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Produced by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci and PG Distributed Proofreaders | |
Other Books by the Same Author: | |
"Journeys to Bagdad" | |
_Sixth printing_. | |
"Chimney-Pot Papers" | |
_Third printing_. | |
"Hints to Pilgrims" | |
THERE'S PIPPINS | |
AND | |
CHEESE TO COME | |
BY | |
CHARLES S. BROOKS | |
1917 | |
Illustrated by Theodore Diedricksen, Jr. | |
TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER | |
CONTENTS | |
I. There's Pippins and Cheese to Come | |
II. On Buying Old Books | |
III. Any Stick Will Do to Beat a Dog | |
IV. Roads of Morning | |
V. The Man of Grub Street Comes from His Garret | |
VI. Now that Spring is Here | |
VII. The Friendly Genii | |
VIII. Mr. Pepys Sits in the Pit | |
IX. To an Unknown Reader | |
X. A Plague of All Cowards | |
XI. The Asperities of the Early British Reviewers | |
XII. The Pursuit of Fire | |
THERE'S PIPPINS AND CHEESE TO COME | |
There's Pippins and Cheese To Come | |
In my noonday quest for food, if the day is fine, it is my habit to shun | |
the nearer places of refreshment. I take the air and stretch myself. Like | |
Eve's serpent I go upright for a bit. Yet if time presses, there may be had | |
next door a not unsavory stowage. A drinking bar is nearest to the street | |
where its polished brasses catch the eye. It holds a gilded mirror to such | |
red-faced nature as consorts within. Yet you pass the bar and come upon a | |
range of tables at the rear. | |
Now, if you yield to the habits of the place you order a rump of meat. | |
Gravy lies about it like a moat around a castle, and if there is in you the | |
zest for encounter, you attack it above these murky waters. "This castle | |
hath a pleasant seat," you cry, and charge upon it with pike advanced. But | |
if your appetite is one to peck and mince, the whiffs that breathe upon the | |
place come unwelcome to your nostrils. In no wise are they like the sweet | |
South upon your senses. There is even a suspicion in you--such is your | |
distemper--that it is too much a witch's cauldron in the kitchen, "eye of | |
newt, and toe of frog," and you spy and poke upon your food. Bus boys bear | |
off the crockery as though they were apprenticed to a juggler and were only | |
at the beginning of their art. Waiters bawl strange messages to the cook. | |
It's a tongue unguessed by learning, yet sharp and potent. Also, there | |
comes a riot from the kitchen, and steam issues from the door as though the | |
devil himself were a partner and conducted here an upper branch. Like the | |
man in the old comedy, your belly may still ring dinner, but the tinkle is | |
faint. Such being your state, you choose a daintier place to eat. | |
Having now set upon a longer journey--the day being fine and the sidewalks | |
thronged--you pass by a restaurant that is but a few doors up the street. | |
A fellow in a white coat flops pancakes in the window. But even though the | |
pancake does a double somersault and there are twenty curious noses pressed | |
against the glass, still you keep your course uptown. | |
Nor are you led off because a near-by stairway beckons you to a Chinese | |
restaurant up above. A golden dragon swings over the door. Its race has | |
fallen since its fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the | |
Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the | |
East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy | |
dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it | |
wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred it | |
from its dreams. | |
I have wondered why Chinese restaurants are generally on the second story. | |
A casual inquiry attests it. I know of one, it is true, on the ground | |
level, yet here I suspect a special economy. The place had formerly been a | |
German restaurant, with Teuton scrolls, "Ich Dien," and heraldries on its | |
walls. A frugal brush changed the decoration. From the heart of a Prussian | |
blazonry, there flares on you in Chinese yellow a recommendation to try | |
"Our Chicken Chop Soy." The quartering of the House of Hohenzollern wears a | |
baldric in praise of "Subgum Noodle Warmein," which it seems they cook to | |
an unusual delicacy. Even a wall painting of Rip Van Winkle bowling at | |
tenpins in the mountains is now set off with a pigtail. But the chairs were | |
Dutch and remain as such. Generally, however, Chinese restaurants are on | |
the second story. Probably there is a ritual from the ancient days of Ming | |
Ti that Chinamen when they eat shall sit as near as possible to the sacred | |
moon. | |
But hold a bit! In your haste up town to find a place to eat, you are | |
missing some of the finer sights upon the way. In these windows that | |
you pass, the merchants have set their choicest wares. If there is any | |
commodity of softer gloss than common, or one shinier to the eye--so | |
that your poverty frets you--it is displayed here. In the window of the | |
haberdasher, shirts--mere torsos with not a leg below or head above--yet | |
disport themselves in gay neckwear. Despite their dismemberment they are | |
tricked to the latest turn of fashion. Can vanity survive such general | |
amputation? Then there is hope for immortality. | |
But by what sad chance have these blithe fellows been disjointed? If | |
a gloomy mood prevails in you--as might come from a bad turn of the | |
market--you fancy that the evil daughter of Herodias still lives around the | |
corner, and that she has set out her victims to the general view. If there | |
comes a hurdy-gurdy on the street and you cock your ear to the tune of | |
it, you may still hear the dancing measure of her wicked feet. Or it is | |
possible that these are the kindred of Holofernes and that they have supped | |
guiltily in their tents with a sisterhood of Judiths. | |
Or we may conceive--our thoughts running now to food--that these gamesome | |
creatures of the haberdasher had dressed themselves for a more recent | |
banquet. Their black-tailed coats and glossy shirts attest a rare occasion. | |
It was in holiday mood, when they were fresh-combed and perked in their | |
best, that they were cut off from life. It would appear that Jack Ketch the | |
headsman got them when they were rubbed and shining for the feast. We'll | |
not squint upon his writ. It is enough that they were apprehended for some | |
rascality. When he came thumping on his dreadful summons, here they were | |
already set, fopped from shoes to head in the newest whim. Spoon in hand | |
and bib across their knees--lest they fleck their careful fronts--they | |
waited for the anchovy to come. And on a sudden they were cut off from | |
life, unfit, unseasoned for the passage. Like the elder Hamlet's brother, | |
they were engaged upon an act that had no relish of salvation in it. You | |
may remember the lamentable child somewhere in Dickens, who because of an | |
abrupt and distressing accident, had a sandwich in its hand but no mouth | |
to put it in. Or perhaps you recall the cook of the Nancy Bell and his | |
grievous end. The poor fellow was stewed in his own stew-pot. It was the | |
Elderly Naval Man, you recall--the two of them being the ship's sole | |
survivors on the deserted island, and both of them lean with hunger--it was | |
the Elderly Naval Man (the villain of the piece) who "ups with his heels, | |
and smothers his squeals in the scum of the boiling broth." | |
And yet by looking on these torsos of the haberdasher, one is not brought | |
to thoughts of sad mortality. Their joy is so exultant. And all the things | |
that they hold dear--canes, gloves, silk hats, and the newer garments on | |
which fashion makes its twaddle--are within reach of their armless sleeves. | |
Had they fingers they would be smoothing themselves before the glass. Their | |
unbodied heads, wherever they may be, are still smiling on the world, | |
despite their divorcement. Their tongues are still ready with a jest, their | |
lips still parted for the anchovy to come. | |
A few days since, as I was thinking--for so I am pleased to call my muddy | |
stirrings--what manner of essay I might write and how best to sort and lay | |
out the rummage, it happened pat to my needs that I received from a friend | |
a book entitled "The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened." Now, before | |
it came I had got so far as to select a title. Indeed, I had written the | |
title on seven different sheets of paper, each time in the hope that by | |
the run of the words I might leap upon some further thought. Seven times I | |
failed and in the end the sheets went into the waste basket, possibly | |
to the confusion of Annie our cook, who may have mistaken them for a | |
reiterated admonishment towards the governance of her kitchen--at the | |
least, a hint of my desires and appetite for cheese and pippins. | |
"The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened" is a cook book. It is due you | |
to know this at once, otherwise your thoughts--if your nature be | |
vagrant--would drift towards family skeletons. Or maybe the domestic traits | |
prevail and you would think of dress-clothes hanging in camphorated bags | |
and a row of winter boots upon a shelf. | |
I am disqualified to pass upon the merits of a cook book, for the reason | |
that I have little discrimination in food. It is not that I am totally | |
indifferent to what lies on the platter. Indeed, I have more than a tribal | |
aversion to pork in general, while, on the other hand, I quicken joyfully | |
when noodles are interspersed with bacon. I have a tooth for sweets, too, | |
although I hold it unmanly and deny it as I can. I am told also--although | |
I resent it--that my eye lights up on the appearance of a tray of French | |
pastry. I admit gladly, however, my love of onions, whether they come | |
hissing from the skillet, or lie in their first tender whiteness. They | |
are at their best when they are placed on bread and are eaten largely at | |
midnight after society has done its worst. | |
A fine dinner is lost within me. A quail is but an inferior chicken--a poor | |
relation outside the exclusive hennery. Terrapin sits low in my regard, | |
even though it has wallowed in the most aristocratic marsh. Through such | |
dinners I hack and saw my way without even gaining a memory of my progress. | |
If asked the courses, I balk after the recital of the soup. Indeed, I am so | |
forgetful of food, even when I dine at home, that I can well believe that | |
Adam when he was questioned about the apple was in real confusion. He had | |
or he had not. It was mixed with the pomegranate or the quince that Eve had | |
sliced and cooked on the day before. | |
A dinner at its best is brought to a single focus. There is one dish | |
to dominate the cloth, a single bulk to which all other dishes are | |
subordinate. If there be turkey, it should mount from a central platter. | |
Its protruding legs out-top the candles. All other foods are, as it were, | |
privates in Caesar's army. They do no more than flank the pageant. Nor may | |
the pantry hold too many secrets. Within reason, everything should be | |
set out at once, or at least a gossip of its coming should run before. | |
Otherwise, if the stew is savory, how shall one reserve a corner for the | |
custard? One must partition himself justly--else, by an over-stowage at the | |
end, he list and sink. | |
I am partial to picnics--the spreading of the cloth in the woods or beside | |
a stream--although I am not avid for sandwiches unless hunger press me. | |
Rather, let there be a skillet in the company and let a fire be started! | |
Nor need a picnic consume the day. In summer it requires but the late | |
afternoon, with such borrowing of the night as is necessary for the | |
journey home. You leave the street car, clanking with your bundles like an | |
itinerant tinman. You follow a stream, which on these lower stretches, it | |
is sad to say, is already infected with the vices of the city. Like many a | |
countryman who has come to town, it has fallen to dissipation. It shows the | |
marks of the bottle. Further up, its course is cleaner. You cross it in the | |
mud. Was it not Christian who fell into the bog because of the burden on | |
his back? Then you climb a villainously long hill and pop out upon an open | |
platform above the city. | |
The height commands a prospect to the west. Below is the smoke of a | |
thousand suppers. Up from the city there comes the hum of life, now | |
somewhat fallen with the traffic of the day--as though Nature already | |
practiced the tune for sending her creatures off to sleep. You light a | |
fire. The baskets disgorge their secrets. Ants and other leviathans think | |
evidently that a circus has come or that bears are in the town. The chops | |
and bacon achieve their appointed destiny. You throw the last bone across | |
your shoulder. It slips and rattles to the river. The sun sets. Night like | |
an ancient dame puts on her jewels: | |
And now that I have climbed and won this height, | |
I must tread downward through the sloping shade | |
And travel the bewildered tracks till night. | |
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed | |
And see the gold air and the silver fade | |
And the last bird fly into the last light. | |
By these confessions you will see how unfit I am to comment on the old cook | |
book of Sir Kenelm Digby. Yet it lies before me. It may have escaped your | |
memory in the din of other things, that in the time when Oliver Cromwell | |
still walked the earth, there lived in England a man by the name of Kenelm | |
Digby, who was renowned in astrology and alchemy, piracy, wit, philosophy | |
and fashion. It appears that wherever learning wagged its bulbous head, Sir | |
Kenelm was of the company. It appears, also, that wherever the mahogany did | |
most groan, wherever the possets were spiced most delicately to the nose, | |
there too did Sir Kenelm bib and tuck himself. With profundity, as | |
though he sucked wisdom from its lowest depth, he spouted forth on the | |
transmutation of the baser metals or tossed you a phrase from Paracelsus. | |
Or with long instructive finger he dissertated on the celestial universe. | |
One would have thought that he had stood by on the making of it and that | |
his judgment had prevailed in the larger problems. Yet he did not neglect | |
his trencher. | |
And now as time went on, the richness of the food did somewhat dominate his | |
person. The girth of his wisdom grew no less, but his body fattened. In | |
a word, the good gentleman's palate came to vie with his intellect. Less | |
often was he engaged upon some dark saying of Isidore of Seville. Rather, | |
even if his favorite topic astrology were uppermost about the table, his | |
eye travelled to the pantry on every change of dishes. His fingers, too, | |
came to curl most delicately on his fork. He used it like an epicure, | |
poking his viands apart for sharpest scrutiny. His nod upon a compote was | |
much esteemed. | |
Now mark his further decline! On an occasion--surely the old rascal's head | |
is turned!--he would be found in private talk with his hostess, the Lady of | |
Middlesex, or with the Countess of Monmouth, not as you might expect, on | |
the properties of fire or on the mortal diseases of man, but--on subjects | |
quite removed. Society, we may be sure, began to whisper of these snug | |
parleys in the arbor after dinner, these shadowed mumblings on the balcony | |
when the moon was up--and Lady Digby stiffened into watchfulness. It was | |
when they took leave that she saw the Countess slip a note into her lord's | |
fingers. Her jealousy broke out. "Viper!" She spat the words and seized her | |
husband's wrist. Of course the note was read. It proved, however, that Sir | |
Kenelm was innocent of all mischief. To the disappointment of the gossips, | |
who were tuned to a spicier anticipation, the note was no more than a | |
recipe of the manner that the Countess was used to mix her syllabub, with | |
instruction that it was the "rosemary a little bruised and the limon-peal | |
that did quicken the taste." Advice, also, followed in the postscript on | |
the making of tea, with counsel that "the boiling water should remain upon | |
it just so long as one might say a _miserere_." A mutual innocence being | |
now established, the Lady Digby did by way of apology peck the Countess on | |
the cheek. | |
Sir Kenelm died in 1665, full of years. In that day his fame rested chiefly | |
on his books in physic and chirurgery. His most enduring work was still to | |
be published--"The Closet Opened." | |
It was two years after his death that his son came upon a bundle of his | |
father's papers that had hitherto been overlooked. I fancy that he went | |
spying in the attic on a rainy day. In the darkest corner, behind the | |
rocking horse--if such devices were known in those distant days--he came | |
upon a trunk of his father's papers. "Od's fish," said Sir Kenelm's son, | |
"here's a box of manuscripts. It is like that they pertain to alchemy or | |
chirurgery." He pulled out a bundle and held it to the light--such light as | |
came through the cobwebs of the ancient windows. "Here be strange matters," | |
he exclaimed. Then he read aloud: "My Lord of Bristol's Scotch collops are | |
thus made: Take a leg of fine sweet mutton, that to make it tender, is | |
kept as long as possible may be without stinking. In winter seven or eight | |
days"--"Ho! Ho!" cried Sir Kenelm's son. "This is not alchemy!" He drew out | |
another parchment and read again: "My Lord of Carlile's sack posset, how | |
it's made: Take a pottle of cream and boil in it a little whole cinnamon | |
and three or four flakes of mace. Boil it until it simpreth and bubbleth." | |
By this time, as you may well imagine, Sir Kenelm's son was wrought to an | |
excitement. It is likely that he inherited his father's palate and that the | |
juices of his appetite were stirred. Seizing an armful of the papers, he | |
leaped down the attic steps, three at a time. His lady mother thrust a | |
curled and papered head from her door and asked whether the chimney were | |
afire, but he did not heed her. The cook was waddling in her pattens. He | |
cried to her to throw wood upon the fire. | |
That night the Digby household was served a delicacy, red herrings broiled | |
in the fashion of my Lord d'Aubigny, "short and crisp and laid upon a | |
sallet." Also, there was a wheaten flommery as it was made in the West | |
Country--for the cook chose quite at random--and a slip-coat cheese as | |
Master Phillips proportioned it. Also, against the colic, which was | |
ravishing the country, the cook prepared a metheglin as Lady Stuart mixed | |
it--"nettles, fennel and grumel seeds, of each two ounces being small-cut | |
and mixed with honey and boiled together." It is on record that the Lady | |
Digby smiled for the first time since her lord had died, and when the | |
grinning cook bore in the platter, she beat upon the table with her spoon. | |
The following morning, Sir Kenelm's son posted to London bearing the | |
recipes, with a pistol in the pocket of his great coat against the crossing | |
of Hounslow Heath. He went to a printer at the Star in Little Britain whose | |
name was H. Brome. | |
Shortly the book appeared. It was the son who wrote the preface: "There | |
needs no Rhetoricating Floscules to set it off. The Authour, as is well | |
known, having been a Person of Eminency for his Learning, and of Exquisite | |
Curiosity in his Researches. Even that Incomparable Sir Kenelme Digbie | |
Knight, Fellow of the Royal Society and Chancellour to the Queen Mother, | |
(Et omen in Nomine) His name does sufficiently Auspicate the Work." The | |
sale of the book is not recorded. It is supposed that the Lady Middlesex, | |
so many of whose recipes had been used, directed that her chair be carried | |
to the shop where the book was for sale and that she bought largely of it. | |
The Countess of Dorset bought a copy and spelled it out word for word to | |
her cook. As for the Lady Monmouth, she bought not a single copy, which | |
neglect on coming to the Digbys aroused a coolness. | |
To this day it is likely that a last auspicated volume still sits on its | |
shelf with the spice jars in some English country kitchen and that a worn | |
and toothless cook still thumbs its leaves. If the guests about the table | |
be of an antique mind, still will they pledge one another with its honeyed | |
drinks, still will they pipe and whistle of its virtues, still will they-- | |
"EAT"--A flaring sign hangs above the sidewalk. By this time, in our | |
noonday search for food, we have come into the thick of the restaurants. In | |
the jungle of the city, here is the feeding place. Here come the growling | |
bipeds for such bones and messes as are thrown them. | |
The waiter thrusts a card beneath my nose. "Nice leg of lamb, sir?" I waved | |
him off. "Hold a bit!" I cried. "You'll fetch me a capon in white broth as | |
my Lady Monmouth broileth hers. Put plentiful sack in it and boil it until | |
it simpreth!" The waiter scratched his head. "The chicken pie is good," he | |
said. "It's our Wednesday dish." "Varlet!" I cried--then softened. "Let it | |
be the chicken pie! But if the cook knoweth the manner that Lord Carlile | |
does mix and pepper it, let that manner be followed to the smallest | |
fraction of a pinch!" | |
On Buying Old Books | |
By some slim chance, reader, you may be the kind of person who, on a visit | |
to a strange city, makes for a bookshop. Of course your slight temporal | |
business may detain you in the earlier hours of the day. You sit with | |
committees and stroke your profound chin, or you spend your talent in the | |
market, or run to and fro and wag your tongue in persuasion. Or, if you be | |
on a holiday, you strain yourself on the sights of the city, against being | |
caught in an omission. The bolder features of a cathedral must be grasped | |
to satisfy a quizzing neighbor lest he shame you later on your hearth, a | |
building must be stuffed inside your memory, or your pilgrim feet must wear | |
the pavement of an ancient shrine. However, these duties being done and the | |
afternoon having not yet declined, do you not seek a bookshop to regale | |
yourself? | |
Doubtless, we have met. As you have scrunched against the shelf not to | |
block the passage, but with your head thrown back to see the titles up | |
above, you have noticed at the corner of your eye--unless it was one of | |
your blinder moments when you were fixed wholly on the shelf--a man in | |
a slightly faded overcoat of mixed black and white, a man just past the | |
nimbleness of youth, whose head is plucked of its full commodity of hair. | |
It was myself. I admit the portrait, though modesty has curbed me short of | |
justice. | |
Doubtless, we have met. It was your umbrella--which you held villainously | |
beneath your arm--that took me in the ribs when you lighted on a set of | |
Fuller's Worthies. You recall my sour looks, but it was because I had | |
myself lingered on the volumes but cooled at the price. How you smoothed | |
and fingered them! With what triumph you bore them off! I bid you--for I | |
see you in a slippered state, eased and unbuttoned after dinner--I bid you | |
turn the pages with a slow thumb, not to miss the slightest tang of their | |
humor. You will of course go first, because of its broad fame, to the page | |
on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and their wet-combats at the Mermaid. But | |
before the night is too far gone and while yet you can hold yourself from | |
nodding, you will please read about Captain John Smith of Virginia and his | |
"strange performances, the scene whereof is laid at such a distance, they | |
are cheaper credited than confuted." | |
In no proper sense am I a buyer of old books. I admit a bookish quirk | |
maybe, a love of the shelf, a weakness for morocco, especially if it is | |
stained with age. I will, indeed, shirk a wedding for a bookshop. I'll | |
go in "just to look about a bit, to see what the fellow has," and on an | |
occasion I pick up a volume. But I am innocent of first editions. It is | |
a stiff courtesy, as becomes a democrat, that I bestow on this form | |
of primogeniture. Of course, I have nosed my way with pleasure along | |
aristocratic shelves and flipped out volumes here and there to ask their | |
price, but for the greater part, it is the plainer shops that engage me. If | |
a rack of books is offered cheap before the door, with a fixed price upon a | |
card, I come at a trot. And if a brown dust lies on them, I bow and sniff | |
upon the rack, as though the past like an ancient <DW2> in peruke and buckle | |
were giving me the courtesy of its snuff box. If I take the dust in my | |
nostrils and chance to sneeze, it is the fit and intended observance toward | |
the manners of a former century. | |
I have in mind such a bookshop in Bath, England. It presents to the street | |
no more than a decent front, but opens up behind like a swollen bottle. | |
There are twenty rooms at least, piled together with such confusion of | |
black passages and winding steps, that one might think that the owner | |
himself must hold a thread when he visits the remoter rooms. Indeed, such | |
are the obscurities and dim turnings of the place, that, were the legend of | |
the Minotaur but English, you might fancy that the creature still lived in | |
this labyrinth, to nip you between his toothless gums--for the beast grows | |
old--at some darker corner. There is a story of the place, that once a raw | |
clerk having been sent to rummage in the basement, his candle tipped off | |
the shelf. He was left in so complete darkness that his fears overcame his | |
judgment and for two hours he roamed and babbled among the barrels. Nor was | |
his absence discovered until the end of the day when, as was the custom, | |
the clerks counted noses at the door. When they found him, he bolted up the | |
steps, nor did he cease his whimper until he had reached the comforting | |
twilight of the outer world. He served thereafter in the shop a full two | |
years and had a beard coming--so the story runs--before he would again | |
venture beyond the third turning of the passage; to the stunting of his | |
scholarship, for the deeper books lay in the farther windings. | |
Or it may appear credible that in ages past a jealous builder contrived the | |
place. Having no learning himself and being at odds with those of better | |
opportunity, he twisted the pattern of the house. Such was his evil temper, | |
that he set the steps at a dangerous hazard in the dark, in order that | |
scholars--whose eyes are bleared at best--might risk their legs to the end | |
of time. Those of strict orthodoxy have even suspected the builder to have | |
been an atheist, for they have observed what double joints and steps and | |
turnings confuse the passage to the devouter books--the Early Fathers in | |
particular being up a winding stair where even the soberest reader might | |
break his neck. Be these things as they may, leather bindings in sets of | |
"grenadier uniformity" ornament the upper and lighter rooms. Biography | |
straggles down a hallway, with a candle needed at the farther end. A room | |
of dingy plays--Wycherley, Congreve and their crew--looks out through an | |
area grating. It was through even so foul an eye, that when alive, they | |
looked upon the world. As for theology, except for the before-mentioned | |
Fathers, it sits in general and dusty convention on the landing to the | |
basement, its snuffy sermons, by a sad misplacement--or is there an | |
ironical intention?--pointing the way to the eternal abyss below. | |
It was in this shop that I inquired whether there was published a book on | |
piracy in Cornwall. Now, I had lately come from Tintagel on the Cornish | |
coast, and as I had climbed upon the rocks and looked down upon the sea, I | |
had wondered to myself whether, if the knowledge were put out before me, I | |
could compose a story of Spanish treasure and pirates. For I am a prey to | |
such giddy ambition. A foul street--if the buildings slant and topple--will | |
set me thinking delightfully of murders. A wharf-end with water lapping | |
underneath and bits of rope about will set me itching for a deep-sea plot. | |
Or if I go on broader range and see in my fancy a broken castle on a hill, | |
I'll clear its moat and sound trumpets on its walls. If there is pepper | |
in my mood, I'll storm its dungeon. Or in a softer moment I'll trim its | |
unsubstantial towers with pageantry and rest upon my elbow until I fall | |
asleep. So being cast upon the rugged Cornish coast whose cliffs are so | |
swept with winter winds that the villages sit for comfort in the hollows, | |
it was to be expected that my thoughts would run toward pirates. | |
There is one rock especially which I had climbed in the rain and fog of | |
early morning. A reckless path goes across its face with a sharp pitch to | |
the ocean. It was so slippery and the wind so tugged and pulled to throw me | |
off, that although I endangered my dignity, I played the quadruped on the | |
narrower parts. But once on top in the open blast of the storm and safe | |
upon the level, I thumped with desire for a plot. In each inlet from the | |
ocean I saw a pirate lugger--such is the pleasing word--with a keg of rum | |
set up. Each cranny led to a cavern with doubloons piled inside. The | |
very tempest in my ears was compounded out of ships at sea and wreck and | |
pillage. I needed but a plot, a thread of action to string my villains on. | |
If this were once contrived, I would spice my text with sailors' oaths and | |
such boasting talk as might lie in my invention. Could I but come upon a | |
plot, I might yet proclaim myself an author. | |
With this guilty secret in me I blushed as I asked the question. It seemed | |
sure that the shopkeeper must guess my purpose. I felt myself suspected as | |
though I were a rascal buying pistols to commit a murder. Indeed, I seem | |
to remember having read that even hardened criminals have become confused | |
before a shopkeeper and betrayed themselves. Of course, Dick Turpin and | |
Jerry Abershaw could call for pistols in the same easy tone they ordered | |
ale, but it would take a practiced villainy. But I in my innocence wanted | |
nothing but the meager outline of a pirate's life, which I might fatten to | |
my uses. | |
But on a less occasion, when there is no plot thumping in me, I still feel | |
a kind of embarrassment when I ask for a book out of the general demand. I | |
feel so like an odd stick. This embarrassment applies not to the request | |
for other commodities. I will order a collar that is quite outside the | |
fashion, in a high-pitched voice so that the whole shop can hear. I could | |
bargain for a purple waistcoat--did my taste run so--and though the | |
sidewalk listened, it would not draw a blush. I have traded even for | |
women's garments--though this did strain me--without an outward twitch. | |
Finally, to top my valor, I have bought sheet music of the lighter kind and | |
have pronounced the softest titles so that all could hear. But if I desire | |
the poems of Lovelace or the plays of Marlowe, I sidle close up to the | |
shopkeeper to get his very ear. If the book is visible, I point my thumb at | |
it without a word. | |
It was but the other day--in order to fill a gap in a paper I was | |
writing--I desired to know the name of an author who is obscure although | |
his work has been translated into nearly all languages. I wanted to know a | |
little about the life of the man who wrote _Mary Had a Little Lamb_, which, | |
I am told, is known by children over pretty much all the western world. It | |
needed only a trip to the Public Library. Any attendant would direct me to | |
the proper shelf. Yet once in the building, my courage oozed. My question, | |
though serious, seemed too ridiculous to be asked. I would sizzle as I | |
met the attendant's eye. Of a consequence, I fumbled on my own devices, | |
possibly to the increase of my general knowledge, but without gaining what | |
I sought. | |
They had no book in the Bath shop on piracy in Cornwall. I was offered | |
instead a work in two volumes on the notorious highwaymen of history, and | |
for a moment my plot swerved in that direction. But I put it by. To pay the | |
fellow for his pains--for he had dug in barrels to his shoulders and had a | |
smudge across his nose--I bought a copy of Thomson's "Castle of Indolence," | |
and in my more energetic moods I read it. And so I came away. | |
On leaving the shop, lest I should be nipped in a neglect, I visited the | |
Roman baths. Then I took the waters in the Assembly Room. It was Sam | |
Weller, you may recall, who remarked, when he was entertained by the select | |
footmen, that the waters tasted like warm flat-irons. Finally, I viewed | |
the Crescent around which the shirted Winkle ran with the valorous Dowler | |
breathing on his neck. With such distractions, as you may well imagine, | |
Cornish pirates became as naught. Such mental vibration as I had was now | |
gone toward a tale of fashion in the days when Queen Anne was still alive. | |
Of a consequence, I again sought the bookshop and stifling my timidity, I | |
demanded such volumes as might set me most agreeably to my task. | |
I have in mind also a bookshop of small pretension in a town in Wales. For | |
purely secular delight, maybe, it was too largely composed of Methodist | |
sermons. Hell fire burned upon its shelves with a warmth to singe so poor a | |
worm as I. Yet its signboard popped its welcome when I had walked ten miles | |
of sunny road. Possibly it was the chair rather than the divinity that | |
keeps the place in memory. The owner was absent on an errand, and his | |
daughter, who had been clumping about the kitchen on my arrival, was | |
uninstructed in the price marks. So I read and fanned myself until his | |
return. | |
Perhaps my sluggishness toward first editions--to which I have hinted | |
above--comes in part from the acquaintance with a man who in a linguistic | |
outburst as I met him, pronounced himself to be a numismatist and | |
philatelist. One only of these names would have satisfied a man of less | |
conceit. It is as though the pteranodon should claim also to be the | |
spoon-bill dinosaur. It is against modesty that one man should summon all | |
the letters. No, the numismatist's head is not crammed with the mysteries | |
of life and death, nor is a philatelist one who is possessed with the | |
dimmer secrets of eternity. Rather, this man who was so swelled with | |
titles, eked a living by selling coins and stamps, and he was on his way | |
to Europe to replenish his wares. Inside his waistcoat, just above his | |
liver--if he owned so human an appendage--he carried a magnifying glass. | |
With this, when the business fit was on him, he counted the lines and dots | |
upon a stamp, the perforations on its edge. He catalogued its volutes, its | |
stipples, the frisks and curlings of its pattern. He had numbered the very | |
hairs on the head of George Washington, for in such minutiae did the value | |
of the stamp reside. Did a single hair spring up above the count, it would | |
invalidate the issue. Such values, got by circumstance or accident--resting | |
on a flaw--founded on a speck--cause no ferment of my desires. | |
For the buying of books, it is the cheaper shops where I most often prowl. | |
There is in London a district around Charing Cross Road where almost every | |
shop has books for sale. There is a continuous rack along the sidewalk, | |
each title beckoning for your attention. You recall the class of | |
street-readers of whom Charles Lamb wrote--"poor gentry, who, not having | |
wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open | |
stalls." It was on some such street that these folk practiced their | |
innocent larceny. If one shopkeeper frowned at the diligence with which | |
they read "Clarissa," they would continue her distressing adventures across | |
the way. By a lingering progress up the street, "Sir Charles Grandison" | |
might be nibbled down--by such as had the stomach--without the outlay of | |
a single penny. As for Gibbon and the bulbous historians, though a whole | |
perusal would outlast the summer and stretch to the colder months, yet with | |
patience they could be got through. However, before the end was come even a | |
hasty reader whose eye was nimble on the page would be blowing on his nails | |
and pulling his tails between him and the November wind. | |
But the habit of reading at the open stalls was not only with the poor. You | |
will remember that Mr. Brownlow was addicted. Really, had not the Artful | |
Dodger stolen his pocket handkerchief as he was thus engaged upon his book, | |
the whole history of Oliver Twist must have been quite different. And Pepys | |
himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty. "To Paul's Church Yard," he | |
writes, "and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy | |
not, but borrow to read." Such parsimony is the curse of authors. To thumb | |
a volume cheaply around a neighborhood is what keeps them in their garrets. | |
It is a less offence to steal peanuts from a stand. Also, it is recorded in | |
the life of Beau Nash that the persons of fashion of his time, to pass a | |
tedious morning "did divert themselves with reading in the booksellers' | |
shops." We may conceive Mr. Fanciful Fopling in the sleepy blink of those | |
early hours before the pleasures of the day have made a start, inquiring | |
between his yawns what latest novels have come down from London, or whether | |
a new part of "Pamela" is offered yet. If the post be in, he will prop | |
himself against the shelf and--unless he glaze and nod--he will read | |
cheaply for an hour. Or my Lady Betty, having taken the waters in the | |
pump-room and lent her ear to such gossip as is abroad so early, is now | |
handed to her chair and goes round by Gregory's to read a bit. She is | |
flounced to the width of the passage. Indeed, until the fashion shall | |
abate, those more solid authors that are set up in the rear of the shop, | |
must remain during her visits in general neglect. Though she hold herself | |
against the shelf and tilt her hoops, it would not be possible to pass. She | |
is absorbed in a book of the softer sort, and she flips its pages against | |
her lap-dog's nose. | |
But now behold the student coming up the street! He is clad in shining | |
black. He is thin of shank as becomes a scholar. He sags with knowledge. He | |
hungers after wisdom. He comes opposite the bookshop. It is but coquetry | |
that his eyes seek the window of the tobacconist. His heart, you may be | |
sure, looks through the buttons at his back. At last he turns. He pauses on | |
the curb. Now desire has clutched him. He jiggles his trousered shillings. | |
He treads the gutter. He squints upon the rack. He lights upon a treasure. | |
He plucks it forth. He is unresolved whether to buy it or to spend the | |
extra shilling on his dinner. Now all you cooks together, to save your | |
business, rattle your pans to rouse him! If within these ancient buildings | |
there are onions ready peeled--quick!--throw them in the skillet that the | |
whiff may come beneath his nose! Chance trembles and casts its vote--eenie | |
meenie--down goes the shilling--he has bought the book. Tonight he will | |
spread it beneath his candle. Feet may beat a snare of pleasure on the | |
pavement, glad cries may pipe across the darkness, a fiddle may scratch its | |
invitation--all the rumbling notes of midnight traffic will tap in vain | |
their summons upon his window. | |
Any Stick Will Do To Beat A Dog | |
Reader, possibly on one of your country walks you have come upon a man with | |
his back against a hedge, tormented by a fiend in the likeness of a dog. | |
You yourself, of course, are not a coward. You possess that cornerstone of | |
virtue, a love for animals. If at your heels a dog sniffs and growls, you | |
humor his mistake, you flick him off and proceed with unbroken serenity. It | |
is scarcely an interlude to your speculation on the market. Or if you work | |
upon a sonnet and are in the vein, your thoughts, despite the beast, run | |
unbroken to a rhyme. But pity this other whose heart is less stoutly | |
wrapped! He has gone forth on a holiday to take the country air, to thrust | |
himself into the freer wind, to poke with his stick for such signs of | |
Spring as may be hiding in the winter's leaves. Having been grinding in an | |
office he flings himself on the great round world. He has come out to smell | |
the earth. Or maybe he seeks a hilltop for a view of the fields that lie | |
below patched in many colors, as though nature had been sewing at her | |
garments and had mended the cloth from her bag of scraps. | |
On such a journey this fellow is travelling when, at a turn of the road, he | |
hears the sound of barking. As yet there is no dog in sight. He pauses. He | |
listens. How shall one know whether the sound comes up a wrathful gullet or | |
whether the dog bays at him impersonally, as at the distant moon? Or maybe | |
he vents himself upon a stubborn cow. Surely it is not an idle tune he | |
practices. He holds a victim in his mind. There is sour venom on his | |
churlish tooth. Is it best to go roundabout, or forward with such a nice | |
compound of innocence, boldness and modesty as shall satisfy the beast? If | |
one engross oneself on something that lies to the lee of danger, it allays | |
suspicion. Or if one absorb oneself upon the flora--a primrose on the | |
river's brim--it shows him clear and stainless. The stupidest dog should | |
see that so close a student can have no evil in him. Perhaps it would be | |
better to throw away one's stick lest it make a show of violence. Or it may | |
be concealed along the outer leg. Ministers of Grace defend us, what an | |
excitement in the barnyard! Has virtue no reward? Shall innocence perish | |
off the earth? Not one dog, but many, come running out. There has gone | |
a rumor about the barn that there is a stranger to be eaten, and it's | |
likely--if they keep their clamor--there will be a bone for each. Note how | |
the valor oozes from the man of peace! Observe his sidling gait, his skirts | |
pulled close, his hollowed back, his head bent across his shoulder, his | |
startled eye! Watch him mince his steps, lest a lingering heel be nipped! | |
Listen to him try the foremost dog with names, to gull him to a belief that | |
they have met before in happier circumstances! He appeals mutely to the | |
farmhouse that a recall be sounded. The windows are tightly curtained. The | |
heavens are comfortless. | |
You remember the fellow in the play who would have loved war had they not | |
digged villainous saltpetre from the harmless earth. The countryside, too, | |
in my opinion, would be more peaceful of a summer afternoon were it not | |
overrun with dogs. Let me be plain! I myself like dogs--sleepy dogs | |
blinking in the firelight, friendly dogs with wagging tails, young dogs in | |
their first puppyhood with their teeth scarce sprouted, whose jaws have not | |
yet burgeoned into danger, and old dogs, too, who sun themselves and give | |
forth hollow, toothless, reassuring sounds. When a dog assumes the cozy | |
habits of the cat without laying off his nobler nature, he is my friend. A | |
dog of vegetarian aspect pleases me. Let him bear a mild eye as though he | |
were nourished on the softer foods! I would wish every dog to have a full | |
complement of tail. It's the sure barometer of his warm regard. There's no | |
art to find his mind's construction in the face. And I would have him with | |
not too much curiosity. It's a quality that brings him too often to the | |
gate. It makes him prone to sniff when one sits upon a visit. Nor do I like | |
dogs addicted to sudden excitement. Lethargy becomes them better. Let them | |
be without the Gallic graces! In general, I like a dog to whom I have been | |
properly introduced, with an exchange of credentials. While the dog is by, | |
let his master take my hand and address me in softest tones, to cement the | |
understanding! At bench-shows I love the beasts, although I keep to the | |
middle of the aisle. The streets are all the safer when so many of the | |
creatures are kept within. | |
Frankly, I would enjoy the country more, if I knew that all the dogs were | |
away on visits. Of course, the highroad is quite safe. Its frequent traffic | |
is its insurance. Then, too, the barns are at such a distance, it is only a | |
monstrous anger can bring the dog. But if you are in need of direction you | |
select a friendly white house with green shutters. You swing open the gate | |
and crunch across the pebbles to the door. To the nearer eye there is a | |
look of "dog" about the place. Or maybe you are hot and thirsty, and there | |
is a well at the side of the house. Is it better to gird yourself to danger | |
or to put off your thirst until the crossroads where pop is sold? | |
Or a lane leads down to the river. Even at this distance you hear the | |
shallow brawl of water on the stones. A path goes off across a hill, with | |
trees beckoning at the top. There is a wind above and a wider sweep of | |
clouds. Surely, from the crest of the hill the whole county will lie before | |
you. Such tunes as come up from the world below--a school-bell, a rooster | |
crowing, children laughing on the road, a threshing machine on the lower | |
meadows--such tunes are pitched to a marvellous softness. Shall we follow | |
the hot pavement, or shall we dare those lonely stretches? | |
There is a kind of person who is steeped too much in valor. He will cross a | |
field although there is a dog inside the fence. Goodness knows that I would | |
rather keep to the highroad with such humility as shall not rouse the | |
creature. Or he will shout and whistle tunes that stir the dogs for miles. | |
He slashes his stick against the weeds as though in challenge. One might | |
think that he went about on unfeeling stalks instead of legs as children | |
walk on stilts, or that a former accident had clipped him off above the | |
knees and that he was now jointed out of wood to a point beyond the biting | |
limit. Or perhaps the clothes he wears beneath--the inner mesh and very | |
balbriggan of his attire--is of so hard a texture that it turns a tooth. Be | |
these defenses as they may, note with what bravado he mounts the wall! One | |
leg dangles as though it were baited and were angling for a bite. | |
There is a French village near Quebec whose population is chiefly dogs. | |
It lies along the river in a single street, not many miles from the point | |
where Wolfe climbed to the Plains of Abraham. There are a hundred houses | |
flat against the roadway and on the steps of each there sits a dog. As I | |
went through on foot, each of these dogs picked me up, examined me nasally | |
and passed me on, not generously as though I had stood the test, but rather | |
in deep suspicion that I was a queer fellow, not to be penetrated at first, | |
but one who would surely be found out and gobbled before coming to the | |
end of the street. As long as I would eventually furnish forth the common | |
banquet, it mattered not which dog took the first nip. Inasmuch as I would | |
at last be garnished for the general tooth, it would be better to wait | |
until all were gathered around the platter. "Good neighbor dog," each | |
seemed to say, "you too sniff upon the rogue! If he be honest, my old nose | |
is much at fault." Meantime I padded lightly through the village, at first | |
calling on the dogs by English names, but later using such wisps as I had | |
of French. "Aucassin, mon pauvre chien. Voici, Tintagiles, alors donc mon | |
cherie. Je suis votre ami," but with little effect. | |
But the dogs that one meets in the Canadian woods are of the fiercest | |
breed. They border on the wolf. They are called huskies and they are so | |
strong and so fleet of foot that they pull sleds for hours across the | |
frozen lakes at almost the speed of a running horse. It must be confessed | |
that they are handsome and if it happens to be your potato peelings and | |
discarded fish that they eat, they warm into friendliness. Indeed, on these | |
occasions, one can make quite a show of bravery by stroking and dealing | |
lightly with them. But once upon a time in an ignorant moment two other | |
campers and myself followed a lonely railroad track and struck off on a | |
path through the pines in search of a certain trapper on a fur farm. The | |
path went on a broken zigzag avoiding fallen trees and soft hollows, | |
conducting itself on the whole with more patience than firmness. We walked | |
a quarter of a mile, but still we saw no cabin. The line of the railroad | |
had long since disappeared. An eagle wheeled above us and quarrelled at our | |
intrusion. Presently to test our course and learn whether we were coming | |
near the cabin, we gave a shout. Immediately out of the deeper woods there | |
came a clamor that froze us. Such sounds, it seemed, could issue only from | |
bloody and dripping jaws. In a panic, as by a common impulse we turned and | |
ran. Yet we did not run frankly as when the circus lion is loose, but in a | |
shamefaced manner--an attempt at a retreat in good order--something between | |
a walk and a run. At the end of a hundred yards we stopped. No dogs had | |
fallen on us. Danger had not burst its kennel. We hallooed again, to rouse | |
the trapper. At last, after a minute of suspense, came his answering voice, | |
the sweetest sound to be imagined. Whereupon I came down from my high stump | |
which I had climbed for a longer view. | |
I am convinced that I am not alone in my--shall I say diffidence?--toward | |
dogs. Indeed, there is evidence from the oldest times that mankind, in its | |
more honest moments, has confessed to a fear of dogs. In recognition of | |
this general fear, the unmuzzled Cerberus was put at the gate of Hades. | |
It was rightly felt that when the unhappy pilgrims got within, his fifty | |
snapping heads were better than a bolt upon the door. It was better for | |
them to endure the ills they had, than be nipped in the upper passage. He, | |
also, who first spoke the ancient proverb, _Let sleeping dogs lie_, did no | |
more than voice the caution of the street. And he, also, who invented the | |
saying that the world is going to the bow-wows, lodged his deplorable | |
pessimism in fitting words. | |
It was Daniel who sat with the lions. But there are degrees of bravery. On | |
Long Street, within sight of my window--just where the street gets into its | |
most tangled traffic--there has hung for many years the painted signboard | |
of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old | |
age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's | |
name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below flames with color. | |
What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a | |
wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present Long Street. Such | |
mild-eyed, accumbent, sharp-ribbed horses as now infest the curb--mere | |
whittlings from a larger age--hang their heads at their degeneracy. Indeed, | |
these horses seem to their owners not to be worth the price of a nostrum. | |
If disease settles in them, let them lean against a post until the fit is | |
past! And of a consequence, the doctor's work has fallen off. It has | |
become a rare occasion when it is permitted him to stroke his chin in | |
contemplation of some inner palsy. Therefore to give his wisdom scope, | |
the doctor some time since announced the cellar of the building to be a | |
hospital for dogs. Must I press the analogy? I have seen the doctor with | |
bowl and spoon in hand take leave of the cheerful world. He opens the | |
cellar door. A curdling yelp comes up the stairs. In the abyss below there | |
are twenty dogs at least, all of them sick, all dangerous. Not since Orion | |
led his hunting pack across the heavens has there been so fierce a sound. | |
The door closes. There is a final yelp, such as greets a bone. Doubtless, | |
by this time, they are munching on the doctor. Good sir, had you lived in | |
pre-apostolic days, your name would have been lined with Daniel's in the | |
hymn. I might have spent my earliest treble in your praise. | |
But there are other kinds of dogs. Gentlest of readers, have you ever | |
passed a few days at Tunbridge Wells? It lies on one of the roads that run | |
from London to the Channel and for several hundred years persons have gone | |
there to take the waters against the more fashionable ailments. Its chief | |
fame was in the days when rich folk, to ward off for the season a touch of | |
ancestral gout, travelled down from London in their coaches. We may fancy | |
Lord Thingumdo crossing his sleek legs inside or putting his head to the | |
window on the change of horses. He has outriders and a horn to sound his | |
coming. His Lordship has a liver that must be mended, but also he has | |
a weakness for the gaming table. Or Lady Euphemia, wrapped in silks, | |
languishes mornings in her lodgings with a latest novel, but goes forth at | |
noon upon the Pantilles to shop in the stalls. A box of patches must be | |
bought. A lace flounce has caught her eye. Bless her dear eyes, as she | |
bends upon her purchase she is fair to look upon. The Grand Rout is set for | |
tonight. Who knows but that the Duke will put the tender question and will | |
ask her to name the happy day? | |
But these golden days are past. Tunbridge Wells has sunk from fashion. The | |
gaming tables are gone. A band still plays mornings in the Pantilles--or | |
did so before the war--but cheaper gauds are offered in the shops. Emerald | |
brooches are fallen to paste. In all the season there is scarcely a single | |
demand for a diamond garter. If there were now a Rout, the only dancers | |
would be stiff shadows from the past. The healing waters still trickle from | |
the ground and an old woman serves you for a penny, but the miracle has | |
gone. The old world is cured and dead. | |
Tunbridge Wells is visited now chiefly by old ladies whose husbands--to | |
judge by the black lace caps--have left Lombard Street for heaven. At the | |
hotel where I stopped, which was at the top of the Commons outside the | |
thicker town, I was the only man in the breakfast room. Two widows, each | |
with a tiny dog on a chair beside her, sat at the next table. This was | |
their conversation: | |
"Did you hear her last night?" | |
"Was it Flossie that I heard?" | |
"Yes. The poor dear was awake all night. She got her feet wet yesterday | |
when I let her run upon the grass." | |
But after breakfast--if the day is sunny and the wind sits in a favoring | |
quarter--one by one the widows go forth in their chairs. These are wicker | |
contrivances that hang between three wheels. Burros pull them, and men walk | |
alongside to hold their bridles. Down comes the widow. Down comes a maid | |
with her wraps. Down comes a maid with Flossie. The wraps are adjusted. The | |
widow is handed in. Her feet are wound around with comforters against a | |
draft. Her salts rest in her lap. Her ample bag of knitting is safe aboard. | |
Flossie is placed beside her. Proot! The donkey starts. | |
All morning the widow sits in the Pantilles and listens to the band and | |
knits. Flossie sits on the flagging at her feet with an intent eye upon the | |
ball of worsted. Twice in a morning--three times if the gods are kind--the | |
ball rolls to the pavement. Flossie has been waiting so long for this | |
to happen. It is the bright moment of her life--the point and peak of | |
happiness. She darts upon it. She paws it exultantly for a moment. Brief is | |
the rainbow and brief the Borealis. The finger of Time is swift. | |
The poppy blooms and fades. The maid captures the ball of worsted and | |
restores it. | |
It lies in the widow's lap. The band plays. The needles click to a long | |
tune. The healing waters trickle from the ground. The old woman whines | |
their merits. Flossie sits motionless, her head cocked and her eye upon the | |
ball. Perhaps the god of puppies will again be good to her. | |
ROADS OF MORNING | |
My grandfather's farm lay somewhere this side of the sunset, so near that | |
its pastures barely missed the splash of color. But from the city it was a | |
two hours' journey by horse and phaeton. My grandfather drove. I sat next, | |
my feet swinging clear of the lunchbox. My brother had the outside, a place | |
denied to me for fear that I might fall across the wheel. When we were | |
all set, my mother made a last dab at my nose--an unheeded smudge having | |
escaped my vigilance. Then my grandfather said, "Get up,"--twice, for the | |
lazy horse chose to regard the first summons as a jest. We start. The great | |
wheels turn. My brother leans across the guard to view the miracle. We | |
crunch the gravel. We are alive for excitement. My brother plays we are | |
a steamboat and toots. I toot in imitation, but higher up as if I were a | |
younger sort of steamboat. We hold our hands on an imaginary wheel and | |
steer. We scorn grocery carts and all such harbor craft. We are on a long | |
cruise. Street lights will guide us sailing home. | |
Of course there were farms to the south of the city and apples may have | |
ripened there to as fine a flavor, and to the east, also, doubtless there | |
were farms. It would be asking too much that the west should have all the | |
haystacks, cherry trees and cheese houses. If your judgment skimmed upon | |
the surface, you would even have found the advantage with the south. It was | |
prettier because more rolling. It was shaggier. The country to the south | |
tipped up to the hills, so sharply in places that it might have made its | |
living by collecting nickels for the slide. Indeed, one might think that a | |
part of the city had come bouncing down the <DW72>, for now it lay resting | |
at the bottom, sprawled somewhat for its ease. Or it might appear--if your | |
belief runs on discarded lines--that the whole flat-bottomed earth had been | |
fouled in its celestial course and now lay aslant upon its beam with its | |
cargo shifted and spilled about. | |
The city streets that led to the south, which in those days ended in lanes, | |
popped out of sight abruptly at the top of the first ridge. And when the | |
earth caught up again with their level, already it was dim and purple and | |
tall trees were no more than a roughened hedge. But what lay beyond that | |
range of hills--what towns and cities--what oceans and forests--how beset | |
with adventure--how fearful after dark--these things you could not see, | |
even if you climbed to some high place and strained yourself on tiptoe. And | |
if you walked from breakfast to lunch--until you gnawed within and were but | |
a hollow drum--there would still be a higher range against the sky. There | |
are misty kingdoms on this whirling earth, but the ways are long and steep. | |
The lake lay to the north with no land beyond, the city to the east. But to | |
the west-- | |
Several miles outside the city as it then was, and still beyond its | |
clutches, the country was cut by a winding river bottom with sharp edges of | |
shale. Down this valley Rocky River came brawling in the spring, over-fed | |
and quarrelsome. Later in the year--its youthful appetite having caught an | |
indigestion--it shrunk and wasted to a shadow. By August you could cross it | |
on the stones. The uproar of its former flood was marked upon the shale and | |
trunks of trees here and there were wedged, but now the river plays drowsy | |
tunes upon the stones. There is scarcely enough movement of water to flick | |
the sunlight. A leaf on its idle current is a lazy craft whose skipper | |
nods. There were hickory trees on the point above. May-apples grew in the | |
deep woods, and blackberries along the fences. And in the season sober | |
horses plowed up and down the fields with nodding heads, affirming their | |
belief in the goodness of the soil and their willingness to help in its | |
fruition. | |
Yet the very core of this valley in days past was a certain depth of water | |
at a turn of the stream. There was a clay bank above it and on it small | |
naked boys stood and daubed themselves. One of them put a band of clay | |
about himself by way of decoration. Another, by a more general smudge, made | |
himself a Hottentot and thereby gave his manners a wider scope and license. | |
But by daubing yourself entire you became an Indian and might vent yourself | |
in hideous yells, for it was amazing how the lungs grew stouter when the | |
clay was laid on thick. Then you tapped your flattened palm rapidly against | |
your mouth and released an intermittent uproar in order that the valley | |
might he warned of the deviltry to come. You circled round and round and | |
beat upon the ground in the likeness of a war dance. But at last, sated | |
with scalps, off you dived into the pool and came up a white man. Finally, | |
you stood on one leg and jounced the water from your ear, or pulled a | |
bloodsucker from your toes before he sapped your life--for this tiny | |
creature of the rocks was credited with the gift of prodigious inflation, | |
and might inhale you, blood, sinews, suspenders and all, if left to his | |
ugly purpose. | |
Farms should not be too precisely located; at least this is true of farms | |
which, like my grandfather's, hang in a mist of memory. I read once of a | |
wonderful spot--quite inferior, doubtless, to my grandfather's farm--which | |
was located by evil directions intentionally to throw a seeker off. | |
Munchausen, you will recall, in the placing of his magic countries, was not | |
above this agreeable villainy. Robinson Crusoe was loose and vague in the | |
placing of his island. It is said that Izaak Walton waved a hand obscurely | |
toward the stream where he had made a catch, but could not be cornered to a | |
nice direction, lest his pool be overrun. In early youth, I myself went, on | |
a mischievous hint, to explore a remote region which I was told lay in the | |
dark behind the kindling pile. But because I moved in a fearful darkness, | |
quite beyond the pale light from the furnace room, I lost the path. It did | |
not lead me to the peaks and the roaring waters. | |
But the farm was reached by more open methods. Dolly and the phaeton were | |
the chief instruments. First--if you were so sunk in ignorance as not to | |
know the road--you inquired of everybody for the chewing gum factory, to be | |
known by its smell of peppermint. Then you sought the high bridge over the | |
railroad tracks. Beyond was Kamm's Corners. Here, at a turn of the road, | |
was a general store whose shelves sampled the produce of this whole fair | |
world and the factories thereof. One might have thought that the proprietor | |
emulated Noah at the flood by bidding two of each created things to find a | |
place inside. | |
Beyond Kamm's Corners you came to the great valley. When almost down the | |
hill you passed a house with broken windows and unkept grass. This house, | |
by report, was haunted, but you could laugh at such tales while the morning | |
sun was up. At the bottom of the hill a bridge crossed the river, with | |
loose planking that rattled as though the man who made nails was dead. | |
Beyond the bridge, at the first rise of ground, the horse stopped--for I | |
assume that you drove a sagacious animal--by way of hint that every one | |
of sound limb get out and walk to the top of the hill. A suspicious horse | |
turned his head now and again and cast his eye upon the buggy to be sure | |
that no one climbed in again. | |
Presently you came to the toll-gate at the top and paid its keeper five | |
cents, or whatever large sum he demanded. Then your grandfather--if by | |
fortunate chance you happened to have one--asked after his wife and | |
children, and had they missed the croup; then told him his corn was looking | |
well. | |
My grandfather--for it is time you knew him--lived with us. Because of a | |
railway accident fifteen years before in which one of his legs was cut off | |
just below the knee, he had retired from public office. Several years of | |
broken health had been followed by years that were for the most part free | |
from suffering. My own first recollection reverts to these better years. | |
I recall a tall man--to my eyes a giant, for he was taller even than my | |
father--who came into the nursery as I was being undressed. There was a | |
wind in the chimney, and the windows rattled. He put his crutches against | |
the wall. Then taking me in his arms, he swung me aloft to his shoulder | |
by a series of somersaults. I cried this first time, but later I came to | |
demand the performance. | |
Once, when I was a little older, I came upon one of his discarded wooden | |
legs as I was playing in the garret of the house. It was my first | |
acquaintance with such a contrivance. It lay behind a pile of trunks and I | |
was, at the time, on my way to the center of the earth, for the cheerful | |
path dove into darkness behind the chimney. You may imagine my surprise. I | |
approached it cautiously. I viewed it from all sides by such dusty light as | |
fell between the trunks. Not without fear I touched it. It was unmistakably | |
a leg--but whose? Was it possible that there was a kind of Bluebeard in the | |
family, who, for his pleasure, lopped off legs? There had been no breath of | |
such a scandal. Yet, if my reading and studies were correct, such things | |
had happened in other families not very different from ours; not in our own | |
town maybe, but in such near-by places as Kandahar and Serendib--places | |
which in my warm regard were but as suburbs to our street, to be gained if | |
you persevered for a hundred lamp-posts. Or could the leg belong to Annie | |
the cook? Her nimbleness with griddle-cakes belied the thought: And once, | |
when the wind had swished her skirts, manifestly she was whole and sound. | |
Then all at once I knew it to be my grandfather's. Grown familiar, I pulled | |
it to the window. I tried it on, but made bad work of walking. | |
To the eye my grandfather had two legs all the way down and, except for | |
his crutches and an occasional squeak, you would not have detected his | |
infirmity. Evidently the maker did no more than imitate nature, although, | |
for myself, I used to wonder at the poverty of his invention. There would | |
be distinction in a leg, which in addition to its usual functions, would | |
also bend forward at the knee, or had a surprising sidewise joint--and | |
there would be profit, too, if one cared to make a show of it. The greatest | |
niggard on the street would pay two pins for such a sight. | |
As my grandfather was the only old gentleman of my acquaintance, a wooden | |
leg seemed the natural and suitable accompaniment of old age. Persons, it | |
appeared, in their riper years, cast off a leg, as trees dropped their | |
leaves. But my grandmother puzzled me. Undeniably she retained both of | |
hers, yet her hair was just as white, and she was almost as old. Evidently | |
this law of nature worked only with men. Ladies, it seemed, were not | |
deciduous. But how the amputation was effected in men--whether by day or | |
night--how the choice fell between the right and left--whether the wooden | |
leg came down the chimney (a proper entrance)--how soon my father would go | |
the way of all masculine flesh and cast his off--these matters I could not | |
solve. The Arabian Nights were silent on the subject. Aladdin's uncle, | |
apparently, had both his legs. He was too brisk in villainy to admit a | |
wooden leg. But then, he was only an uncle. If his history ran out to the | |
end, doubtless he would go with a limp in his riper days. The story of the | |
Bible--although it trafficked in such veterans as Methuselah--gave not a | |
hint. Abraham died full of years. Here would have been a proper test--but | |
the book was silent. | |
My grandfather in those days had much leisure time. He still kept an office | |
at the rear of the house, although he had given up the regular practice | |
of the law. But a few old clients lingered on, chiefly women who carried | |
children in their arms and old men without neckties who came to him for | |
free advice. These he guided patiently in their troubles, and he would sit | |
an hour to listen to a piteous story. In an extremity he gave them money, | |
or took a well-meant but worthless note. Often his callers overran the | |
dinner hour and my mother would have to jingle the dinner bell at the door | |
to rouse them. Occasionally he would be called on for a public speech, and | |
for several days he would be busy at his desk. Frequently he presided at | |
dinners and would tell a story and sing a song, for he had a fine bass | |
voice and was famous for his singing. | |
He read much in those last years in science. When he was not reading | |
Trowbridge to his grandchildren, it was Huxley to himself. But when his | |
eyes grew tired, he would on an occasion--if there was canning in the | |
house--go into the kitchen where my mother and grandmother worked, and help | |
pare the fruit. Seriously, as though he were engaged upon a game, he would | |
cut the skin into thinnest strips, unbroken to the end, and would hold up | |
the coil for us to see. Or if he broke it in the cutting it was a point | |
against him in the contest. | |
His diversion rather than his profit was the care and rental of about | |
twenty small houses, some of which he built to fit his pensioners. My | |
brother and myself often made the rounds with him in the phaeton. At most | |
of the houses he was affectionately greeted as "Jedge" and was held in long | |
conversations across the fence. And to see an Irishman was to see a friend. | |
They all knew him and said, "Good mornin'," as we passed. He and they were | |
good Democrats together. | |
I can see in memory a certain old Irishman in a red flannel shirt, with his | |
foot upon the hub, bending across the wheel and gesticulating in an endless | |
discussion of politics or crops, while my brother and I were impatient to | |
be off. Dolly was of course patient, for she had long since passed her | |
fretful youth. If by any biological chance it had happened that she had | |
been an old lady instead of a horse, she would have been the kind that | |
spent her day in a rocker with her knitting. Any one who gave Dolly an | |
excuse for standing was her friend. There she stood as though she wished | |
the colloquy to last forever. | |
It was seldom that Dolly lost her restraint. She would, indeed, when she | |
came near the stable, somewhat hasten her stride; and when we came on our | |
drives to the turning point and at last headed about for home, Dolly would | |
know it and show her knowledge by a quickening of the ears and the quiver | |
of a faint excitement. Yet Dolly lost her patience when there were flies. | |
Then she threw off all repression and so waved her tail that she regularly | |
got it across the reins. This stirred my grandfather to something not | |
far short of anger. How vigorously would he try to dislodge the reins | |
by pulling and jerking! Dolly only clamped down her tail the harder. | |
Experience showed that the only way was to go slowly and craftily and | |
without heat or temper--a slackening of the reins--a distraction of Dolly's | |
attention--a leaning across the dashboard--a firm grasping of the tail out | |
near the end--a sudden raising thereof. Ah! It was done. We all settled | |
back against the cushions. Or perhaps a friendly fly would come to our | |
assistance and Dolly would have to use her tail in another direction. | |
The whip was seldom used. Generally it stood in its socket. It was | |
ornamental like a flagstaff. It forgot its sterner functions. But Dolly | |
must have known the whip in some former life, for even a gesture toward the | |
socket roused her. If it was rattled she mended her pace for a block. But | |
if on a rare occasion my grandfather took it in his hand, Dolly lay one ear | |
back in our direction, for she knew then he meant business. And what an | |
excitement would arise in the phaeton! We held on tight for fear that she | |
might take it into her mild old head to run away. | |
But Dolly had her moments. One sunny summer afternoon while she grazed | |
peacefully in the orchard, with her reins wound around the whip handle--the | |
appropriate place on these occasions--she was evidently stung by a bee. My | |
brother was at the time regaling himself in a near-by blackberry thicket. | |
He looked up at an unusual sound. Without warning, Dolly had leaped to | |
action and was tearing around the orchard dragging the phaeton behind | |
her. She wrecked the top on a low hanging branch, then hit another tree, | |
severing thereby all connection between herself and the phaeton, and at | |
last galloped down the lane to the farm house, with the broken shafts and | |
harness dangling behind her. Kipling's dun "with the mouth of a bell and | |
the heart of Hell and the head of the gallows-tree," could hardly have | |
shown more spirit. It was as though one brief minute of a glorious youth | |
had come back to her. It was a last spurting of an old flame before it sunk | |
to ash. | |
My grandfather gave his leisure to his grandchildren. He carved for us with | |
his knife, with an especial knack for willow whistles. He showed us the | |
colors that lay upon the world when we looked at it through one of the | |
glass pendants of the parlor chandelier. He sat by us when we played | |
duck-on-the-rock. He helped us with our kites and gave a superintendence to | |
our toys. It is true that he was superficial with tin-tags and did not know | |
the difference in value between a Steam Engine tag--the rarest of them | |
all--and a common Climax, but we forgave him as one forgives a friend who | |
is ignorant of Persian pottery. He employed us as gardeners and put a | |
bounty on weeds. We watered the lawn together, turn by turn. When I was | |
no more than four years old, he taught us to play casino with him--and | |
afterwards bezique. How he cried out if he got a royal sequence! With what | |
excitement he announced a double bezique! Or if one of us seemed about to | |
score and lacked but a single card, how intently he contended for the last | |
few tricks to thwart our declaration! And if we got it despite his lead | |
of aces, how gravely he squinted on the cards against deception, with his | |
glasses forward on his nose! | |
When he took his afternoon nap and lay upon his back on the sofa in the | |
sitting-room, we made paper pin-wheels to see whether his breath would | |
stir them. This trick having come to his notice by a sudden awakening, he | |
sometimes thereafter played to be asleep and snored in such a mighty gust | |
that the wheels spun. He was like a Dutch tempest against a windmill. | |
If a Dime Museum came to town we made an afternoon of it. He took us to all | |
the circuses and gave us our choice of side-shows. We walked up and | |
down before the stretches of painted canvas, balancing in our desire a | |
sword-swallower against an Indian Princess. Most of the fat women and all | |
the dwarfs that I have known came to my acquaintance when in company with | |
my grandfather. As a young man, it was said, he once ran away from home to | |
join a circus as an acrobat, having acquired the trick of leaping upon a | |
running horse. I fancy that his knack of throwing us to his shoulder by a | |
double somersault was a recollection of his early days. You may imagine | |
with what awe we looked on him even though he now went on crutches. He was | |
the epitome of adventure, the very salt of excitement. It was better having | |
him than a pirate in the house. When the circus had gone and life was drab, | |
he was our tutor in the art of turning cart-wheels and making hand-stands | |
against the door. | |
And once, when we were away from him, he walked all morning about the | |
garden and in his loneliness he gathered into piles the pebbles that we had | |
dropped. | |
I was too young to know my grandfather in his active days when he was | |
prominent in public matters. His broader abilities are known to others. But | |
though more than twenty years have passed since his death, I remember his | |
tone of voice, his walk, his way of handling a crutch, all his tricks of | |
speech and conduct as though he had just left the room. And I can think of | |
nothing more beautiful than that a useful man who has faced the world for | |
seventy years and has done his part, should come back in his old age to the | |
nursery and be the playfellow of his grandchildren. | |
But the best holiday was a trip to the farm. | |
This farm--to which in our slow trot we have been so long a time in | |
coming--lay for a mile on the upper land, and its grain fields and pastures | |
looked down into the valley. The buildings, however, were set close to the | |
road and fixed their interest on such occasional wagons as creaked by. A | |
Switzer occupied the farm, who owned, in addition to the more immediate | |
members of his family, a cuckoo clock whose weights hung on long cords | |
which by Saturday night reached almost to the floor. When I have sat at his | |
table, I have neglected cheese and the lesser foods, when the hour came | |
near, in order not to miss the cuckoo's popping out. And in the duller | |
spaces, when the door was shut, I have fancied it sitting in the dark and | |
counting the minutes to itself. | |
The Switzer's specialty was the making of a kind of rubber cheese which one | |
could learn to like in time. Of the processes of its composition, I can | |
remember nothing except that when it was in the great press the whey ran | |
from its sides, but this may be common to all cheeses. I was once given a | |
cup of this whey to drink and I brightened, for until it was in my mouth, | |
I thought it was buttermilk. Beyond was the spring-house with cans of milk | |
set in the cool water and with a trickling sound beneath the boards. From | |
the spring-house there started those mysterious cow-paths that led down | |
into the great gorge that cut the farm. Here were places so deep that only | |
a bit of the sky showed and here the stones were damp. It was a place that | |
seemed to lie nearer to the confusion when the world was made, and rocks | |
lay piled as though a first purpose had been broken off. And to follow a | |
cow-path, regardless of where it led, was, in those days, the essence of | |
hazard; though all the while from the pastures up above there came the flat | |
safe tinkling of the bells. | |
The apple orchard--where Dolly was stung by the bee--was set on a fine | |
breezy place at the brow of the hill with the valley in full sight. The | |
trees themselves were old and decayed, but they were gnarled and crotched | |
for easy climbing. And the apples--in particular a russet--mounted to a | |
delicacy. On the other side of the valley, a half mile off as a bird would | |
fly, were the buildings of a convent, and if you waited you might hear | |
the twilight bell. To this day all distant bells come to my ears with a | |
pleasing softness, as though they had been cast in a quieter world. Stone | |
arrow-heads were found in a near-by field as often as the farmer turned up | |
the soil in plowing. And because of this, a long finger of land that put | |
off to the valley, was called Indian Point. Here, with an arm for pillow, | |
one might lie for a long hour on a sunny morning and watch the shadows of | |
clouds move across the lowland. A rooster crows somewhere far off--surely | |
of all sounds the drowsiest. A horse in a field below lifts up its head and | |
neighs. The leaves practice a sleepy tune. If one has the fortune to keep | |
awake, here he may lie and think the thoughts that are born of sun and | |
wind. | |
And now, although it is not yet noon, hunger rages in us. The pancakes, the | |
syrup, the toast and the other incidents of breakfast have disappeared | |
the way the rabbit vanishes when the magician waves his hand. The horrid | |
Polyphemus did not so crave his food. And as yet there is no comforting | |
sniff from the kitchen. Scrubbing and other secular matters engage the | |
farmer's wife. There is as yet not a faintest gurgle in the kettle. | |
To divert ourselves, we climb three trees and fall out of one. Is twelve | |
o'clock never to come? Have Time and the Hour grown stagnant? We eat apples | |
and throw the cores at the pig to hear him grunt. Is the great round sun | |
stuck? Have the days of Joshua come again? We walk a rail fence. Is it not | |
yet noon? Shrewsbury clock itself--reputed by scholars the slowest of all | |
possible clocks--could not so hold off. I snag myself--but it is nothing | |
that shows when I sit. | |
Ah! At last! My grandfather is calling from the house. We run back and | |
find that the lunch is ready and is laid upon a table with a red oil-cloth | |
cover. We apply ourselves. Silence.... | |
The journey home started about five o'clock. There was one game we always | |
played. Each of us, having wisely squinted at the sky, made a reckoning and | |
guessed where we would be when the sun set. My grandfather might say the | |
high bridge. I named the Sherman House. But my brother, being precise, | |
judged it to a fraction of a telegraph pole. Beyond a certain turn--did we | |
remember?--well, it would be exactly sixteen telegraph poles further on. | |
What an excitement there was when the sun's lower rim was already below the | |
horizon! We stood on our knees and looked through the little window at | |
the back of the phaeton. With what suspicion we regarded my grandfather's | |
driving! Or if Dolly lagged, did it not raise a thought that she, too, was | |
in the plot against us? The sun sets. We cry out the victor. | |
The sky flames with color. Then deadens in the east. The dusk is falling. | |
The roads grow dark. Where run the roads of night? While there is light, | |
you can see the course they keep across the country--the dust of horses' | |
feet--a bridge--a vagrant winding on a hill beyond. All day long they are | |
busy with the feet of men and women and children shouting. Then twilight | |
comes, and the roads lead home to supper and the curling smoke above the | |
roof. But at night where run the roads? It's dark beyond the candle's | |
flare--where run the roads of night. | |
My brother and I have become sleepy. We lop over against my grandfather-- | |
We awake with a start. There is a gayly lighted horse-car jingling beside | |
us. The street lights show us into harbor. We are home at last. | |
The Man Of Grub Street Comes From His Garret | |
I have come to live this winter in New York City and by good fortune I | |
have found rooms on a pleasant park. This park, which is but one block in | |
extent, is so set off from the thoroughfares that it bears chiefly the | |
traffic that is proper to the place itself. Grocery carts jog around and | |
throw out their wares. Laundry wagons are astir. A little fat tailor on an | |
occasion carries in an armful of newly pressed clothing with suspenders | |
hanging. Dogs are taken out to walk but are held in leash, lest a taste of | |
liberty spoil them for an indoor life. The center of the park is laid out | |
with grass and trees and pebbled paths, and about it is a high iron fence. | |
Each house has a key to the enclosure. Such social infection, therefore, as | |
gets inside the gates is of our own breeding. In the sunny hours nurses and | |
children air themselves in this grass plot. Here a gayly painted wooden | |
velocipede is in fashion. At this minute there are several pairs of fat | |
legs a-straddle this contrivance. It is a velocipede as it was first made, | |
without pedals. Beau Brummel--for the velocipede dates back to him--may | |
have walked forth to take the waters at Tunbridge Wells on a vehicle not | |
far different, but built to his greater stature. There is also a trickle | |
of drays and wagons across the park--a mere leakage from the streets, as | |
though the near-by traffic in the pressure had burst its pipes. But only at | |
morning and night when the city collects or discharges its people, are the | |
sidewalks filled. Then for a half hour the nozzle of the city plays a full | |
stream on us. | |
The park seems to be freer and more natural than the streets outside. A man | |
goes by gesticulating as though he practiced for a speech. A woman adjusts | |
her stocking on the coping below the fence with the freedom of a country | |
road. A street sweeper, patched to his office, tunes his slow work to fit | |
the quiet surroundings. Boys skate by or cut swirls upon the pavement in | |
the privilege of a playground. | |
My work--if anything so pleasant and unforced can carry the name--is | |
done at a window that overlooks this park. Were it not for several high | |
buildings in my sight I might fancy that I lived in one of the older | |
squares of London. There is a look of Thackeray about the place as though | |
the Osbornes might be my neighbors. A fat man who waddles off his steps | |
opposite, if he would submit to a change of coat, might be Jos Sedley | |
starting for his club to eat his chutney. If only there were a crest above | |
my bell-pull I might even expect Becky Sharp in for tea. Or occasionally I | |
divert myself with the fancy that I am of a still older day and that I have | |
walked in from Lichfield--I choose the name at hazard--with a tragedy in my | |
pocket, to try my fortune. Were it not for the fashion of dress in the park | |
below and some remnant of reason in myself, I could, in a winking moment, | |
persuade myself that my room is a garret and my pen a quill. On such | |
delusion, before I issued on the street to seek my coffee-house, I would | |
adjust my wig and dust myself of snuff. | |
But for my exercise and recreation--which for a man of Grub Street is | |
necessary in the early hours of afternoon when the morning fires have | |
fallen--I go outside the park. I have a wide choice for my wanderings. I | |
may go into the district to the east and watch the children play against | |
the curb. If they pitch pennies on the walk I am careful to go about, for | |
fear that I distract the throw. Or if the stones are marked for hop-scotch, | |
I squeeze along the wall. It is my intention--from which as yet my | |
diffidence withholds me--to present to the winner of one of these contests | |
a red apple which I shall select at a corner stand. Or an ice wagon pauses | |
in its round, and while the man is gone there is a pleasant thieving of | |
bits of ice. Each dirty cheek is stuffed as though a plague of mumps had | |
fallen on the street. Or there may be a game of baseball--a scampering | |
on the bases, a home-run down the gutter--to engage me for an inning. | |
Or shinny grips the street. But if a street organ comes--not a mournful | |
one-legged box eked out with a monkey, but a big machine with an extra man | |
to pull--the children leave their games. It was but the other day that I | |
saw six of them together dancing on the pavement to the music, with skirts | |
and pigtails flying. There was such gladness in their faces that the | |
musician, although he already had his nickel, gave them an extra tune. It | |
was of such persuasive gayety that the number of dancers at once went up to | |
ten and others wiggled to the rhythm. And for myself, although I am past my | |
sportive days, the sound of a street organ, if any, would inflame me to a | |
fox-trot. Even a surly tune--if the handle be quickened--comes from the box | |
with a brisk seduction. If a dirge once got inside, it would fret until it | |
came out a dancing measure. | |
In this part of town, on the better streets, I sometimes study the fashions | |
as I see them in the shops and I compare them with those of uptown stores. | |
Nor is there the difference one might suppose. The small round muff that | |
sprang up this winter in the smarter shops won by only a week over the | |
cheaper stores. Tan gaiters ran a pretty race. And I am now witness to | |
a dead heat in a certain kind of fluffy rosebud dress. The fabrics are | |
probably different, but no matter how you deny it, they are cut to a common | |
pattern. | |
In a poorer part of the city still nearer to the East River, where | |
smells of garlic and worse issue from cellarways, I came recently on | |
a considerable park. It was supplied with swings and teeters and drew | |
children on its four fronts. Of a consequence the children of many races | |
played together. I caught a Yiddish answer to an Italian question. I fancy | |
that a child here could go forth at breakfast wholly a Hungarian and come | |
home with a smack of Russian or Armenian added. The general games that | |
merged the smaller groups, aided in the fusion. If this park is not already | |
named--a small chance, for it shows the marks of age--it might properly be | |
called _The Park of the Thirty Nations_. | |
Or my inclination may take me to the lower city. Like a poor starveling | |
I wander in the haunts of wealth where the buildings are piled to forty | |
stories, and I spin out the ciphers in my brain in an endeavor to compute | |
the amount that is laid up inside. Also, lest I become discontented with my | |
poverty, I note the strain and worry of the faces that I meet. There is a | |
story of Tolstoi in which a man is whispered by his god that he may possess | |
such land as he can circle in a day. Until that time he had been living on | |
a fertile <DW72> of sun and shadow, with fields ample for his needs. But | |
when the whisper came, at a flash, he pelted off across the hills. He ran | |
all morning, but as the day advanced his sordid ambition broadened and he | |
turned his course into a wider and still wider circle. Here a pleasant | |
valley tempted him and he bent his path to bring it inside his mark. Here | |
a fruitful upland led him off. As the day wore on he ran with a greater | |
fierceness, because he knew he would lose everything if he did not reach | |
his starting place before the sun went down. The sun was coming near the | |
rim of earth when he toiled up the last hill. His feet were cut by stones, | |
his face pinched with agony. He staggered toward the goal and fell across | |
it while as yet there was a glint of light. But his effort burst his heart. | |
Does the analogy hold on these narrow streets? To a few who sit in an inner | |
office, Mammon has made a promise of wealth and domination. These few run | |
breathless to gain a mountain. But what have the gods whispered to the ten | |
thousand who sit in the outer office, that they bend and blink upon their | |
ledgers? Have the gods whispered to them the promise of great wealth? Alas, | |
before them there lies only the dust and heat of a level road, yet they too | |
are broken at the sunset. | |
Less oppressive are the streets where commerce is more apparent. Here, | |
unless you would be smirched, it is necessary to walk fast and hold your | |
coat-tails in. Packing cases are going down slides. Bales are coming up in | |
hoists. Barrels are rolling out of wagons. Crates are being lifted in. Is | |
the exchange never to stop? Is no warehouse satisfied with what it has? | |
English, which until now you judged a soft concordant language, shows here | |
its range and mastery of epithet. And all about, moving and jostling the | |
boxes, are men with hooks. One might think that in a former day Captain | |
Cuttle had settled here to live and that his numerous progeny had kept the | |
place. | |
Often I ride on a bus top like a maharajah on an elephant, up near the | |
tusks, as it were, where the view is unbroken. I plan this trip so that I | |
move counter to the procession that goes uptown in the late afternoon. Is | |
there a scene like it in the world? The boulevards of Paris in times of | |
peace are hardly so gay. Fifth Avenue is blocked with motor cars. Fashion | |
has gone forth to select a feather. A ringlet has gone awry and must be | |
mended. The Pomeranian's health is served by sunlight. The Spitz must have | |
an airing. Fashion has wagged its head upon a Chinese vase--has indeed | |
squinted at it through a lorgnette against a fleck--and now lolls home to | |
dinner. Or style has veered an inch, and it has been a day of fitting. At | |
restaurant windows one may see the feeding of the over-fed. Men sit in club | |
windows and still wear their silk hats as though there was no glass between | |
them and the windy world. Footmen in boots and breeches sit as stiffly as | |
though they were toys grown large and had metal spikes below to hold them | |
to their boxes. They look like the iron firemen that ride on nursery | |
fire-engines. For all these sights the bus top is the best place. | |
And although we sit on a modest roof, the shopkeepers cater to us. For in | |
many of the stores, is there not an upper tier of windows for our use? The | |
commodities of this second story are quite as fine as those below. And the | |
waxen beauties who display the frocks greet us in true democracy with as | |
sweet a simper. | |
My friend G---- while riding recently on a bus top met with an experience | |
for which he still blushes. | |
There was a young woman sitting directly in front of him, and when he came | |
to leave, a sudden lurch threw him against her. When he recovered his | |
footing, which was a business of some difficulty, for the bus pitched upon | |
a broken pavement, what was his chagrin to find that a front button of | |
his coat had hooked in her back hair! Luckily G---- was not seized with a | |
panic. Rather, he labored cautiously--but without result. Nor could | |
she help in the disentanglement. Their embarrassment might have been | |
indefinitely prolonged--indeed, G---- was several blocks already down the | |
street--when he bethought him of his knife and so cut off the button. As he | |
pleasantly expressed it to the young woman, he would give her the choice of | |
the button or the coat entire. | |
Reader, are you inclined toward ferry boats? I cannot include those persons | |
who journey on them night and morning perfunctorily. These persons keep | |
their noses in their papers or sit snugly in the cabin. If the market is | |
up, they can hardly be conscious even that they are crossing a river. | |
Nor do I entirely blame them. If one kept shop on a breezy tip of the | |
Delectable Mountains with all the regions of the world laid out below, | |
he could not be expected to climb up for the hundredth time with a first | |
exhilaration, or to swing his alpenstock as though he were on a rare | |
holiday. If one had business across the Styx too often--although the | |
scenery on its banks is reputed to be unusual--he might in time sit below | |
and take to yawning. Father Charon might have to jog his shoulder to rouse | |
him when the boat came between the further piers. | |
But are you one of those persons who, not being under a daily compulsion, | |
rides upon a ferry boat for the love of the trip? Being in this class | |
myself, I laid my case the other night before the gateman, and asked | |
his advice regarding routes. He at once entered sympathetically into my | |
distemper and gave me a plan whereby with but a single change of piers | |
I might at an expense of fourteen cents cross the river four times at | |
different angles. | |
It was at the end of day and a light fog rested on the water. Nothing was | |
entirely lost, yet a gray mystery wrapped the ships and buildings. If New | |
Jersey still existed it was dim and shadowy as though its real life had | |
gone and but a ghost remained. Ferry boats were lighted in defiance of the | |
murk, and darted here and there at reckless angles. An ocean liner was | |
putting out, and several tugs had rammed their noses against her sides. | |
There is something engaging about a tug. It snorts with eagerness. It kicks | |
and splashes. It bursts itself to lend a hand. And how it butts with its | |
nose! Surely its forward cartilages are of triple strength, else in its | |
zest it would jam its nasal passages. | |
Presently we came opposite lower New York. Although the fog concealed the | |
outlines of the buildings, their lights showed through. This first hour of | |
dark is best, before the day's work is done and while as yet all of the | |
windows are lighted. The Woolworth Tower was suffused in a soft and shadowy | |
light. The other buildings showed like mountains of magic pin-pricks. It | |
was as though all the constellations of heaven on a general bidding had met | |
for conference. | |
The man of Grub Street, having by this time somewhat dispelled the fumes of | |
dullness from his head, descends from his ferry boat and walks to his quiet | |
park. There is a dull roar from the elevated railway on Third Avenue where | |
the last of the day's crowd goes home. The sidewalks are becoming empty. | |
There is a sheen of water on the pavement. In the winter murk there is a | |
look of Thackeray about the place as though the Sedleys or the Osbornes | |
might be his neighbors. If there were a crest above his bell-pull he might | |
even expect Becky Sharp in for tea. | |
Now that Spring is here | |
When the sun set last night it was still winter. The persons who passed | |
northward in the dusk from the city's tumult thrust their hands deep into | |
their pockets and walked to a sharp measure. But a change came in the | |
night. The north wind fell off and a breeze blew up from the south. Such | |
stars as were abroad at dawn left off their shrill winter piping--if it be | |
true that stars really sing in their courses--and pitched their voices to | |
April tunes. One star in particular that hung low in the west until the day | |
was up, knew surely that the Spring had come and sang in concert with the | |
earliest birds. There is a dull belief that these early birds shake off | |
their sleep to get the worm. Rather, they come forth at this hour to cock | |
their ears upon the general heavens for such new tunes as the unfaded | |
stars still sing. If an ear is turned down to the rummage of worms in the | |
earth--for to the superficial, so does the attitude attest--it is only that | |
the other ear may be turned upward to catch the celestial harmonies; for | |
birds know that if there is an untried melody in heaven it will sound first | |
across the clear pastures of the dawn. All the chirping and whistling | |
from the fields and trees are then but the practice of the hour. When the | |
meadowlark sings on a fence-rail she but cons her lesson from the stars. | |
It is on such a bright Spring morning that the housewife, duster in hand, | |
throws open her parlor window and looks upon the street. A pleasant park is | |
below, of the size of a city square, and already it stirs with the day's | |
activity. The housewife beats her cloth upon the sill and as the dust flies | |
off, she hears the cries and noises of the place. In a clear tenor she | |
is admonished that there is an expert hereabouts to grind her knives. A | |
swarthy baritone on a wagon lifts up his voice in praise of radishes and | |
carrots. His eye roves along the windows. The crook of a hungry finger will | |
bring him to a stand. Or a junkman is below upon his business. Yesterday | |
the bells upon his cart would have sounded sour, but this morning they | |
rattle agreeably, as though a brisker cow than common, springtime in her | |
hoofs, were jangling to her pasture. At the sound--if you are of country | |
training--you see yourself, somewhat misty through the years, barefoot in a | |
grassy lane, with stick in hand, urging the gentle beast. There is a subtle | |
persuasion in the junkman's call. In these tones did the magician, bawling | |
for old lamps, beguile Aladdin. If there were this morning in my lodging an | |
unrubbed lamp, I would toss it from the window for such magic as he might | |
extract from it. And if a fair Princess should be missing at the noon and | |
her palace be skipped from sight, it will follow on the rubbing of it. | |
The call of red cherries in the park--as you might guess from its Italian | |
source--is set to an amorous tune. What lady, smocked in morning cambric, | |
would not be wooed by such a voice? The gay fellow tempts her to a | |
purchase. It is but a decent caution--now that Spring is here--that the | |
rascal does not call his wares by moonlight. As for early peas this | |
morning, it is Pan himself who peddles them--disguised and smirched lest | |
he be caught in the deception--Pan who stamps his foot and shakes the | |
thicket--whose habit is to sing with reedy voice of the green willows that | |
dip in sunny waters. Although he now clatters his tins and baskets and | |
cries out like a merchant, his thoughts run to the black earth and the | |
shady hollows and the sound of little streams. | |
I have wondered as I have observed the housewives lingering at their | |
windows--for my window also looks upon the park--I have wondered that these | |
melodious street cries are not used generally for calling the wares of | |
wider sale. If a radish can be so proclaimed, there might be a lilt devised | |
in praise of other pleasing merceries--a tripping pizzicato for laces and | |
frippery--a brave trumpeting for some newest cereal. And should not the | |
latest book--if it be a tale of love, for these I am told are best offered | |
to the public in the Spring (sad tales are best for winter)--should not a | |
tale of love be heralded through the city by the singing of a ballad, with | |
a melting tenor in the part? In old days a gaudy rogue cried out upon the | |
broader streets that jugglers had stretched their rope in the market-place, | |
but when the bears came to town, the news was piped even to the narrowest | |
lanes that house-folk might bring their pennies. | |
With my thoughts set on the Spring I chanced to walk recently where the | |
theatres are thickest. It was on a Saturday afternoon and the walk was | |
crowded with amusement seekers. Presently in the press I observed a queer | |
old fellow carrying on his back a monstrous pack of umbrellas. He rang | |
a bell monotonously and professed himself a mender of umbrellas. He can | |
hardly have expected to find a customer in the crowd. Even a blinking | |
eye--and these street merchants are shrewd in these matters--must have told | |
him that in all this hurrying mass of people, the thoughts of no one ran | |
toward umbrellas. Rather, I think that he was taking an hour from the | |
routine of the day. He had trod the profitable side streets until truantry | |
had taken him. But he still made a pretext of working at his job and called | |
his wares to ease his conscience from idleness. Once when an unusually | |
bright beam of sunlight fell from between the clouds, he tilted up his hat | |
to get the warmth and I thought him guilty of a skip and syncopation in the | |
ringing of his bell, as if he too twitched pleasantly with the Spring and | |
his old sap was stirred. | |
I like these persons who ply their trades upon the sidewalk. My hatter--the | |
fellow who cleans my straw hat each Spring--is a partner of a bootblack. | |
Over his head as he putters with his soap and brushes, there hangs a rusty | |
sign proclaiming that he is famous for his cleaning all round the world. He | |
is so modest in his looks that I have wondered whether he really can read | |
the sign. Or perhaps like a true merchant, he is not squeamish at the | |
praise. As I have not previously been aware that any of his profession ever | |
came to general fame except the Mad Hatter of Wonderland, I have squinted | |
sharply at him to see if by chance it might be he, but there are no marks | |
even of a distant kinship. He does, however, bring my hat to a marvellous | |
whiteness and it may be true that he has really tended heads that are now | |
gone beyond Constantinople. | |
Bootblacks have a sense of rhythm unparalleled. Of this the long rag is | |
their instrument. They draw it once or twice across the shoe to set the key | |
and then they go into a swift and pattering melody. If there is an unusual | |
genius in the bootblack--some remnant of ancient Greece--he plays such a | |
lively tune that one's shoulders jig to it. If there were a dryad or other | |
such nimble creature on the street, she would come leaping as though | |
Orpheus strummed a tune, but the dance is too fast for our languid northern | |
feet. | |
Nowhere are apples redder than on a cart. Our hearts go out to Adam in the | |
hour of his temptation. I know one lady of otherwise careful appetite who | |
even leans toward dates if she may buy them from a cart. "Those dear dirty | |
dates," she calls them, but I cannot share her liking for them. Although | |
the cart is a beguiling market, dates so bought are too dusty to be eaten. | |
They rank with the apple-john. The apple-john is that mysterious leathery | |
fruit, sold more often from a stand than from a cart, which leans at the | |
rear of the shelf against the peppermint jars. For myself, although I do | |
not eat apple-johns, I like to look at them. They are so shrivelled and so | |
flat, as though a banana had caught a consumption. Or rather, in the older | |
world was there not a custom at a death of sending fruits to support the | |
lonesome journey? If so, the apple-john came untasted to the end. Indeed, | |
there is a look of old Egypt about the fruit. Whether my fondness for | |
gazing at apple-johns springs from a distant occasion when as a child I | |
once bought and ate one, or whether it arises from the fact that Falstaff | |
called Prince Hal a dried apple-john, is an unsolved question, but I like | |
to linger before a particularly shrivelled one and wonder what its youth | |
was like. Perhaps like many of its betters, it remained unheralded and | |
unknown all through its fresher years and not until the coming of its | |
wrinkled age was it at last put up to the common view. The apple-john sets | |
up kinship with an author. | |
The day of all fools is wisely put in April. The jest of the day resides in | |
the success with which credulity is imposed upon, and April is the month of | |
easiest credulity. Let bragging travellers come in April and hold us with | |
tales of the Anthropopagi! If their heads are said to grow beneath their | |
shoulders, still we will turn a credent ear. Indeed, it is all but sure | |
that Baron Munchausen came back from his travels in the Spring. When | |
else could he have got an ear? What man can look upon the wonders of the | |
returning year--the first blue skies, the soft rains, the tender sproutings | |
of green stalks without feeling that there is nothing beyond belief? If | |
such miracles can happen before his eyes, shall not the extreme range even | |
of travel or metaphysics be allowed? What man who has smelled the first | |
fragrance of the earth, has heard the birds on their northern flight and | |
has seen an April brook upon its course, will withhold his credence even | |
though the jest be plain? | |
I beg, therefore, that when you walk upon the street on the next day of | |
April fool, that you yield to the occasion. If an urchin points his finger | |
at your hat, humor him by removing it! Look sharply at it for a supposed | |
defect! His glad shout will be your reward. Or if you are begged piteously | |
to lift a stand-pipe wrapped to the likeness of a bundle, even though you | |
sniff the imposture, seize upon it with a will! It is thus, beneath these | |
April skies, that you play your part in the pageantry that marks the day. | |
The Friendly Genii | |
Do you not confess yourself to be several years past that time of greenest | |
youth when burnt cork holds its greatest charm? Although not fallen to a | |
crippled state, are you not now too advanced to smudge your upper lip and | |
stalk agreeably as a villain? Surely you can no longer frisk lightly in | |
a comedy. If you should wheeze and limp in an old man's part, with back | |
humped in mimicry, would you not fear that it bordered on the truth? But | |
doubtless there was a time when you ranged upon these heights--when Kazrac | |
the magician was not too heavy for your art. In those soaring days, let us | |
hope that you played the villain with a swagger, or being cast in a softer | |
role, that you won a pink and fluffy princess before the play was done. | |
Your earliest practice, it may be, was in rigging the parlor hangings as a | |
curtain with brown string from the pantry and safety pins. Although you had | |
no show to offer, you said "ding" three times--as is the ancient custom of | |
the stage when the actors are ready--and drew them wide apart. The cat | |
was the audience, who dozed with an ear twitching toward your activity. A | |
complaint that springs up in youth and is known as "snuffles" had kept you | |
out of school. It had gripped you hard at breakfast, when you were sunk in | |
fear of your lessons, but had abated at nine o'clock. Whether the cure came | |
with a proper healing of the nasal glands or followed merely on the ringing | |
of the school bell, must be left to a cool judgment. | |
Your theatre filled the morning. When Annie came on her quest for dust, you | |
tooted once upon your nose, just to show that a remnant of your infirmity | |
persisted, then put your golden convalescence on the making of your | |
curtain. | |
But in the early hours of afternoon when the children are once more upon | |
the street, you regret your illness. Here they come trooping by threes and | |
fours, carrying their books tied up in straps. One would think that they | |
were in fear lest some impish fact might get outside the covers to spoil | |
the afternoon. Until the morrow let two and two think themselves five at | |
least! And let Ohio be bounded as it will! Some few children skip ropes, or | |
step carefully across the cracks of the sidewalk for fear they spoil their | |
suppers. Ah!--a bat goes by--a glove--a ball! And now from a vacant lot | |
there comes the clamor of choosing sides. Is no mention to be made of | |
you--you, "molasses fingers"--the star left fielder--the timely batter? | |
What would you not give now for a clean bill of health? You rub your | |
offending nose upon the glass. What matters it with what deep rascality in | |
black mustachios you once strutted upon your boards? What is Hecuba to you? | |
My own first theatre was in the attic, a place of squeaks and shadows | |
to all except the valiant. In it were low, dark corners where the night | |
crawled in and slept. But in the open part where the roof was highest, | |
there was the theatre. Its walls were made of a red cambric of a flowered | |
pattern that still lingers with me, and was bought with a clatter of | |
pennies on the counter, together with nickels that had escaped my | |
extravagance at the soda fountain. | |
A cousin and I were joint proprietors. In the making of it, the hammer and | |
nails were mine by right of sex, while she stitched in womanish fashion on | |
the fabrics. She was leading woman and I was either the hero or the villain | |
as fitted to my mood. My younger cousin--although we scorned her for her | |
youth--was admitted to the slighter parts. She might daub herself with | |
cork, but it must be only when we were done. Nor did we allow her to carry | |
the paper knife--shaped like a dagger--which figured hugely in our plots. | |
If we gave her any word to speak, it was as taffy to keep her silent about | |
some iniquity that we had worked against her. In general, we judged her to | |
be too green and giddy for the heavy parts. At the most, she might take | |
pins at the door--for at such a trifle we displayed our talents--or play | |
upon the comb as orchestra before the rising of the curtain. | |
The usual approach to this theatre was the kitchen door, and those who came | |
to enjoy the drama sniffed at their very entrance the new-baked bread. A | |
pan of cookies was set upon a shelf and a row of apples was ranged along | |
the window sill. Of the ice-box around the corner, not a word, lest hunger | |
lead you off! As for the cook, although her tongue was tart upon a just | |
occasion and although she shooed the children with her apron, secretly she | |
liked to have them crowding through her kitchen. | |
Now if you, reader--for I assume you to be one of the gathering | |
audience--were of the kind careful on scrubbing days to scrape your feet | |
upon the iron outside and to cross the kitchen on the unwashed parts, then | |
it is likely that you stood in the good graces of the cook. Mark your | |
reward! As you journeyed upward, you munched upon a cookie and bit scallops | |
in its edge. Or if a ravenous haste was in you--as commonly comes up in the | |
middle afternoon--you waived this slower method and crammed yourself with | |
a recklessness that bestrewed the purlieus of your mouth. If your ears lay | |
beyond the muss, the stowage was deemed decent and in order. | |
Is there not a story in which children are tracked by an ogre through the | |
perilous wood by the crumbs they dropped? Then let us hope there is no ogre | |
lurking on these back stairs, for the trail is plain. It would be near the | |
top, farthest from the friendly kitchen, that the attack might come, for | |
there the stairs yielded to the darkness of the attic. There it was best | |
to look sharp and to turn the corners wide. A brave whistling kept out the | |
other noises. | |
It was after Aladdin had been in town that the fires burned hottest in us. | |
My grandfather and I went together to the matinee, his great thumb within | |
my fist. We were frequent companions. Together we had sat on benches in the | |
park and poked the gravel into patterns. We went to Dime Museums. Although | |
his eyes had looked longer on the world than mine, we seemed of an equal | |
age. | |
The theatre was empty as we entered. We carried a bag of candy against a | |
sudden appetite--colt's foot, a penny to the stick. Here and there ushers | |
were clapping down the seats, sounds to my fancy not unlike the first corn | |
within a popper. Somewhere aloft there must have been a roof, else the day | |
would have spied in on us, yet it was lost in the gloom. It was as though | |
a thrifty owner had borrowed the dusky fabrics of the night to make his | |
cover. The curtain was indistinct, but we knew it to be the Stratford | |
Church and we dimly saw its spire. | |
Now, on the opening of a door to the upper gallery, there was a scampering | |
to get seats in front, speed being whetted by a long half hour of waiting | |
on the stairs. Ghostly, unbodied heads, like the luminous souls of lost | |
mountaineers--for this was the kind of fiction, got out of the Public | |
Library, that had come last beneath my thumb--ghostly heads looked down | |
upon us across the gallery rail. | |
And now, if you will tip back your head like a paper-hanger--whose Adam's | |
apple would seem to attest a life of sidereal contemplation--you will see | |
in the center of the murk above you a single point of light. It is the | |
spark that will ignite the great gas chandelier. I strain my neck to the | |
point of breaking. My grandfather strains his too, for it is a game between | |
us which shall announce the first spurting of the light. At last! We cry | |
out together. The spark catches the vent next to it. It runs around the | |
circle of glass pendants. The whole blazes up. The mountaineers come to | |
life. They lean forward on their elbows. | |
From the wings comes the tuning of the violins. A flute ripples up and down | |
in a care-free manner as though the villain Kazrac were already dead and | |
virtue had come into its own. The orchestra emerges from below. Their | |
calmness is but a pretense. Having looked on such sights as lie behind the | |
curtain, having trod such ways, they should be bubbling with excitement. | |
Yet observe the bass viol! How sodden is his eye! How sunken is his gaze! | |
With what dull routine he draws his bow, as though he knew naught but | |
sleepy tunes! If there be any genie in the place, as the program says, let | |
him first stir this sad fellow from his melancholy! | |
We consult our programs. The first scene is the magician's cave where he | |
plans his evil schemes. The second is the Chinese city where he pretends to | |
be Aladdin's uncle. And for myself, did a friendly old gentleman offer me | |
lollypops and all-day-suckers--for so did the glittering baubles present | |
themselves across the footlights--like Aladdin I, too, would not have | |
squinted too closely on his claim. Gladly I would have gone off with him on | |
an all-day picnic toward the Chinese mountains. | |
We see a lonely pass in the hills, the cave of jewels (splendid to the eye | |
of childhood) where the slave of the lamp first appears, and finally the | |
throne-room with Aladdin seated safely beside his princess. | |
Who knows how to dip a pen within the twilight? Who shall trace the figures | |
of the mist? The play is done. We come out in silence. Our candy is but a | |
remnant. Darkness has fallen. The pavements are wet and shining, so that | |
the night might see his face, if by chance the old fellow looked our way. | |
All about there are persons hurrying home with dinner-pails, who, by their | |
dull eyes, seem never to have heard what wonders follow on the rubbing of a | |
lamp. | |
But how the fires leaped up--how ambition beat within us--how our attic | |
theatre was wrought to perfection--how the play came off and wracked the | |
neighborhood of its pins--with what grace I myself acted Aladdin--these | |
things must be written by a vain and braggart pen. | |
Mr. Pepys Sits in the Pit | |
When it happens that a man has risen to be a member of Parliament, the | |
Secretary of the British Navy and the President of the Royal Society, when | |
he has become the adviser of the King and is moreover the one really bright | |
spot in that King's reign, it is amazing that considerably more than one | |
hundred years after his death, when the navy that he nurtured dominates the | |
seven seas, that he himself on a sudden should be known, not for his larger | |
accomplishments, but as a kind of tavern crony and pot-companion. When he | |
should be standing with fame secure in a solemn though dusty niche in the | |
Temple of Time, it is amazing that he should be remembered chiefly for | |
certain quarrels with his wife and as a frequenter of plays and summer | |
gardens. | |
Yet this is the fate of Samuel Pepys. Before the return of the Stuarts he | |
held a poor clerkship in the Navy Office and cut his quill obscurely at | |
the common desk. At the Restoration, partly by the boost of influence, but | |
chiefly by his substantial merit, he mounted to several successively higher | |
posts. The Prince of Wales became his friend and patron and when he became | |
Lord High Admiral he took Pepys with him in his advancement. Thus in 1684, | |
Pepys became Secretary of the Navy. When later the Prince of Wales became | |
King James II, Pepys, although his office remained the same, came to quite | |
a pinnacle of administrative power. He was shrewd and capable in the | |
conduct of his position and brought method to the Navy Office. He was a | |
prime factor in the first development of the British Navy. Later victories | |
that were to sweep the seas may be traced in part to him. Nelson rides upon | |
his shoulders. These achievements should have made his fame secure. But | |
on a sudden he gained for posterity a less dignified although a more | |
interesting and enduring renown. | |
In life, Samuel Pepys walked gravely in majestical robe with full-bottomed | |
wig and with ceremonial lace flapping at his wrists. Every step, if his | |
portrait is to be believed, was a bit of pageantry. Such was his fame, that | |
if his sword but clacked a warning on the pavement, it must have brought | |
the apprentices to the windows. Tradesmen laid down their wares to get a | |
look at him. Fat men puffed and strained to gain the advantage of a sill. | |
Fashionable ladies peeped from brocaded curtains and ogled for his regard. | |
Or if he went by chair, the carriers held their noses up as though offended | |
by the common air. When he spoke before the Commons, the galleries were | |
hushed. He gave his days to the signing of stiff parchments--Admiralty | |
Orders or what not. He checked the King himself at the council table. In | |
short, he was not only a great personage, but also he was quite well aware | |
of the fact and held himself accordingly. | |
But now many years have passed, and Time, that has so long been at bowls | |
with reputations, has acquired a moderate skill in knocking them down. Let | |
us see how it fares with Pepys! Some men who have been roguish in their | |
lives have been remembered by their higher accomplishments. A string | |
of sonnets or a novel or two, if it catches the fancy, has wiped out a | |
tap-room record. The winning of a battle has obliterated a meanly spent | |
youth. It is true that for a while an old housewife who once lived on the | |
hero's street will shake a dubious finger on his early pranks. Stolen | |
apples or cigarettes behind the barn cram her recollection. But even a | |
village reputation fades. In time the sonnets and glorious battle have the | |
upper place. But things went the other way with Pepys. Rather, his fate | |
is like that of Zeus, who--if legend is to be trusted--was in his life a | |
person of some importance whose nod stirred society on Olympus, but who is | |
now remembered largely for his flirtations and his braggart conduct. A not | |
unlike evil has fallen on the magnificent Mr. Pepys. | |
This fate came to him because--as the world knows--it happened that for | |
a period of ten years in comparative youth, he wrote an interesting and | |
honest diary. He began this diary in 1659, while he was still a poor clerk | |
living with his wife in a garret, and ended it in 1669, when, although he | |
had emerged from obscurity, his greater honors had not yet been set on him. | |
All the facts of his life during this period are put down, whether good or | |
bad, small or large, generous or mean. He writes of his mornings spent in | |
work at his office, of his consultations with higher officials. There | |
is much running to and fro of business. The Dutch war bulks to a proper | |
length. Parliament sits through a page at a stretch. Pepys goes upon the | |
streets in the days of the plague and writes the horror of it--the houses | |
marked with red crosses and with prayers scratched beneath--the stench and | |
the carrying of dead bodies. He sees the great fire of London from his | |
window on the night it starts; afterwards St. Paul's with its roofs fallen. | |
He is on the fleet that brings Charles home from his long travels, and | |
afterwards when Charles is crowned, he records the processions and the | |
crowds. But also Pepys quarrels with his wife and writes it out on paper. | |
He debauches a servant and makes a note of it. He describes a supper at an | |
ale-house, and how he plays on the flute. He sings "Beauty Retire," a song | |
of his own making, and tells how his listeners "cried it up." | |
In consequence of this, Samuel Pepys is now known chiefly for his | |
attentions to the pretty actresses of Drury Lane, for kissing Nell Gwynne | |
in her tiring-room, for his suppers with "the jade" Mrs. Knipp, for his | |
love of a tune upon the fiddle, for coming home from Vauxhall by wherry | |
late at night, "singing merrily" down the river. Or perhaps we recall him | |
best for burying his wine and Parmazan cheese in his garden at the time | |
of the Fire, or for standing to the measure of Mr. Pin the tailor for a | |
"camlett cloak with gold buttons," or for sitting for his portrait in an | |
Indian gown which he "hired to be drawn in." Who shall say that this is not | |
the very portrait by which we have fancied him stalking off to Commons? | |
Could the apprentices have known in what a borrowed majesty he walked, | |
would they not have tossed their caps in mirth and pointed their dusky | |
fingers at him? | |
Or we remember that he once lived in a garret, and that his wife, "poor | |
wretch," was used to make the fire while Samuel lay abed, and that she | |
washed his "foul clothes"--that by degrees he came to be wealthy and | |
rode in his own yellow coach--that his wife went abroad in society "in | |
a flowered tabby gown"--that Pepys forsook his habits of poverty and | |
exchanged his twelve-penny seat in the theatre gallery for a place in the | |
pit--and that on a rare occasion (doubtless when he was alone and there was | |
but one seat to buy) he arose to the extravagance of a four-shilling box. | |
Consequently, despite the weightier parts of the diary, we know Pepys | |
chiefly in his hours of ease. Sittings and consultations are so dry. If | |
only the world would run itself decently and in silence! Even a meeting of | |
the Committee for Tangier--when the Prince of Wales was present and such | |
smaller fry as Chancellors--is dull and is matter for a skipping eye. | |
If a session of Parliament bulks to a fat paragraph and it happens that | |
there is a bit of deviltry just below at the bottom of the page--maybe no | |
more than a clinking of glasses (or perhaps Nell Gwynne's name pops in | |
sight)--bless us how the eye will hurry to turn the leaf on the chance | |
of roguery to come! Who would read through a long discourse on Admiralty | |
business, if it be known before that Pepys is engaged with the pretty Mrs. | |
Knipp for a trip to Bartholomew Fair to view the dancing horse, and that | |
the start is to be made on the turning of the page? Or a piece of scandal | |
about Lady Castlemaine, how her nose fell out of joint when Mrs. Stuart | |
came to court--such things tease one from the sterner business. | |
And for these reasons, we have been inclined to underestimate the | |
importance of Pepys' diary. Francis Jeffrey, who wrote long ago about | |
Pepys, evidently thought that he was an idle and unprofitable fellow and | |
that the diary was too much given to mean and petty things. But in reality | |
the diary is an historical mine. Even when Pepys plays upon the surface, | |
he throws out facts that can be had nowhere else. No one would venture to | |
write of Restoration life without digging through his pages. Pepys wrote in | |
a confused shorthand, maybe against the eye of his wife, from whom he had | |
reason to conceal his offenses. The papers lay undeciphered until 1825, | |
when a partial publication was made. There were additions by subsequent | |
editors until now it appears that the Wheatley text of 1893-1899 is final. | |
But ever since 1825, the diary has been judged to be of high importance in | |
the understanding of the first decade of the Restoration. | |
If some of the weightier parts are somewhat dry, there are places in which | |
a lighter show of personality is coincident with real historical data. | |
Foremost are the pages where Pepys goes to the theatre. | |
More than Charles II was restored in 1660. Among many things of more | |
importance than this worthless King, the theatre was restored. Since the | |
close of Elizabethan times it had been out of business. More than thirty | |
years before, Puritanism had snuffed out its candles and driven its | |
fiddlers to the streets. But Puritanism, in its turn, fell with the return | |
of the Stuarts. Pepys is a chief witness as to what kind of theatre it was | |
that was set up in London about the year 1660. It was far different from | |
the Elizabethan theatre. It came in from the Bankside and the fields to the | |
north of the city and lodged itself on the better streets and squares. It | |
no longer patterned itself on the inn-yard, but was roofed against the | |
rain. The time had been when the theatre was cousin to the bear-pit. They | |
were ranged together on the Bankside and they sweat and smelled like | |
congenial neighbors. But these days are past. Let Bartholomew Fair be as | |
rowdy as it pleases, let acrobats and such loose fellows keep to Southwark, | |
the theatre has risen in the world! It has put on a wig, as it were, it has | |
tied a ribbon to itself and has become fashionable. And although it has | |
taken on a few extra dissolute habits, they are of the genteelest kind and | |
will make it feel at home in the upper circles. | |
But also the theatre introduced movable scenery. There is an attempt toward | |
elaboration of stage effect. "To the King's playhouse--" says Pepys, "a | |
good scene of a town on fire." Women take parts. An avalanche of new plays | |
descends on it. Even the old plays that have survived are garbled to suit a | |
change of taste. | |
But if you would really know what kind of theatre it was that sprang up | |
with the Stuarts and what the audiences looked like and how they behaved, | |
you must read Pepys. With but a moderate use of fancy, you can set out with | |
him in his yellow coach for the King's house in Drury Lane. Perhaps hunger | |
nips you at the start. If so, you stop, as Pepys pleasantly puts it, for a | |
"barrel of oysters." Then, having dusted yourself of crumbs, you take the | |
road again. Presently you come to Drury Lane. Other yellow coaches are | |
before you. There is a show of foppery on the curb and an odor of smoking | |
links. A powdered beauty minces to the door. Once past the doorkeeper, you | |
hear the cries of the orange women going up and down the aisles. There is a | |
shuffling of apprentices in the gallery. A dandy who lolls in a box with a | |
silken leg across the rail, scrawls a message to an actress and sends it | |
off by Orange Moll. Presently Castlemaine enters the royal box with the | |
King. There is a craning of necks, for with her the King openly "do | |
discover a great deal of familiarity." In other boxes are other fine ladies | |
wearing vizards to hold their modesty if the comedy is free. A board breaks | |
in the ceiling of the gallery and dust falls in the men's hair and the | |
ladies' necks, which, writes Pepys, "made good sport." Or again, "A | |
gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in | |
the midst of the play, did drop down as dead; being choked, but with much | |
ado Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat and brought him to | |
life again." Or perhaps, "I sitting behind in a dark place, a lady spit | |
backward upon me by a mistake, not seeing me, but after seeing her to be a | |
very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all." | |
At a change of scenes, Mrs. Knipp spies Pepys and comes to the pit door. He | |
goes with her to the tiring-room. "To the women's shift," he writes, | |
"where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, | |
prettier than I thought.... But to see how Nell cursed for having so few | |
people in the pit, was pretty."--"But Lord! their confidence! and how | |
many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how | |
confident they are in their talk!" Or he is whispered a bit of gossip, how | |
Castlemaine is much in love with Hart, an actor of the house. Then Pepys | |
goes back into the pit and lays out a sixpence for an orange. As the play | |
nears its end, footmen crowd forward at the doors. The epilogue is spoken. | |
The fiddles squeak their last. There is a bawling outside for coaches. | |
"Would it fit your humor," asks Mr. Pepys, when we have been handed to our | |
seats, "would it fit your humor, if we go around to the Rose Tavern for | |
some burnt wine and a breast of mutton off the spit? It's sure that some | |
brave company will fall in, and we can have a tune. We'll not heed the | |
bellman. We'll sit late, for it will be a fine light moonshine morning." | |
To an Unknown Reader | |
Once in a while I dream that I come upon a person who is reading a book | |
that I have written. In my pleasant dreams these persons do not nod | |
sleepily upon my pages, and sometimes I fall in talk with them. Although | |
they do not know who I am, they praise the book and name me warmly among | |
my betters. In such circumstance my happy nightmare mounts until I ride | |
foremost with the giants. If I could think that this disturbance of my | |
sleep came from my diet and that these agreeable persons arose from a | |
lobster or a pie, nightly at supper I would ply my fork recklessly among | |
the platters. | |
But in a waking state these meetings never come. If an article of mine is | |
ever read at all, it is read in secret like the Bible. Once, indeed, in a | |
friend's house I saw my book upon the table, but I suspect that it had been | |
dusted and laid out for my coming. I request my hostess that next time, for | |
my vanity, she lay the book face down upon a chair, as though the grocer's | |
knock intruded. Or perhaps a huckster's cart broke upon her enjoyment. | |
Let it be thought that a rare bargain--tender asparagus or the first | |
strawberries of the summer--tempted her off my pages! Or maybe there was | |
red rhubarb in the cart and the jolly farmer, as he journeyed up the | |
street, pitched it to a pleasing melody. Dear lady, I forgive you. But let | |
us hope no laundryman led you off! Such discord would have marred my book. | |
I saw once in a public library, as I went along the shelves, a volume of | |
mine which gave evidence to have been really read. The record in front | |
showed that it had been withdrawn one time only. The card was blank | |
below--but once certainly it had been read. I hope that the book went out | |
on a Saturday noon when the spirits rise for the holiday to come, and that | |
a rainy Sunday followed, so that my single reader was kept before his fire. | |
A dull patter on the window--if one sits unbuttoned on the hearth--gives | |
a zest to a languid chapter. The rattle of a storm--if only the room be | |
snug--fixes the attention fast. Therefore, let the rain descend as though | |
the heavens rehearsed for a flood! Let a tempest come out of the west! Let | |
the chimney roar as it were a lion! And if there must be a clearing, let | |
it hold off until the late afternoon, lest it sow too early a distaste for | |
indoors and reading! There is scarcely a bookworm who will not slip his | |
glasses off his nose, if the clouds break at the hour of sunset when the | |
earth and sky are filled with a green and golden light. I took the book off | |
the library shelf and timidly glancing across my shoulder for fear that | |
some one might catch me, I looked along the pages. There was a thumb mark | |
in a margin, and presently appeared a kindly stickiness on the paper as | |
though an orange had squirted on it. Surely there had been a human being | |
hereabouts. It was as certain as when Crusoe found the footprints in the | |
sand. Ah, I thought, this fellow who sits in the firelight has caught an | |
appetite. Perhaps he bit a hole and sucked the fruit, and the skin has | |
burst behind. Or I wave the theory and now conceive that the volume was | |
read at breakfast. If so, it is my comfort that in those dim hours it stood | |
propped against his coffee cup. | |
But the trail ended with the turning of the page. There were, indeed, | |
further on, pencil checks against one of the paragraphs as if here the book | |
had raised a faint excitement, but I could not tell whether they sprang | |
up in derision or in approval. Toward the end there were uncut leaves, as | |
though even my single reader had failed in his persistence. | |
Being swept once beyond a usual caution, I lamented to my friend F---- of | |
the neglect in which readers held me, to which the above experience in | |
a library was a rare exception. F---- offered me such consolation as he | |
could, deplored the general taste and the decadence of the times, and said | |
that as praise was sweet to everyone, he, as far as he himself was able, | |
offered it anonymously to those who merited it. He was standing recently | |
in a picture gallery, when a long-haired man who stood before one of the | |
pictures was pointed out to him as the artist who had painted it. At once | |
F---- saw his opportunity to confer a pleasure, but as there is a touch of | |
humor in him, he first played off a jest. Lounging forward, he dropped his | |
head to one side as artistic folk do when they look at color. He made a | |
knot-hole of his fingers and squinted through. Next he retreated across the | |
room and stood with his legs apart in the very attitude of wisdom. He cast | |
a stern eye upon the picture and gravely tapped his chin. At last when the | |
artist was fretted to an extremity, F---- came forward and so cordially | |
praised the picture that the artist, being now warmed and comforted, | |
presently excused himself in a high excitement and rushed away to start | |
another picture while the pleasant spell was on him. | |
Had I been the artist, I would have run from either F----'s praise or | |
disapproval. As an instance, I saw a friend on a late occasion coming from | |
a bookstore with a volume of suspicious color beneath his arm. I had been | |
avoiding that particular bookstore for a week because my book lay for sale | |
on a forward table. And now when my friend appeared, a sudden panic seized | |
me and I plunged into the first doorway to escape. I found myself facing a | |
soda fountain. For a moment, in my blur, I could not account for the | |
soda fountain, or know quite how it had come into my life. Presently an | |
interne--for he was jacketted as if he walked a hospital--asked me what I'd | |
have. | |
Still somewhat dazed, in my discomposure, having no answer ready, my | |
startled fancy ran among the signs and labels of the counter until I | |
recalled that a bearded man once, unblushing in my presence, had ordered | |
a banana flip. I got the fellow's ear and named it softly. Whereupon he | |
placed a dead-looking banana across a mound of ice-cream, poured on | |
juices as though to mark the fatal wound and offered it to me. I ate a few | |
bites of the sickish mixture until the streets were safe. | |
I do not know to what I can attribute my timidity. Possibly it arises from | |
the fact that until recently my writing met with uniform rejection and | |
failure. For years I wrote secretly in order that few persons might know | |
how miserably I failed. I answered upon a question that I had given up the | |
practice, that I now had no time for it, that I scribbled now and then | |
but always burned it. All that while I gave my rare leisure and my stolen | |
afternoons--the hours that other men give to golf and sleep and sitting | |
together--these hours I gave to writing. On a holiday I was at it early. On | |
Saturday when other folks were abroad, I sat at my desk. It was my grief | |
that I was so poor a borrower of the night that I blinked stupidly on my | |
papers if I sat beyond the usual hour. Writing was my obsession. I need no | |
pity for my failures, for although I tossed my cap upon a rare acceptance, | |
my deeper joy was in the writing. That joy repeated failures could not | |
blunt. | |
There are paragraphs that now lie yellow in my desk with their former | |
meaning faded, that still recall as I think of them the first exaltation | |
when I wrote them--feverishly in a hot emotion. In those days I thought | |
that I had caught the sunlight on my pen, and the wind and the moon and the | |
spinning earth. I thought that the valleys and the mountains arose from the | |
mist obedient to me. If I splashed my pen, in my warm regard it was the | |
roar and fury of the sea. It was really no more than my youth crying out. | |
And, alas, my thoughts and my feelings escaped me when I tried to put them | |
down on paper, although I did not know it then. Perhaps they were too | |
vagrant to be held. And yet these paragraphs that might be mournful records | |
of failure, fill me with no more than a tender recollection for the boy | |
who wrote them. The worn phrases now beg their way with broken steps. Like | |
shrill and piping minstrels they whine and crack a melody that I still | |
remember in its freshness. | |
But perhaps, reader, we are brothers in these regards. Perhaps you, too, | |
have faded papers. Or possibly, even on a recent date, you sighed your soul | |
into an essay or a sonnet, and you now have manuscript which you would like | |
to sell. Do not mistake me! I am not an editor, nor am I an agent for these | |
wares. Rather I speak as a friend who, having many such hidden sorrows, | |
offers you a word of comfort. To a desponding Hamlet I exclaim, "'Tis | |
common, my Lord." I have so many friends that have had an unproductive | |
fling toward letters, that I think the malady is general. So many books are | |
published and flourish a little while in their bright wrappers, but yours | |
and theirs and mine waste away in a single precious copy. | |
I am convinced that a close inspection of all desks--a federal matter as | |
though Capital were under fire--would betray thousands of abandoned novels. | |
There may be a few stern desks that are so cluttered with price-sheets and | |
stock-lists that they cannot offer harborage to a love tale. Standing desks | |
in particular, such as bookkeepers affect, are not always chinked | |
with these softer plots. And rarely there is a desk so smothered in | |
learning--reeking so of scholarship--as not to admit a lighter nook for | |
the tucking of a sea yarn. Even so, it was whispered to me lately that | |
Professor B----, whose word shakes the continent, holds in a lower drawer | |
no fewer than three unpublished historical novels, each set up with a full | |
quota of smugglers and red bandits. One of these stories deals scandalously | |
with the abduction of an heiress, but this must be held in confidence. The | |
professor is a stoic before his class, but there's blood in the fellow. | |
There is, therefore, little use in your own denial. You will recall that | |
once, when taken to a ruined castle, you brooded on the dungeons until a | |
plot popped into your head. You crammed it with quaint phrasing from the | |
chroniclers. You stuffed it with soldiers' oaths. "What ho! landlord," | |
you wrote gayly at midnight, "a foaming cup, good sir. God pity the poor | |
sailors that take the sea this night!" And on you pelted with your plot to | |
such conflicts and hair-breadth escapes as lay in your contrivance. | |
These things you have committed. Good sir, we are of a common piece. Let us | |
salute as brothers! And therefore, as to a comrade, I bid you continue in | |
your ways. And that you may not lack matter for your pen, I warmly urge | |
you, when by shrewdest computation you have exhausted the plots of | |
adventure and have worn your villains thin, that you proceed in quieter | |
vein. I urge you to an April mood, for the winds of Spring are up and | |
daffodils nod across the garden. There is black earth in the Spring and | |
green hilltops, and there is also the breath of flowers along the fences | |
and the sound of water for your pen to prattle of. | |
A Plague of All Cowards | |
Having written lately against the dog, several acquaintances have asked me | |
to turn upon the cat, and they have been good enough to furnish me with | |
instances of her faithlessness. Also, a lady with whom I recently sat at | |
dinner, inquired of me on the passing of the fish, whether I had ever | |
properly considered the cow, which she esteemed a most mischievous animal. | |
One of them had mooed at her as she crossed a pasture and she had hastily | |
climbed a fence. I get a good many suggestions first and last. I was once | |
taken to a Turkish bath for no other reason--as I was afterwards told--than | |
that it might supply me with a topic. Odd books have been put in my way. | |
A basket of school readers was once lodged with me, with a request that I | |
direct my attention to the absurd selection of the poems. I have been urged | |
to go against car conductors and customs men. On one occasion I received a | |
paper of tombstone inscriptions, with a note of direction how others might | |
be found in a neighboring churchyard if I were curious. A lady in whose | |
company I camped last summer has asked me to give a chapter to it. We were | |
abroad upon a lake in the full moon--we were lost upon a mountain--twice a | |
canoe upset--there were the usual jests about cooking. These things might | |
have filled a few pages agreeably, yet so far they have given me only a | |
paragraph. | |
But I am not disposed toward any of these subjects, least of all the cat, | |
upon which I look--despite the coldness of her nature--as a harmless and | |
comforting appendage of the hearth-rug. I would no more prey upon her | |
morals than I would the morals of the andirons. I choose, rather, to slip | |
to another angle of the question and say a few words about cowards, among | |
whom I have already confessed that I number myself. | |
In this year of battles, when physical courage sits so high, the reader--if | |
he is swept off in the general opinion--will expect under such a title | |
something caustic. He will think that I am about to loose against all | |
cowards a plague of frogs and locusts as if old Egypt had come again. But | |
cowardice is its own punishment. It needs no frog to nip it. Even the | |
sharp-toothed locust--for in the days that bordered so close upon the | |
mastodon, the locust could hardly have fallen to the tender greenling we | |
know today--even the locust that once spoiled the Egyptians could not now | |
add to the grief of a coward. | |
And yet--really I hesitate. I blush. My attack will be too intimate; for I | |
have confessed that I am not the very button on the cap of bravery. I have | |
indeed stiffened myself to ride a horse, a mightier feat than driving him | |
because of the tallness of the monster and his uneasy movement, as though | |
his legs were not well socketed and might fall out on a change of gaits. I | |
have ridden on a camel in a side-show, but have found my only comfort in | |
his hump. I have stroked the elephant. In a solemn hour of night I have | |
gone downstairs to face a burglar. But I do not run singing to these | |
dangers. While your really brave fellow is climbing a dizzy staircase to | |
the moon--I write in figure--I would shake with fear upon a lower platform. | |
Perhaps you recall Mr. Tipp of the Elia essays. "Tipp," says his pleasant | |
biographer, "never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned | |
against the rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or | |
looked down a precipice; or let off a gun." I cannot follow Tipp, it may | |
be, to his extreme tremors--my hair will not rise to so close a likeness of | |
the fretful porcupine--yet in a measure we are in agreement. We are, as it | |
were, cousins, with the mark of our common family strong on both of us. | |
There are persons who, when in your company on a country walk, will steal | |
apples, not with a decent caution from a tree along the fence, but far | |
afield. If there are grapes, they will not wait for a turn of the road, | |
but will pluck them in the open. Or maybe in your wandering you come on a | |
half-built house. You climb in through a window to look about. Here the | |
stairs will go. The ice-box will be set against this wall. But if your | |
companion is one of valor's minions, he will not be satisfied with this | |
safe and agreeable research--this mild speculation on bath-rooms--this | |
innocent placing of a stove. He must go aloft. He has seen a ladder and | |
yearns to climb it. The footing on the second story is bad enough. If you | |
fall between the joists, you will clatter to the basement. It is hard to | |
realize that such an open breezy place will ever be cosy and warm with | |
fires, and that sleepy folk will here lie snugly a-bed on frosty mornings. | |
But still the brazen fellow is not content. A ladder leads horribly to the | |
roof. For myself I will climb until the tip of my nose juts out upon the | |
world--until it sprouts forth to the air from the topmost timbers: But I | |
will go no farther. But if your companion sees a scaffold around a chimney, | |
he must perch on it. For him, a dizzy plank is a pleasant belvedere from | |
which to view the world. | |
The bravery of this kind of person is not confined to these few matters. | |
If you happen to go driving with him, he will--if the horse is of the kind | |
that distends his nostrils--on a sudden toss you the reins and leave you to | |
guard him while he dispatches an errand. If it were a motor car there would | |
be a brake to hold it. If it were a boat, you might throw out an anchor. A | |
butcher's cart would have a metal drag. But here you sit defenseless--tied | |
to the whim of a horse--greased for a runaway. The beast Dobbin turns his | |
head and holds you with his hard eye. There is a convulsive movement along | |
his back, a preface, it may be, to a sudden seizure. A real friend would | |
have loosed the straps that run along the horse's flanks. Then, if any | |
deviltry take him, he might go off alone and have it out. | |
I have in mind a livery stable in Kalamazoo. Myself and another man of | |
equal equestrianism were sent once to bring out a thing called a surrey and | |
a pair of horses. Do you happen to be acquainted with Blat's Horse Food? If | |
your way lies among the smaller towns, you must know its merits. They are | |
proclaimed along the fences and up the telegraph poles. Drinking-troughs | |
speak its virtues. Horses thrive on Blat's Food. They neigh for it. A | |
flashing lithograph is set by way of testament wherever traffic turns or | |
lingers. Do you not recall the picture? A great red horse rears himself | |
on his hind legs. His forward hoofs are extended. He is about to trample | |
someone under foot. His nostrils are wide. He is unduly excited. It cannot | |
be food, it must be drink that stirs him. He is a fearful spectacle. | |
There was such a picture on the wall of the stable. | |
"Have you any horses," I asked nervously, jerking my thumb toward the wall, | |
"any horses that have been fed on just ordinary food? Some that are a | |
little tired?" | |
For I remembered how Mr. Winkle once engaged horses to take the | |
Pickwickians out to Manor Farm and what mishaps befell them on the way. | |
"'He don't shy, does he?' inquired Mr. Pickwick. | |
"'Shy, sir?--He wouldn't shy if he was to meet a vagginload of monkeys with | |
their tails burnt off.'" | |
But how Mr. Pickwick dropped his whip, how Mr. Winkle got off his tall | |
horse to pick it up, how he tried in vain to remount while his horse went | |
round and round, how they were all spilt out upon the bridge and how | |
finally they walked to Manor Farm--these things are known to everybody with | |
an inch of reading. | |
"'How far is it to Dingley Dell?' they asked. | |
"'Better er seven mile.' | |
"'Is it a good road?' | |
"'No, t'ant.'... | |
"The depressed Pickwickians turned moodily away, with the tall quadruped, | |
for which they all felt the most unmitigated disgust, following slowly at | |
their heels." | |
"Have you any horses," I repeated, "that have not been fed on Blat's | |
Food--horses that are, so to speak, on a diet?" | |
In the farthest stalls, hidden from the sunlight and the invigorating | |
infection of the day, two beasts were found with sunken chests and hollow | |
eyes, who took us safely to our destination on their hands and knees. | |
As you may suspect, I do not enjoy riding. There is, it is true, one saddle | |
horse in North Carolina that fears me. If time still spares him, that horse | |
I could ride with content. But I would rather trust myself on the top of a | |
wobbly step-ladder than up the sides of most horses. I am not quite of a | |
mind, however, with Samuel Richardson who owned a hobby-horse and rode on | |
his hearth-rug in the intervals of writing "Pamela." It is likely that when | |
he had rescued her from an adventure of more than usual danger--perhaps her | |
villainous master has been concealed in her closet--perhaps he has been | |
hiding beneath her bed--it is likely, having brought her safely off, the | |
author locked her in the buttery against a fresh attack. Then he felt, good | |
man, in need of exercise. So while he waits for tea and muffins, he leaps | |
upon his rocking-horse and prances off. As for the hobby-horse itself, I | |
have not heard whether it was of the usual nursery type, or whether it was | |
built in the likeness of the leather camels of a German steamship. | |
I need hardly say that these confessions of my cowardice are for your ear | |
alone. They must not get abroad to smirch me. If on a country walk I have | |
taken to my heels, you must not twit me with poltroonery. If you charge me | |
with such faint-heartedness while other persons are present, I'll deny it | |
flat. When I sit in the company of ladies at dinner, I dissemble my true | |
nature, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat. | |
If then, you taunt me, for want of a better escape, I shall turn it to a | |
jest. I shall engage the table flippantly: Hear how preposterously the | |
fellow talks!--he jests to satisfy a grudge. In appearance I am whole as | |
the marble, founded as a rock. | |
But really some of us cowards are diverting persons. The lady who directed | |
me against the cow is a most delightful woman with whom I hope I shall | |
again sit at dinner. A witty lady of my acquaintance shivers when a | |
cat walks in the room. A man with whom I pass the time pleasantly and | |
profitably, although he will not admit a fear of ghosts, still will not | |
sleep in an empty house because of possible noises. I would rather spend a | |
Saturday evening in the company of the cowardly Falstaff than of the bold | |
Hotspur. If it were not for sack, villainous sack, and a few spots upon his | |
front, you would go far to find a better companion than the fat old Knight. | |
Bob Acres was not much for valor and he made an ass of himself when he went | |
to fight a duel, yet one could have sat agreeably at mutton with him. | |
But these things are slight. It matters little whether or not one can mount | |
a ladder comfortably. Now that motors have come in, horses stand remotely | |
in our lives. Nor is it of great moment whether or not we fear to be out of | |
fashion--whether we halt in the wearing of a wrong-shaped hat, or glance | |
fearfully around when we choose from a line of forks. Superstitions rest | |
mostly on the surface and are not deadly in themselves. A man can be true | |
of heart even if he will not sit thirteen at table. But there is a kind | |
of fear that is disastrous to them that have it. It is the fear of the | |
material universe in all its manifestations. There are persons, stout both | |
of chest and limb, who fear drafts and wet feet. A man who is an elephant | |
of valor and who has been feeling this long while a gentle contempt for | |
such as myself, will cry out if a soft breeze strikes against his neck. If | |
a foot slips to the gutter and becomes wet, he will dose himself. Achilles | |
did not more carefully nurse his heel. For him the lofty dome of air is | |
packed with malignant germs. The round world is bottled with contagion. A | |
strong man who, in his time, might have slain the Sofi, is as fearful of | |
his health as though the plague were up the street. Calamities beset him. | |
The slightest sniffling in his nose is the trumpet for a deep disorder. | |
Existence is but a moving hazard. Life for him, poor fellow, is but a room | |
with a window on the night and a storm beating on the casement. God knows, | |
it is better to grow giddy on a ladder than to think that this majestic | |
earth is such an universal pestilence. | |
The Asperities of the Early British Reviewers | |
Book reviewers nowadays direct their attention, for the most part, to the | |
worthy books and they habitually neglect those that seem beneath their | |
regard. On a rare occasion they assail an unprofitable book, but even this | |
is often but a bit of practice. They swish a bludgeon to try their hand. | |
They only take their anger, as it were, upon an outing, lest with too | |
close housing it grow pallid and shrink in girth. Or maybe they indulge | |
themselves in humor. Perhaps they think that their pages grow dull and that | |
ridicule will restore the balance. They throw it in like a drunken porter | |
to relieve a solemn scene. I fancy that editors of this baser sort keep on | |
their shelves one or two volumes for their readers' sport and mirth. I read | |
recently a review of an historical romance--a last faltering descendant of | |
the race--whose author in an endeavor to restore the past, had made too | |
free a use of obsolete words. With what playfulness was he held up to | |
scorn! Mary come up, sweet chuck! How his quaint phrasing was turned | |
against him! What a merry fellow it is who writes, how sharp and caustic! | |
There's pepper on his mood. | |
But generally, it is said, book reviews are too flattering. Professor | |
Bliss Perry, being of this opinion, offered some time ago a statement | |
that "Magazine writing about current books is for the most part bland, | |
complaisant, pulpy.... The Pedagogue no longer gets a chance at the gifted | |
young rascal who needs, first and foremost, a premonitory whipping; the | |
youthful genius simply stays away from school and carries his unwhipped | |
talents into the market place." At a somewhat different angle of the same | |
opinion, Dr. Crothers suggests in an essay that instead of being directed | |
to the best books, we need to be warned from the worst. He proposes to set | |
up a list of the Hundred Worst Books. For is it not better, he asks, to put | |
a lighthouse on a reef than in the channel? The open sea does not need a | |
bell-buoy to sound its depth. | |
On these hints I have read some of the book criticisms of days past to | |
learn whether they too were pulpy--whether our present silken criticism | |
always wore its gloves and perfumed itself, or whether it has fallen to | |
this smiling senility from a sterner youth. Although I am usually a rusty | |
student, yet by diligence I have sought to mend my knowledge that I might | |
lay it out before you. Lately, therefore, if you had come within our Public | |
Library, you would have found me in one of these attempts. Here I went, | |
scrimping the other business of the day in order that I might be at my | |
studies before the rush set in up town. Mine was the alcove farthest from | |
the door, where are the mustier volumes that fit a bookish student. So if | |
your quest was the lighter books--such verse and novels as present fame | |
attests--you did not find me. I was hooped and bowed around the corner. I | |
am no real scholar, but I study on a spurt. For a whole week together I may | |
read old plays until their jigging style infects my own. I have set myself | |
against the lofty histories, although I tire upon their lower <DW72>s and | |
have not yet persisted to their upper and windier ridges. I have, also, a | |
pretty knowledge of the Queen Anne wits and feel that I must have dogged | |
and spied upon them while they were yet alive. But in general, although | |
I am curious in the earlier chapters of learning, I lag in the inner | |
windings. However, for a fortnight I have sat piled about with old reviews, | |
whose leather rots and smells, in order that I might study the fading | |
criticisms of the past. | |
Until rather near the end of the eighteenth century, those who made their | |
living in England by writing were chiefly publishers' hacks, fellows of | |
the Dunciad sucking their quills in garrets and selling their labor for a | |
crust, for the reading public was too small to support them. Or they | |
found a patron and gave him a sugared sonnet for a pittance, or strained | |
themselves to the length of an Ode for a berth in his household. Or | |
frequently they supported a political party and received a place in the | |
Red Tape Office. But even in politics, on account of the smallness of the | |
reading public and the politicians' indifference to its approval, their | |
services were of slight account. Too often a political office was granted | |
from a pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a | |
trifling expense. To gain support inside the House of Commons was enough. | |
The greater public outside could be ignored. This attitude changed with | |
the coming of the French Revolution. Here was a new force unrealized | |
before--that of a crowd which, being unrepresented and with a real | |
grievance, could, when it liked, take a club and go after what it wanted. | |
For the first time in many years in England--such were the whiffs of | |
liberty across the Channel--the power of an unrepresented public came to be | |
known. It was not that the English crowd had as yet taken the club in its | |
hands, but there were new thoughts abroad in the world, and there was the | |
possibility to be regarded. To influence this larger public, therefore, men | |
who could write came little by little into a larger demand. And as | |
writers were comparatively scarce, all kinds--whether they wrote poems or | |
prose--were pressed into service. It is significant, too, that it was in | |
the decades subjected to the first influence of the French Revolution that | |
the English daily paper took its start as an agent to influence public | |
opinion. | |
It was therefore rather more than one hundred years ago that writers came | |
to a better prosperity. They came out of their garrets, took rooms on the | |
second floor, polished their brasses and became Persons. I can fancy that a | |
writer after spending a morning in the composition of a political article | |
on the whisper of a Cabinet Minister, wrote a sonnet after lunch, and | |
a book review before dinner. Let us see in what mood they took their | |
advancement! Let us examine their temper--but in book reviewing only, for | |
that alone concerns us! In doing this, we have the advantage of knowing the | |
final estimate of the books they judged. Like the witch, we have looked | |
into the seeds of time and we know "which grain will grow and which will | |
not." | |
In 1802, when the Edinburgh Review (which was the first of its line to | |
acquire distinction) came into being, the passion of the times found voice | |
in politics. Both Whigs and Tories had been alarmed by the excesses of the | |
French Revolution; both feared that England was drifting the way of France; | |
each had a remedy, but opposed and violently maintained. The Tories put the | |
blame of the Revolution on the compromises of Louis XVI, and accordingly | |
they were hostile to any political change. The Whigs, on the other | |
hand, saw the rottenness of England as a cause that would incite her to | |
revolution also, and they advocated reform while yet there was time. The | |
general fear of a revolution gave the government of England to the Tories, | |
and kept them in power for several decades. And England was ripe for | |
trouble. The government was but nominally representative. No Catholic, | |
Jew, Dissenter or poor man had a vote or could hold a seat in Parliament. | |
Industrially and economically the country was in the condition of France | |
in the year of Arthur Young's journey. The poverty was abject, the relief | |
futile and the hatred of the poor for the rich was inflammatory. | |
George III, slipping into feebleness and insanity, yet jealous of his | |
unconstitutional power, was a vacillating despot, quarrelling with his | |
Commons and his Ministers. Lord Eldon as Chancellor, but with as nearly the | |
control of a Premier as the King would allow, was the staunch upholder of | |
all things that have since been disproved and discarded. Bagehot said of | |
him that "he believed in everything which it is impossible to believe in." | |
France and Napoleon threatened across the narrow channel. England still | |
growled at the loss of her American colonies. It was as yet the England | |
of the old regime. The great reforms were to come thirty years later--the | |
Catholic Emancipation, the abolishment of slavery in the colonies, the | |
suppression of the pocket boroughs, the gross bribery of elections, the | |
cleaning of the poor laws and the courts of justice. | |
It was in this dark hour of English history that the writers polished their | |
brasses and set up as Persons. And if the leading articles that they wrote | |
of mornings stung and snapped with venom, it is natural that the book | |
reviews on which they spent their afternoons had also some vinegar in them, | |
especially if they concerned books written by those of the opposition. And | |
other writers, even if they had no political connection, borrowed their | |
manners from those who had. It was the animosities of party politics that | |
set the general tone. Billingsgate that had grown along the wharves of the | |
lower river, was found to be of service in Parliament and gave a spice and | |
sparkle even to a book review. Presently a large part of literary England | |
wore the tags of political preference. Writers were often as clearly | |
distinguished as were the ladies in the earlier day, when Addison wrote his | |
paper on party patches. There were seats of Moral Philosophy to be handed | |
out, under-secretaryships, consular appointments. It is not enough to say | |
that Francis Jeffrey was a reviewer, he was as well a Whig and was running | |
a Review that was Whig from the front cover to the back. Leigh Hunt was not | |
merely a poet, for he was also a radical, and therefore in the opinions of | |
Tories, a believer in immorality and indecency. No matter how innocent | |
a title might appear, it was held in suspicion, on the chance that it | |
assailed the Ministry or endangered the purity of England. William Gifford | |
was more than merely the editor of the Quarterly Review, for he was as well | |
a Tory editor whose duty it was to pry into Whiggish roguery. Lockhart and | |
Wilson, who wrote in Blackwood's, were Tories tooth and nail, biting and | |
scratching for party. Nowadays, literature, having found the public to be | |
its most profitable patron, works hard and even abjectly for its favor. | |
Although there are defects in the arrangement, it must be confessed that | |
the divorce of literature from politics contributes to the general peace of | |
the household. | |
The Edinburgh Review was founded in 1802, the Quarterly Review in 1809, | |
Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. These three won distinction among others of | |
less importance, and from them only I quote. In 1802, when Tory rule was | |
strongest and Lord Eldon flourished, there was living in Edinburgh a group | |
of young men who were for the most part briefless barristers. Their case | |
was worse because they were Whigs. Few cases came their way and no offices. | |
These young men were Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Henry Brougham, and | |
there was also Sydney Smith who had just come to Edinburgh from an English | |
country parish. The eldest was thirty-one, the youngest twenty-three. | |
Although all of them had brilliant lives before them, not one of them had | |
made as yet more than a step toward his accomplishment. Sydney Smith had | |
been but lately an obscure curate, buried in the middle of Salisbury Plain, | |
away from all contact with the world. Francis Jeffrey had been a hack | |
writer in London, had studied medicine, had sought unsuccessfully a | |
government position in India, had written poor sonnets, and was now | |
lounging with but a scanty occupation in the halls of the law courts. | |
Francis Horner had just come to the Scottish bar straight from his studies. | |
Henry Brougham, who in days to come was to be Lord Chancellor of England | |
and to whose skill in debate the passing of the Great Reform bill of 1832 | |
is partly due, is also just admitted to the practice of the law. | |
The founding of the Review was casual. These men were accustomed to meet of | |
an evening for general discussion and speculation. It happened one night as | |
they sat together--the place was a garret if legend is to be believed--that | |
Sydney Smith lamented that their discussions came to nothing, for they were | |
all Whigs, all converted to the cause; whereas if they could only bring | |
their opinions to the outside public they could stir opinion. From so | |
slight a root the Review sprouted. Sydney Smith was made editor and kept | |
the position until after the appearance of the first number, when Jeffrey | |
succeeded him. The Review became immediately a power, appearing quarterly | |
and striking its blows anonymously against a sluggish government, lashing | |
the Tory writers, and taking its part, which is of greater consequence, in | |
the promulgation of the Whig reforms which were to ripen in thirty years | |
and convert the old into modern England. In the destruction of outworn | |
things, it was, as it were, a magazine of Whig explosives. | |
The Quarterly Review was the next to come and it was Tory. John Murray, the | |
London publisher, had been the English distributor of the Edinburgh Review. | |
In 1809, two considerations moved him to found in London a review to rival | |
the Scotch periodical. First the Tory party was being hard hit by the | |
Edinburgh Review and there was need of defense and retaliation. In the | |
second place, John Murray saw that if his publishing house was to flourish, | |
it must provide this new form of literature that had become so popular. | |
For the very shortness of the essays and articles, in which extensive | |
conditions were summarized for quick digestion, had met with English | |
approval as well as Scotch. People had become accustomed, says Bagehot, of | |
taking "their literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches on a journey." | |
Murray appealed to George Canning, then in office, for assistance and was | |
introduced to William Gifford as a man capable of the undertaking, who | |
would also meet the favor of the government party. The rise of the | |
Quarterly Review was not brilliant. It did not fill the craving for | |
novelty, inasmuch as the Edinburgh was already in the field. Furthermore, | |
there is not the opportunity in defense for as conspicuous gallantry as in | |
offensive warfare. | |
It was eight years before another enduring review was started. William | |
Blackwood of Edinburgh had grown like Murray from a bookseller to a | |
publisher, and he, too, looked for a means of increasing his prestige. He | |
had launched a review the year previously, in 1816, but it had foundered | |
when it was scarcely off the ways. His second attempt he was determined | |
must be successful. His new editors were John G. Lockhart and John Wilson, | |
and the new policy, although nominally Tory, was first and last the | |
magazine's notoriety. It hawked its wares into public notice by sensational | |
articles and personal vilification. Wilson was thirty-two and Lockhart | |
twenty-three, yet they were as mischievous as boys. In their pages is found | |
the most abominable raving that has ever passed for literary criticism. | |
They did not need any party hatred to fire them. William Blackwood | |
welcomed any abuse that took his magazine out of "the calm of respectable | |
mediocrity." Anything that stung or startled was welcome to a place in its | |
pages. | |
So Blackwood's was published and Edinburgh city, we may be sure, set up a | |
roar of delight and anger. Never before had one's friends been so assailed. | |
Never before had one's enemies been so grilled. How pleasing for a Tory | |
fireside was the mud bath with which it defiled Coleridge, who was--and you | |
had always known it--"little better than a rogue." One's Tory dinner was | |
the more toothsome for the hot abuse of the Chaldee Manuscript. What stout | |
Tory, indeed, would doze of an evening on such a sheet! There followed | |
of course cases of libel. The editors even found it safer, after the | |
publication of the first number, to retire for a time to the country until | |
the city cooled. | |
I choose now to turn to the pages of these three reviews and set out before | |
you samples of their criticisms, in order that you may contrast them | |
with our own literary judgments. I warn you in fairness that I have been | |
disposed to choose the worst, yet there are hundreds of other criticisms | |
but little better. Of the three reviews, Blackwood's was the least | |
seriously political in its policy, yet its critical vilifications are the | |
worst. The Edinburgh Review, the most able of the three and the most in | |
earnest in politics, is the least vituperative. With this introduction, let | |
us shake the pepperpot and lay out the strong vinegar of our feast! | |
In the judgment of the Edinburgh Review, Tom Moore, who had just published | |
his "Odes and Epistles" but had not yet begun his Irish melodies, is a man | |
who "with some brilliancy of fancy, and some show of classical erudition | |
... may boast, if the boast can please him, of being the most licentious of | |
modern versifiers, and the most poetical of those who, in our times, have | |
devoted their talents to the propagation of immorality. We regard his book, | |
indeed, as a public nuisance.... He sits down to ransact the impure places | |
of his memory for inflammatory images and expressions, and commits them | |
laboriously in writing, for the purpose of insinuating pollution into the | |
minds of unknown and unsuspecting readers." | |
Francis Jeffrey wrote this, and Moore challenged him to fight. The police | |
interfered, and as Jeffrey put it, "the affair ended amicably. We have | |
since breakfasted together very lovingly. He has expressed penitence for | |
what he has written and declared that he will never again apply any little | |
talents he may possess to such purpose: and I have said that I shall be | |
happy to praise him whenever I find that he has abjured these objectionable | |
topics." It was Sydney Smith who said of Jeffrey he would "damn the solar | |
system--bad light--planets too distant--pestered with comets. Feeble | |
contrivance--could make a better with great ease." | |
Jeffrey reviewed Wordsworth and found in the "Lyrical Ballads" | |
"vulgarity, affectation and silliness." He is alarmed, moreover, lest | |
his "childishness, conceit and affectation" spread to other authors. He | |
proposes a poem to be called "Elegiac Stanzas to a Sucking Pig," and of | |
"Alice Fell" he writes that "if the publishing of such trash as this be | |
not felt as an insult on the public taste, we are afraid it cannot be | |
insulted." When the "White Doe of Rylstone" was published--no prime | |
favorite, I confess, of my own--Jeffrey wrote that it had the merit of | |
being the very worst poem he ever saw imprinted in a quarto volume. "It | |
seems to us," he wrote, "to consist of a happy union of all the faults, | |
without any of the beauties, which belong to his school of poetry. It is | |
just such a work, in short, as some wicked enemy of that, school might be | |
supposed to have devised, on purpose to make it ridiculous." | |
Lord Byron, on the publication of an early volume, is counselled "that he | |
do forthwith abandon poetry ... the mere rhyming of the final syllable, | |
even when accompanied by the presence of a certain number of feet ... is | |
not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him to believe," continued | |
the reviewer, "that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is | |
necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to | |
be read, must contain at least one thought...." It was this attack that | |
brought forth Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." | |
As long as Jeffrey hoped to enlist Southey to write for the Edinburgh | |
Review, he treated him with some favor. But Southey took up with the | |
Quarterly. "The Laureate," says the Edinburgh presently, "has now been | |
out of song for a long time: But we had comforted ourselves with the | |
supposition that he was only growing fat and lazy.... The strain, however, | |
of this publication, and indeed of some that went before it, makes us | |
apprehensive that a worse thing has befallen him ... that the worthy | |
inditer of epics is falling gently into dotage." | |
Now for the Quarterly Review, if by chance it can show an equal spleen! | |
There lived in the early days of the nineteenth century a woman by the name | |
of Lady Morgan, who was the author of several novels and books of travel. | |
Although her record in intelligence and morals is good, John Croker, | |
who regularly reviewed her books, accuses her works of licentiousness, | |
profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty and atheism. | |
There are twenty-six pages of this in one review only, and any paragraph | |
would be worth the quoting for its ferocity. After this attack it was | |
Macaulay who said he hated Croker like "cold boiled veal." | |
The Quarterly reviewed Keats' "Endymion," although the writer naively | |
states at the outset that he has not read the poem. "Not that we have been | |
wanting in our duty," he writes, "far from it--indeed, we have made efforts | |
almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it; | |
but with the fullest stretch of our perseverance we are forced to confess | |
that we have not been able to struggle beyond the first of the four | |
books...." Finally he questions whether Keats is the author's name, for | |
he doubts "that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a | |
rhapsody." | |
Leigh Hunt's "Rimini" the Quarterly finds to be an "ungrammatical, | |
unauthorized, chaotic jargon, such as we believe was never before spoken, | |
much less written.... We never," concludes the reviewer, "in so few lines | |
saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious | |
and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, | |
to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into | |
the stout-heartedness of being familiar with a Lord." In a later review, | |
Hunt is a propounder of atheism. "Henceforth," says the reviewer, "... he | |
may slander a few more eminent characters, he may go on to deride venerable | |
and holy institutions, he may stir up more discontent and sedition, but he | |
will have no peace of mind within ... he will live and die unhonoured | |
in his own generation, and, for his own sake it is to be hoped, moulder | |
unknown in those which are to follow." | |
Hazlitt belongs to a "class of men by whom literature is more than at any | |
period disgraced." His style is suited for washerwomen, a "class of | |
females with whom ... he and his friend Mr. Hunt particularly delight to | |
associate." | |
Shelley, writes the Quarterly, "is one of that industrious knot of authors, | |
the tendency of whose works we have in our late Numbers exposed to the | |
caution of our readers ... for with perfect deliberation and the steadiest | |
perseverance he perverts all the gifts of his nature, and does all the | |
injury, both public and private, which his faculties enable him to | |
perpetrate." His "poetry is in general a mere jumble of words and | |
heterogeneous ideas." "The Cloud" is "simple nonsense." "Prometheus | |
Unbound" is a "great storehouse of the obscure and unintelligible." In the | |
"Sensitive Plant" there is "no meaning." And for Shelley himself, he is | |
guilty of a great many terrible things, including verbiage, impiety, | |
immorality and absurdity. | |
Of Blackwood's Magazine the special victims were Keats and Hunt and | |
Coleridge. "Mr. Coleridge," says the reviewer, "... seems to believe that | |
every tongue is wagging in his praise--that every ear is open to imbibe the | |
oracular breathings of his inspiration ... no sound is so sweet to him as | |
that of his own voice ... he seems to consider the mighty universe itself | |
as nothing better than a mirror in which, with a grinning and idiot | |
self-complacency, he may contemplate the physiognomy of Samuel Taylor | |
Coleridge.... Yet insignificant as he assuredly is, he cannot put pen to | |
paper without a feeling that millions of eyes are fixed upon him...." | |
Leigh Hunt, says Blackwood, "is a man of extravagant pretensions ... | |
exquisitely bad taste and extremely vulgar modes of thinking." His | |
"Rimini" "is so wretchedly written that one feels disgust at its pretense, | |
affectation and gaudiness, ignorance, vulgarity, irreverence, quackery, | |
glittering and rancid obscenities." | |
Blackwood's wrote of the "calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy | |
of Endymion," and elsewhere of Keats' "prurient and vulgar lines, evidently | |
meant for some young lady east of Temple Bar.... It is a better and a wiser | |
thing," it commented, "to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so | |
back to the shop, Mr. John, back to 'plasters, pills and ointment | |
boxes.'" And even when Shelley wrote his "Adonais" on the death of Keats, | |
Blackwood's met it with a contemptible parody: | |
"Weep for my Tom cat! all ye Tabbies weep!" | |
Perhaps I have quoted enough. This is the parentage of our silken and | |
flattering criticism. | |
The pages of these old reviews rest yellow on the shelves. From them there | |
comes a smell of rotting leather, as though the infection spreads. The hour | |
grows late. Like the ghost of the elder Hamlet, I detect the morning to be | |
near. | |
The Pursuit of Fire | |
Reader, if by chance you have the habit of writing--whether they be sermons | |
to hurl across your pews, or sonnets in the Spring--doubtless you have | |
moments when you sit at your desk bare of thoughts. Mother Hubbard's | |
cupboard when she went to seek the bone was not more empty. In such plight | |
you chew your pencil as though it were stuff to feed your brain. Or if you | |
are of delicate taste, you fall upon your fingers. Or in the hope that | |
exercise will stir your wits, you pace up and down the room and press your | |
nose upon the window if perhaps the grocer's boy shall rouse you. Some | |
persons draw pictures on their pads or put pot-hooks on their letters--for | |
talent varies--or they roughen up their hair. I knew one gifted fellow | |
whose shoes presently would cramp him until he kicked them off, when at | |
once the juices of his intellect would flow. Genius, I am told, sometimes | |
locks its door and, if unrestrained, peels its outer wrappings. Or, in your | |
poverty, you run through the pages of a favorite volume, with a notebook | |
for a sly theft to start you off. In what dejection you have fallen! It is | |
best that you put on your hat and take your stupid self abroad. | |
Or maybe you think that your creative fire will blaze, if instead of | |
throwing in your wet raw thoughts, you feed it a few seasoned bits. You | |
open, therefore, the drawer of your desk where you keep your rejected and | |
broken fragments--for your past has not been prosperous--hopeful against | |
experience that you can recast one of these to your present mood. This | |
is mournful business. Certain paragraphs that came from you hot are now | |
patched and shivery. Their finer meaning has run out between the lines as | |
though these spaces were sluices for the proper drainage of the page. You | |
had best put on your hat. You will get no comfort from these stale papers. | |
One evening lately, being in this plight, I spread out before me certain | |
odds and ends. I had dug deeper than usual in the drawer and had brought up | |
a yellow stratum of a considerable age. I was poring upon these papers and | |
was wondering whether I could fit them to a newer measure, when I heard a | |
slight noise behind me. I glanced around and saw that a man had entered the | |
room and was now seated in a chair before the fire. In the common nature | |
of things this should have been startling, for the hour was late--twelve | |
o'clock had struck across the way--and I had thought that I was quite | |
alone. But there was something so friendly and easy in his attitude--he | |
was a young man, little more than a lanky boy--that instead of being | |
frightened, I swung calmly around for a better look. He sat with his legs | |
stretched before him and with his chin resting in his hand, as though in | |
thought. By the light that fell on him from the fire, I saw that he wore a | |
brown checked suit and that he was clean and respectable in appearance. His | |
face was in shadow. | |
"Good evening," I said, "you startled me." | |
"I am sorry," he replied. "I beg your pardon. I was going by and I saw your | |
light. I wished to make your acquaintance. But I saw at once that I was | |
intruding, so I sat here. You were quite absorbed. Would you mind if I | |
mended the fire?" | |
Without waiting for an answer, he took the poker and dealt the logs several | |
blows. It didn't greatly help the flame, but he poked with such enjoyment | |
that I smiled. I have myself rather a liking for stirring a fire. He set | |
another log in place. Then he drew from his pocket a handful of dried | |
orange peel. "I love to see it burn," he said. "It crackles and spits." He | |
ranged the peel upon the log where the flame would get it, and then settled | |
himself in the big chair. | |
"Perhaps you smoke?" I asked, pushing toward him a box of cigarettes. | |
He smiled. "I thought that you would know my habits. I don't smoke." | |
"So you were going by and came up to see me?" I asked. | |
"Yes. I was not sure that I would know you. You are a little older than I | |
thought, a little--stouter, but dear me, how you have lost your hair! But | |
you have quite forgotten me." | |
"My dear boy," I said, "you have the advantage of me. Where have I seen | |
you? There is something familiar about you and I am sure that I have seen | |
that brown suit before." | |
"We have never really known each other," the boy replied. "We met once, but | |
only for an instant. But I have thought of you since that meeting a great | |
many times. I lay this afternoon on a hilltop and wondered what you would | |
be like. But I hoped that sometimes you would think of me. Perhaps you have | |
forgotten that I used to collect railway maps and time-tables." | |
"Did you?" I replied. "So did I when I was a little younger than you are. | |
Perhaps if I might see your face, I would know you." | |
"It's nothing for show," he replied, and he kept it still in shadow. "Would | |
you mind," he said at length, "if I ate an apple?" He took one from his | |
pocket and broke it in his hands. "You eat half," he said. | |
I accepted the part he offered me. "Perhaps you would like a knife and | |
plate," I said. "I can find them in the pantry." | |
"Not for me," he replied. "I prefer to eat mine this way." He took an | |
enveloping bite. | |
"I myself care nothing for plates," I said. We ate in silence. Presently: | |
"You have my habit," I said, "of eating everything, skin, seeds and all." | |
"Everything but the stem," he replied. | |
By this time the orange peel was hissing and exploding. | |
"You are an odd boy," I said. "I used to put orange peel away to dry in | |
order to burn it. We seem to be as like as two peas." | |
"I wonder," he said, "if that is so." He turned in his chair and faced me, | |
although his face was still in shadow. "Doubtless, we are far different in | |
many things. Do you swallow grape seeds?" | |
"Hardly!" I cried. "I spit them out." | |
"I am glad of that." He paused. "It was a breezy hilltop where I lay. I | |
thought of you all afternoon. You are famous, of course?" | |
"Dear me, no!" | |
"Oh, I'm so sorry. I had hoped you might be. I had counted on it. It is | |
very disappointing. I was thinking about that as I lay on the hill. But | |
aren't you just on the point of doing something that will make you famous?" | |
"By no means." | |
"Dear me, I am so sorry. Do you happen to be married?" | |
"Yes." | |
"And would you mind telling me her name?" | |
I obliged him. | |
"I don't remember to have heard of her. I didn't think of that name once | |
as I lay upon the hill. Things don't turn out as one might expect. Now, I | |
would have thought--but it's no matter." | |
For a moment or so he was lost in thought, and then he spoke again: "You | |
were writing when I came into the room?" | |
"Nothing important." | |
The boy ran his fingers in his hair and threw out his arms impatiently. | |
"That's what I would like to do. I am in college, and I try for one of the | |
papers. But my stuff comes back. But this summer in the vacation, I am | |
working in an office. I run errands and when there is nothing else to do, I | |
study a big invoice book, so as to get the names of things that are bought. | |
There is a racket of drays and wagons outside the windows, and along in | |
the middle of the afternoon I get tired and thick in my head. But I write | |
Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings." | |
The boy stopped and fixed his eyes on me. "I don't suppose that you happen | |
to be a poet?" | |
"Not at all," I replied. "But perhaps you are one. Tell me about it!" | |
The boy took a turn at the fire with the poker, but it was chiefly in | |
embarrassment. Presently he returned to his chair. He stretched his long | |
arms upward above his head. | |
"No, I'm not," he said. "And yet sometimes I think that I have a kind of | |
poetry in me. Only I can't get it into words. I lay thinking about that, | |
too, on the hillside. There was a wind above my head, and I thought that I | |
could almost put words to the tune. But I have never written a single poem. | |
Yet, goodness me, what thoughts I have! But they aren't real thoughts--what | |
you would regularly call thoughts. Things go racing and tingling in my | |
head, but I can never get them down. They are just feelings." | |
As he spoke, the boy gazed intently through the chimney bricks out into | |
another world. The fireplace was its portal and he seemed to wait for the | |
fires to cool before entering into its possession. It was several moments | |
before he spoke again. | |
"I don't want you to think me ridiculous, but so few understand. If only I | |
could master the tools! Perhaps my thoughts are old, but they come to me | |
with such freshness and they are so unexpected. Could I only solve the | |
frets and spaces inside me here, I could play what tune I chose. But my | |
feelings are cold and stale before I can get them into thoughts. I have no | |
doubt, however, that they are just as real as those other feelings that in | |
time, after much scratching, get into final form and become poetry. I | |
know of course that a man's reach should exceed his grasp--it's hackneyed | |
enough--but just for once I would like to pull down something when I have | |
been up on tiptoe for a while. | |
"Sometimes I get an impression of pity--a glance up a dark hallway--an old | |
woman with a shawl upon her head--a white face at a window--a blind fiddler | |
in the street--but the impression is gone in a moment. Or a touch of beauty | |
gets me. It may be nothing but a street organ in the spring. Perhaps you | |
like street organs, too?" | |
"I do, indeed!" I cried. "There was one today outside my window and my feet | |
kept wiggling to it." | |
The boy clapped his hands. "I knew that you would be like that. I hoped for | |
it on the hill. As for me, when I hear one, I'm so glad that I could cry | |
out. In its lilt there is the rhythm of life. It moves me more than a | |
hillside with its earliest flowers. Am I absurd? It is equal to the pipe of | |
birds, to shallow waters and the sound of wind to stir me to thoughts of | |
April. Today as I came downtown, I saw several merry fellows dancing on | |
the curb. There are tunes, too, upon the piano that send me off. I play a | |
little myself. I see you have a piano. Do you still play?" | |
"A little, rather sadly," I replied. | |
"That's too bad, but perhaps you sing?" | |
"Even worse." | |
"Dear me, that's too bad. I have rather a voice myself. Well, as I was | |
saying, when I hear those tunes, I curl up with the smoke and blow forth | |
from the chimney. If I walk upon the street when the wind is up, and see a | |
light fleece of smoke coming from a chimney top, I think that down below | |
someone is listening to music that he likes, and that his thoughts ride | |
upon the night, like those white streamers of smoke. And then I think of | |
castles and mountains and high places and the sounds of storm. Or in fancy | |
I see a tower that tapers to the moon with a silver gleam upon it." | |
The strange boy lay back and laughed. "Musicians think that they are the | |
only ones that can hear the finer sounds. If one of us common fellows cocks | |
his ear, they think that only the coarser thumps get inside. And artists | |
think that they alone know the glory of color. I was thinking of that, this | |
afternoon. And yet I have walked under the blue sky. I have seen twilights | |
that these men of paint would botch on canvas. But both musicians and | |
artists have a vision that is greater than their product. The soul of a man | |
can hardly be recorded in black and white keys. Nor can a little pigment | |
which you rub upon your thumb be the measure of an artist. So I suppose | |
that is the way also with poets. It is not to be expected that they can | |
express themselves fully in words that they have borrowed from the kitchen. | |
When their genius flames up, it is only the lesser sparks that fall upon | |
their writing pads. It consoles me that a man should be greater than his | |
achievement. I who have done so little would otherwise be so forlorn." | |
"It's odd," I said, when he had fallen into silence, "that I used to feel | |
exactly as you do. It stirs an old recollection. If I am not mistaken, I | |
once wrote a paper on the subject." | |
The boy smiled dreamily. "But if small persons like myself," he began, "can | |
have such frenzies, how must it be with those greater persons who have | |
amazed the world? I have wondered in what kind of exaltation Shakespeare | |
wrote his storm in 'Lear.' There must have been a first conception greater | |
even than his accomplishment. Did he look from his windows at a winter | |
tempest and see miserable old men and women running hard for shelter? Did | |
a flash of lightning bare his soul to the misery, the betrayal and the | |
madness of the world? His supreme moment was not when he flung the | |
completed manuscript aside, or when he heard the actors mouth his lines, | |
but in the flash and throb of creation--in the moment when he knew that he | |
had the power in him to write 'Lear.' What we read is the cold forging, | |
wonderful and enduring, but not to be compared to the producing furnace." | |
The boy had spoken so fast that he was out of breath. | |
"Hold a bit!" I cried. "What you have said sounds familiar. Where could I | |
have heard it before?" | |
There was something almost like a sneer on the boy's face. "What a memory | |
you have! And perhaps you recall this brown suit, too. It's ugly enough to | |
be remembered. Now please let me finish what came to me this afternoon on | |
the hill! Prometheus," he continued, "scaled the heavens and brought back | |
fire to mortals. And he, as the story goes, clutched at a lightning bolt | |
and caught but a spark. And even that, glorious. Mankind properly accredits | |
him with a marvellous achievement. It is for this reason that I comfort | |
myself although I have not yet written a single line of verse." | |
"My dear fellow," I said, "please tell me where I have read something like | |
what you have spoken?" | |
The boy's answer was irrelevant. "You first tell me what you did with a | |
brown checked suit you once owned." | |
"I never owned but one brown suit," I replied, "and that was when I was | |
still in college. I think that I gave it away before it was worn out." | |
The boy once more clapped his hands. "Oh, I knew it, I knew it. I'll give | |
mine tomorrow to the man who takes our ashes. Now, won't you please play | |
the piano for me?" | |
"Assuredly. Choose your tune!" | |
He fumbled a bit in the rack and passing some rather good music, he held up | |
a torn and yellow sheet. "This is what I want," he said. | |
I had not played it for many years. After a false start or so--for it was | |
villainously set in four sharps for which I have an aversion--I got through | |
it. On a second trial I did better. | |
The boy made no comment. He had sunk down in his chair until he was quite | |
out of sight. "Well," I said, "what next?" | |
There was no answer. | |
I arose from the bench and glanced in his direction. "Hello," I cried, | |
"what has become of you?" | |
The chair was empty. I turned on all the lights. He was nowhere in sight. I | |
shook the hangings. I looked under my desk, for perhaps the lad was hiding | |
from me in jest. It was unlikely that he could have passed me to gain the | |
door, but I listened at the sill for any sound upon the stairs. The hall | |
was silent. I called without response. Somewhat bewildered I came back to | |
the hearth. Only a few minutes before, as it seemed, there had been a brisk | |
fire with a row of orange peel upon the upper log. Now all trace of the | |
peel was gone and the logs had fallen to a white ash. | |
I was standing perplexed, when I observed that a little pile of papers lay | |
on the rug just off the end of my desk as by a careless elbow. At least, | |
I thought, this impolite fellow has forgotten some of his possessions. It | |
will serve him right if it is poetry that he wrote upon the hilltop. | |
I picked up the papers. They were yellow and soiled, and writing was | |
scrawled upon them. At the top was a date--but it was twenty years old. | |
I turned to the last sheet. At least I could learn the boy's name. To my | |
amazement, I saw at the bottom in an old but familiar writing, not the | |
boy's name, but my own. | |
I gazed at the chimney bricks and their substance seemed to part before my | |
eyes. I looked into a world beyond--a fabric of moonlight and hilltop and | |
the hot fret of youth. Perhaps the boy had only been waiting for the fire | |
upon the hearth to cool to enter this other world of his restless ambition | |
and desire. | |
Reader, if by chance you have the habit of writing--let us confine | |
ourselves now to sonnets and such airy matter as rides upon the | |
night--doubtless, you sit sometimes at your desk bare of thoughts. The | |
juices of your intellect are parched and dry. In such plight, I beg you | |
not to fall upon your fingers or to draw pictures on your sheet. But most | |
vehemently, and with such emphasis as I possess, I beg you not to rummage | |
among your rejected and broken fragments in the hope of recasting a | |
withered thought to a present mood. Rather, before you sour and curdle, | |
it is good to put on your hat and take your stupid self abroad. | |
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of There's Pippins And Cheese To Come | |
by Charles S. Brooks | |
*** |