car- 
 riages nor horses, and if we tried to make him, 
 at once left for home, where he would sit with nose 
 raised to Heaven, emitting through it a most lugu- 
 brious, shrill noise. Then again, one must not 
 place a stick, a sHpper, a glove, or anything with 
 which he could play, upon one's head — since such 
 an action reduced him at once to frenzy. For so 
 conservative a dog, his environment was sadly 
 anarchistic. He never complained in words of 
 our shifting habits, but curled his head round over 
 his left paw and pressed his chin very hard against 
 the ground whenever he smelled packing. What 
 necessity, — ^he seemed continually to be saying, — 
 
 145 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 what real necessity is there for change of any kind 
 whatever? Here we were all together, and one 
 day was like another, so that I knew where I was 
 — ^and now you only know what will happen next; 
 and I — I can't teU you whether I shall be with you 
 when it happens ! What strange, grieving minutes 
 a dog passes at such times in the underground of 
 his subconsciousness, refusing realisation, yet all 
 the time only too well divining. Some careless 
 word, some unmuted compassion in voice, the 
 stealthy wrapping of a pair of boots, the imaccus- 
 tomed shutting of a door that ought to be open, 
 the removal from a down-stair room of an object 
 always there — one tiny thing, and he knows for 
 certain that he is not going too. He fights against 
 the knowledge just as we do against what we can- 
 not bear; he gives up hope, but not effort, protest- 
 ing in the only way he knows of, and now and then 
 heaving a great sigh. Those sighs of a dog! They 
 go to the heart so much more deeply than the 
 sighs of our own kind, because they are utterly 
 unintended, regardless of effect, emerging from 
 one who, heaving them, knows not that they 
 have escaped him! 
 
 The words: "Yes — agoing too!" spoken in a cer- 
 tain tone, would call up in his eyes a still-question- 
 ing half-happiness, and from his tail a quiet flutter, 
 
 146 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 but did not quite serve to put to rest either his 
 doubt or his feeUng that it was all unnecessary — 
 until the cab arrived. Then he would pour him- 
 self out of door or window, and be found in the 
 bottom of the vehicle, looking severely away from 
 an admiring cabman. Once settled on our feet he 
 travelled with philosophy, but no digestion. 
 
 I think no dog was ever more indifferent to an 
 outside world of human creatures; yet few dogs 
 have made more conquests — especially among 
 strange women, through whom, however, he had 
 a habit of looking — ^veiy discouraging. He had, 
 natheless, one or two particular friends, such as 
 him to whom this book is dedicated, and a few 
 persons whom he knew he had seen before, but, 
 broadly speaking, there were in his world_of men, 
 only his mistress, and — ^the almighty. 
 
 Each August, till he was six, he was sent for 
 health, and the assuagement of his hereditary in- 
 stincts, up to a Scotch shooting, where he carried 
 many birds in a very tender manner. Once he 
 was compelled by Fate to remain there nearly a 
 year; and we went up ourselves to fetch him home. 
 Down the long avenue toward the keeper's cottage 
 we walked. It was high autumn; there had been 
 frost already, for the ground was fine with red and 
 yellow leaves; and presently we saw himself com- 
 
 147 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 ing, professionally questing among those leaves, 
 and preceding his dear keeper with the business- 
 like self-containment of a sportsman; not too fat, 
 glossy as a raven's wing, swinging his ears and 
 sporran like a little Highlander. We approached 
 him silently. Suddenly his nose went up from its 
 imagined trail, and he came rushing at our legs. 
 From him, as a garment drops from a man, 
 dropped all his strange soberness; he became in a 
 single instant one fluttering eagerness. He leaped 
 from life to life in one bound, without hesitation, 
 without regret. Not one sigh, not one look back, 
 not the faintest token of gratitude or regret at 
 leaving those good people who had tended him for 
 a whole year, buttered oat-cake for him, allowed 
 him to choose each night exactly where he would 
 sleep. No, he just marched out beside us, as 
 close as ever he could get, drawing us on in spirit, 
 and not even attending to the scents, until the 
 lodge gates were passed. 
 
 It was strictly in accordance with the perversity 
 of things, and something in the nature of calamity 
 that he had not been ours one year, when there 
 came over me a dreadful but overmastering aver- 
 sion from killing those birds and creatures of 
 which he was so fond as soon as they were dead. 
 And so I never knew him as a sportsman; for dur- 
 
 148 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 ing that first year he was only an unbroken puppy, 
 tied to my waist for fear of accidents, and carefully 
 pulling me off every shot. They tell me he de- 
 veloped a lovely nose and perfect mouth, large 
 enough to hold gingerly the biggest hare. I well 
 beheve it, remembering the qualities of his mother, 
 whose character, however, in stability he far sur- 
 passed. But, as he grew every year more devoted 
 to dead grouse and birds and rabbits, / liked 
 them more and more alive; it was the only real 
 breach between us, and we kept it out of sight. 
 Ah! well; it is consoling to reflect that I should in- 
 fallibly have ruined his sporting quahties, lacking 
 that pecuHar habit of meaning what one says, so 
 necessary to keep dogs virtuous. But surely to 
 have had him with me, quivering and alert, with 
 his solemn, eager face, would have given a new 
 joy to those crisp mornings when the hope of wings 
 coming to the gun makes poignant in the sports- 
 man as nothing else wiU, an almost sensual love 
 of Nature, a fierce deUght in the soft glow of leaves, 
 in the white birch stems and tracery of sparse 
 twigs against blue sky, in the scents of sap and 
 grass and gum and heather flowers; stivers the hair 
 of him with keenness for interpreting each sound, 
 and fills the very fern or moss he kneels on, the 
 very trunk he leans against, with strange vibration. 
 
 149 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 Slowly Fate prepares for each of us the religion 
 that lies coiled in our most secret nerves ; with such 
 we cannot trifle, we do not even try! But how 
 shall a man grudge any one sensations he has so 
 keenly felt? Let such as have never known those 
 curious delights, uphold the hand of horror — ^for 
 me there can be no such luxury. If I could, I 
 would still perhaps be knowing them; but when 
 once the joy of life in those winged and furry 
 things has knocked at the very portals of one's 
 spirit, the thought that by pressing a httle iron 
 twig one will rive that joy out of their vitals, is 
 too hard to bear. CaU it sestheticism, squeamish- 
 ness, namby-pamby sentimentalism, what you 
 will — ^it is stronger than oneseK! 
 
 Yes, after one had once watched with an eye 
 that did not merely see, the thirsty gaping of a 
 slowly dying bird, or a rabbit dragging a broken 
 leg to a hole where he would lie for hours thinking 
 of the fern to which he should never more come 
 forth — after that, there was always the following 
 little matter of arithmetic: Given, that all those 
 who had been shooting were "good-fair" shots — 
 which. Heaven knew, they never were — ^they yet 
 missed one at least in fotir, and did not miss it 
 very much; so that if seventy-five things were 
 slain, there were also twenty-five that had been 
 
 150 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 fired at, and, of those twenty-five, twelve and a 
 half had "gotten it" somewhere in their bodies, 
 and would "Hkely " die at their great leisure. 
 
 This was the sum that brought about the only 
 cleavage in our lives; and so, as he grew older, and 
 trying to part from each other we no longer could, 
 he ceased going to Scotland. But after that I 
 often felt, and especially when we heard guns, how 
 the best and most secret instincts of him were 
 being stifled. But what was to be done? In that 
 which was left of a clay pigeon he would take not 
 the faintest interest — ^the scent of it was paltry. 
 Yet always, even in his most cosseted and idle 
 days, he managed to preserve the grave preoccu- 
 pation of one professionally concerned with re- 
 trieving things that smell; and consoled himself 
 with pastimes such as cricket, which he played in 
 a manner highly speciaUsed, following the ball up 
 the moment it left the bowler's hand, and some- 
 times retrieving it before it reached the batsman. 
 When remonstrated with, he would consider a 
 little, hanging out a pink tongue and looking 
 rather too eagerly at the ball, then canter slowly 
 out to a sort of forward short leg. Why he always 
 chose that particular position it is difficult to 
 say; possibly he could lurk there better than any- 
 where else, the batsman's eye not being on him, 
 
 151 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 and the bowler's not too much. As a fieldsman 
 he was perfect, but for an occasional belief that 
 he was not merely short leg, but slip, point, mid- 
 off, and wicket-keep; and perhaps a tendency to 
 make the ball a little "jubey." But he worked 
 tremendously, watching every movement; for he 
 knew the game thoroughly, and seldom delayed it 
 more than three minutes when he secured the ball. 
 And if that ball were really lost, then indeed he 
 took over the proceedings with an intensity and 
 quiet vigour that destroyed many shrubs, and the 
 solemn satisfaction which comes from being in the 
 very centre of the stage. 
 
 But his most passionate delight was swimming 
 in anything except the sea, for which, with its un- 
 pleasant noise and habit of tasting salt, he had 
 Uttle affection. I see him now, cleaving the Ser- 
 pentine, with his air of "the world well lost," 
 striving to reach my stick before it had touched 
 water. Being only a large spaniel, too small for 
 mere heroism, he saved no lives in the water but 
 his own — and that, on one occasion, before our 
 very eyes, from a dark trout stream, which was 
 trying to wash him down into a black hole among 
 the boulders. 
 
 The call of the wild — Spring running — ^whatever 
 it is — ^that besets men and dogs, seldom attained 
 
 152 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 full mastery over him; but one could often see it 
 struggling against his devotion to the scent of us, 
 and, watching that dumb contest, I have time 
 and again wondered how far this civiHsation of ours 
 was justifiably imposed on him; how far the love 
 for us that we had so carefully implanted could 
 ever replace in him the satisfaction of his primitive 
 wild yearnings. He was like a man, naturally 
 polygamous, married to one loved woman. 
 
 It was surely not for nothing that Rover is dog's 
 most common name, and would be ours, but for 
 our too tenacious fear of losing something, to ad- 
 mit, even to ourselves, that we are hankering. 
 There was a man who said : Strange that two such 
 queerly opposite qualities as courage and hypoc- 
 risy are the leading characteristics of the Anglo- 
 Saxon! But is not hypocrisy just a product of 
 tenacity, which is again the lower part of courage? 
 Is not hypocrisy but an active sense of property 
 in one's good name, the clutching close of respecta- 
 bility at any price, the f eehng that one must not 
 part, even at the cost of truth, with what he has 
 sweated so to gain? And so we Anglo-Saxons will 
 not answer to the name of Rover, and treat our 
 dogs so that they, too, hardly know their natures. 
 
 The history of his one wandering, for which no 
 respectable reason can be assigned, will never, of 
 
 153 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 course, be known. It was in London, of an Octo- 
 ber evening, when we were told he had slipped out 
 and was not anywhere. Then began those four 
 distressful hours of searching for that black needle 
 in that blacker bundle of hay. Hours of real dis- 
 may and suffering — ^for it is suffering, indeed, to 
 feel a loved thing swallowed up in that hopeless 
 maze of London streets. Stolen or run over? 
 Which was worst? The neighbouring police sta- 
 tions visited, the Dog's Home notified, an order 
 for five hundred "Lost Dog" biUs placed in the 
 printer's hands, the streets patrolled! And then, 
 in a lull snatched for food, and stiU endeavouring 
 to preserve some aspect of assurance, we heard 
 the bark which meant: "Here is a door I cannot 
 open!" We hurried forth, and there he was on 
 the top doorstep — ^busy, imashamed, giving no 
 explanations, asking for his supper; and very 
 shortly after him came his five hundred "Lost 
 Dog" bills. Long I sat looking at him that night 
 after my companion had gone up, thinking of the 
 evening, some years before, when there followed 
 us that shadow of a spaniel who had been lost for 
 eleven days. And my heart turned over within me. 
 But he! He was asleep, for he knew not remorse. 
 Ah! and there was that other time, when it was 
 reported to me, returning home at night, that he 
 
 154 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 had gone out to find me; and I went forth again, 
 disturbed, and whistling his special caU to the 
 empty fields. Suddenly out of the darkness I 
 heard a rushing, and he came furiously dashing 
 against my heels from he alone knew where he had 
 been lurking and saying to himself: I will not go 
 in tUl he comes! I could not scold, there was 
 something too lyrical in the return of that live, 
 lonely, rushing piece of blackness through the 
 blacker night. After all, the vagary was but a 
 variation in his practice when one was away at 
 bed-time, of passionately scratching up his bed 
 in protest, till it resembled nothing; for, in spite 
 of his long and solemn face and the silkiness of 
 his ears, there was much in him yet of the cave 
 bear — he dug graves on the smallest provocations, 
 in which he never buried anything. He was not 
 a "clever" dog; and guiltless of all tricks. Nor 
 was he ever " shown. " We did not even dream of 
 subjecting him to this indignity. Was our dog 
 a clown, a hobby, a fad, a fashion, a feather in our 
 caps — ^that we should subject him to periodic 
 pennings in stuffy haUs, that we should harry his 
 faithful soul with such tomfoolery? He never 
 even heard us talk about his lineage, deplore the 
 length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking." 
 We should have been ashamed to let him smell 
 
 155 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 about us the tar-brush of a sense of property, to 
 let him think we looked on him as an asset to earn 
 us pelf or glory. We wished that there should be 
 between us the spirit that was between the sheep- 
 dog and that farmer, who, when asked his dog's 
 age, touched the old creature's head, and answered 
 thus: "Teresa" (his daughter) "was bom in 
 November, and this one in August. " That sheep- 
 dog had seen eighteen years when the great white 
 day came for him, and his spirit passed away up, 
 to cling with the wood-smoke round the dark 
 rafters of the kitchen where he had lain so vast 
 a time beside his master's boots. No, no! If 
 a man does not soon pass beyond the thought: 
 "By what shall this dog profit me?" into the large 
 state of simple gladness to be with dog, he shall 
 never know the very essence of that companion- 
 ship which depends not on the points of dog, but 
 on some strange and subtle mingling of mute 
 spirits. For it is by muteness that a dog becomes 
 for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is 
 at peace, where words play no torturing tricks. 
 When he just sits, loving, and knows that he is 
 being loved, those are the moments that I think are 
 precious to a dog; when, with his adoring soul 
 coming through his eyes, he feels that you are 
 really thinking of him. But he is touchingly 
 
 156 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 tolerant of one's other occupations. The subject 
 of these memories always knew when one was too 
 absorbed in work to be so close to him as he 
 thought proper; yet he never tried to hinder or 
 distract; or asked for attention. It dinged his 
 mood, of course, so that the red under his eyes and 
 the folds of his crumply cheeks — ^which seemed to 
 speak of a touch of bloodhound introduced a 
 long way back into his breeding — ^grew deeper and 
 more manifest. If he could have spoken at such 
 times, he would have said: "I have been a long 
 time alone, and I cannot always be asleep; but 
 you know best, and I must not criticise. " 
 
 He did not at all mind one's being absorbed in 
 other humans; he seemed to enjoy the sounds of 
 conversation lifting roimd him, and to know when 
 they were sensible. He could not, 'for instance, 
 stand actors or actresses giving readings of their 
 parts, perceiving at once that the same had no 
 connection with the minds and real feehngs of 
 the speakers; and, having wandered a little to 
 show his disapproval, he would go to the door and 
 stare at it till it opened and let him out. Once 
 or twice, it is true, when an actor of large voice 
 was declaiming an emotional passage, he so far 
 relented as to go up to him and pant in his face. 
 Music, too, made him restless, inclined to sigh, and 
 
 157 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 to ask questions. Sometimes, at its first somid, 
 he would cross to the window and remain there 
 looking for Her. At others, he would simply go 
 and lie on the loud pedal, and we never could tell 
 whether it was from sentiment, or because he 
 thought that in this way he heard less. At one 
 special Nocturne of Chopin's he always whim- 
 pered. He was, indeed, of rather PoHsh temperar 
 ment — ^very gay when he was gay, dark and 
 brooding when he was not. 
 
 On the whole, perhaps his life was uneventful 
 for so far-traveUing a dog, though it held its mo- 
 ments of eccentricity, as when he leaped through 
 the window of a four-wheeler into Kensington, or 
 sat on a Dartmoor adder. But that was fortu- 
 nately of a Sunday afternoon — ^when adder and all 
 were torpid, so nothing happened, till a friend, 
 who was following, lifted him off the creature with 
 his large boot. 
 
 If only one could have known more of his private 
 life — ^more of his relations with his own kind! 
 I fancy he was always rather a dark dog to them, 
 having so many thoughts about us that he could 
 not share with any one, and being naturally fas- 
 tidious, except with ladies, for whom he had a 
 chivalrous and catholic taste, so that they often 
 turned and snapped at him. He had, however, 
 
 158 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 but one lasting love affair, for a liver-coloured 
 lass of our village, not quite of his own caste, but 
 a wholesome if somewhat elderly girl, with loving 
 and sphinx-hke eyes. Their children, alas, were 
 not for this world, and soon departed. 
 
 Nor was he a fighting dog; but once attacked, 
 he lacked a sense of values, being imable to dis- 
 tinguish between dogs that he could beat and dogs 
 with whom he had "no earthly." It was, in fact, 
 as well to interfere at once, especially in the matter 
 of retrievers, for he never forgot having in his 
 youth been attacked by a retriever from behind. 
 No, he never forgot, and never forgave, an enemy. 
 Only a month before that day of which I cannot 
 speak, being very old and ill, he engaged an Irish 
 terrier on whose impudence he had long had his 
 eye, and routed him. And how a battle cheered 
 his spirit! He was certainly no Christian; but, 
 allowing for essential dog, he was very much a 
 gentleman. And I do think that most of us who 
 live on this earth these days would rather leave it 
 with that label on us than the other. For to be a 
 Christian, as Tolstoy understood the word — and 
 no one else in our time has had logic and love of 
 truth enough to give it coherent meaning — ^is 
 (to be qxiite sincere) not suited to men of Western 
 blood. Whereas — ^to be a gentleman! It is a far 
 
 159 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 cry, but perhaps it can be done. In him, at all 
 events, there was no pettiness, no meanness, and 
 no cruelty, and though he fell below his ideal at 
 times, this never altered the true look of his eyes, 
 nor the simple loyalty in his soul. 
 
 But what a crowd of memories come back, 
 bringing with them the perfume of fallen days! 
 What delights and glamour, what long hours of 
 effort, discouragements, and secret fears did he 
 not watch over — our black famUiar; and with the 
 sight and scent and touch of him, deepen or as- 
 suage! How many thousand walks did we not go 
 together, so that we still turn to see if he is follow- 
 ing at his padding gait, attentive to the invisible 
 trails. Not the least hard thing to bear when they 
 go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry 
 away with them so many years of our own lives. 
 Yet, if they find warmth therein, who would 
 grudge them those years that they have so 
 guarded? Nothing else of us can they take to 
 lie upon with outstretched paws and chin pressed 
 to the ground; and, whatever they take, be sure 
 they have deserved. 
 
 Do they know, as we do, that their time must 
 come? Yes, they know, at rare moments. No 
 other way can I interpret those pauses of his latter 
 life, when, propped on his forefeet, he would sit for 
 
 160 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 long minutes quite motionless— his head drooped, 
 utterly withdrawn; then turn those eyes of his 
 and look at me. That look said more plainly 
 than all words could: "Yes, I know that I must 
 go!" If we have spirits that persist — they have. 
 If we know after our departure, who we were — 
 they do. No one, I think, who really longs for 
 truth, can ever ghbly say which it will be for dog 
 and man — ^persistence or extinction of our con- 
 sciousness. There is but one thing certain — ^the 
 childishness of fretting over that eternal question. 
 Whichever it be, it must be right, the only possible 
 thing. He felt that too, I know; but then, like 
 his master, he was what is called a pessimist. 
 
 My companion teUs me that, since he left us, 
 he has once come back. It was Old Year's Night, 
 and she was sad, when he came to her in visible 
 shape of his black body, passing round the dining- 
 table from the window-end, to his proper place be- 
 neath the table, at her feet. She saw him quite 
 clearly; she heard the padding tap-tap of his paws 
 and very toe-nails; she felt his warmth brushing 
 hard against the front of her skirt. She thought 
 then that he would settle down upon her feet, but 
 something disturbed him, and he stood pausing, 
 pressed against her, then moved out toward where 
 I generally sit, but was not sitting that night. 
 
 161 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 She saw him stand there, as if considering; then 
 at some sound or laugh, she became self-conscious, 
 and slowly, very slowly, he was no longer there. 
 Had he some message, some counsel to give, some- 
 thing he would say, that last night of the last year 
 of all those he had watched over us? Will he 
 come back again? 
 
 No stone stands over where he lies. It is on 
 our hearts that his life is engraved. 
 
 1912. 
 
 162 
 
FELICITY 
 
 WHEN God is so good to the fields, of what 
 use are words — those poor husks of senti- 
 ment! There is no painting Felicity on the wing! 
 No way of bringing on to the canvas the flying 
 glory of things ! A single buttercup of the twenty 
 naillion in one field is worth all these dry symbols 
 — ^that can never body forth the very spirit of 
 that froth of May breaking over the hedges, the 
 choir of birds and bees, the lost-travelling down of 
 the wind-flowers, the white-throated swallows in 
 their Odysseys. Just here there are no skylarks, 
 but what joy of song and leaf; of lanes Hghted 
 with bright trees, the few oaks still golden brown, 
 and the ashes stiU spiritual! Only the blackbirds 
 and thrushes can sing-up this day, and cuckoos 
 over the hill. The year has flown so fast that the 
 apple-trees have dropped nearly all their bloom, 
 and in "long meadow" the "daggers" are out 
 early, beside the narrow bright streams. Orpheus 
 sits there on a stone, when nobody is by, and pipes 
 to the ponies; and Pan can often be seen danc- 
 ing with his njrmphs in the raised beech-grove 
 
 163 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 where it is always twilight, if you lie still enough 
 against the far bank. 
 
 Who can believe in growing old, so long as we 
 are wrapped in this cloak of colour and wings and 
 song; so long as this unimaginable vision is here 
 for us to gaze at — ^the soft-faced sheep about us, 
 and the wool-bags drying out along the fence, and 
 great numbers of tiay ducks, so trustful that the 
 crows have taken several. 
 
 Blue is the colour of youth, and all the blue 
 flowers have a "fey" look. Everything seems 
 young — ^too young to work. There is but one 
 thing busy, a starling, fetching grubs for its little 
 family, above my head — ^it must take that flight 
 at least two hundred times a day. The children 
 should be very fat. 
 
 When the sky is so happy, and the flowers so 
 luminous, it does not seem possible that the bright 
 angels of this day shall pass into dark night, that 
 slowly these wings shall close, and the cuckoo 
 praise himself to sleep, mad midges dance-in the 
 evening; the grass shiver with dew, wind die, and 
 no bird sing. . . . 
 
 Yet so it is. Day has gone — ^the song and glam- 
 our and swoop of wings. Slowly has passed the 
 daily miracle. It is night. But Felicity has not 
 withdrawn; she has but changed her robe for 
 
 164 
 
FELICITY 
 
 silence, velvet, and the pearl fan of the moon. 
 Everything is sleeping, save only a single star, and 
 the pansies. Why they should be more wakeful 
 than the other flowers, I do not know. The ex- 
 pressions of their faces, if one bends down into the 
 dusk, are sweeter and more cunning than ever. 
 They have some compact, no doubt, in hand. 
 
 What a ntmiber of voices have given up the 
 ghost to this night of but one voice — ^the murmur 
 of the stream out there in darkness! 
 
 With what religion all has been done! Not one 
 buttercup open; the yew-trees already with shad- 
 ows flung down! No moths are abroad yet; it 
 is too early in the year for nightjars; and the owls 
 are quiet. But who shall say that in this silence, 
 in this hovering wan light, in this air bereft of 
 wings, and of aU scent save freshness, there is less 
 of the ineffable, less of that before which words are 
 dumb? 
 
 It is strange how this tranquillity of night, that 
 seems so final, is inhabited, if one keeps still 
 enough. A lamb is bleating out there on the dim 
 moor; a bird somewhere, a little one, about three 
 fields away, makes the sweetest kind of chirrup- 
 ing; some cows are still cropping. There is a 
 scent, too, underneath the freshness — sweet-brier, 
 I think, and our Dutch honeysuckle; nothing else 
 
 165 
 
CONCERNING LIFE 
 
 could so delicately twine itself with air. And even 
 in this darkness the roses have colour, more beauti- 
 ful perhaps than ever. If colour be, as they say, 
 but the effect of hght on various fibre, one may 
 think of it as a tune, the song of thanksgiving that 
 each form puts forth, to sun and moon and stars 
 and fire. These moon-coloured roses are singing 
 a most quiet song. I see all of a sudden that 
 there are many more stars beside that one so red 
 and watchful. The flown kite is there with its 
 seven pale worlds; it has adventured very high 
 and far to-night — ^with a company of others re- 
 moter still. 
 
 This serenity of night! What could seem less 
 likely ever more to move, and change again to 
 day? Surely now the world has found its long 
 sleep; and the pearly gUmmer from the moon will 
 last, and the precious silence never again yield 
 to clamoixr; the grape-bloom of this mystery never 
 more pale out into gold. . . . 
 
 And yet it is not so. The nightly miracle has 
 passed. It is dawn. Faint light has come. I 
 am waiting for the first sound. The sky as yet 
 is Hke nothing but grey paper, with the shadows 
 of wild geese passing. The trees are phantoms. 
 And then it comes — ^that first call of a bird, 
 startled at discovering day! Just one call — ^and 
 
 166 
 
FELICITY 
 
 now, here, there, on all the trees, the sudden an- 
 swers swelling, of that most sweet and careless 
 choir. Was irresponsibility ever so divine as 
 this, of birds waking? Then — saffron into the 
 sky, and once more silence! What is it birds do 
 after the first Chorale? Think of their sins and 
 business? Or just sleep again? The trees are 
 fast dropping unreahty, and the cuckoos begin 
 calling. Colour is burning up in the flowers al- 
 ready; the dew smells of them. 
 
 The miracle is ended, for the starling has begun 
 its job; and the sun is fretting those dark, busy 
 wings with gold. Full day has come again. But 
 the face of it is a Uttle strange, it is not like yester- 
 day. Queer — to think, no day is like to a day 
 that's past and no night like a night that's coming ! 
 Why, then, fear death, which is but night? Why 
 care, if next day have different face and spirit? 
 
 The sun has hghted buttercup-field now, the 
 wind touches the hme-tree. Something passes 
 over me away up there. 
 
 It is Felicity on her wings! 
 
 1912. 
 
 167 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 ONCE upon a time the Prince of Felicitas had 
 occasion to set forth on a journey. It was 
 a late autumn evening with few pale stars and a 
 moon no larger than the paring of a finger-nail. 
 And as he rode through the purlieus of his city, 
 the white mane of his amber-coloured steed was all 
 that he could clearly see in the dusk of the high 
 streets. His way led through a quarter but Uttle 
 known to him, and he was surprised to find that 
 his horse, instead of ambling forward with his 
 customary gentle vigour, stepped carefully from 
 side to side, stopping now and then to curve his 
 neck and prick his ears — as though at some thing 
 of fear tinseen in- the darkness; while on either 
 hand creatures could be heard rustling and scut- 
 tling, and Kttle cold draughts as of wings fanned 
 the rider's cheeks. 
 
 The Prince at last turned in his saddle, but so 
 great was the darkness that he could not even see 
 his escort. 
 
 "What is the name of this street?" he said. 
 
 "Sire, it is called the Vita Publica. " 
 171 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 "It is very dark." Even as he spoke his horse 
 staggered, but, recovering its foothold with an 
 effort, stood trembling violently. Nor could all 
 the incitements of its master induce the beast 
 again to move forward. 
 
 "Is there no one with a lanthom in this street?" 
 asked the Prince. 
 
 His attendants began forthwith to call out loudly 
 for any one who had a lanthorn. Now, it chanced 
 that an old man deeping in a hovel on a pallet of 
 straw was awakened by these cries. When he 
 heard that it was the Prince of Felicitas himself, 
 he came hastily, carrying his lanthom, and stood 
 trembling beside the Prince's horse. It was so 
 dark that the Prince could not see him. 
 
 "Light your lanthom, old man," he said. 
 
 The old man laboriously lit his lanthom. Its 
 pale rays fled out on either hand; beautiful but 
 grim was the vision they disclosed. Tall houses, 
 fair court-yards, and a palm-grown garden; in 
 front of the Prince's horse a deep cesspool, on 
 whose jagged edges the good beast's hoofs were 
 planted ; and, as far as the gUmmer of the lanthom 
 stretched, both ways down the rutted street, pav- 
 ing stones displaced, and smooth tesselated mar- 
 ble; pools of mud, the hanging fruit of an orange- 
 tree, and dark, scurrying shapes of monstrous rats 
 
 172 
 
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 bolting across from house to house. The old man 
 held the lanthom higher; and instantly bats flying 
 against it would have beaten out the light but for 
 the thin protection of its horn sides. 
 
 The Prince sat stni upon his horse, looking first 
 at the rutted space that he had traversed and then 
 at the rutted space before him. 
 
 "Without a light," he said, "this thoroughfare 
 is dangerous. What is your name, old man? " 
 
 "My name is Cethru," replied the aged churl. 
 
 "Cethru!" said the Prince. "Let it be your 
 duty henceforth to walk with your lanthom up 
 and down this street all night and eveiy night," 
 — ^and he looked at Cethru: "Do you understand, 
 old man, what it is you have to do?" 
 
 The old man answered in a voice that trembled 
 like a rusty flute: 
 
 "Aye, aye! — ^to walk up and down and hold 
 my lanthom so that folk can see where they be 
 goin'." 
 
 The Prince gathered up his reins; but the old 
 man, lurching forward, touched his stirrap. 
 
 "How long be I to go on wi' thiccy job?" 
 
 "Until you die!" 
 
 Cethru held up his lanthom, and they could see 
 his long, thin face, hke a sandwich of dried leather, 
 jerk and quiver, and his thin grey hairs flutter in 
 
 173 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 the draught of the bats' wings circling round the 
 Hght. 
 
 "Twill be main hard!" he groaned; "an' my 
 lanthom's nowt but a poor thing. " 
 
 With a high look, the Prince of Fehcitas bent 
 and touched the old man's forehead. 
 
 "Until you die, old man," he repeated; and 
 bidding his followers to hght torches from Cethru's 
 lanthom, he rode on down the twisting street. 
 The clatter of the horses' hoofs died out in the 
 night, and the scuttling and the rustling of the 
 rats and the whispers of the bats' wings were 
 heard again. 
 
 Cethru, left alone in the dark thoroughfare, 
 sighed heavily; then, spittiag on his hands, he 
 tightened the old girdle round his loins, and sKng- 
 ing the lanthorn on his staff, held it up to the level 
 of his waist, and began to make his way along the 
 street. His progress was but slow, for he had 
 many times to stop and rekindle the flame within 
 his lanthom, which the bats' wings, his own stum- 
 bles, and the jostlings of footpads or of revellers 
 returning home, were for ever extinguishing. In 
 traversing that long street he spent half the night, 
 and half the night in traversing it back again. 
 The saffron swan of dawn, slow swimming up the 
 sky-river between the high roof-banks, bent her 
 
 174 
 
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 neck down through the dark air-water to look at 
 him staggering below her, with his still smoking 
 wick. No sooner did Cethru see that svinlit bird, 
 than with a great sigh of joy he sat him down, and 
 at once feU asleep. 
 
 Now when the dwellers in the houses of the Vita 
 Publica first gained knowledge that this old man 
 passed every night with his lanthorn up and down 
 their street, and when they marked those pallid 
 gleams ghding over the motley prospect of cess- 
 pools and garden gates, over the sightless hovels 
 and the rich-carved frontages of their palaces; or 
 saw them stay their journey and remain suspended 
 like a handful of daffodils held up against the black 
 stuffs of secrecy — ^they said: 
 
 "It is good that the old man should pass like 
 this — ^we shall see better where we're going; and 
 if the Watch have any job on hand, or want to 
 put the pavements in order, his lanthorn will 
 serve their piirpose well enough." And they 
 would call out of their doors and windows to him 
 passing: 
 
 "Hola! old man Cethru! All's well with our 
 house, and with the street before it?" 
 
 But, for answer, the old man only held his lan- 
 thorn up, so that in the ring of its pale light they 
 saw some sight or other in the street. And his 
 
 175 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 silence troubled them, one by one, for each had 
 expected that he would reply: 
 
 "Aye, aye! All's well with your house, Sirs, 
 and with the street before it!" 
 
 Thus they grew irritated with this old man who 
 did not seem able to do anything but just hold his 
 lanthorn up. And gradually they began to dis- 
 like his passing by their doors with his pale light, 
 by which they could not fail to see, not only the 
 rich-carved frontages and scrolled gates of court- 
 yards and fair gardens, but things that were not 
 pleasing to the eye. And they murmured amongst 
 themselves: "What is the good of this old man 
 and his silly lanthorn? We can see all we want 
 to see without him; in fact, we got on very well 
 before he came. " 
 
 So, as he passed, rich folk who were supping 
 would pelt him with orange-peel and empty the 
 dregs of their wine over his head; and poor folk, 
 sleeping in their hutches, turned over, as the rays 
 of the lanthorn fell on them, and cursed him for 
 that disturbance. Nor did revellers or footpads 
 treat the old man civilly, but tied him to the wall, 
 where he was constrained to stay till a kind passer- 
 by released him. And ever the bats darkened his 
 lanthorn with their wings and tried to beat the 
 flame out. And the old man thought: "This be a 
 
 176 
 
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 terrible hard job; I don't seem to please nobody. " 
 But because the Prince of Felicitas had so com- 
 manded him, he continued nightly to pass with 
 his lanthorn up and down the street; and every 
 morning as the saffron swan came swimming over- 
 head, to faU asleep. But his sleep did not last 
 long, for he was compelled to pass many hours each 
 day in gathering rushes and melting down tallow 
 for his lanthorn; so that his lean face grew more 
 than ever like a sandwich of dried leather. 
 
 Now it came to pass that the Town Watch hav- 
 ing had certain complaints made to them that per- 
 sons had been bitten in the Vita Publiea by rats, 
 doubted of their duty to destroy these ferocious 
 creatures; and they held investigation, summon- 
 ing the persons bitten and inquiring of them how 
 it was that in so dark a street they could tell that 
 the animals which had bitten them were indeed 
 rats. Howbeit for some time no one could be 
 found who could say more than what he had been 
 told, and since this was not evidence, the Town 
 Watch had good hopes that they would not after 
 all be forced to undertake this tedious enterprise. 
 But presently there came before them one who 
 said that he had himself seen the rat which had 
 bitten him, by the light of an old man's lanthorn. 
 When the Town Watch heard this they were vexed, 
 
 177 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 for they knew that if this were true they would 
 now be forced to prosecute the arduous undertak- 
 ing, and they said: 
 
 "Bring in this old man!" 
 
 Cethru was brought before them trembling. 
 
 "What is this we hear, old man, about your 
 lanthorn and the rat? And in the first place, what 
 were you doing in the Vita Publica at that time 
 of night?" 
 
 Cethru answered: "I were just passin' with my 
 lanthorn!" 
 
 "Tell us — did you see the rat?" 
 
 Cethru shook his head: "My lanthorn seed the 
 rat, maybe!" he muttered. 
 
 "Old owl!" said the Captain of the Watch: 
 "Be careful what you say! If you saw the rat, 
 why did you then not aid this unhappy citizen 
 who was bitten by it — ^first, to avoid that rodent, 
 and subsequently to slay it, thereby reUeving the 
 pubhc of a pestilential danger?" 
 
 Cethru looked at him, and for some seconds did 
 not reply; then he said slowly: "I were just 
 passin' with my lanthorn. " 
 
 "That you have already told us," said the Cap- 
 tain of the Watch; "it is no answer. " 
 
 Cethru's leathern cheeks became wine-coloured, 
 so desirous was he to speak, and so unable. And 
 
 178 
 
A. NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 the Watch sneered and laughed, saying: "This 
 is a fine witness." 
 
 But of a sudden Cethru spoke: 
 
 "What would I be duin'— killin' rats; tidden 
 my business to kill rats." 
 
 The Captain of the Watch caressed his beard, 
 and looking at the old man with contempt, said: 
 
 "It seems to me, brothers, that this is an idle 
 old vagabond, who does no good to any one. We 
 should be well advised, I think, to prosecute him 
 for vagrancy. But that is not at this moment the 
 matter in hand. Owing to the accident — scarcely 
 fortunate — of this old man's passing with his lan- 
 thom, it would certainly appear that citizens have 
 been bitten by rodents. It is then, I fear, our 
 duty to institute proceedings against those poison- 
 ous and violent animals. " 
 
 And amidst the sighing of the Watch, it was so 
 resolved. 
 
 Cethru was glad to shuJSBe away, unnoticed, 
 from the Court, and sitting down under a camel- 
 date tree outside the City Wall, he thus reflected: 
 
 "They were rough with me! I done nothin', 
 so far's I can see!" 
 
 And a long time he sat there with the bunches 
 of the camel-dates above him, golden as the sun- 
 light. Then, as the scent of the lyrio flowers, re- 
 
 179 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 leased by evening, warned him of the night drop- 
 ping Uke a flight of dark birds on the plain, he rose 
 stifiiy, and made his way as usual toward the Vita 
 Publica. 
 
 He had traversed but little of that black thor- 
 oughfare, holding his lanthorn at the level of his 
 breast, when the sound of a splash and cries for 
 help smote his long, thru ears. Remembering how 
 the Captain of the Watch had admonished him, he 
 stopped and peered about, but owing to his prox- 
 imity to the Ught of his own lanthorn he saw noth- 
 ing. Presently he heard another splash and the 
 soxmd of blowings and of puffings, but still unable 
 to see clearly whence they came, he was forced 
 in bewilderment to resume his march. But he 
 had no sooner entered the next bend of that ob- 
 scure and winding avenue than the most lamen- 
 table, lusty cries assailed him. Again he stood 
 still, blinded by his own light. Somewhere at 
 hand a citizen was being beaten, for vague, quick- 
 moving forms emerged into the radiance of his 
 lanthorn out of the deep violet of the night air. 
 The cries swelled, and died away, and swelled; 
 and the mazed Cethru moved forward on his way. 
 But very near the end of his first traversage, the 
 sound of a long, deep sighing, as of a fat man in 
 spiritual pain, once more arrested him. 
 
 180 
 
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 "Drat me!" he thought, "this time I will see 
 what 'tis/' and he spun round and round, holding 
 his lanthorn now high, now low, and to both sides. 
 "The devil an' all's in it to-night," he murmured 
 to himself; "there's some 'at here fetchin' of its 
 breath awful loud." But for his life he could see 
 nothing, only that the higher he held his lanthorn 
 the more painful grew the sound of the fat but 
 spiritual sighing. And desperately, he at last 
 resumed his progress. 
 
 On the morrow, while he still slept stretched on 
 his straw pallet, there came to him a member of 
 the Watch. 
 
 "Old man, you are wanted at the Court House; 
 rouse up, and bring your lanthorn. " 
 
 Stiffly Cethru rose. 
 
 "What be they wantin' me fur now, mester?" 
 
 "Ah!" rephed the Watchman, "they are about 
 to see if they can't put an end to your goings-on. " 
 
 Cethru shivered, and was sUent. 
 
 Now when they reached the Court House it 
 was patent that a great affair was forward; for 
 the Judges were in their robes, and a crowd of 
 advocates, burgesses, and coromon folk thronged 
 the carven, lofty haU of justice. 
 
 When Cethru saw that all eyes were turned on 
 him, he shivered still more violently, fixing his 
 
 181 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 fascinated gaze on the three Judges in their emer- 
 ald robes. 
 
 "This then is the prisoner," said the oldest of 
 the Judges; "proceed with the indictment!" 
 
 A httle advocate in snuff-coloured clothes rose 
 on little legs, and commenced to read: 
 
 "Forasmuch as on the seventeenth night of 
 August fifteen hundred years since the Messiah's 
 death, one Celestine, a maiden of this city, fell 
 into a cesspool in the Vita Publica, and while be- 
 ing quietly drowned, was espied of the burgess 
 Pardonix by the hght of a lanthom held by the 
 old man Cethru; and, forasmuch as, plunging in, 
 the said Pardonix rescued her, not without grave 
 risk of life and the ruin of his clothes, and to-day 
 lies ill of fever; and forasmuch as the old man 
 Cethru was the cause of these misfortunes to the 
 burgess Pardonix, by reason of his wandering 
 lanthom's showing the drowning maiden, the 
 Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and otherwise 
 place charge upon this Cethru of 'Vagabondage 
 without serious occupation. ' 
 
 "And, forasmuch as on this same night the 
 Watchman FUepo, made aware, by the Ught of 
 this said Cethru's lanthom, of three sturdy foot- 
 pads, went to arrest them, and was set on by the 
 rogues and welhiigh slain, the Watch do hereby 
 
 182 
 
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 indict, accuse, and otherwise charge upon Cethru 
 complicity in this assatilt, by reasons, namely, 
 first, that he discovered the footpads to the Watch- 
 man and the Watchman to the footpads by the 
 light of his lanthom; and, second, that, having 
 thus discovered them, he stood idly by and gave 
 no assistance to the law. 
 
 "And, forasmuch as on this same night the 
 wealthy burgess Pranzo, who, having prepared a 
 banquet, was standing in his doorway awaiting 
 the arrival of his guests, did see, by the light of 
 the said Cethru's lanthom, a beggar woman and 
 her children grovelling in the gutter for garbage, 
 whereby his appetite was lost completely; and, 
 forasmuch as he, Pranzo, has lodged a complaint 
 against the Constitution for permitting women and 
 children to go starved, the Watch do hereby in- 
 dict, accuse, and otherwise make charge on Cethru 
 of rebellion and of anarchy, in that wilfully he 
 doth disturb good citizens by showing to them 
 without provocation disagreeable sights, and doth 
 moreover endanger the laws by causing persons 
 to desire to change them. 
 
 "These be the charges, reverend Judges, so 
 please you!" 
 
 And having thus spoken, the little advocate 
 resumed his seat. 
 
 183 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 Then said the oldest of the Judges: 
 
 "Cethru, you have heard; what answer do you 
 make?" 
 
 But no word, only the chattering of teeth, came 
 from Cethru. 
 
 "Have you no defence?" said the Judge: 
 "these are grave accusations!" 
 
 Then Cethru spoke. 
 
 "So please your Highnesses," he said, "can I 
 help what my lanthom sees?" 
 
 And having spoken these words, to all further 
 questions he remained more silent than a head- 
 less man. 
 
 The Judges took counsel of each other, and the 
 oldest of them thus addressed himself to Cethru: 
 
 "If you have no defence, old man, and there is 
 no one will say a word for you, we can but proceed 
 to judgment." 
 
 Then in the main aisle of the Court there rose 
 a youthful advocate. 
 
 "Most reverend Judges," he said in a mellif- 
 luous voice, clearer than the fluting of a bell-bird, 
 "it is useless to look for words from this old man, 
 for it is manifest that he himself is nothing, and 
 that his lanthom is alone concerned in this affair. 
 But, reverend Judges, bethink you well: Would 
 you have a lanthom ply a trade or be concerned 
 
 184 
 
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 with a profession, or do aught indeed but pervade 
 the streets at night, shedding its Ught, which, if 
 you will, is vagabondage? And, Sirs, upon the 
 second count of this indictment: Would you have 
 a lanthom dive into cesspools to rescue maidens? 
 Would you have a lanthom to beat footpads? Or, 
 indeed, to be any sort of partisan either of the Law 
 or of them that break the Law? Sure, Sirs, I 
 think not. And as to this third charge of foster- 
 ing anarchy — ^let me but describe the trick of this 
 lanthom's flame. It is distilled, most reverend 
 Judges, of oil and wick, together with that sweet 
 secret heat of whose birth no words of mine can 
 tell. And when. Sirs, this pale flame has sprung 
 into the air swaying to every wind, it brings 
 vision to the human eye. And, if it be charged on' 
 this old man Cethru that he and his lanthom by 
 reason of their showing not only the good but the 
 evil bring no pleasure into the world, I ask, Sirs, 
 what in the world is so dear as this power to see — 
 whether it be the beautiful or the foul that is dis- 
 closed? Need I, indeed, tell you of the way this 
 flame spreads its feelers, and deUcately darts and 
 hovers in the darkness, conjuring things from 
 nothing? This mechanical summoning. Sirs, of 
 visions out of blackness is benign, by no means of 
 malevolent intent; no more than if a man, pass- 
 
 185 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 ing two donkeys in the road, one lean and the 
 other fat, could Justly be arraigned for malignancy 
 because they were not both fat. This, reverend 
 Judges, is the essence of the matter concerning 
 the rich burgess, Pranzo, who, on account of the 
 sight he saw by Cethru's lanthom, has lost the 
 equilibrium of his stomach. For, Sirs, the lan- 
 thom did but show that which was there, both 
 fair and foul, no more, no less; and though it is 
 indeed true that Pranzo is upset, it was not 
 because the lanthom mahciously produced dis- 
 torted images, but merely caused to be seen, in 
 due proportions, things which Pranzo had not 
 seen before. And surely, reverend Judges, being 
 just men, you would not have this lanthom turn 
 its light away from what is ragged and ugly 
 because there are also fair things on which its 
 light may fall; how, indeed, being a lanthorn, 
 could it, if it would? And I would have you 
 note this. Sirs, that by this impartial discovery 
 of the proportions of one thing to another, this 
 lanthom must indeed perpetually seem to cloud 
 and sadden those things which are fair, because 
 of the deep instincts of harmony and justice 
 planted in the human breast. However irnfair 
 and cmel, then, this lanthorn may seem to those 
 who, deficient in these instincts, desire all their 
 
 186 
 
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 
 
 lives to see naught but what is pleasant, lest 
 they, hke Pranzo, should lose their appetites — 
 it is not consonant with equity that this lanthorn 
 should, even if it could, be prevented from thus 
 mechanically buffeting the holiday cheek of life. 
 I would think, Sirs, that you should rather blame 
 the queazy state of Pranzo's stomach. The old 
 man has said that he cannot help what his lan- 
 thorn sees. This is a just saying. But if, rever- 
 end Judges, you deem this equipoised, indifferent 
 lanthorn to be indeed blameworthy for having 
 shown in the same moment, side by side, the skull 
 and the fair face, the burdock and the tiger-lily, 
 the butterfly and toad, then, most reverend 
 Judges, punish it, but do not punish this old man, 
 for he himself is but a flume of smoke, thistle 
 down dispersed — nothing ! ' ' 
 
 So saying, the young advocate ceased. 
 
 Again the three Judges took counsel of each 
 other, and after much talk had passed between 
 them, the oldest spoke : 
 
 "What this young advocate has said seems 
 to us to be the truth. We cannot punish a lan- 
 thorn. Let the old man go!" 
 
 And Cethru went out into the sunshine. . . . 
 
 Now it came to pass that the Prince of Felic- 
 itas, returning from his journey, rode once more 
 
 187 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 on his amber- coloured steed down the Vita 
 PubUca. 
 
 The night was dark as a rook's wing, but far 
 away down the street burned a little light, like a 
 red star truant from heaven. The Prince riding 
 by descried it for a lanthom, with an old man 
 sleeping beside it. 
 
 "How is this, Friend?" said the Prince. "You 
 are not walking as I bade you, carrying your 
 lanthom. " 
 
 But Cethru neither moved nor answered. 
 
 "Lift him up!" said the Prince. 
 
 They lifted up his head and held the lanthorn 
 to his closed eyes. So lean was that brown face 
 that the beams from the lanthom would not rest 
 on it, but slipped past on either side into the night. 
 His eyes did not open. He was dead. 
 
 And the Prince touched him, saying : " Farewell, 
 old man! The lanthom is still alight. Go, fetch 
 me another one, and let him carry it!" . . . 
 
 1909. 
 
 188 
 
SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING 
 DRAMA 
 
 A DRAMA must be shaped so as to have a 
 spire of meaning. Every grouping of life 
 and character has its inherent moral; and the 
 business of the dramatist is so to pose the group 
 as to bring that moral poignantly to the light of 
 day. Such is the moral that exhales from plays 
 hke Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth. But such is not 
 the moral to be found in the great bulk of con- 
 temporary Drama. The moral of the average 
 play is now, and probably has always been, the 
 triumph at all costs of a supposed immediate ethi- 
 cal good over a supposed immediate ethical evil. 
 
 The vice of drawing these distorted morals has 
 permeated the Drama to its spine; discoloured its 
 art, humanity, and significance; infected its 
 creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned 
 it from a picture into a caricature. A Drama 
 which lives under the shadow of the distorted 
 moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine — ^for- 
 gets so completely that it often prides itself on 
 having forgotten. 
 
 Now, in writing plays, there are, in this matter 
 189 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 of the moral, three courses open to the serious 
 dramatist. The first is: To definitely set before 
 the pubhc that which it wishes to have set before 
 it, the views and codes of life by which the public 
 lives and in which it beUeves. This way is the 
 most common, successful, and popular. It makes 
 the dramatist's position sure, and not too obvi- 
 ously authoritative. 
 
 The second course is: To definitely set before 
 the public those views and codes of life by which 
 the dramatist himself lives, those theories in which 
 he himself beUeves, the more effectively if they are 
 the opposite of what the public wishes to have 
 placed before it, presenting them so that the audi- 
 ence may swallow them like powder in a spoonful 
 of jam. 
 
 There is a third course: To set before the public 
 no cut-and-dried codes, but the phenomena of 
 life and character, selected and combined, but 
 not distorted, by the dramatist's outlook, set down 
 without fear, favour, or prejudice, leaving the pub- 
 lic to draw such poor moral as nature may afford. 
 This third method requires a certain detachment; 
 it requires a sympathy with, a love of, and a 
 curiosity as to, things for their own sake; it re- 
 quires a far view, together with patient industry, 
 for no immediately practical result. 
 
 190 
 
PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA 
 
 It was once said of Shakespeare that he had 
 never done any good to any one, and never would. 
 This, unfortunately, could not, in the sense in 
 which the word "good" was then meant, be said 
 of most modern dramatists. In truth, the good 
 that Shakespeare did to humanity was of a remote, 
 and, shall we say, eternal nature; something of 
 the good that men get from having the sky and 
 the sea to look at. And this partly because he 
 was, in his greater plays at all events, free from 
 the habit of drawing a distorted moral. Now, the 
 playwright who supplies to the pubUc the facts 
 of life distorted by the moral which it expects, does 
 so that he may do the public what he considers an 
 immediate good, by fortifying its prejudices; and 
 the dramatist who supplies to the public facts dis- 
 torted by his own advanced morahty, does so be- 
 cause he considers that he will at once benefit the 
 public by substituting for its worn-out ethics, his 
 own. In both cases the advantage the dramatist 
 hopes to confer on the public is immediate and 
 practical. 
 
 But matters change, and morals change; men 
 remain — and to set men, and the facts about them, 
 down faithfully, so that they draw for us the moral 
 of their natural actions, may also possibly be of 
 benefit to the community. It is,, at all events, 
 
 191 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 harder than to set men and facts down, as they 
 ought, or ought not to be. This, however, is not 
 to say that a dramatist should, or indeed can, 
 keep himself and his temperamental philosophy 
 out of his work. As a man lives and thinks, so 
 will he write. But it is certain, that to the making 
 of good drama, as to the practice of every other 
 art, there must be brought an almost passionate 
 love of discipline, a white-heat of self-respect, a 
 desire to make the truest, fairest, best thing in 
 one's power; and that to these must be added an 
 eye that does not flinch. Such qualities alone 
 wUl bring to a drama the selfless character which 
 soaks it with inevitabiUty. 
 
 The word "pessimist" is frequently applied 
 to the few dramatists who have been content to 
 work in this way. It has been applied, among 
 others, to Euripides, to Shakespeare, to Ibsen; it 
 will be apphed to many in the future. Nothing, 
 however, is more dubious than the way in which 
 these two words "pessimist" and "optimist" are 
 used; for the optimist appears to be he who can- 
 not bear the world as it is, and is forced by his 
 nature to picture it as it ought to be, and the 
 pessimist one who cannot only bear the world as 
 it is, but loves it well enough to draw it faithfully. 
 The true lover of the human race is surely he who 
 
 192 
 
PLATITUDES CONCERNING DHAMA 
 
 can put up with it in all its forms, in vice as well 
 as in virtue, in defeat no less than in victory; the 
 true seer he who sees not only joy but sorrow, the 
 true painter of human life one who blinks nothing. 
 It may be that he is also, incidentally, its true 
 benefactor. 
 
 In the whole range of the social fabric there are 
 only two impartial persons, the scientist and the ^ 
 artist, and imder the latter heading such dram- 
 atists as desire to write not only for to-day, but 
 for to-morrow, must strive to come. 
 
 But dramatists being as they are made — ^past 
 remedy — ^it is perhaps more profitable to examine 
 the various points at which their quahties and 
 defects are shown. 
 
 The plot ! A good plot is that sure edifice which ^ 
 slowly rises out of the interplay of circumstance 
 on temperament, and temperament on circum- 
 stance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea. 
 A human being is the best plot there is; it may be 
 impossible to see why he is a good plot, because the 
 idea within which he was brought forth cannot 
 be fully grasped; but it is plain that he is a good 
 plot. He is organic. And so it must be with a 
 good play. Reason alone produces no good plots; 
 they come by original sin, sure conception, and 
 instinctive after-power of selecting what benefits 
 
 193 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 the gerai. A bad plot, on the other hand, is sim- 
 ply a row of stakes, with a character impaled on 
 each — characters who would have liked to live, 
 but came to untimely grief; who started bravely, 
 but fell on these stakes, placed beforehand in a 
 row, and were transfixed one by one, while their 
 ghosts stride on, squeaking and gibbering, through 
 the play. Whether these stakes are made of facts 
 or of ideas, according to the nature of the dramatist 
 who planted them, their effect on the unfortunate 
 characters is the same ; the creatures were begotten 
 to be staked, and staked they are! The demand 
 for a good plot, not unf requently heard, commonly 
 signifies: "Tickle my sensations by stuffing the 
 play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not 
 be troubled to take the characters seriously. Set 
 the persons of the play to action, regardless of 
 time, sequence, atmosphere, and probability!" 
 
 Now, true dramatic action is what characters 
 do, at once contrary, as it were, to expectation, 
 and yet because they have already done other 
 things. No dramatist should let his audience 
 know what is coming; but neither should he suffer 
 his characters to act without making his audience 
 feel that those actions are in harmony with temper- 
 ament, and arise from previous known actions, to- 
 gether with the temperaments and previous known 
 
 194 
 
PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA 
 
 actions of the other characters in the play. The ' 
 dramatist who hangs his characters to his plot, 
 instead of hanging his plot to his characters, is 
 guilty of cardinal sin. 
 
 The dialogue ! Good dialogue again is character, , 
 marshalled so as continually to stimulate interest 
 or excitement. The reason good dialogue is sel- 
 dom found in plays is merely that it is hard to 
 write, for it requires not only a knowledge of what 
 interests or excites, but such a feeling for character 
 as brings misery to the dramatist's heart when his 
 creations speak as they should not speak — ashes 
 to his mouth when they say things for the sake 
 of sajdng them — disgust when they are "smart." ' 
 
 The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an . 
 austere art, denying itself all hcense, grudging 
 every sentence devoted to the mere machinery of 
 the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams 
 severed from character, relying for fun and pathos 
 on the fun and tears of life. From start to finish 
 good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace; clear, 
 of fine texture, furthering with each thread the 
 harmony and strength of a design to which all 
 must be subordinated. 
 
 But good dialogue is also spiritual action. In 
 so far as the dramatist divorces his dialogue from 
 spiritual action — ^that is to say, from progress of 
 
 195 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 events, or toward events which are significant of 
 character — ^he is stultifying to hpdiia the thing 
 done; he may make pleasing disqioisitions, he is 
 not making drama. And in so far as he twists 
 character to suit his moral or his plot, he is neg- 
 lecting a first principle, that truth to Nature which 
 alone invests art with hand-made quality. 
 
 The dramatist's license, in fact, ends with his 
 design. In conception alone he is free. He may 
 take what character or group of characters he 
 chooses, see them with what eyes, knit them with 
 what idea, within the limits of his temperament; 
 but once taken, seen, and knitted, he is boimd to 
 treat them like a gentleman, with the tenderest 
 consideration of their mainsprings. Take care 
 of character; action and dialogue will take care 
 of themselves! The true dramatist gives full 
 rein to his temperament in the scope and nature of 
 his subject; having once selected subject and char- 
 acters, he is just, gentle, restrained, neither 
 gratifying his lust for praise at the expense of his 
 offspring, nor using them as puppets to flout his 
 audience. Being himself the natm-e that brought 
 them forth, he guides them in the course pre- 
 destined at their conception. So only have they 
 a chance of defying Time, which is always lying 
 in wait to destroy the false, topical, or fashionable, 
 
 196 
 
PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA 
 
 all — ^in a word — ^that is not based on the permanent 
 elements of human nature. The perfect dramatist 
 rounds up his characters and facts within the ring- 
 fence of a dominant idea which fulfils the craving 
 of his spirit; having got them there, he suffers 
 them to live their own hves. 
 
 Plot, action, character, dialogue! But there 
 is yet another subject for a platitude. Flavour! 
 An impalpable quality, less easily captured than 
 the scent of a flower, the peculiar and most essen- 
 tial attribute of any work of art! It is the thin, 
 poignant spirit which hovers up out of a play, and 
 is as much its differentiating essence as is caffeine 
 of coffee. Flavour, in fine, is the spirit of the 
 dramatist projected into his work in a state of 
 volatOity, so that no one can exactly lay hands 
 on it, here, there, or anywhere. This distinctive 
 essence of a play, marking its brand, is the one 
 thing at which the dramatist cannot work, for it 
 is outside his consciousness. A man may have 
 many moods, he has but one spirit; and this 
 spirit he communicates in some subtle, unconscious 
 way to all his work. It waxes and wanes with the 
 currents of his vitality, but no more alters than a 
 chestnut changes into an oak. 
 
 For, in truth, dramas are very like unto trees, 
 springing from seedlings, shaping themselves in- 
 evitably in accordance with the laws fast hidden 
 
 197 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 within themselves, drinking sustenance from the 
 earth and air, and in conflict with the natural 
 forces round them. So they slowly come to fuU 
 growth, until warped, stunted, or risen to fair and 
 gracious height, they stand open to aU the winds. 
 And the trees that spring from each dramatist are 
 of different race; he is the spirit of his own sacred 
 grove, into which no stray tree can by any chance 
 enter. 
 
 One more platitude. It is not unfashionable to 
 pit one form of drama against another — ^holding 
 up the naturaUstic to the disadvantage of the 
 epic; the epic to the beUttlement of the fantastic; 
 the fantastic to the detriment of the naturalistic. 
 Little purpose is thus served. The essential mean- 
 ing, truth, beauty, and irony of things may be 
 revealed imder all these forms. Vision over life 
 and human nature can be as keen and just, the 
 revelation as true, inspiring, delight-giving, and 
 thought-provoking, whatever fashion be employed 
 —it is simply a question of doing it well enough 
 to uncover the kernel of the nut. Whether the 
 violet come from Russia, from Parma, or from 
 England, matters little. Close by the Greek 
 temples at Psestum there are violets that seem 
 redder, and sweeter, than any ever seen — as 
 though they have sprung up out of the footprints 
 of some old pagan goddess; but under the April 
 
 198 
 
PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA 
 
 sun, in a Devonshire lane, the little blue scentless 
 violets capture every bit as much of the spring. 
 And so it is with drama — no matter what its form 
 — it need only be the "real thing, " need only have 
 caught some of the precious flmds, revelation, or 
 delight, and imprisoned them within a chalice to 
 which we may put our hps and continually drink. 
 
 And yet, starting from this last platitude, one 
 may perhaps be suffered to speculate as to the 
 particular forms that our renascent drama is 
 likely to assume. For our drama is renascent, 
 and nothing will stop its growth. It is not re- 
 nascent because this or that man is writing, but 
 because of a new spirit. A spirit that is no doubt 
 in part the gradual outcome of the impact on our 
 home-grown art, of Russian, French, and Scandi- 
 navian influences, but which in the main rises from 
 an awakened humanity in the conscience of our time. ' 
 
 What, then, are to be the main channels down 
 which the renascent English drama will float in 
 the coming years? It is more than possible that 
 these main channels will come to be two in num- 
 ber and situate far apart. 
 
 The one wiU be the broad and clear-cut channel 
 of naturalism, down which wiU course a drama 
 poignantly shaped, and inspired with high inten- 
 tion, but faithful to the seething and multiple life 
 
 199 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 around us, drama such as some are inclined to 
 term photographic, deceived by a seeming sim- 
 pUcity into forgetfulness of the old proverb, "Ars 
 est celare artem," and oblivious of the fact that, 
 to be vital, to grip, such drama is in every respect 
 as dependent on imagination, construction, selec- 
 tion, and elimination — ^the main laws of artistry 
 — as ever was the romantic or rhapsodic play. 
 The question of naturalistic technique will bear, 
 indeed, much more study than has yet been given 
 to it. The aim of the dramatist employing it is 
 obviously to create such an illusion of actual life 
 passing on the stage as to compel the spectator 
 to pass through an experience of his own, to think, 
 and talk, and move with the people he sees think- 
 ing, talking, and moving in front of him. A false 
 phrase, a single word out of tune or time, will de- 
 stroy that illusion and spoil the surface as surely 
 as a stone heaved into a still pool shatters the image 
 seen there. But this is only the beginning of the 
 reason why the naturalistic is the most exacting 
 and difiScult of all techniques. It is easy enough 
 to reproduce the exact conversation and move- 
 ments of persons in a room; it is desperately hard 
 to prodtice the perfectly natural conversation and 
 movements of those persons, when each natural 
 phrase spoken and each natural movement made 
 
 200 
 
PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA 
 
 has not only to contribute toward the growth and 
 perfection of a drama's soul, but also to be a reve- 
 lation, phrase by phrase, movement by move- 
 ment, of essential traits of character. To put it 
 another way, naturalistic art, when alive, indeed _ 
 to be alive at all, is simply the art of manipu- 
 lating a procession of most dehcate sjTnbols. Its 
 service is the swaying and focussing of men's 
 feelings and thoughts in the various departments 
 of human life. It will be like a steady lamp, held 
 up from time to time, in whose hght things wiU be 
 seen for a space clearly and in due proportion, 
 freed from the mists of prejudice and partisanship. 
 And the other of these two main chaimels will, 
 I think, be a twisting and delicious stream, which 
 will bear on its breast new barques of poetry, 
 shaped, it may be, hke prose, but a prose incarnat- 
 ing through its fantasy and symbolism all the 
 deeper aspirations, yearning, doubts, and myste- 
 rious stirrings of the himaan spirit; a poetic 
 prose-drama, emotionalising us by its diversity 
 and purity of form and invention, and whose 
 province will be to disclose the elemental soul of 
 man and the forces of Nature, not perhaps as the 
 old tragedies disclosed them, not necessarily in 
 the epic mood, but always with beauty and in the 
 spirit of discovery. 
 
 201 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 Such will, I think, be the two vital forms of our 
 drama in the coming generation. And between 
 these two forms there must be no crude unions; 
 they are too far apart, the cross is too violent. 
 For, where there is a seeming blend of lyricism and 
 naturalism, it will on examination be found, I 
 think, to exist only in plays whose subjects or 
 settings — as in Synge's "Playboy of the Western 
 World," or in Mr. Masefield's "Nan"— are so re- 
 moved from our ken that we cannot really tell, 
 and therefore do not care, whether an absolute il- 
 lusion is maintained. The poetry which may and 
 should exist in naturahstic drama, can only be that 
 of perfect rightness of proportion, rhythm, shape — 
 the poetry, in fact, that lies in all vital things. It is 
 the Hi-mating of forms that has killed a thousand 
 plays. We want no more bastard drama; no 
 more attempts to dress out the simple dignity of 
 everyday life in the peacock's feathers of false 
 lyricism; no more straw-stuffed heroes or heroines; 
 no more rabbits and goldfish from the conjurer's 
 pockets, nor any limeHght. Let us have starlight, 
 moonlight, sunlight, and the light of our own self- 
 respects. 
 
 1909. 
 
 202 
 
MEDITATION ON FINALITY 
 
 IN the Grand Canyon of Arizona, that most ex- 
 hilarating of aU natural phenomena, Natm-e 
 has for once so focussed her effects, that the result 
 is a framed and final work of Art. For there, be- 
 tween two high lines of plateau, level as the sea, 
 are sunk the wrought thrones of the innumerable 
 gods, couchant, and for ever revering, in their 
 million moods of light and colour, the Master 
 Mystery. 
 
 Having seen this culmination, I realize why 
 many people either recoil before it, and take the 
 first train home, or speak of it as a "remarkable 
 formation. " For, though mankind at large craves 
 finality, it does not crave the sort that bends the 
 knee to Mystery. In Nature, in ReUgion, in Art, 
 in Life, the common cry is: "TeU me precisely 
 where I am, what doing, and where going ! Let me 
 be free of this fearful untidiness of not knowing 
 all about it!" The favoured rehgions are always 
 those whose message is most finite. The fashion- 
 able professions — ^they that end us in assured posi- 
 tions. The most popular works of fiction, such 
 
 203 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 as leave nothing to our imagination. And to this 
 craving after prose, who would not be lenient, that 
 has at all known life, with its usual predominance 
 of our lower and less courageous selves, our con-^ 
 stant hankering after the cosey closed door and 
 line of least resistance? We are continually beg- 
 ging to be allowed to know for certain; though, if 
 our prayer were granted, and Mystery no longer 
 hovered, made blue the hills, and turned day 
 into night, we should, as surely, wail at once 
 to be delivered of that ghastUness of knowing 
 things for certain! 
 
 Now, in Art, I would never quarrel with a cer- 
 tain living writer who demands of it the kind of 
 finality implied in what he calls a "moral dis- 
 covery" — ^using, no doubt, the words in their 
 widest sense. I would maintain, however, that 
 such finaUty is not confined to positively discover- 
 ing the true conclusion of premises laid down; but 
 that it may also distil gradually, negatively from 
 the whole work, in a moral discovery, as it were, 
 of Author. In other words, that, permeation by 
 an essential point of view, by emanation of author, 
 may so unify and vitalize a work, as to give it all 
 the finality that need be required of Art. For the 
 finality that is requisite to Art, be it positive or 
 negative, is not the finahty of dogma, nor the 
 
 204 
 
MEDITATION ON FINALITY 
 
 finality of fact, it is ever the finality of feeling — of 
 a spiritual light, subtly gleaned by the spectator 
 out of that queer luminous haze which one man's 
 nature must ever be to others. And herein, 
 incidentally, it is that Art acquires also that 
 quality of mystery, more needful to it even than 
 finality, for the mystery that wraps a work of 
 Art is the mystery of its maker, and the mystery 
 of its maker is the difference between that maker's 
 soul and every other soul. 
 
 But let me take an illustration of what I mean 
 by these two kinds of finaUty that Art may have, 
 and show that ia essence they are but two halves 
 of the same thing. The term "a work of Art" 
 will not be denied, I think, to that, early novel of 
 M. Anatole France, "Le Lys Rouge." Now, 
 that novel has positive finality, since the spiritual 
 conclusion from its premises strikes one as true. 
 But neither will the term "a work of Art" be 
 denied to the same writer's four "Bergeret" vol- 
 umes, whose negative finaUty consists only in the 
 temperamental atmosphere wherein they are 
 soaked. Now, if the theme of "Le Lys Eouge" 
 had been treated by Tolstoy, Meredith, or Tur- 
 genev, we should have had spiritual conclusions 
 from the same factual premises so different from 
 M. France's as prunes from prisms, and yet, being 
 
 205 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 the work of equally great artists, they would, 
 doubtless, have struck us as equally true. Is not, 
 then, the positive finaUty of "Le Lys Rouge," 
 though expressed in terms of a different craftsman- 
 ship, the same, in essence, as the negative finality 
 of the " Bergeret " volumes ? Are not both, in fact, 
 merely flower of author true to himself? So long 
 as the scent, colour, form of that flower is strong 
 and fine enough to affect the senses of our spirit, 
 then all the rest, surely, is academic — I would 
 say, immaterial. 
 
 But here, in regard to Art, is where mankind at 
 large comes on the field. " ' Flower of author,' " it 
 says, "'Senses of the spirit!' Phew! Give me 
 something I can vinderstand ! Let me know where 
 I am getting to!" In a word, it wants a finahty 
 different from that which Art can give. It will 
 ask the artist, with irritation, what his solution, or 
 his lesson, or his meaning, really is, having omitted 
 to notice that the poor creature has been giving 
 all the meaning that he can, in every sentence. It 
 will demand to know why it was not told definitely 
 what became of Charles or Maiy in whom it had 
 grown so interested; and will be almost frightened 
 to learn that the artist knows no more than itself. 
 And if by any chance it be required to dip its mind 
 into a philosophy that does not promise it a defined 
 
 206 
 
MEDITATION ON FINALITY 
 
 position both in this world and the next, it will as- 
 suredly recoil, and with a certain contempt say: 
 "No, sir! This means nothing to me; and if it 
 means anything to you — which I very much doubt 
 — ^I am sorry for you!" 
 
 It must have facts, and again facts, not only in 
 the present and the past, but in the future. And 
 it demands facts of that, which alone cannot glibly 
 give it facts. It goes on asking facts of Art, or, 
 rather, such facts as Art cannot give — ^for, after 
 all, even "flower of author" is fact in a sort of 
 way. 
 
 Consider, for instance, Synge's masterpiece, 
 "The Playboy of the Western World ! " There is 
 flower of author! What is it for mankind at 
 large? An attack on the Irish character! A 
 pretty piece of writing! An amusing farce! 
 Enigmatic cynicism leading nowhere! A puzzling 
 fellow wrote it! Mankind at large has little 
 patience with puzzling fellows. 
 
 Few, in fact, want flower of author. Moreover, 
 it is a quality that may well be looked for where it 
 does not exist. To say that the finality which 
 Art requires is merely an enwrapping mood, or 
 flower of author, is not by any means to say that 
 any robust fellow, slamming his notions down in 
 iuk, can give us these. Indeed, no! So long as 
 
 207 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 we see the author's proper person in his work, we 
 do not see the flower of him. Let him retreat him- 
 self, if he pretend to be an artist. There is no less 
 of subtle skUl, no less impersonality, in the "Ber- 
 geret" volimies than in "Le Lys Rouge." No 
 less labour and mental torturing went to their 
 making, page by page, in order that they might 
 exhale their perfume of mysterious finality, their 
 withdrawn but imphcit judgment. Flower of 
 author is not quite so common as the buttercup, 
 the Calif ornian poppy, or the gay Texan gaillardia, 
 and for that very reason the finahty it gives off 
 will never be robust enough for a mankind at large 
 that would have things cut and dried, and labelled 
 in thick letters. For, consider — ^to take one phase 
 alone of this demand for factual finality — ^how 
 continual and insistent is the cry for characters 
 that can be worshipped; how intense and per- 
 sistent the desire to be told that Charles was a real 
 hero; and how bitter the regret that Mary was no 
 better than she should be! Mankind at large 
 wants heroes that are heroes, and heroines that 
 are heroines — and nothing so inappropriate to 
 them as unhappy endings. 
 
 Travelling away, I remember, from that Grand 
 Canyon of Arizona were a young man and a young 
 woman, evidently m love. He was sitting very 
 
 208 
 
MEDITATION ON FINALITY 
 
 close to her, and reading aloud for her pleasure, 
 from a paper-covered novel, heroically obUvious 
 of us all: 
 
 "'Sir Robert,' she murmured, lifting her beau- 
 teous eyes, 'I may not tempt you, for you are too 
 dear to me!' Sir Robert held her lovely face be- 
 tween his two strong hands. 'Farewell!' he said, 
 and went out into the night. But something 
 told them both that, when he had fulfilled his duty, 
 Sir Robert would return, . . ."He had not re- 
 turned before we reached the Junction, but there 
 was finaUty about that baronet, and we well knew 
 that he ultimately woi;ld. And, long after the 
 soimd of that yoimg man's faithful reading had 
 died out of -our ears, we meditated on Sir Robert, 
 and compared him with the famous characters of 
 fiction, slowly perceiving that they were none of 
 them so final in their heroism as he. No, none of 
 them reached that apex. For Hamlet was a most 
 unfinished fellow, and Lear extremely violent. 
 Pickwick addicted to punch, and Sam Weller to 
 Ijdng; Bazarof actually a Nihilist, and Irina — ! 
 Levin and Anna, Pierre and Natasha, aU of them 
 stormy and unsatisfactory at times. "Un Cceur 
 Simple" nothing but a servant, and an old maid 
 at that; "Saint Julien I'Hospitaher" a sheer 
 fanatic. Colonel Newcome too irritable and too 
 
 209 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 simple altogether. Don Quixote certified iosane. 
 Hilda Wangel, Nora, Hedda — Sir Robert would 
 never even have spoken to such baggages! Mon- 
 sieur Bergeret — an amiable weak thing! D'Arta- 
 gnan — a true swashbuckler! Tom Jones, Faust, 
 Don Juan — we might not even think of them. 
 And those poor Greeks: Prometheus — shocking 
 rebel. CEdipus — ^for a long time banished by the 
 Censor. Phaedra and Elektra, not even so virtu- 
 ous as Mary, who failed of being what she should 
 be! And coming to more familiar persons — 
 Joseph and Moses, David and Elijah, all of them 
 lacked his finality of true heroism — none could 
 quite pass muster beside Sir Robert. . . . Long 
 we meditated, and, reflecting that an author must 
 ever be superior to the creatures of his brain, were 
 refreshed to think that there were so many Uving 
 authors capable of giving birth to Sir Robert; for 
 indeed, Sir Robert and finaUty like his — no doubt- 
 ful heroes, no flower of author, and no mystery 
 — ^is what mankind at large has always wanted 
 from Letters, and will always want. 
 
 As truly as that oU and water do not mix, there 
 are two kinds of men. The main cleavage in the 
 whole tale of life is this subtle, all-pervading divi- 
 sion of mankind into the man of facts and the 
 man of feeling. And not by what they are or do 
 
 210 
 
MEDITATION ON FINALITY 
 
 can they be told one from the other, but just 
 by their attitude toward finaUty. Fortunately 
 most of us are neither quite the one nor quite 
 the other, *But between the pure-blooded of 
 each kind there is real antipathy, far deeper 
 than the antipathies of race, poHtics, or religion — 
 an antipathy that not circumstance, love, good- 
 will, or necessity wiU ever quite get rid of. Sooner 
 shall the panther agree with the bull than that 
 other one with the man of facts. There is no 
 bridging the gorge that divides these worlds. 
 
 Nor is it so easy to tell, of each, to which world 
 he belongs, as it was to place the lady, who held 
 out her finger over that gorge called Grand Canyon, 
 and said: 
 
 "It doesn't look thirteen nules; but they meas- 
 ured it just there ! Excuse my pointing ! " 
 
 1912. 
 
 211 
 
WANTED— SCHOOLING 
 
 "TT^T nous jongleurs inviiles, frivoles joueurs de 
 mZj luth!" . . . Useless jugglers, frivolous play- 
 ers on the lute! Must we so describe ourselves, 
 we, the producers, season by season, of so many > 
 hundreds of "remarkable" works of fiction? — ^for 
 though, when we take up the remarkable works of 
 our fellows, we "really cannot read them!" the 
 Press and the advertisements of our publishers tell 
 us that they are "remarkable." 
 
 A stoiy goes that once in the twilight under- 
 growth of a forest of nut-bearing trees a number of 
 little purblind creatures wandered, singing for 
 nuts. On some of these purblind creatures the 
 nuts fell heavy and full, extremely indigestible, 
 and were quickly swallowed; on others they fell 
 light, and contained nothing, because the kernel 
 had already been eaten up above, and these light 
 and kernel-less nuts were accompanied by sibila- 
 tions or laughter. On others again no nuts at all, 
 empty or full, came down. But nuts or no nuts, 
 full nuts or empty nuts, the purblind creatures be- 
 low went on wandering and singing. A traveller 
 
 212 
 
WANTED— SCHOOLING 
 
 one day stopped one of these creatures whose 
 voice was peculiarly disagreeable, and asked: 
 "Why do you sing like this? Is it for pleasure 
 that you do it, or for pain? What do you get out 
 of it? Is it for the sake of those up there? Is it 
 for your own sake — ^for the sake of your family — 
 for whose sake? Do you think your songs worth 
 listening to? Answer!" 
 
 The creature scratched itself, and sang the louder. 
 
 "Ah! Cacoethes! I pity, but do not blame you," 
 said the traveller. 
 
 He left the creature, and presently came to an- 
 other which sang a squeaky treble song. It wan- 
 dered round in a ring imder a grove of stunted 
 trees, and the traveller noticed that it never went 
 out of that grove. 
 
 "Is it really necessary," he said, "for you to ex- 
 press yourseK thus?" 
 
 And as he spoke showers of tiny hard nuts came 
 down on the little creature, who ate them greedily. 
 The traveller opened one; it was extremely small 
 and tasted of dry rot. 
 
 "Why, at all events," he said, "need you stay 
 under these trees? the nuts are not good here. " 
 
 But for answer the little creature ran round and 
 round, and round and round. 
 
 "I suppose, " said the traveller, "small bad nuts 
 213 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 are better than no bread; if you went out of this 
 grove you would starve? " 
 
 The purblind little creature shrieked. The 
 traveller took the sound for affirmation; and passed 
 on. He came to a third Httle creature who, under 
 a tall tree, was singing very loudly indeed, while 
 aU around was a great silence, broken only by 
 sounds like the snufHing of small noses. The 
 creature stopped singing as the traveller came up, 
 and at once a storm of huge nuts came down; the 
 traveller found them sweetish and very oUy. 
 
 "Why," he said to the creature, "did you sing 
 so loud? You cannot eat all these nuts. You 
 really do sing louder than seems necessary; come, 
 answer me!" 
 
 But the purblind httle creature began to sing 
 again at the top of its voice, and the noise of the 
 snuffling of small noses became so great that the 
 traveller hastened away. He passed many other 
 purblind little creatures in the twilight of this 
 forest, tUl at last he came to one that looked even 
 blinder than the rest, but whose song was sweet and 
 low and clear, breaking a perfect stillness; and the 
 traveller sat down to hsten. For a long time he 
 listened to that song without noticing that not a 
 nut was falling. But suddenly he heard a faint 
 rustle and three httle oval nuts lay on the ground. 
 
 214 
 
WANTED— SCHOOLING 
 
 The traveller cracked one of them. It was of 
 delicate flavour. He looked at the little creature 
 standing with its face raised, and said: 
 
 "TeU me, little blind creature, whose song is so 
 charming, where did you learn to sing?" 
 
 The little creature turned its head a trifle to one 
 side as though hstening for the fall of nuts. 
 
 "Ah, indeed!" said the traveller: "You, whose 
 voice is so clear, is this all you get to eat?" 
 
 The little blind creature smiled. , . . 
 
 It is a twilight forest in which we writers of fic- 
 tion wander, and once in a way, though all this 
 has been said before, we may as well remind our- 
 selves and others why the light is so dim; why 
 there is so much bad and false fiction; why the de- 
 mand for it is so great. Living in a world where 
 demand creates supply, we writers of fiction furnish 
 the exception to this rule. For, consider how, as 
 a class, we come into existence. Unlike the fol- 
 lowers of any other occupation, nothing whatever 
 compels any one of us to serve an apprenticeship. 
 We go to no school, have to pass no examination, 
 attain no standard, receive no diploma. We need 
 not study that which should be studied; we are at 
 liberty to flood our minds with all that should not 
 be studied. Like mushrooms, in a single night we 
 spring up — a pen in our hands, very little in our 
 brains, and who-knows-what in our hearts! 
 
 215 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 Few of us sit down in cold blood to write our 
 first stories; we have somethiag in us that we feel 
 we must express. This is the beginning of the 
 vicious circle. Our first books often have some- 
 thing in them. We are sincere in trjdng to express 
 that something. It is true we cannot express it, 
 not having learnt how, but its ghost haunts the 
 pages — ^the ghost of real experience and real life — 
 just enough to attract the untrained intelligence, 
 just enough to make a generous Press remark: 
 "This shows promise. " We have tasted blood, we 
 pant for more. Those of us who had a carking 
 occupation hasten to throw it aside, those who had 
 no occupation have now found one; some few of 
 us keep both the old occupation and the new. 
 Whichever of these courses we pursue, the hurry 
 with which we pursue it undoes us. For, often we 
 have only that one book in us, which we did not 
 know how to write, and having expressed that 
 which we have felt, we are driven in our second, our 
 third, our fourth, to warm up variations, like those 
 dressed remains of last night's dinner which are 
 served for lunch; or to spin from our usually com- 
 monplace imaginations thin extravagances which 
 those who do not try to think for themselves are 
 ever ready to accept as full of inspiration and 
 vitality. Anything for a book, we say — anything 
 for a book! 
 
 216 
 
WANTED— SCHOOLING 
 
 From time immemorial we have acted in this 
 immoral manner, till we have accustomed the 
 Press and Public to expect it. From time imme- 
 morial we have allowed ourselves to be driven 
 by those powerful drivers, Bread, and Praise, and 
 cared little for the quality of either. Sensibly, 
 or insensibly, we tune our songs to earn the nuts 
 of our twilight forest. We tune them, not to the 
 key of: "Is it good?" but to the key of: "WiUit 
 pay? " and at each tuning the nuts fall fast ! It is 
 all so natural. How can we help it, seeing that 
 we are undisciplined and standardless, seeing 
 that we started without the backbone that school- 
 ing gives? Here and there among us is a genius, 
 here and there a man of exceptional stabihty who 
 trains himself in spite of all the forces working for 
 his destruction. But those who do not publish 
 until they can express, and do not express until 
 they have something worth expressing, are so rare 
 that they can be coimted on the fingers of three or 
 perhaps four hands; mercifully, we all — or nearly 
 all — believe ourselves of that company. 
 
 It is the fashion to say that the public will have 
 what it wants. Certainly the PubHc will have what 
 it wants if what it wants is given to the PubUc. 
 If what it now wants were suddenly withdrawn, 
 the PubHc, the big Public, would by an obvious 
 
 217 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 natural law take the lowest of what remained; 
 if that again were withdrawn, it would take the 
 next lowest, until by degrees it took a relatively 
 good article. The Public, the big Public, is a 
 mechanical and helpless consumer at the mercy of 
 what is supplied to it, and this must ever be so. 
 The Public then is not to blame for the supply of 
 bad, false fiction. The Press is not to blame, for 
 the Press, like the PubUc, must take what is set 
 before it; their Critics, for the most part, like our- 
 selves have been to no school, passed no test of 
 fitness, received no certificate; they cannot lead 
 us, it is we who lead them, for without the Critics 
 we could hve but without us the Critics would die. 
 We cannot, therefore, blame the Press. Nor is 
 the Pubhsher to blame ; for the Publisher will pub- 
 lish what is set before him. It is true that if he 
 pubUshed no books on commission he would de- 
 serve the praise of the State, but it is quite unrea- 
 sonable for us to expect him to deserve the praise 
 of the State, since it is we who supply him with 
 these books and incite him to pubHsh them. We 
 cannot, therefore, lay the blame on the Publisher. 
 _^We must lay the blame where it clearly should 
 be laid, on ourselves. We ourselves create the 
 demand for bad and false fiction. Very many of 
 us have private meana; for such there is no excuse. 
 
 218 
 
WANTED— SCHOOLING 
 
 Very many of us have none; for such, once started 
 on this journey of fiction, there is much, often 
 tragic, excuse — ^the less reason then for not having 
 trained ourselves before setting out on our way. 
 There is no getting out of it; the fault is ours. If 
 we wiU not put ourselves to school when we are 
 young; if we must rush into print before we can 
 spell; if we will not repress our natural desires and 
 walk before we nm; if we will not learn at least 
 what not to do — ^we shall go on wandering through 
 the forest, singing our foolish songs. 
 
 And since we cannot train ourselves except by 
 writing, let us write, and bum what we write; then 
 shall we soon stop writing, or produce what we 
 need not bum! 
 
 For, as things are now, without compass, with- 
 out map, we set out into the twihght forest of fic- 
 tion; without path, without track — ^and we never 
 emerge. 
 
 Yes, with the French writer, we must say: 
 
 "Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs de 
 luih!" . . . 
 
 1906. 
 
 219 
 
REFLECTIONS ON OUR DISLIKE OF 
 
 THINGS AS THEY ARE 
 
 YES! Why is this the chief characteristic of 
 our art? What secret instincts are respon- 
 sible for this inveterate distaste? But, first, is it 
 true that we have it? 
 
 To stand still and look at a thing for the joy of 
 looking, without reference to any material ad- 
 vantage, and personal benefit, either to ourselves 
 or oiu^ neighbours, just simply to indulge our curi- 
 osity ! Is that a British habit? I think not. 
 
 If, on some November afternoon, we walk into 
 Kensington Gardens, where they join the Park on 
 the Bayswater side, and, crossing in front of the 
 ornamental fountain, glance at the semicircular 
 seat let into a dismal little Temple of the Sun, 
 we shall see a half-moon of apathetic figures. 
 There, enjoying a moment of lugubrious idleness, 
 may be sitting an old coimtrywoman with steady 
 eyes in a lean, dusty-black dress and an old poke- 
 bonnet; by her side, some gin-faced creature of 
 the town, all blousy and draggled; a hollow-eyed 
 foreigner, far gone in consumption; a bronzed 
 
 220 
 
REFLECTIONS 
 
 young navvy, asleep, with his muddy boots jut- 
 ting straight out; a bearded, dreary being, chin on 
 chest; and more consumptives, and more vaga- 
 bonds, and more people dead-tired, speechless, 
 and staring before them from that crescent-shaped 
 haven where there is no draught at their backs, 
 and the sun occasionally shines. And as we look 
 at them, according to the state of our temper, we 
 think: Poor creatures, I wish I could do somethiag 
 for them! or: Revolting! They oughtn't to aUow 
 it! But do we feel any pleasure ra just watching 
 them; any of that intimate sensation a cat enter- 
 tains when its back is being rubbed; are we curi- 
 ously enjoying the sight of these people, simply 
 as manifestations of Hfe, as objects fashioned by 
 the ebb and flow of its tides? Again, I think, not. 
 And why? Either, because we have instantly felt 
 that we ought to do something; that here is a dan- 
 ger in our midst, which one day might affect our 
 own security; and at all events, a sight revolt- 
 ing to us who came out to look at this remarkably 
 fine foxmtain. Or, because we are too humane! 
 Though very possibly that frequent murmur- 
 ing of ours: Ah! It's too sad! is but another 
 way of putting the words: Stand aside, please, 
 you're too depressing! Or, again, is it that we 
 avoid the sight of things as they are, avoid the 
 
 221 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 unedifying, because of what may be called "the 
 uncreative instinct," that safeguard and concom- 
 itant of a civilisation which demands of us com- 
 plete efficiency, practical and thorough employ- 
 ment of every second of our time and every iach 
 of our space? We know, of course, that out of 
 nothing nothing can be made, that to "create" 
 anything a man must first receive impressions, and 
 that to receive impressions requires an apparatus 
 of nerves and feelers, exposed and quivering to 
 every vibration round it, an apparatus so entirely 
 opposed to our national spirit and traditions that 
 the bare thought of it causes us to blush. A ro- 
 bust recognition of this, a steadfast resolve not to 
 be forced out of the current of strenuous civilisa- 
 tion into the sleepy backwater of pure impression- 
 ism, makes us distrustful of attempts to foster 
 in om^elves that receptivity and subsequent crea- 
 tiveness, the microbes of which exist in every man. 
 To watch a thing simply because it is a thing, 
 entirely without considering how it can affect us, 
 and without even seeing at the moment how we 
 are to get anything out of it, jars our consciences, 
 jars that inner feeling which keeps secure and 
 makes harmonious the whole concert of our fives, 
 for we feel it to be a waste of time, dangerous to 
 the community, contributing neither to our meat 
 
 222 
 
REFLECTIONS 
 
 and drink, our clothes and comfort, nor to the 
 stability and order of our lives. 
 
 Of these three possible reasons for our dislike 
 of things as they are, the first two are perhaps 
 contained within the third. But, to whatever 
 our dislike is due, we have it — Oh! we have it! 
 With the possible exception of Hogarth in his non- 
 preaching pictures, and Constable in his sketches 
 of the sky, — ^I speak of dead men only, — have we 
 produced any painter of reahty like Manet or 
 Millet, any writer hke Flaubert or Maupassant, 
 like Turgenev, or Tchekov. We are, I think, too 
 deeply civihsed, so deeply civilised that we have 
 come to look on Nature as indecent. The acts 
 and emotions of life undraped with ethics seem to 
 us anathema. It has long been, and stiU is, the 
 fashion among the intellectuals of the Continent to 
 regard us as barbarians in most aesthetic matters. 
 Ah! If they only knew how infinitely barbarous 
 they seem to us in their naive contempt of our bar- 
 barism, and in what we regard as their infantine 
 concern with things as they are. How far have we 
 not gone past all that — we of the oldest settled 
 Western country, who have so veneered our Hves 
 that we no longer know of what wood they are 
 made! Whom generations have so soaked with 
 the preserve "good form" that we are impervious 
 
 223 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 to the claims and clamour of that ill-bred creature 
 — ^life! Who think it either dreadful, or vi&ux jeu, 
 that such things as the crude emotions and the raw 
 struggles of Fate should be even mentioned, much 
 less presented in terms of art! For whom an 
 artist is 'suspect' if he is not, in his work, a sports- 
 man and a gentleman? Who shake a solemn head 
 over writers who will treat of sex; and, with the 
 remark: "Worst of it is, there's so much truth in 
 those fellows!" close the book. 
 
 Ah! well! I suppose we have been too long 
 familiar with the unprofitableness of speculation, 
 have surrendered too definitely to action — ^to the 
 material side of things, retaining for what relaxa- 
 tion our spirits may require, a habit of sentimental 
 aspiration, carefully divorced from things as they 
 are. We seem to have decided that things are 
 not, or, if they are, ought not to be — and what is 
 the good of thinking of things like that? In fact, 
 our national ideal has become the WiU to Health, 
 to Material Efl&ciency, and to it we have sacrificed 
 the Will to Sensibility. It is a point of view. And 
 yet — ^to the philosophy that craves Perfection, to 
 the spirit that desires the golden mean, and hank- 
 ers for the serene and balanced seat in the centre 
 of the see-saw, it seems a little pitiful, and con- 
 stricted; a confession of defeat, a hedging and 
 
 224 
 
REFLECTIONS 
 
 limitation of the soul. Need we put up with this, 
 must we for ever turn our eyes away from things 
 as they are, stifle our imaginations and our sensi- 
 bilities, for fear that they should become our mas- 
 ters, and destroy our sanity? This is the eternal 
 question that confronts the artist and the thinker. 
 Because of the inevitable decUne after fuU flower- 
 ing-point is reached, the inevitable fading of the 
 fire that follows the full flame and glow, are we 
 to recoil from striving to reach the perfect and 
 harmonious climacteric? Better to have loved 
 and lost, I think, than never to have loved at all; 
 better to reach out and grasp the fullest expres- 
 sion of the individual and the national soul, than 
 to keep for ever under the shelter of the wall. I 
 would even think it possible to be sensitive with- 
 out neurasthenia, to be sympathetic without in- 
 sanity, to be aUve to all the winds that blow with- 
 out getting influenza. God forbid that our Letters 
 and our Arts should decade into Beardsleyism; 
 but between that and their present "health" 
 there hes full flowering-point, not yet, by a long 
 way, reached. 
 
 To flower like that, I suspect, we must see things 
 just a httle more — as they are! 
 
 1905-1912. 
 
 225 
 
THE WINDLESTRAW 
 
 A CERTAIN writer, retviming one afternoon 
 from rehearsal of his play, sat down in the 
 hall of the hotel where he was staying. "No," 
 he reflected, "this play of mine will not please the 
 Public; it is gloomy, almost terrible. This very- 
 day I read these words in my morning paper: 
 'No artist can afford to despise his Pubhc, for, 
 whether he confesses it or not, the artist exists to 
 give the Public what it wants.' I have, then, not 
 only done what I cannot afford to do, but I have 
 been false to the reason of my existence." 
 
 The hall was full of people, for it was the hour 
 of tea; and looking round him, the writer thought : 
 "And this is the Public — ^the Public that my play 
 is destined not to please!" And for several min- 
 utes he looked at them as if he had been hypno- 
 tised. Presently, between two tables he noticed 
 a waiter standing, lost in his thoughts. The mask 
 of the man's professional civility had come awry, 
 and the expression of his face and figure was curi- 
 ously remote from the faces and forms of those 
 from whom he had been taking orders; he seemed 
 
 226 
 
THE WINDLESTRAW 
 
 like a bird discovered in its own haunts, all un- 
 conscious as yet of human eyes. And the writer 
 thought: "But if those people at the tables are 
 the Public, what is that waiter? How if I was 
 mistaken, and not they, but he were the real Pub- 
 Uc?" And testing this thought, his mind began 
 at once to range over all the people he had lately 
 seen. He thought of the Foimder's Day dinner 
 of a great School, which he had attended the night 
 before. "No," he mused, "I see very Kttle re- 
 semblance between the men at that dinner and 
 the men in this hall; still less between them and 
 the waiter. How if they were the real Public, 
 and neither the waiter, nor these people here!" 
 But no sooner had he made this reflection, than 
 he bethought him of a gathering of workers whom 
 he had watched two days ago. "Again," he 
 mused, "I do not recollect any resemblance at all 
 between those workers and the men at the dinner, 
 and certainly they are not like any one here. What 
 if those workers are the real Public, not the men 
 at the dinner, nor the waiter, nor the people in 
 this hall!" And thereupon his mind flew off 
 again, and this time rested on the figures of his 
 own immediate circle of friends. They seemed 
 very different from the four real Pubhcs whom 
 he had as yet discovered. "Yes," he considered, 
 
 227 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 "when I come to think of it, my associates — 
 painters, and writers, and critics, and all that kind 
 of person — do not seem to have anything to speak 
 of in common with any of these people. Perhaps 
 my own associates, then, are the real PubHc, and 
 not these others!" Perceiving that this would be 
 the fifth real Public, he felt discouraged. But 
 presently he began to think: "The past is the 
 past and cannot be undone, and with this play of 
 mine I shall not please the PubUc; but there is 
 always the future! Now, I do not wish to do 
 what the artist cannot afford to do, I earnestly 
 desire to be true to the reason of my existence; 
 and since the reason of that existence is to give 
 the Public what it wants, it is really vital to dis- 
 cover who and what the PubUc is!" And he be- 
 gan to look very closely at the faces around him, 
 hoping to find out from types what he had failed 
 to ascertain from classes. Two men were sitting 
 near, one on each side of a woman. The first, 
 who was all crumpled in his arm-chair, had curly 
 hps and wrinkles round the eyes, cheeks at once 
 rather fat and rather shadowy, and a dimple in 
 his chin. It seemed certain that he was hu- 
 mourous, and kind, sympathetic, rather diffident, 
 speculative, moderately intelligent, with the rudi- 
 ments perhaps of an imagination. And he looked 
 
 228 
 
THE WINDLESTRAW 
 
 at the second man, who was sitting very upright, 
 as if he had a particulariy fine backbone, of which 
 he was not a httle proud. He was extremely big 
 and handsome, with pronounced and regular nose 
 and chin, firm, weU-cut Hps beneath a smooth 
 moustache, direct and rather insolent eyes, a some- 
 what receding forehead, and an air of mastery 
 over aU around. It was obvious that he possessed 
 a complete knowledge of his own mind, some 
 brutality, much practical intelligence, great reso- 
 lution, no imagination, and plenty of conceit. 
 And he looked at the woman. She was pretty, 
 but her face was vapid, and seemed to have no 
 character at aU. And from one to the other he 
 looked, and the more he looked the less resem- 
 blance he saw between them, till the objects of his 
 scrutiny grew restive. Then, ceasing to examine 
 them, an idea came to him. "No! The Public 
 is not this or that class, this or that type; the 
 PubUc is an hypothetical average human being, 
 endowed with average human qualities — a dis- 
 tillation, in fact, of all the people in this hall, 
 the people in the street outside, the people of this 
 country everywhere. " And for a moment he was 
 pleased; but soon he began again to feel uneasy. 
 "Since," he reflected, "it is necessary for me 
 to supply this hypothetical average human being 
 
 229 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 with what he wants, I shall have to find out how 
 to distil him from all the ingredients around me. 
 Now how am I to do that? It will certainly take 
 me more than all my life to coUect and boil the 
 souls of aU of them, which is necessary if I am to 
 extract the genuine article, and I should then 
 apparently have no time left to supply the pre- 
 cipitated spirit, when I had obtained it, with what 
 it wanted! Yet this hjrpothetical average human 
 being must be found, or I must stay for ever 
 haunted by the thought that I am not supplying 
 him with what he wants!" And the writer be- 
 came more and more discouraged, for to arrogate 
 to himself knowledge of all the heights and depths, 
 and even of all the virtues and vices, tastes and 
 dislikes of aU the people of the country, without 
 having first obtained it, seemed to him to savour 
 of insolence. And still more did it appear im- 
 pertinent, having taken this mass of knowledge 
 which he had not got, to extract from it a golden- 
 mean man, in order to supply him with what he 
 wanted. And yet this was what every artist did 
 who justified his existence — or it would not have 
 been so stated in a newspaper. And he gazed up 
 at the lofty ceiling, as if he might perchance see 
 the PubHc flying up there in the faint bluish 
 mist of smoke. And suddenly he thought: "Sup- 
 
 230 
 
THE WINDLESTRAW 
 
 pose, by some miracle, my golden-mean bird came 
 flying to me with its beak open for the food with 
 which it is my duty to supply it — ^would it after 
 all be such a very strange-looking creatm-e; would 
 it not be extremely like my normal self? Am I 
 not, in fact, myself the Public? For, without the 
 strongest and most reprehensible conceit, can I 
 claim for my normal seK a single attribute or 
 quaUty not possessed by an hjrpothetical average 
 hmnan being? Yes, I am myself the Public; or 
 at aU events all that my consciousness can ever 
 know of it for certain. " And he began to consider 
 deeply. For sitting there in cold blood, with his 
 nerves at rest, and his brain and senses normal, 
 the play he had written did seem to him to put an 
 unnecessary strain upon the faculties. "Ah!" he 
 thought, "in future I must take good care never 
 to write anything except in cold blood, with my 
 nerves well clothed, and my brain and senses 
 quiet. I ought only to write when I feel as normal 
 as I do now. " And for some minutes he remained 
 motionless, looking at his boots. Then there 
 crept into his mind an uncomfortable thought. 
 "But have I ever written anything without feel- 
 ing a little — abnormal, at the time? Have I ever 
 even felt inclined to write anything, until my emo- 
 tions had been unduly excited, my brain immoder- 
 
 231 
 
. CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 ately stirred, my senses unusually quickened, or 
 my spirit extravagantly roused? Never! Alas, 
 never! I am then a miserable renegade, false 
 to the whole purpose of my being — nor do I see 
 the slightest hope of becoming a better man, a less 
 unworthy artist! For I literally cannot write 
 without the stimulus of some feeling exaggerated 
 at the expense of other feelings. What has been 
 in the past will be in the future: I shall never be 
 taking up my pen when I feel my comfortable and 
 normal self — ^never be satisfying that self which 
 is the Public!" And he thought: "I am lost. 
 For, to satisfy that normal self, to give the Public 
 what it wants, is, I am told, and therefore must be- 
 Ueve, what all artists exist for. ^schylus in his 
 'Choephorse' and his 'Prometheus'; Sophocles 
 in his 'CEdipus Tyrannus'; Euripides when he 
 wrote 'The Trojan Women,' 'Medea,' and 
 'Hippolytus'; Shakespeare in his 'Lear'; Goethe 
 in his 'Faust'; Ibsen in his 'Ghosts' and his 
 'Peer Gynt'; Tolstoy in 'The Powers of Dark- 
 ness'; all — all in those great works, must have 
 satisfied their most comfortable and normal selves; 
 all — all must have given to the average human be- 
 ing, to the Public, what it wants; for to do that, 
 we know, was the reason of their existence, and 
 who shall say those noble artists were not true to 
 
 232 
 
THE WINDLESTRAW 
 
 it? That is surely unthinkable. And yet — and 
 yet — ^we are assured, and, indeed, it is true, that 
 there is no real Public in this country for just those 
 plays ! Therefore ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, 
 Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, Tolstoy, in their 
 greatest works did not give the Public what it 
 wants, did not satisfy the average human being, 
 their more comfortable and normal selves, and as 
 artists were not true to the reason of their 
 existence. Therefore they were not artists, which 
 is unthinkable; therefore I have not yet found the 
 Public!" 
 
 And perceiving that in this impasse his last hope 
 of discovery had foundered, the writer let his head 
 faU on his chest. 
 
 But even as he did so a gleam of light, like a 
 faint moonbeam, stole out into the garden of his 
 despair. "Is it possible," he thought, "that, 
 by a writer, until his play has been performed 
 (when, alas! it is too late), 'the PubUc' is incon- 
 ceivable — ^in fact that for him there is no such 
 thing? But if there be no such thing, I cannot 
 exist to give it what it wants. What then is 
 the reason of my existence? Am I but a windle- 
 straw?" And wearied out with his perplexity, he 
 fell into a doze. And while he dozed he dreamed 
 that he saw the figure of a woman standing in 
 
 233 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 darkness, from whose face and form came a misty 
 refulgence, such as steals out into the dusk from 
 white campion flowers along summer hedgerows. 
 She was holding her pale hands before her, wide 
 apart, with the pahns turned down, quivering as 
 might doves about to settle; and for all it was so 
 dark, her grey eyes were visible — ^fuU of light, 
 with black rims round the irises. To gaze at those 
 eyes was almost painful; for though they were 
 beautiful," they seemed to see right through his 
 soul, to pass him by, as though on a far discovering 
 voyage, and forbidden to rest. 
 
 The dreamer spoke to her: "Who are you, 
 standing there in the darkness with those eyes that 
 I can hardly bear to look at? Who are you? " 
 
 And the woman answered: "Friend, I am 
 your Conscience; I am the Truth as best it may be 
 seen by you. I am she whom you exist to serve. " 
 With those words she vanished, and the writer 
 woke. A boy was standing before him with the 
 evening papers. 
 
 To cover his confusion at being caught asleep 
 he purchased one and began to read a leading 
 article. It commenced with these words: "There 
 are certain playwrights taking themselves very 
 seriously; might we suggest to them that they are 
 in danger of becoming ridiculous. ..." 
 
 234 
 
THE WINDLESTRAW 
 
 The writer let fall his hand, and the paper flut- 
 tered to the grovind. "The Public," he thought, 
 "I am not able to take seriously, because I cannot 
 conceive what it may be; myself, my conscience, 
 I am told I must not take seriously, or I become 
 ridiculous. Yes, I am indeed lost!" 
 
 And with a feeling of elation, as of a straw blown 
 on every wind, he arose, 
 
 1910. 
 
 235 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 SINCE, time and again, it has been proved, in 
 this country of free institutions, that the 
 great majority of our fellow-countrymen consider 
 the only Censorship that now obtains amongst us, 
 namely the Censorship of Plays, a bulwark for 
 the preservation of their comfort and sensibUity 
 against the spiritual researches and speculations 
 of bolder and too active spirits — ^it has become 
 time to consider whether we should not seriously 
 extend a principle, so grateful to the majority, to 
 all our institutions. / 
 
 For no one can deny that in practice the Censor- 
 ship of Drama works with a smooth swiftness — a 
 lack of delay and friction xmexampled in any pub- 
 he office. No troublesome pubhcity and tedious 
 postponement for the purpose of appeal mar its 
 efficiency. It is neither hampered by the Law nor 
 by the slow process of popular election. Wel- 
 comed by the overwhelming majority of the pubhc ; 
 objected to only by such persons as suffer from it, 
 and a negligible faction, who, wedded pedantically 
 to hberty of the subject, are resentful of sunamary 
 
 236 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 powers vested in a single person responsible only 
 to his own conscience — ^it is amazingly, triumph- 
 antly, successful. 
 
 Why, then, in a democratic State, is so valuable 
 a protector of the wiU, the interests, and pleasure 
 of the majority not bestowed on other branches of 
 the pubhc being? Opponents of the Censorship 
 of Plays have been led by the absence of such other 
 Censorships to conclude that this Office is an 
 archaic survival, persisting into times that have 
 outgrown it. They have been known to allege 
 that the reason of its survival is simply the fact 
 that Dramatic Authors, whose reputation and 
 means of livelihood it threatens, have ever been few 
 in niunber and poorly organised — that the reason, 
 in short, is the helplessness and weakness of the 
 interests concerned. We must all combat with 
 force such an aspersion on our Legislature. Can 
 it even for a second be supposed that a State which 
 gives trial by Jury to the meanest, poorest, most 
 helpless of its citizens, and concedes to the great- 
 est criminals the right of appeal, could have de- 
 barred a body of reputable men from the ordinary 
 rights of citizenship for so cynical a reason as that 
 their nvunbers were small, their interests unjoined, 
 their protests feeble? Such a supposition were 
 intolerable! We do not in this country deprive 
 
 237 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 a class of citizens of their ordinary rights, we do 
 not place their produce under the irresponsible 
 control of one not amenable to Law, by any sort 
 of political accident! That would indeed be to 
 laugh at Justice in this Kingdom! That would 
 indeed be cynical and unsound! We must never 
 admit that there is no basic Justice controlling 
 the edifice of our Civic Rights. We do, we must, 
 conclude that a just and well-considered principle 
 underlies this despotic Institution; for surely, 
 else, it would not be suffered to survive for a 
 single moment! Pom! Pom! 
 
 If, then, the Censorship of Plays be just, benef- 
 icent, and based on a well-considered principle, 
 we must rightly inquire what good and logical 
 reason there is for the absence of Censorship in 
 other departments of the national life. If Censor- 
 ship of the Drama be in the real interests of the 
 people, or at all events in what the Censor for the 
 time being conceives to be their interest — ^then 
 Censorships of Art, Literature, ReHgion, Science, 
 and PoUtics are in the interests of the people, un- 
 less it can be proved that there exists essential dif- 
 ference between the Drama and these other 
 branches of the public being. Let us consider 
 whether there is any such essential difference. 
 
 It is fact, beyond dispute, that every year num- 
 238 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 bers of books appear which strain the average read- 
 er's intelligence and sensibilities to an unendurable 
 extent; books whose speculations are totally un- 
 suited to normal thinking powers; books which 
 contain views of morality divergent from the cus- 
 tomary, and discussions of themes unsuited to the 
 young person; books which, in fine, provide the 
 greater PubUc with no pleasure whatsoever, and, 
 either by harrowing their feelings or offending 
 their good taste, cause them real pain. 
 
 It is true that, precisely as in the case of Plays, 
 the PubKc are protected by a vigilant and critical 
 Press from works of this description; that, further, 
 they are protected by the commercial instinct of 
 the Libraries, who will not stock an article which 
 may offend their customers — ^Just as, in the case 
 of Plays, the Pubhc are protected by the com- 
 mon-sense of theatrical Managers; that, finally, 
 they are protected by the Police and the Common 
 Law of the land. But despite all these protections, 
 it is no uncommon thing for an average citizen to 
 purchase one of these disturbing or dubious books. 
 Has he, on discovering its true nature, the right 
 to call on the bookseller to refund its value? He 
 has not. And thus he runs a danger obviated in 
 the case of the Drama which has the protection 
 of a prudential Censorship. For this reason alone, 
 
 239 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 how much better, then, that there should exist a 
 paternal authority (some, no doubt, will call it 
 grand-maternal — ^but sneers must not be con- 
 founded with argument) to suppress these books 
 before appearance, and safeguard us from the 
 danger of buying and possibly reading undesirable 
 or painful literature! 
 
 A specious reason, however, is advanced for ex- 
 empting Literature from the Censorship accorded 
 to Plays. He — ^it is said — who attends the per- 
 formance of a play, attends it in pubUc, where his 
 feelings may be harrowed and his taste offended, 
 cheek by jowl with boys, or women of all ages; it 
 may even chance that he has taken to this enter- 
 tainment his wife, or the young persons of his 
 household. He— on the other hand — ^who reads 
 a book, reads it in privacy. True; but the wielder 
 of this argument has clasped his fingers round a 
 two-edged blade. The very fact that the book 
 has no mixed audience removes from Literature an 
 element which is ever the greatest check on Ucen- 
 tiousness in Drama. No manager of a theatre, — 
 a man of the world engaged in the acquisition of 
 his livelihood, — ^unless guaranteed by the license 
 of the Censor, dare risk the presentment before 
 a mixed audience of that which might cause an 
 kneute among his clients. It has, indeed, always 
 
 240 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 been observed that the theatrical manager, ahnost 
 without exception, thoughtfully recoils from the 
 responsibility that would be thrust on him by the 
 abolition of the Censorship. The fear of the mixed 
 audience is ever suspended above his head. No 
 such fear threatens the publisher, who displays 
 his wares to one man at a time. And for this 
 very reason of the mixed audience, perpetually and 
 perversely cited to the contrary by such as have 
 no firm grasp of this matter, there is a greater 
 necessity for a Censorship on Literature than for 
 one on Plays. 
 
 Further, if there were but a Censorship of Litera- 
 tiu-e, no matter how dubious the books that were 
 allowed to pass, the conscience of no reader need 
 ever be troubled. For, that the perfect rest of the 
 pubhc conscience is the first result of Censorship, 
 is proved to certainty by the protected Drama, 
 since many dubious plays are yearly put before 
 the play-going PubUc without tending in any way 
 to disturb a complacency engendered by the 
 security from harm guaranteed by this beneficent, 
 if despotic. Institution. Pundits who, to the dis- 
 comfort of the popvilace, foster this exemption of 
 Literature from discipline, cling to the old- 
 fashioned notion that ulcers should be encouraged 
 to discharge themselves upon the surface, instead 
 
 241 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 of being quietly and decently driven into the 
 system and allowed to fester there. 
 
 The remaining plea for exempting Literature 
 from Censorship, put forward by unreflecting per- 
 sons: That it would require too many Censors 
 — ^besides being imworthy, is, on the face of it, 
 erroneous. Special tests have never been thought 
 necessary in appointing Examiners of Plays. 
 They would, indeed, not only be unnecessary, but 
 positively dangerous, seeing that the essential 
 function of Censorship is protection of the ordi- 
 nary prejudices and forms of thought. There 
 would, then, be no difficulty in securing to- 
 morrow as many Censors of Literature as might 
 be necessary (say twenty or thirty) ; since all that 
 would be required of each one of them would be 
 that he should secretly exercise, in his uncon- 
 trolled discretion, his individual taste. Li a word, 
 this Free Literature of ours protects advancing 
 thought and speculation; and those who believe 
 in civic freedom subject only to Conamon Law, 
 and espouse the cause of free literature, are cham- 
 pioning a system which is essentially undemocratic, 
 essentially inimical to the will of the majority, 
 who have certainly no desire for any such things 
 as advancing thought and speculation. Such per- 
 sons, indeed, merely hold the faith that the People, 
 
 242 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 as a whole, unprotected hy the despotic judgments of 
 single persons, have enough strength and wisdom to 
 know what is and what is not harmful to themselves. 
 They put their trust in a Public Press and a Common 
 Law, which deriving from the Conscience of the Courts- 
 try, is openly administered and within the reach of all. 
 How absurd, how inadequate this all is we see 
 from the existence of the Censorship on Drama. 
 
 Having observed that there is no reason what- 
 ever for the exemption of Literature, let us now 
 turn to the case of Art. Every picture hung in a 
 gallery, every statue placed on a pedestal, is ex- 
 posed to the public stare of a mixed company. 
 Why, then, have we no Censorship to protect us 
 from the possibihty of encountering works that 
 bring blushes to the cheek of the young person? 
 The reason cannot be that the proprietors of Gal- 
 leries are more worthy of trust than the managers 
 of Theatres; this would be to make an odious dis- 
 tinction which those very Managers who uphold 
 the Censorship of Plays would be the first to resent. 
 It is true that Societies of artists and the pro- 
 prietors of Galleries are subject to the prosecution 
 of the Law if they offend against the ordinary 
 standards of public decency; but precisely the 
 same liability attaches to theatrical managers and 
 proprietors of Theatres, in whose case it has been 
 
 243 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 found necessary and beneficial to add the Censor- 
 ship. And in this connection let it once more be 
 noted how much more easily the ordinary stand- 
 ards of public decency can be assessed by a single 
 person responsible to no one, than by the clumsy 
 (if more open) process of pubhc protest. 
 
 What, then, in the Hght of the proved justice 
 and efficiency of the Censorship of Drama, is the 
 reason for the absence of the Censorship of Art? 
 The more closely the matter is regarded, the more 
 plain it is, that there is none! At any moment we 
 may have to look upon some painting, or con- 
 template some statue, as tragic, heart-rending, and 
 dubiously deUcate in theme as that censured play 
 "The Cenci," by one Shelley; as dangerous to 
 prejudice, and suggestive of new thought as the 
 censured " Ghosts, " by one Ibsen. Let us protest 
 against this peril suspended over our heads, and de- 
 mand the immediate appointment of a single person 
 not selected for any pretentiously artistic feelings, 
 but endowed with summary powers of prohibiting 
 the exhibition, in public galleries or places, of such 
 works as he shall deem, in his uncontrolled discre- 
 tion, unsuited to average intelligence or sensibility. 
 Let us demand it in the interest, not only of the 
 young person, but of those whole sections of the 
 community which cannot be expected to take an 
 
 244 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 interest in Art, and to whom the purpose, specula- 
 tions, and achievements of great artists, working 
 not only for to-day but for to-morrow, must natu- 
 rally be dark riddles. Let us even require that this 
 official should be empowered to order the destruc- 
 tion of the works which he has deemed unsuited 
 to average intelligence and sensibility, lest their 
 creators should, by private sale, make a profit out 
 of them, such as, iu the nature of the case. Dra- 
 matic Authors are debarred from making out 
 of plays which, having been censured, cannot be 
 played for money. Let us ask this with con- 
 fidence; for it is not compatible with common jus- 
 tice that there should be any favouring of Painter 
 over Playwright. They are both artists — ^let them 
 both be measured by the same last! 
 
 But let us now consider the case of Science. It 
 wiU not, indeed cannot, be contended that the in- 
 vestigations of scientific men, whether committed 
 to writing or to speech, are always suited to the 
 taste and capacities of our general pubUc. There 
 was, for example, the well-known doctrine of 
 Evolution, the teachings of Charles Darwin and 
 Alfred Russel Wallace, who gathered up certain 
 facts, hitherto but vaguely known, into present- 
 ments, irreverent and startling, which, at the time, 
 profoxmdly disturbed every normal mind. Not 
 
 245 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 only did religion, as then accepted, suffer in this 
 cataclysm, but our taste and feeling were inex- 
 pressibly shocked by the discovery, so emphasised 
 by Thomas Henry Huxley, of Man's descent from 
 Apes. It was felt, and is felt by many to this day, 
 that the advancement of that theory grossly and 
 dangerously violated every canon of decency. 
 What pain, then, might have been averted, what 
 far-reaching consequences and incalculable sub- 
 version of primitive faiths checked, if some judi- 
 cious Censor of scientific thought had existed in 
 those days to demand, in accordance with his 
 private estimate of the will and temper of the 
 majority, the suppression of the doctrine of Evolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Innumerable investigations of scientists on sub- 
 jects such as the date of the world's creation, have 
 from time to time been summarised and incon- 
 siderately sprung on a Pubhc shocked and startled 
 by the revelation that facts which they were accus- 
 tomed to revere were conspicuously at fault. So, 
 too, in the range of medicine, it would be difficult 
 to cite any radical discovery (such as the preven- 
 tive power of vaccination), whose unchecked 
 publication has not violated the prejudices and 
 disturbed the immediate comfort of the common 
 mind. Had these discoveries been judiciously 
 
 246 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 suppressed, or pared away to suit what a Cen- 
 sorship conceived to be the popular palate of the 
 time, all this disturbance and discomfort might 
 have been avoided. 
 
 It will doubtless be contended (for there are no 
 such violent opponents of Censorship as those 
 who are threatened with the same) that to com- 
 pare a momentous disclosure, such as the doctrine 
 of Evolution, to a mere drama, were unprofit- 
 able. The answer to this ungenerous contention 
 is fortunately plain. Had a judicious Censor- 
 ship existed over our scientific matters, such 
 as for two hundred years has existed over our 
 Drama, scientific discoveries would have been no 
 more disturbing and momentous than those which we 
 are accustomed to see made on our nicely pruned and 
 tutored stage. For not only would the more dan- 
 gerous and penetrating scientific truths have been 
 carefully destroyed at birth, but scientists, aware 
 that the results of investigations offensive to ac- 
 cepted notions would be suppressed, would long 
 have ceased to waste their time in search of a 
 knowledge repugnant to average intelligence, and 
 thus foredoomed, and have occupied themselves 
 with services more agreeable to the public taste, 
 such as the rediscovery of truths already known 
 and published. 
 
 247 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 Indissolubly connected with the desirabiUty of 
 a Censorship of Science, is the need for ReUgious 
 Censorship. For in this, assuredly not the least 
 important department of the nation's life, we are 
 witnessing week by week and year by year, what 
 in the light of the security guaranteed by the Cen- 
 sorship of Drama, we are justified in terming an 
 alarming spectacle. Thousands of men are li- 
 censed to proclaim from their pulpits, Sunday 
 after Sunday, their individual beliefs, quite re- 
 gardless of the settled convictions of the masses of 
 their congregations. It is true, indeed, that the 
 vast majority of sermons (like the vast majority of 
 plays) are, and wiU always be, harmonious with 
 the feeHngs of the average citizen; for neither 
 priest nor playwright have customarily any such 
 peculiar gift of spiritual daring as might render 
 them unsafe mentors of their fellows; and there 
 is not wanting the deterrent of common-sense to 
 keep them in bounds. Yet it can hardly be denied 
 that there spring up at times men — like John Wes- 
 ley or General Booth — of such incurable tempera- 
 ment as to be capable of abusing their freedom by 
 the promulgation of doctrine or procedure, diver- 
 gent from the current traditions of religion. Nor 
 must it be forgotten that sermons, like plays, are 
 addressed to a mixed audience of families, and that 
 
 248 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 the spiritual teachings of a lifetime may be de- 
 stroyed by ten minutes of uncensured pronounce- 
 ment from a pulpit, the while parents are sitting, 
 not, as in a theatre vested with the right of protest, 
 but dumb and excoriated to the soul, watching 
 their children, perhaps of tender age, eagerly drink- 
 ing in words at variance with that which they 
 themselves have been at such pains to instil. 
 
 If a set of Censors — ^for it would, as in the case 
 of Literature, indubitably require more than one 
 (perhaps one hundred and eighty, but, for reasons 
 already given, there should be no difficulty what- 
 ever in procuring them) endowed with the swift 
 powers conferred by freedom from the dull tedium 
 of responsibUity, and not remarkable for religious 
 temperament, were appointed, to whom all ser- 
 mons and public addresses on religious subjects 
 must be submitted before deKvery, and whose duty 
 after perusal should be to excise all portions not 
 conformable to their private ideas of what was at 
 the moment suitable to the PubUc's ears, we should 
 be far on the road toward that proper preserva- 
 tion of the status quo so desirable if the faiths and 
 ethical standards of the less exuberantly spiritual 
 masses are to be maintained in their full bloom. 
 As things now stand, the nation has absolutely 
 nothing to safeguard it against religious progress. 
 
 We have seen, then, that Censorship is at least 
 249 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 as necessary over Literature, Art, Science, and 
 Religion as it is over our Drama. We have now 
 to call attention to the crowning need — the want 
 of a Censorship in Pohtics. 
 
 If Censorship be based on justice, if it be proved 
 to serve the Public and to be successful in its 
 lonely vigil over Drama, it should, and logically 
 must he, extended to all parallel cases; it cannot, 
 it dare not, stop short at Politics. For, pre- 
 cisely in this supreme branch of the public life 
 are we most menaced by the rule and Kcense of 
 the leading spirit. To appreciate this fact, we 
 need only examine the Constitution of the House 
 of Commons. Six hundred and seventy persons 
 chosen from a population nimibering four and 
 forty mUKons, must necessarily, whatever their 
 individual defects, be citizens of more than average 
 enterprise, resource, and resolution. They are 
 elected for a period that may last five years. 
 Many of them are ambitious; some xmcompromis- 
 ing; not a few enthusiastically eager to do some- 
 thing for their country; filled with designs and 
 aspirations for national or social betterment, with 
 which the masses, sunk in the immediate pursuits 
 of fife, can in the nature of things have little 
 sympathy. And yet we find these men Ucensed 
 to pour forth at pleasure, before mixed audiences, 
 checked only by Common Law and Common- 
 
 250 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 Sense political utterances which may have the 
 gravest, the most terrific consequences; utterances 
 which may at any moment let loose revolution, or 
 plunge the country into war; which often, as a 
 fact, excite an utter detestation, terror, and mis- 
 trust; or shock the most sacred domestic and 
 proprietary convictions in the breasts of vast 
 majorities of their fellow-coimtrymen! And we 
 incur this appalling risk for the want of a single, 
 or at the most, a handful of Censors, invested 
 with a simple but limitless discretion to excise or 
 to suppress entirely such political utterances as 
 may seem to their private judgments calculated 
 to cause pain or moral disturbance in the average 
 man. The masses, it is true, have their protection 
 and remedy against injudicious or inflammatory 
 politicians in the Law and the so-called demo- 
 cratic process of election; but we have seen that 
 theatre audiences have also the protection of the 
 Law, and the remedy of boycott, and that in their 
 case this protection and this remedy are not 
 deemed enough. What, then, shall we say of 
 the case of Politics, where the dangers attending 
 inflammatory or subversive utterance are greater 
 a million fold, and the remedy a thousand times 
 less expeditious? 
 Our Legislators have laid down Censorship as 
 251 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 the basic principle of Justice underlying the civic 
 rights of dramatists. Then, let "Censorship for 
 all" be their motto, and this country no longer 
 be ridden and destroyed by free Institutions ! Let 
 them not only estabUsh forthwith Censorships of 
 Literature, Art, Science, and Rehgion, but also 
 place themselves beneath the regimen with which 
 they have calmly fettered Dramatic Authors. 
 They cannot deem it becoming to their regard for 
 justice, to their honour, to their sense of humour, 
 to recoil from a restriction which, iri a parallel 
 case they have imposed on others. It is an old 
 and homely saying that good officers never place 
 their men in positions they would not themselves 
 be willing to fill. And we are not entitled to be- 
 lieve that our Legislators, having set Dramatic 
 Authors where they have been set, will — ^now that 
 their duty is made plain — for a moment hesitate 
 to step down and stand alongside. 
 
 But if by any chance they should recoil, and 
 thus make answer: "We are ready at all times to 
 submit to the Law and the People's will, and to 
 bow to their demands, but we cannot and must not 
 be asked to place our calling, our duty, and our 
 honour beneath the irresponsible rule of an ar- 
 bitrary autocrat, however sympathetic with the 
 generality he may chance to be!" Then, we 
 
 252 
 
ABOUT CENSORSHIP 
 
 would ask: "Sirs, did you ever hear of that great 
 saying: 'Do unto others as ye would they should 
 do unto you!'" For it is but fair presumption 
 that the Dramatists, whom our Legislators have 
 placed in bondage to a despot, are, no less than 
 those Legislators, proud of their calling, conscious 
 of their duty, and jealous of their honour. 
 
 1909. 
 
 253 
 
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON AET 
 
 IT was on a day of rare beauty that I went out 
 into the fields to try and gather these few 
 thoughts. So golden and sweetly hot it was, that 
 they came lazily, and with a flight no more co- 
 herent or responsible than the swoop of the very 
 swallows; and, as in a play or poem, the result 
 is conditioned by the conceiving mood, so I knew 
 would be the nature of my diving, dipping, pale- 
 throated, fork-tailed words. But, after all — I 
 thought, sitting there — I need not take my critical 
 pronouncements seriously. I have not the firm 
 soul of the critic. It is not my profession to know 
 things for certain, and to make others feel that 
 certainty. On the contrary, I am often wrong — 
 a luxury no critic can afford. And so, invading 
 as I was the realm of others, I advanced with a 
 light pen, feeling that none, and least of all my- 
 self, need expect me to be right. 
 
 What then — ^I thought — ^is Art? For I per- 
 ceived that to think about it I must first define it; 
 and I almost stopped thinking at all before the 
 fearsome nature of that task. Then slowly in my 
 mind gathered this group of words : 
 
 254 
 
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART 
 
 , / Art is that imaginative expression of human 
 energy, which, through technical concretion of 
 feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the in- 
 dividual with the imiversal, by excitiag in him 
 impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is 
 that which excites the greatest impersonal emo- 
 tion in an hypothecated perfect human being. 
 
 Impersonal emotion! And what — I thought — 
 do I mean by that? Surely I mean: That is not 
 Art, which, while I. afn. contemplating it, inspires 
 me with any active or directive impulse; that is 
 Art, when, for however brief a moment, it re- 
 places within me interest in myself by interest in 
 itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence 
 of a carved marble bath. If my thoughts be: 
 "What could I buy that for?" Impulse of ac- 
 quisition; or: "From what quarry did it come?" 
 Impulse of inquiry; or: "Which would be the 
 right end for my head?" Mixed impulse of 
 inquiry and acquisition — I am at that moment 
 insensible to it as a work of Art. But, if I stand 
 before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, 
 if ever so Uttle and for ever so short a time, un- 
 haunted by any definite practical thought or im- 
 pulse — ^to that extent and for that moment it has 
 stolen me away out of myself and put itself there 
 instead; has linked me to the universal by making 
 
 255 
 
CONCERNING LETTERS 
 
 me forget the individual in me. And for that 
 moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is 
 to me a work of Art. The word "impersonal," 
 then, is but used in this my definition to signify 
 momentary forgetfulness of one's own personality 
 and its active wants. 
 
 So Art — ^I thought — ^is that which, heard, read, 
 or looked on, while producing no directive im- 
 pulse, warms one with unconscious vibration. Nor 
 can I imagine any means of defining what is the 
 greatest Art, without hypothecating a perfect 
 human being. But since we shall never see, or 
 know if we do see, that desirable creature — dog- 
 matism is banished, "Academy" is dead to the dis- 
 cussion, deader than even Tolstoy left it after his 
 fainous treatise "What is Art?" For, having de- 
 stroyed aU the old Judges and Academies, Tolstoy, 
 by saying that the greatest Art was that which 
 appealed to the greatest number of living human 
 beings, raised up the masses of mankind to be a 
 definite new Judge or Academy, as tyrannical and 
 narrow as ever were those whom he had destroyed. 
 
 This, at all events — I thought — ^is as far as I 
 dare go in defining what Art is. But let me try to 
 make plain to myself what is the essential quality 
 that gives to Art the power of exciting this un- 
 conscious vibration, this impersonal emotion. It 
 
 256 
 
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART 
 
 has been called Beauty! An awkward word — ^a 
 perpetual begging of the question; too current 
 in use, too ambiguous altogether; now too narrow, 
 now too wide — a word, in fact, too ghb to know at 
 all what it means. And how dangerous a word — 
 often misleading us into slabbing with extraneous 
 floridities what would otherwise, on its own plane, 
 be Art! To be decorative where decoration is not 
 suitable, to be lyrical where lyricism is out of place, 
 is assuredly to spoil Art, not to achieve it. But 
 this essential quality of Art has also, and more 
 happily, been called Rhythm. And, what is 
 Rhythm if not that mysterious harmony between 
 part and part, and part and whole, which gives 
 what is caUed life; that exact proportion, the 
 mystery of which is best grasped in observing how 
 hfe leaves an animate creature when the essential 
 relation of part to whole has been sufficiently dis- 
 turbed. Aiid I agree that this rhythmic relation 
 of part to part, and part to whole — ^in short, 
 vitahty — ^is the one quahty inseparable from a 
 work of Art. For nothing which does not seem 
 to a man possessed of this rhythmic vitahty, can 
 ever steal him out of himself. 
 
 And having got thus far in my thoughts, I 
 paused, watching the swallows; for they seemed to 
 me the sjnnbol, in their swift, sure curvetting, all 
 
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 daring and balance and surprise, of the delicate 
 poise and motion of Art, that visits no two men 
 alike, in a world where no two things of all the 
 things there be, are quite the same. 
 
 Yes — I thought — and this Art is the one form 
 of human energy in the whole world, which really 
 works for union, and destroys the barriers between 
 man and man. It is the continual, unconscious 
 replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by an- 
 other; the real cement of human life; the ever- 
 lasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is 
 grievous, dompting, grim, about our Kves is that 
 we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to 
 get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from 
 ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from 
 that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were 
 secret, enfranchisement. The active amusements 
 and relaxations of life can only rest certain of our 
 faculties, by indulging others; the whole self is 
 never rested save through that unconsciousness 
 of self, which comes through rapt contemplation 
 of Nature or of Art. 
 
 And suddenly I remembered that some believe 
 that Art does not produce unconsciousness of self, 
 but rather very vivid self-realisation. 
 
 Ah! but — I thought — ^that is not the first and 
 instant effect of Art; the new impetus is the after 
 
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 effect of that momentary replacement of oneself 
 by the self of the work before us; it is surely the 
 result of that brief span of enlargement, enfran- 
 chisement, and rest. 
 
 Yes, Art is the great and universal refreshment. 
 For Art is never dogmatic; holds no brief for itself 
 — ^you may take it or you may leave it. It does 
 not force itself rudely where it is not wanted. It 
 is reverent to all tempers, to all points of view. 
 But it is wilful — ^the very wind in the comings and 
 goings of its influence, an uncapturable fugitive, 
 visiting our hearts at vagrant, sweet moments; 
 since we often stand even before the greatest works 
 of Art without being able quite to lose ourselves! 
 That restful obhvion comes, we never quite know 
 when — and it is gone! But when it comes, it is a 
 spirit hovering with cool wings, blessing us from 
 least to greatest, according to our powers; a 
 spirit deathless and varied as human life itself. 
 
 And in what sort of age — ^I thought — ^are artists 
 living now? Are conditions favourable? Life 
 is very multiple; full of "movements," "facts," 
 and "news"; with the limehght terribly turned 
 on — ^and aU this is adverse to the artist. Yet, 
 leisure is abundant; the facihties for study 
 great; Liberty is respected — ^more or less. But, 
 there is one great reason why, in this age of 
 
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 ours, Art, it seems, must flourish. ■ For, just as 
 cross-breeding in Nature — if it be not too vio- 
 lent — often gives an extra vitality tp the offspring, 
 so does cross-breeding of philosophies make for 
 vitality in Art. I cannot help thinking that his- 
 torians, looking back from the far future, will re- 
 cord this age as the Third Renaissance. We who 
 are lost in it, working or looking on, can neither 
 tell what we are doing, nor where standing; but 
 we cannot help observing, that, just as in the Greek 
 Renaissance, worn-out Pagan orthodoxy was pene- 
 trated by new philosophy; just as in the Italian 
 Renaissance, Pagan philosophy, reasserting itself, 
 fertilised again an already too inbred Christian 
 creed; so now Orthodoxy fertilised by Science is 
 producing a fresh and fuller conception of life — a 
 love of Perfection, not for hope of reward, not for 
 fear of punishment, but for Perfection's sake. 
 Slowly, under our feet, beneath our consciousness, 
 is forming that new philosophy, and it is in times 
 of new philosophies that Art, itseK in essence al- 
 ways a discovery, must flourish. Those whose 
 sacred suns and moons are ever in the past, tell 
 us that oiu" Art is going to the dogs; and it is, in- 
 deed, true that we are in confusion! The waters 
 are broken, and every nerve and sinew of the artist 
 is strained to discover his own safety. It is an age 
 
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 of stir and change, a season of new wine and old 
 bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and 
 waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time 
 being made. 
 
 I ceased again to think, for the smi had dipped 
 low, and the midges were biting me; and the 
 sovmds of evening had begun, those innumerable 
 far-travelling sounds of man and bird and beast — 
 so clear and intimate — of remote countiysides at 
 sunset. And for long I listened, too vague to 
 move my pen. 
 
 New philosophy — a vigorous Art! Are there 
 not all the signs of it? In music, sculpture, paint- 
 ing; in fiction — and drama; in dancing; in criti- 
 cism itself, if criticism be an Art. Yes, we are 
 reaching out to a new faith not yet crystallised, 
 to a new Art not yet perfected; the forms still to 
 find — ^the flowers still to fashion! 
 
 And how has it come, this slowly growing faith 
 in Perfection for Perfection's sake? Surely like 
 this: The Western world awoke one day to find 
 that it no longer believed corporately and for cer- 
 tain in future life for the individual consciousness. 
 It began to feel: I cannot say more than that 
 there may be — Death may be the end of man, 
 or Death may be nothing. And it began to ask 
 itself in this uncertainty: Do I then desire to 
 
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 go on living? Now, since it found that it desired 
 to go on living at least as earnestly as ever it 
 did before, it began to inquire why. And slowly 
 it perceived that there was, inborn within it, a 
 passionate instinct of which it had hardly till then 
 been conscious — a sacred instinct to perfect itself, 
 now, as well as in a possible hereafter; to perfect 
 itself because Perfection was desirable, a vision 
 to be adored, and striven for; a dream motive 
 fastened within [the Universe; the very essential 
 Cause of everything. And it began to see that 
 this Perfection, cosmicaUy, was nothing but per- 
 fect Equanimity and Harmony; and in human 
 relations, nothing but perfect Love and Justice. 
 And Perfection began to glow before the eyes of 
 the Western world like a new star, whose Hght 
 touched with glamour all things as they came forth 
 from Mystery, till to Mystery they were ready to 
 return. 
 
 This — ^I thought — ^is surely what the Western 
 world has dimly been rediscovering. There has 
 crept into our minds once more the feeling that the 
 Universe is all of a piece. Equipoise supreme; and 
 all things equally wonderful, and mysterious, and 
 valuable. We have begim, in fact, to have a 
 glimmering of the artist's creed, that nothing may 
 we despise or neglect — ^that everything is worth the 
 
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 doing well, the making fair — ^that our God, Per- 
 fection, is implicit everywhere, and the revelation 
 of Him the business of our Art. 
 
 And as I jotted down these words I noticed that 
 some real stars had crept up into the sky, so grad- 
 ually darkening above the pollard lime-trees; 
 cuckoos, who had been calling on the thorn-trees 
 all the afternoon, were silent; the swallows no long- 
 er flirted past, but a bat was already in career over 
 the holly hedge ; and round me the buttercups were 
 closing. The whole form and feeling of the world 
 had changed, so that I seemed to have before me a 
 new picture hanging. 
 
 Ah! I thought — ^Art must indeed be priest of 
 this new faith in Perfection, whose motto is : "Har- 
 mony, Proportion, Balance," For by Art alone 
 can true harmony in human affairs be fostered, 
 true Proportion revealed, and true Equipoise 
 preserved. Is not the training of an artist a train- 
 ing in the due relation of one thing with another, 
 and in the faculty of expressing that relation 
 clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty 
 of disengaging from self the very essence of self 
 — and passing that essence into other selves by so 
 deHcate means that none shall see how it is done, ' 
 yet be insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all 
 men, foe and nullifier of partisanship and parochial- 
 
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 ism, of distortions and extravagance, the dis- 
 coverer of that jack-o'-lantern — ^Truth; for, if 
 Truth be not Spiritual Proportion I know not what 
 it is. Truth — ^it seems to me — ^is no absolute 
 thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry 
 in the varying relationships of life; and the most 
 perfect truth is but the concrete expression of the 
 most penetrating vision. Life seen throughout as 
 a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life 
 shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, 
 and the extravagant; Life, as it were, spiritually 
 selected — ^that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and 
 changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, 
 and as little to be bound by dogma. Truth ad- 
 mits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no ex- 
 cess! Disobedient to that rule — ^nothing attains 
 full vitaUty. And secretly fettered by that rule is 
 Art, whose business is the creation of vital things. 
 That aesthete, to be sure, was right, when he 
 said: " It[is Style that makes one believe in a thing; 
 nothing but Style. " For, what is Style in its true 
 and broadest sense save fidelity to idea and mood, 
 and perfect balance in the clothing of them? And 
 I thought: Can one beUeve in the decadence of 
 Art in an age which, however unconsciously as yet, 
 is beginning to worship that which Art worships — 
 Perfection — Style? 
 
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VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART 
 
 The faults of our Arts to-day are the faults of 
 zeal and of adventure, the faults and crudities of 
 pioneers, the errors and mishaps of the explorer. 
 They must pass through many fevers, and many 
 times lose their way; but at all events they shall 
 not go dying in their beds, and be btiried at Kensal 
 Green. And, here and there, amid the disasters and 
 wreckage of their voyages of discovery, they will 
 find something new, some fresh way of embelUsh- 
 ing life, or of revealing the heart of things. That 
 characteristic of to-day's Art — the striving of each 
 branch of Art to burst its own boundaries — ^which 
 to many spells destruction, is surely of happy 
 omen. The novel straining to become the play, 
 the play the novel, both trying to paint; music 
 striving to become story; poetry gasping to be 
 music; painting panting to be philosophy; forms, 
 canons, rules, all melting in the pot; stagnation 
 broken up! In all this havoc there is much to 
 shock and jar even the most eager and adventu- 
 rous. We caimot stand these new-fangled fellows ! 
 They have no form! They rush in where angels 
 fear to tread. They have lost all the good of the 
 old, and given us nothing in its place ! And yet- 
 only out of stir and change is bom new salvation. 
 To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our 
 backs on courage! It is well, indeed, that some 
 
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 should live in closed studies with the paintings and 
 the books of yesterday — such devoted students 
 serve Art in their own way. But the fresh-air 
 world will ever want new forms. We shall not 
 get them without faith enough to risk the old! 
 The good will live, the bad will die; and to-mor- 
 row only can tell us which is which! 
 
 Yes — ^I thought — we naturally take a too im- 
 patient view of the Art of our own time, since we 
 can neither see the ends toward which it is almost 
 bhndly groping, nor the few perfected creations 
 that will be left standing amidst the rubble of 
 a,bortive effort. An age must always decry it- 
 self and extol its forbears. The unwritten his- 
 tory of every Art will show us that. Consider the 
 novel — ^that most recent form of Art ! Did not the 
 age which followed Fielding lament the treachery 
 of authors to the Picaresque tradition, complain- 
 ing that they were not as Fielding and Smollett 
 were? Be sure they did. Very slowly and in 
 spite of opposition did the novel attain in this 
 country the fulness of that biographical form 
 achieved under Thackeray. Very slowly, and in 
 face of condemnation, it has been losing that form 
 in favour of a greater vividness which places be- 
 fore the reader's brain, not historical statements, 
 as it were, of motives and of facts, but word-paint- 
 
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 ings of things and persons, so chosen and arranged 
 that the reader may see, as if at first hand, the 
 spirit of Life at work before him. The new novel 
 has as many bemoaners as the old novel had when 
 it was new. It is no question of better or worse, 
 but of differing forms — of change dictated by 
 gradual suitability to the changing conditions of 
 our social life, and to the ever fresh discoveries of 
 craftsmen, in the intoxication of which, old and 
 equally worthy craftsmanship is — ^by the way — ^too 
 often for the moment mislaid. The vested interests 
 of life favour the line of least resistance — disliking 
 and revolting against disturbance; but one must 
 always remember that a spurious glamour is in- 
 clined to gather around what is new. And, be- 
 cause of these two deflecting factors, those who 
 break through old forms must well expect to be 
 dead before the new forms they have unconsciously 
 created have found their true level, high or low, 
 in the world of Art. When a thing is new— how 
 shall it be judged? In the fluster of meeting 
 novelty, we have even seen coherence attempting 
 to bind together two personalities so fundamentally 
 opposed as those of Ibsen and Bernard Shaw — 
 dramatists with hardly a quality in common; no 
 identity of tradition, or belief; not the faintest 
 resemblance in methods of construction or tech- 
 
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 nique. Yet contemporary estimate talks of them 
 often in the same breath. They are new! It is 
 enough. And others, as utterly unlike them both. 
 They too are new. They have as yet no label of 
 their own — ^then put on some one else's! 
 
 And so — I thought — ^it must always be; for 
 Time is essential to the proper placing and esti- 
 mate of all Art. And is it not this feeling, that con- 
 temporary judgments are apt to turn out a httle 
 ludicrous, which has converted much criticism of 
 late from judgment pronounced into impression 
 recorded — ^recreative statement — a kind, in fact, 
 of expression of the critic's seK, eUcited through 
 contemplation of a book, a play, a symphony, a 
 pictvire? For this kind of criticism there has 
 even recently been claimed an actual identity 
 with creation. ^Esthetic judgment and creative 
 power identical! That is a hard saying. For, 
 however sympathetic one may feel toward this 
 new criticism, however one may recognise that 
 the recording of impression has a wider, more 
 elastic, and more lasting value than the delivery 
 of arbitrary judgment based on rigid laws of taste; 
 however one may admit that it approaches the 
 creative gift in so far as it demands the qualities 
 of receptivity and reproduction — is there not still 
 lacking to this "new" critic something of that 
 
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 thirsting spirit of discovery, which precedes the 
 creation — thitherto so-called — of anything? Criti- 
 cism, taste, aesthetic judgment, by the very nature 
 of their task, wait tiU life has been f ocussed by the 
 artists before they attempt to reproduce the image 
 which that imprisoned fragment of life makes on 
 the mirror of their minds. But a thing created 
 springs from a germ unconsciously implanted by 
 the direct impact of imfettered life on the whole 
 range of the creator's temperament; and round the 
 germ thus engendered, the creative artist — ever 
 penetrating, discovering, selecting — goes on build- 
 ing cell on cell, gathered from a million Kttle fresh 
 impacts and visions. And to say that this is also 
 exactly what the recreative critic does, is to say 
 that the interpretative musician is creator in the 
 same sense as is the composer of the music that he 
 interprets. K, indeed, these processes be the same 
 in kind, they are in degree so far apart that one 
 would think the word creative imfortunately used 
 of both. . . . 
 
 But this speculation— I thought — ^is going be- 
 yond the bounds of vagueness. Let there be some 
 thread of coherence in your thoughts, as there is in 
 the progress of this evening, fast fading into night. 
 Return to the consideration of the nature and pur- 
 poses of Art! And recognize that much of what 
 
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 you have thought will seem on the face of it heresy 
 to the school whose doctrine was incarnated by 
 Oscar Wilde in that admirable apotheosis of half- 
 truths: "The Decay of the Art of Lying." For 
 therein he said: "No great artist ever sees things 
 as they really are." Yet, that half-truth might 
 also be put thus : The seeing of things as they really 
 are — ^the seeing of a proportion veiled from other 
 eyes (together with the power of expression), is 
 what makes a man an artist. What makes him 
 a great artist is a high fervour of spirit, which pro- 
 duces a superlative, instead of a comparative, 
 clarity of vision. 
 
 Close to my house there is a group of pines with 
 gnarled red limbs flanked by beech-trees. And 
 there is often a very deep blue sky behind. Gener- 
 ally, that is all I see. But, once in a way, in those 
 trees against that sky I seem to see all the passion- 
 ate life and glow that Titian painted into his pagan 
 pictures. I have a vision of mysterious meaning, 
 of a mysterious relation between that sky and those 
 trees with their gnarled red limbs and Life as I 
 know it. And when I have had that vision I al- 
 ways feel, this is reality, and aU those other times, 
 when I have no such vision, simple unreality. If I 
 were a painter, it is for such fervent vision I should 
 wait, before moving brush. This, so intimate, 
 
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 inner vision of reality, indeed, seems in duller 
 moments wellnigh grotesque; and hence that other 
 glib haK-truth: "Art is greater than Life itself." 
 Art is, indeed, greater than Life in the sense that 
 the power of Art is the disengagement from Life 
 of its real spirit and significance. But ia any other 
 sense, to say that Art is greater than Life from 
 which it emerges, and into which it must remerge, 
 can but suspend the artist over Life, with his feet 
 in the air and his head in the clouds — ^Prig mas- 
 querading as Demi-god. "Nature is no great 
 Mother who has borne us. She is our creation. 
 It is in our brain that she quickens to life. " Such 
 is the highest hyperbole of the aesthetic creed. 
 But what is creative instinct, if not an incessant 
 living sympathy with Nature, a constant craving 
 like that of Nature's own, to fashion something 
 new out of all that comes within the grasp of those 
 faculties with which Nature has endowed us? The 
 qualities of vision, of fancy, and of imaginative 
 power, are no more divorced from Nature, than 
 are the qualities of common-sense and courage. 
 They are rarer, that is all. But in truth, no one 
 holds such views. Not even those who utter 
 them. They are the rhetoric, the over-statement 
 of half-truths, by such as wish to condemn what 
 they call "Reahsm," without being tempera- 
 
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 mentally capable of understanding what "Real- 
 ism" really is. 
 
 And what — I thought — ^is Realism? What is 
 the meaning of that word so wildly used? Is it 
 descriptive of technique, or descriptive of the 
 spirit of the artist; or both, or neither? Was 
 Turgenev a realist? No greater poet ever wrote 
 in prose, nor any one who more closely brought 
 the actual shapes of men and things before us. 
 No more fervent idealists than Ibsen and Tolstoy 
 ever lived; and none more careful to make their 
 people real. Were they reahsts? No more deeply 
 fantastic writer can I conceive than Dostoievsky, 
 nor any who has described actual situations more 
 vividly. Was he a reahst? The late Stephen 
 Crane was called a realist. Than whom no more 
 impressionistic writer ever painted with words. 
 What then is the heart of this term still often used 
 as an expression almost of abuse? To me, at all 
 events — ^I thought — ^the words realism, realistic, 
 have no longer reference to technique, for which 
 the words naturalism, naturalistic, serve far better. 
 Nor have they to do with the question of imagina- 
 tive power — ^as much demanded by reahsm as by 
 romanticism. For me, a realist is by no means 
 tied to natxiralistic technique — ^he may be poetic, 
 idealistic, fantastic, impressionistic, anything but 
 
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 —romantic; that, in so far as he is a realist, he 
 cannot be. The word, in fact, characterises that 
 artist whose temperamental preoccupation is with 
 revelation of the actual inter-relating spirit of life, 
 character, and thought, with a view to enlighten 
 himself and others; as distinguished from that 
 artist — ^whom I call romantic — ^whose tempera- 
 mental purpose is invention of tale or design with 
 a view to delight himself and others. It is a ques- 
 tion of temperamental antecedent motive in the 
 artist, and nothing more. 
 
 Realist — Romanticist! Enhghtenment — De- 
 light! That is the true apposition. To make 
 a revelation — to tell a fairy-tale! And either of 
 these artists may use what form he likes — ^natural- 
 istic, fantastic, poetic, impressionistic. For it is 
 not by the form, but by the purpose and mood of 
 his art that he shall be known, as one or as the 
 other. Realists indeed — ^including the half of 
 Shakespeare that was reaUst — ^not being primarily 
 concerned to amuse their audience, are still com- 
 paratively unpopular in a world made up for the 
 greater part of men of action, who instinctively re- 
 ject all art that does not distract them without 
 causing them to think. For thought makes 
 demands on an energy already in full use; thought 
 causes introspection; and introspection causes dis- 
 
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 comfort, and disturbs the grooves of action. To 
 say that the object of the reaUst is to enlighten 
 rather than to deUght, is not to say that in his 
 art the reaUst is not amusing himself as much as 
 ever is the teller of a fairy-tale, though he does not 
 dehberately start out to do so; he is amusing, too, 
 a large part of mankind. For, admitted that the 
 object, and the test of Art, is always the awakening 
 of vibration, of impersonal emotion, it is still 
 usually forgotten that men fall, roughly speaking, 
 into two flocks: Those whose inteUigence is un- 
 inquiring in the face of Art, and does not demand 
 to be appeased before their emotions can be 
 stirred; and those who, having a speculative bent 
 of mind, must first be satisfied by an enlightening 
 quality in a work of Art, before that work of Art 
 can awaken in them feeling. The audience of the 
 realist is drawn from this latter type of man; the 
 much larger audience of the romantic artist from 
 the former; together with, in both cases, those 
 fastidious few for whom all Art is style and only 
 style, and who welcome either kind, so long as it 
 is good enough. 
 
 To me, then — ^I thought — ^this division into 
 Realism and Romance, so understood, is the main 
 cleavage in all the Arts; but it is hard to find pure 
 examples of either kind. For even the most de- 
 
 274 
 
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART. 
 
 termined realist has more than a streak in him of 
 the romanticist, and the most resolute romanticist 
 finds it impossible at times to be quite unreal. 
 Guido Reni, Watteau, Leighton — were they not 
 perhaps somewhat pure romanticists ; Rembrandt, 
 Hogarth, Manet — ^mainly reaUsts; Botticelli, 
 Titian, Raphael, a blend. Dumas pSre, and Scott, 
 surely romantic; Flaubert and Tolstoy as surely 
 reahsts; Dickens and Cervantes, blended. Keats 
 and Swinburne — ^romantic; Browning and Whit- 
 man — ^realistic; Shakespeare and Goethe, both. 
 The Greek dramatists — ^reaUsts. The Arabian 
 Nights and Malory — ^romantic. The IHad, the 
 Odyssey, and the Old Testament, both realism 
 and romance. And if in the vagueness of my 
 thoughts I were to seek for illustration less general 
 and vague to show the essence of this temperar 
 mental cleavage in all Art, I would take the two 
 novelists Turgenev and Stevenson. For Tur- 
 genev expressed himself in stories that must be 
 called romances, and Stevenson employed almost 
 always a naturalistic technique. Yet no one would 
 ever call Turgenev a romanticist, or Stevenson a 
 realist. The spirit of the first brooded over life, 
 found in it a perpetual voyage of spiritual adven- 
 ture, was set on discovering and making clear to 
 himself and all, the varying traits and emotions 
 
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 of human character — ^the varying moods of Natm-e ; 
 and though he couched all this discovery in caskets 
 of engaging story, it was always clear as day what 
 mood it was that drove him to dip pen in ink. The 
 spirit of the second, I think, almost dreaded to dis- 
 cover; he felt life, I believe, too keenly to want to 
 probe into it; he spun his gossamer to lure himself 
 and all away from life. That was his driving 
 mood; but the craftsman in him, longing to be 
 clear and poignant, made him more natural, more 
 actual than most realists. 
 
 So, how thin often is the hedge! And how poor 
 a business the partisan abuse of either kind of art 
 in a world where each sort of mind has full right to 
 its own due expression, and grumbUng lawful 
 only when due expression is not attained. One 
 may not care for a Rembrandt portrait of a plain 
 old woman; a graceful Watteau decoration may 
 leave another cold — ^but fooUsh will he be who 
 denies that both are faithful to their conceiving 
 moods, and so proportioned part to part, and part 
 to whole, as to have, each in its own way, that in- 
 herent rhythm or vitahty which is the hall-mark 
 of Art. He is but a poor philosopher who holds a 
 view so narrow as to exclude forms not to his per- 
 sonal taste. No realist can love romantic Art so 
 much as he loves his own, but when that Art ful- 
 
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 fils the laws of its peculiar being, if he would be no 
 blind partisan, he must admit it. The romanticist 
 will never be amused by reahsm, but let him not 
 for that reason be so parochial as to think that 
 realism, when it achieves vitaUty, is not Art. For 
 what is Art but the perfected expression of self in 
 contact with the world; and whether that self be 
 of enlightening, or of f airy-teUing temperament, is 
 of no moment whatsoever. The tossing of abuse 
 from realist to romanticist and back is but the 
 sword-play of two one-eyed men with their bhnd 
 side turned toward each other. Shall not each 
 attempt be judged on its own merits? If found 
 not shoddy, faked, or forced, but true to itself, 
 true to its conceiving mood, and fair-proportioned 
 part to whole, so that it lives — ^then, realistic or 
 romantic, in the name of Fairness let it pass! Of 
 all kinds of human energy, Art is surely the most 
 free, the least parochial; and demands of us an 
 essential tolerance of all its forms. Shall we waste 
 breath and ink in condemnation of artists, be- 
 cause their temperaments are not our own? 
 
 But the shapes and colours of the day were now 
 all blurred; every tree and stone entangled in the 
 dusk. How different the world seemed from that 
 in which I had first sat down, with the swallows 
 flirting past. And my mood was different; for 
 
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 each of those worlds had brought to my heart its 
 proper feeUng — painted on my eyes the just 
 picture. And Night, that was conung, would 
 bring me yet another mood that would frame itself 
 with consciousness at its own fair moment, and 
 hang before me. A quiet owl stole by in the field 
 below, and vanished into the heart of a tree. And 
 suddenly above the moor-line I saw the large moon 
 rising. Cinnamon-coloured, it made all things 
 swim, made me uncertaia of my thoughts, vague 
 with mazy feeling. Shapes seemed but drifts of 
 moon-dust, and true reaUty nothing save a sort of 
 still Ustening to the wind. And for long I sat, 
 just watching the moon creep up, and hearing the 
 thin, dry rustle of the leaves along the holly hedge. 
 And there came to me this thought : What is this 
 Universe — ^that never had beginning and will never 
 have an end — ^but a myriad striving to perfect 
 pictures never the same, so blending and fading 
 one into another, that all form one great perfected 
 picture? And what are we — cripples on the tides 
 of a birthless, deathless, equipoised Creative Pur- 
 pose — ^but little works of Art? 
 
 Trying to record that thought, I noticed that 
 my note-book was damp with dew. The cattle 
 were lying down. It was too dark to see. 
 
 1911. 
 
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