Part 16

The day before Christmas I promised that I would not send a substitute to play the midnight mass at the church. Our church was the only one in the city where the old-fashioned mass at twelve o’clock on Christmas Eve was celebrated. It is located near the river, and my journey was a long one, for I lived up-town. I ate a six o’clock supper and went to bed, telling them to arouse me at a quarter before eleven. I wished to be fresh for the early service. By eleven I was out on the street, and took a car bound south. I reached the church in time, and soon the solemn high mass began. My choir had with elaborate care prepared Cherubini’s mass, and despite the poor organ, the extra chorus and much enthusiasm made some effect. The congregation was attentive, and Father Oelschlager delivered a short, happy sermon, urging his flock to rejoice at the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem, Jesus the Infant Christ, uncrucified, but newly born into a world of toil and sin for our redemption. At the consecration of the host the good rector’s beaming faith was most edifying. He was served by Father Moreau, a melancholy deacon, indeed. “Ite Missa Est” pronounced, the faithful dismissed, I was overjoyed at the release, for I was tired. The choir chatted about the service, the singing, and at last I was alone. I placed the music-books back in the tall Gothic cupboard, closed the manuals of my instrument, and put on my overcoat. It must have been half past one, perhaps quarter of two, and I relished the prospect of my arrival home, where a warm breakfast would be awaiting me, and then once more to bed, for I had to play the regular half past ten o’clock Christmas mass for the benefit of the sleepy ones, who loved their couch better than their Christ.

Father Moreau met me at the bottom of the choir-loft steps. He was dressed for the street, his eyes were blazing, and as he took my arm his fingers were vise-like. “Will you come with me?” he asked. I was startled. I explained that I would not have much rest, nor should he waste his sleeping time on the dismal, cold streets; besides, I was hungry. I feared that he was about to deluge me with more of his studies in the customs of the early Gnostics, and, to be quite frank, I was worn out and not in a receptive humor for such untoward cryptic wisdom. Any other time--“Will you come with me?” he reiterated, and the clutch on my arm became oppressive. “Where?” I asked, for I hated to affront a friend. “Will you come with me?”

By this time the church was quite empty, and I pushed out into the street. It was dark and snowing hard. We walked toward the street, and as we neared the corner I heard the lucky sound of a horse-car--there were no trolleys then. I excused myself, ran and caught the car; the priest, following, sat down beside me. I paid both fares, and as I had nothing to say we preserved a sad silence. The mean light, the deserted streets, the lonely car, and the muffled strokes of the horses’ hoofs on the snow chilled my soul. I looked sideways at Father Moreau. He was reading a big parchment-covered book, which I saw by the dim lamplight was entitled Le Satanisme, by Jules Bois. I was shocked. A priest fresh from the holy sacrifice of the mass devouring the blasphemies that I was sure were in the gruesome volume, alarmed my piety. Presently he saw me and shut its leaves. “There are curious things in it, my dear friend,” he muttered, and his voice came from across a waste of sorrow. “Curious things; but you are a believer, are you not?” he eagerly repeated. “I am,” I replied devoutly, and I crossed myself. He fairly jumped at me, his eyes wide open and full of devouring flames. “Will you come with me?” he almost screamed, and for the fourth time. “East Street,” called out the conductor, and rather than let my half-mad companion alone--he surely must have been mad--I left the car with him, the conductor gazing after us with cynical eyes. He evidently took us for belated revellers.

We walked slowly for ten minutes until we arrived in front of a sad-looking church, and then I stopped: “The place is not open yet; they do not have Christmas service until five o’clock.” For the last time my companion whispered, “Will you come with me?” and, pushing past me, struck three times on the big doors. A small postern gate opened at once and we entered the vaulted passageway. I trembled at the strangeness of the adventure, and held fast to Moreau, for it was pitch black, and while I heard soft footfalls beside me--the footfalls of an unknown man--I could not see my hand before my face. We must have traversed a long yard, for the wind blew freely about me; I heard it playing on the housetops like a balloon in distress. Yet it felt as if issuing from a sepulchre, and my heart went to my empty stomach. Even in my growing terror I craved for coffee; its aroma would have made me stronger for this inhuman cruise. We went down eleven steps--I counted them--my conductors on either side of me. Dampness and malodors warned me of our proximity to some ancient cellarage, some forgotten catacombs, wherein Father Moreau expected to give me a sacerdotal surprise, a revival perhaps of an antique and early Christian ritual. I feebly applauded his intentions, but wished he had chosen some other time and that the surroundings had been less sinister.

At last we paused and descended another flight of steps--this time I didn’t number them, for the cold was intense, and it was with relief that we suddenly arrived in a dimly lighted and warm chapel. It was empty, devoid of pews, of chairs, of furnishings of any sort, except, at the upper end, a small votive altar. Before it swung a lamp of Byzantine workmanship, in which burned a solitary tongue of yellow flame. The lamp swayed rhythmically, and on the altar were two tall tapers, lighted and perfumed. And then my eyes rested on the spot where should have been the tabernacle, surmounted by the gold cross. Judge of my consternation when I saw, saw as distinctly as I see the pen which traces these letters, a huge bronze serpent, with overlapping, glistening, metallic scales. The eyes of this python were almost feminine, and their regard gentle, reproachful, and voluptuous. My knees bent beneath me and my face was wet with fright.

“You are a believer, then?” crooned a dull voice in my ear. It was Moreau. He had thrown off his outer wrap and stood in a black soutane. He was white with emotion and said in tenderest accents: “Listen; be my friend. Do not desert me at the crisis of my life. It is to be my first mass, my first three o’clock mass. My deacon is already at the altar. Be the solitary worshipper. It will be a low mass--remember, a low mass!” He spoke clearly, rapidly, sanely, and seeing that I had something more than a lunatic to deal with, I removed my overcoat and knelt down near the altar just as Father Moreau ascended its steps, his assistant holding the end of his _black_ canonicals. If it had not been for the apparition of the serpent, I might have fancied that I was assisting at the lonely, pious vigil of a parochial curate. But the eyes of the serpent devoured mine, and I had none for the two silhouetted figures that went through with febrile velocity the familiar motions of the mass. It was low mass, and from the introit to the preface the space was scarcely appreciable. I heard mumblings, and the air became chillier as the celebrants moved and bowed or extended arms; the air grew colder, denser, and tenser. It vibrated like the wires of a monstrous zither, and my temples throbbed as if in the midst of a magnetic storm. I felt that I was nearing a great catastrophe, that God had abandoned His universe to its wicked will, and that I must sob, or scream, or pray, or die, or be damned forever, or--the tap of the silvery little bell was as if a sweet summer air had swum over my agitated soul. It was the bell that announced the solemn moment when God became man, when the divine spirit, by the miracle of transubstantiation, became flesh and blood.

In an ecstasy of faith, of awe, I plunged on my face and adored and wept, and a mighty wind swept from the altar with strange moanings and lamentings, and the lights were extinguished; yet there was a luminous fog, that enfolded us, and in it I saw the great serpent, symbol of wisdom, symbol of eternity, rear spirally aloft, and beneath it--oh, beneath it!--was the Beatific Vision. In swelling nimbus of flame was a counterfeit Mother of God, and holding the hand of Him, of the Infant, Jesus, born but three hours, and--oh, the horror of it!--not _my_ Christ, not _our_ Christ, not the Christ of the Christians, but an Antichrist from some fetid hell, sent to seduce us, curse us, destroy us! My eyes almost burst from their sockets, and the humming of hell’s loom roared about me as I met the gaze--of the Woman. And now her eyes were the serpent’s eyes, and on her head was the crown of hell and its multiple kingdoms. She was naked, and set against her breasts were sharp swords. She was Mater Malorum, and her breath sowed discord, lust, and cruel murder. I yearned to pronounce the name of the true Mother of God, to bid this blinding vision, this damnable vision, vanish, but my tongue was like wet twine and my sight blistered by the pageantry of Satan, of Satan and his Dam. And as I struggled the silvery little bell tapped once more, and in a fading perspective I saw the Madonna and the Child give me such a sweet, beseeching glance that my heart dissolved within me, and I cried aloud, my tongue snapping in the roof of my mouth:

“Mary, Mother of God, preserve us from the Devil and all his works!” A withering streak of light struck my eyeballs, and I glimpsed the serpent falling to earth with distended jaws, as two priestly figures reeled off the altar-steps, and in the brassy clangor of despair we fell, all three, and swooning blackness shut down upon us like smothering velvet.

It was still dark when solicitous hands lifted me to my feet: my coat was thrown about my shoulders, and I was hurried in shivering gloom to the street. The other one disappeared at the little postern gate, and, parting outside, with damp, hot hands, and face plastered with hideous passion, the mad priest said to me, in a cracked voice:

“You have seen _my_ God, the only true God of hell--heaven and earth.”

BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER

_What some distinguished writers have said of them_:

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote, May 15, 1905: “Do you know that ‘Iconoclasts’ is the only book of high and universal critical worth that we have had for years--to be precise, since Georg Brandes. It is at once strong and fine, supple and firm, indulgent and sure.”

And of “Ivory Apes and Peacocks” he said, among other things: “I have marvelled at the vigilance and clarity with which you follow and judge the new literary and artistic movements in all countries. I do not know of criticism more pure and sure than yours.” (October, 1915.)

* * * * *

“The Mercure de France translated the other day from Scribner’s one of the best studies which have been written on Stendhal for a long time, in which there was no evasion of the question of Stendhal’s immorality. The author of that article, James Huneker, is, among foreign critics, the one best acquainted with French literature and the one who judges us with the greatest sympathy and with the most freedom. He has protested with force in numerous American journals against the campaign of defamation against France and he has easily proved that those who participate in it are ignorant and fanatical.”--“_Promenades Littéraires_” (_Troisième Série_), _Remy de Gourmont._ (Translated by Burton Rascoe for the Chicago _Tribune_.)

* * * * *

Paul Bourget wrote, Lundi de Paques, 1909, of “Egoists”: “I have browsed through the pages of your book and found that you touch in a sympathetic style on diverse problems, artistic and literary. In the case of Stendhal your catholicity of treatment is extremely rare and courageous.”

* * * * *

Dr. Georg Brandes, the versatile and profound Danish critic, wrote: “I find your breadth of view and its expression more European than American; but the essential thing is that you are an artist to your very marrow.”

UNICORNS

“The essays are short, full of a satisfying--and fascinating--crispness, both memorable and delightful. And they are full of fancy, too, of the gayest humor, the quickest appreciation, the gentlest sympathy, sometimes of an enchanting extravagance.”

--_New York Times._

MELOMANIACS

“It would be difficult to sum up ‘Melomaniacs’ in a phrase. Never did a book, in my opinion at any rate, exhibit greater contrasts, not, perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of clearness and obscurity.”

--HAROLD E. GORST, in _London Saturday Review_ (Dec. 8, 1906).

VISIONARIES

“In ‘The Spiral Road’ and in some of the other stories both fantasy and narrative may be compared with Hawthorne in his most unearthly moods. The younger man has read his Nietzsche and has cast off his heritage of simple morals. Hawthorne’s Puritanism finds no echo in these modern souls, all sceptical, wavering, and unblessed. But Hawthorne’s splendor of vision and his power of sympathy with a tormented mind do live again in the best of Mr. Huneker’s stories.”

--_London Academy_ (Feb. 3, 1906).

ICONOCLASTS:

A Book of Dramatists

“His style is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in which we are led to expect some significance, if not wit, in every sentence.”

--G. K. CHESTERTON, in _London Daily News_.

MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC

“Mr. Huneker is, in the best sense, a critic; he listens to the music and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few words as possible; or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping strokes with a magnificent disregard for unimportant details. And as Mr. Huneker is, as I have said, a powerful personality, a man of quick brain and an energetic imagination, a man of moods and temperament--a string that vibrates and sings in response to music--we get in these essays of his a distinctly original and very valuable contribution to the world’s tiny musical literature.”

--J. F. RUNCIMAN, in _London Saturday Review_.

IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS

“Out of the depressing welter of our American writing upon æsthetics, with its incredible thinness and triteness and paltriness, its intellectual sterility, its miraculous dulness, its limitless and appalling vapidity, Mr. James Huneker, and the small and honorable minority of his peers, emerge with a conspicuousness that is both comforting and disgraceful.... Susceptibility, clairvoyance, immediacy of response, are his; he is the friend of any talent that is fine and strange and frank enough to incur the dislike of the mighty army of Bourbons, Puritans, and Bœotians. He is innocent of prepossessions. He is infinitely flexible and generous. Yet if, in the twenty years that we have been reading him, he has ever praised a commonplace talent, we have no recollection of it. His critical tact is well-nigh infallible.... His position among writers on æsthetics is anomalous and incredible: no merchant traffics in his heart, yet he commands a large, an eager, an affectionate public. Is it because he is both vivid and acute, robust yet fine-fingered, tolerant yet unyielding, astringent yet tender--a mellow pessimist, a kindly cynic? Or is it rather because he is, primarily, a temperament--dynamic, contagious, lovable, inveterately alive--expressing itself through the most transparent of the arts?”

--LAWRENCE GILMAN, in _North American Review_ (October, 1915).

NEW COSMOPOLIS

“Mr. James Huneker, critic of music in the first place, is a craftsman of diverse accomplishment who occupies a distinctive and distinguished place among present-day American essayists. He is intensely ‘modern,’ well read in recent European writers, and not lacking sympathy with the more rebellious spirits. Ancient serenity has laid no chastening hand on his thought and style, but he has achieved at times a fineness of expression that lifts his work above that of the many eager and artistic souls who strive to be the thinkers of New England to-day. He flings off his impressions at fervent heat; he is not ashamed to be enthusiastic; and he cannot escape that large sentimentality which, to less disciplined transatlantic writers, is known nakedly as ‘heart interest.’ Out of his chaos of reading and observation he has, however, evolved a criticism of life that makes for intellectual cultivation, although it is of a Bohemian rather than an academic kind. Given a different environment, another training, Mr. Huneker might have emerged as an American Walter Pater.”--_London Athenæum_ (November 6, 1915).

FRANZ LISZT

_WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_

CHOPIN: The Man and His Music

OVERTONES:

A Book of Temperaments

_WITH FRONTISPIECE PORTRAIT OF RICHARD STRAUSS_

“In some respects Mr. Huneker must be reckoned the most brilliant of all living writers on matters musical.”

--_Academy, London._

THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE

A Book of a Thousand and One Moments

“He talks about Bergson as well as Matisse; he never can keep still about Wagner; he hauls over his French library of modern immortals, and he gives a touch to George Moore, to Arthur Davies, and to many another valiant worker in paint, music, and letters. The book is stimulating; brilliant even with an unexpected brilliancy.”--_Chicago Tribune._

PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST

“We like best such sober essays as those which analyze for us the technical contributions of Cézanne and Rodin. Here Mr. Huneker is a real interpreter, and here his long experience of men and ways in art counts for much. Charming, in the slighter vein, are such appreciations as the Monticelli and Chardin.”--FRANK JEWETT MATHER, JR., in _New York Nation_ and _Evening Post_.

EGOISTS

_WITH PORTRAIT AND FACSIMILE REPRODUCTIONS_

“Closely and yet lightly written, full of facts, yet as amusing as a bit of discursive talk, penetrating, candid, and very shrewd.”

--ROYAL CORTISSOZ, in the _New York Tribune_.

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, NEW YORK

Transcriber’s Notes

A few minor punctuation errors were corrected.