Read Ebook: Prose Fancies (Second Series) by Le Gallienne Richard

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Ebook has 412 lines and 38127 words, and 9 pages

You wander through the Strand, or along Regent Street, as through the meadows of Enna--sweet scents, sweet sounds, sweet shapes, are all about you; the town-butterflies, white, blue, and gold, 'wheel and shine' and flutter from shop to shop, suddenly resurgent from their winter wardrobes as from a chrysalis; bright eyes flash and flirt along the merry, jostling street, while the sun pours out his golden wine overhead, splashing it about from gilded domes and bright-faced windows--and ever are the voices at the corners and the crossings calling out the sweet flower-names of the spring!

But here in the country it is still all rain and iron. I am tired of waiting for this slow-moving provincial spring. Let us to the town to meet the spring--for:

They've taken all the spring from the country to the town-- Like the butter and the eggs, and the milk from the cow; And if you want a primrose, you write to London now, And if you need a nightingale, well,--Whiteley sends it down.

THE GREAT MERRY-GO-ROUND

In an age curious of new pleasures, the merry-go-round seems still to maintain its ancient popularity. I was the other day the delighted, indeed the fascinated, spectator of one in full swing in an old Thames-side town. It was a very superior example, with a central musical engine of extraordinary splendour, and horses that actually curveted, as they swirled maddeningly round to the strains of 'The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.' How I longed to join the wild riders! But though I am a brave man, I confess that to ride a merry-go-round in front of a laughter-loving Cockney public is more than I can dare. I had to content myself with watching the faces of the riders. I noticed particularly one bright-eyed little girl, whose whole passionate young soul seemed to be on fire with ecstasy, and for whom it was not difficult to prophesy trouble when time should bring her within reach of more dangerous excitements. Then there was a stolid little boy, dull and unmoved in expression, as though he were in church. Life, one felt sure, would be safe enough, and stupid enough, for him; the world would have no music to stir or draw him. The fifes would go down the street with a sweet sound of marching feet, and the eyes of other men would brighten and their blood be all glancing spears and streaming banners, but he would remain behind his counter; from the strange hill beyond the town the dear, unholy music, so lovely in the ears of other men and maids, would call to him in vain, and morning and evening the stars would sing above his draper's shop, but he never hear a word.

What particularly struck me was the number of quite grown-up, even elderly, people who came and had their pennyworth of horse-exercise. Now it was a grave young workman quietly smoking his pipe as he revolved; now it was a stout middle-aged woman returning from marketing, on whom the Zulu music and the whirling horses laid their irresistible spells. Unless ye become as little children!

Is the Kingdom of Heaven really at hand? For, indeed, men and women, and perhaps particularly literary men and women, are once more becoming as little children in their pleasures.

'Why lay your gipsy freedom down And doom your child to pen and ink?'

and by steady and persistent golfing, and writing about angling and cricket, comes as near to the noble savage as is possible to so incorrigibly civilised a man. Mr. Henley--that Berserker of the pen--sings the sword with a vigour that makes one curious to see him using it, and we all know Mr. Kipling's views on the matter. Then Mr. Bernard Shaw rides a bicycle!

Those men of letters whose inclinations or opportunities do not lead them to these out-of-door, and more or less ferocious, pleasures seek to forget themselves at the music-hall, the Aquarium, or the numerous Earl's Court exhibitions. They become amateurs of foreign dancing, connoisseurs of the trapeze, or they leave their great minds at home and go up the Great Wheel. Earl's Court, particularly, is becoming quite a modern Vauxhall--Tan-ta-ra-ra! Earl's Court! Earl's Court!--and Mr. Imre Kiralfy, with his conceptions and designs, is to our generation what Albert Smith was to the age of Dickens and Edmund Yates.

It takes some experience of life to realise how right this is; to realise that, after all our fine philosophies and cocksure sciences, there is no better answer to the riddle of things than a good game of cricket or an exciting spin on one's 'bike.' The real inner significance of Earl's Court--Mr. Kiralfy will no doubt be prepared to hear--is the failure of science as an answer to life. We give up the riddle, and enjoy ourselves with our wiser children. Simple pleasures, no doubt, for the profound! But what is simple, and what is profound?

The simple joy we get from 'fooling among boats' on a summer day, the thrill of a well-hit ball, the rapture of a skilful dive, are no more easy to explain than the more complicated pleasures of literature, or art, or religion. And why is it--to come closer to our theme--that the round or the whirling have such attraction for us? What is the secret of the fascination of the circle? Why is it that the turning of anything, be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels, colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, and wheeling waters: there may--who knows?--have been a certain pleasure in being broken on the wheel, and, at all events, that hideous punishment is another curious example of the fascination of the circle. It would take a whole volume to illustrate the prevalence of the circle in external nature, in history, and, even more significant, in language. We all know, or think we know, that the world is round--

'This orb--this round Of sight and sound,'

as Mr. Quiller Couch sings--though I remember a porter at school who was sure that it was flat, and who used to say that Hamlet's

was a cryptic reference to Shakespeare's secret belief in his theory. Many of the things we love most are round. Is not money, according to the proverb, made round that it may go round, and are not the men most in demand described as 'all-round men'? Nor are all-round women without their admirers. Events, we know, move in a circle, as time moves in cycles--though, alas! not on them. The ballet and the bicycle are popular forms of the circle, and it is the charm of the essay to be 'roundabout.'

Again, how is it that that which on a small scale does not impress us at all, when on a large scale impresses us so much? What is the secret of the impressiveness of size, bulk, height, depth, speed, and mileage? Philosophically, a mountain is no more wonderful than a molehill, yet no man is knighted for climbing a molehill. One little drop of water and one little grain of sand are essentially as wonderful as 'the mighty ocean' or 'the beauteous land' to which they contribute. A balloon is no more wonderful than an air-bubble, and were you to build an Atlantic liner as big as the Isle of Wight it would really be no more remarkable than an average steam-launch. Nobody marvels at the speed of a snail, yet, given a snail's pace to start with, an express train follows as a matter of course. Movement, not the rate of movement, is the mystery. Precisely the same materials, the same forces, the same methods, are employed in the little as in the big of these examples. Why should mere accumulation, reiteration, and magnification make the difference? We may ask why? But it does, for all that. If we answer that these mammoth multiplications impress us because they are so much bigger, taller, fatter, faster, etc., than we are, the question arises--How many times bigger than a man must a mountain be before it impresses us? Perhaps the problem has already been tackled by the schoolman who pondered how many angels could dance on the point of a needle.

However, these and similar first principles, it will readily be seen, are far from being irrelevant for the visitor at the Earl's Court Exhibition. No doubt they are continually discussed by the thousands who daily and nightly throng that very charming dream-world which Mr. Kiralfy has built 'midmost the beating' of our 'steely sea.'

To an age that is over-read and over-fed Mr. Kiralfy brings the message: 'Leave your great minds at home, and go up the Great Wheel!' and I heard his voice and obeyed. The sensation is, I should say, something between going up in a balloon and being upon shipboard--a sensation compounded, maybe, of the creaking of the circular rigging, the pleasure of rising in the air, the freshening of the air as you ascend, the strange feeling of the earth receding and spreading out beneath you, the curious diminution of the people below--to their proper size. You will hear original minds all about you comparing them to ants, and it is curious to notice the involuntary feeling of contempt that possesses you as you watch them. I believe one has a half-defined illusion that we are growing greater as they are growing smaller. Ants and flies! ants and flies! with here and there a fiery centipede in the shape of a District train dashing in and out amongst them. We lose the power of understanding their motions, and their throngs and movements do indeed seem as purposeless at this height as the hurry-scurrying about an anthill. At this height, indeed, one seems to understand how small a matter a bank smash may seem to the Almighty; though, as a lady said to me--as we clung tightly together in terror 'a-top of the topmost bough'--it must be gratifying to see so many churches.

Those who would keep their illusions about the beauty of London had better stay below, at least in the daytime, for it makes one's heart sink to look on those miles and miles of sordid grey roofs huddled in meaningless rows and crescents, just for all the world like a huge child's box of wooden bricks waiting to be arranged into some intelligible pattern. Of course, this is not London proper. Were the Great Wheel set up in Trafalgar Square, one is fain to hope that the view from it would be less disheartening--though it might be better not to try.

THE BURIAL OF ROMEO AND JULIET

One morning of all mornings the citizens of Verona were startled by strange news. Tragic forces, to which they had been accustomed to pay little heed, had been at work in their city during the dark hours, and young Romeo of the Montagues, handsome, devil-may-care lad as they had known him, and little Juliet of the Capulets, that madcap, merry, gentle young mistress, lay dead, side by side in the church of Santa Maria.

Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their guests in the vault of the Capulets, with a strange smile of welcome for all who came. And their presence-chamber was bright with candles and flowers, and sweet with the sweet smell of death. The air that had drunk in their wild words and their last long looks of heavenly love still hung about the dark corners, as the air where a rose has been holds a little while the memory of its breath. Yes! that morning, in that dank but shining tomb, you might draw into you the very breath of love. The air you breathed had passed through the sweet lungs of Juliet, it had been etherealised with her holy passion, and washed clean with her lovely words. And now, for a little while yet, it feasted on the fair peace of their glad young faces. To-morrow, or the next day, or the next week, they would belong to the unvisited treasure-house of the past, but now this morning of all mornings, this day that could never come again, they still belonged to the real and radiant present.

Flowers there are that bloom but once in a hundred years, but here in this tomb had blossomed one of those marvellous flowers that bloom but once throughout eternity. Poets and kings in after-times, O men of Verona, will yearn to have seen what you look upon to-day. For you, you thick and greasy citizens, are chosen out of all time to behold this beauty. There were once in the world thousands of men and women who had heard the very words of Christ as they fell from His lips, words that we may only read. There have been men, actual living, foolish men, who have looked on at the valour of Horatius, men who from the crowded banks of the Nile have watched the living body of Cleopatra step into her gilded barge, men who, standing idle in the streets of Florence, have seen the love-light start in the great Dante's eyes, seen his hand move to his laden heart, as the little Beatrice passed him by among her maidens. Base men of the past, by the indulgent accident of time, have been granted to behold these wonders, and now for you, O men of Verona, a like wonder has been born.

Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their guests in the vault of the Capulets, with a strange smile of welcome for all who came.

It had been an innocent little desire, yet had all the world come against it. It had been a simple little desire, yet too strong for all the world to break.

Strange this enmity of the world to love, as though men should take arms against the song of a bird, or plot against the opening of a flower.

But now, what was this strange homage to a love that a few hours ago had no friend in all the daylight, a fearful bliss beneath the secret moon? But yesterday a stupid old nurse, a herb-gathering friar, a rascally apothecary, had been their only friends, and now was all the world come here to do their bidding.

No need to steal again beneath the shade of orchard walls, no need again to heed if lark or nightingale sang in the reddening east. For the world had grown all warm to love, warm and kind as June to the rose.

Three days lay Romeo and Juliet receiving their guests in the vault of the Capulets, with that strange smile of welcome for all who came. Three days the world worshipped the love it could not understand, but still came dense and denser throngs to worship. For the news of the wonderful flower that had blossomed in Verona had gone far and wide, and travellers from distant cities kept pouring in to look at those strange young lovers, who had deemed the world well lost so that they might leave it together.

Then the governor of the city decreed, as the time drew near when the two lovers must be left to their peace, and it was ill that any should lose the sight of this marvel, that on the fourth day they should be carried through the streets in the eyes of all the people, and then be buried together in the vault of the Capulets--for by this burial in the same tomb, says the old chronicler who was first honoured with the telling of their sweet story, the governor hoped to bring about a peace between the Montagues and Capulets, at least for a little while.

Meanwhile, though Verona was a city of many trades and professions, and love and death were idle things, yet was there little said of business all these days, and little else done but talk of the two lovers, of whom, indeed, it was true, as it has seldom been true out of Holy Writ, that death was swallowed up in victory. During these days also there stole a strange sweetness over the city, as though the very spirit of love had nested there, and was filling the air with its soft breathing--as when in the first days of spring the birds sing so sweetly that broken hearts must hide away, and hard hearts grow a little kind. Men once more spoke kindly to their wives, and even coarse faces wore a gentle light,--just as sometimes at evening the setting sun will turn to tenderness even black rocks and frowning towers.

Thereat she had plunged Romeo's dagger into her side, though some said she had stopped her heart's beating by the strong will of her great love. Yea--such were the distracted rumours--some averred that at the last she had curst Christ and His saints, and called upon Venus, who, it was rumoured in awestruck whispers, was being worshipped once more in secret corners of the world.

It was strong noon when, on the fourth day, Romeo and Juliet were carried through the bright and solemn streets, that the world might be saved; saved as ever by the spectacle and the worship of a mysterious nobility, an uncomprehended greatness, a beauty which haunts not its daily dreams, lifted up by the humble gaze of devout eyes into the empyrean of greater souls, stirred to an unfamiliar passion, and fired with glimpses of a strange unworldly truth.

In the light of the sun the faces of the two lovers, as they lay amid their flowers, seemed to have grown a little weary, but they still wore their sweet and royal smile, and their laurelled brows were very white and proud.

And in the faces that looked upon them, as they moved slowly by, with sweet death music, and the hushed marching of feet, and the wafted odour of lilies, there was to be seen strangely blent a great pity for their tragedy and a heavenly tenderness for their love. It was like a dream passing down the streets of a dream, so deep and tender was the silence, for only the hearts of men were speaking; though here and there a girl sobbed, or a young man buried his face in his sleeve, and the sternest eyes were dashed with the holy water of tears. And with the pity and tenderness, who shall say but that in all that silent heart-speech there was no little envy of the two who had loved so truly and died in the springtide of their love, before the ways of love had grown dusty with its summer, or dreary with its autumn, before its dreams had petrified into duties, and its passion deadened into use?

'Would it were thou and I,' said many wedded eyes one to the other, delusively warm and soft for a moment, but all cold and hard again on the morrow.

And maybe some poet would say in his heart--

'If you loved her living, my Romeo, what were your love could you but see her dead!' for indeed life has no beauty so wonderful as the beauty of death.

And, as in all places and times, there was a base remnant that gaped and worshipped not, and in their hearts resented all this distinction paid to a nobility they could not recognise, as the like had grumbled when Cimabue's Madonna had been carried through the streets in glory. But of these there is no need that we should take account, any more than of the beasts that moved head down amid the pastures outside the town, knowing not of the wonder that was passing within. For the ass will munch his thistles though the Son of Man be his rider, nor will the sheep look aside from his grazing though Apollo be the herdsman.

At length the sacred pageant was ended, gone like the passing of an aerial music, and the people went to their homes silent, with haunted eyes; while the Earth, which had given this beauty, took it back to herself, and one more Persephone of human loveliness was shut within the gates of the forgetful grave.

VARIATIONS UPON WHITEBAIT

I thought of this Pre-Raphaelite brother as the Sphinx and I were seated a few evenings ago at our usual little dinner, in our usual little sheltered corner, on the Lover's Gallery of one of the great London restaurants. The Sphinx says that there is only one place in Europe where one can really dine, but as it is impossible to be always within reasonable train service of that Montsalvat of cookery, she consents to eat with me--she cannot call it dine--at the restaurant of which I speak. I being very simple-minded, untravelled, and unlanguaged, think it, in my Cockney heart, a very fine place indeed, with its white marble pillars surrounding the spacious peristyle, and flashing with a thousand brilliant lights and colours; with its stately cooks, clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, ranged behind a great altar loaded with big silver dishes, and the sacred musicians of the temple ranged behind them--while in and out go the waiters, clothed in white and black, waiters so good and kind that I am compelled to think of Elijah being waited on by angels.

They have such an eye for a romance, too, and really take it personally to heart if it should befall that our little table is usurped by others that know not love. I like them, too, because they really seem to have an eye for the strange beauty and charm of the Sphinx, quite an unexpected taste for Botticelli. They ill conceal their envy of my lot, and sometimes, in the meditative pauses between the courses, I see them romantically reckoning how it might be possible by desperately saving up, by prodigious windfalls of tips, from unexampled despatch and sweetness in their ministrations, how it might be possible in ten years' time, perhaps even in five--the lady would wait five years! and her present lover could be artistically poisoned meanwhile!--how it might be possible to come and sue for her beautiful hand. Then a harsh British cry for 'waiter' comes like a rattle and scares away that beautiful dream-bird, though, as the poor dreamer speeds on the quest of roast beef for four, you can see it still circling with its wonderful blue feathers around his pomatumed head.

Ah, yes, the waiters know that the Sphinx is no ordinary woman. She cannot conceal even from them the mystical star of her face, they too catch far echoes of the strange music of her brain, they too grow dreamy with dropped hints of fragrance from the rose of her wonderful heart.

How reverently do they help her doff her little cloak of silk and lace! with what a worshipful inclination of the head, as in the presence of a deity, do they await her verdict of choice between rival soups--shall it be 'clear or thick'? And when she decides on 'thick,' how relieved they seem to be, as if--well, some few matters remain undecided in the universe, but never mind, this is settled for ever--no more doubts possible on one portentous issue, at any rate--Madame will take her soup 'thick.'

'On such a night' our talk fell upon whitebait.

As the Sphinx's silver fork rustled among the withered silver upon her plate, she turned to me and said:

'Have you ever thought what beautiful little things these whitebait are?'

'Oh, yes,' I replied, 'they are the daisies of the deep sea, the threepenny-pieces of the ocean.'

'You dear!' said the Sphinx, who is alone in the world in thinking me awfully clever. 'Go on, say something else, something pretty about whitebait--there's a subject for you!'

Then it was that, fortunately, I remembered my Pre-Raphaelite friend, and I sententiously remarked: 'Of course, if one has anything to say one cannot do better than say it about whitebait.... Well, whitebait....'

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