Part 16

Only the chief and his old councillors remained—sitting over their eternal fire, chewing their eternal betel—the grandames, and the sick. Towards sunset the laboring folk returned, and the males sat to chew and gossip, but the girls had still their hardest work to do. Presently all the house resounded with the thud of pestles, and the air was filled with husks from the pounded rice. A silence of interest and hunger followed whilst the meal was cooking, and then the pleasure of the day began. For the elders it was only talk, always the same, as far as I could gather, of bad times and good times, and the prospect of the year; seldom personal, and never gossiping, at the chief’s fire, where all heads of families assembled. No one paid attention to the youth or to the maidens, so soon as their household duties were complete. By this time darkness had quite fallen, and there was no light excepting the low fires. Shoulders glossy as brown silk were faintly luminous in the twilight, as we looked down the house; from time to time a fire shot out, revealing the seated group around, lively enough, but subdued. Shadows stalked from hearth to hearth, tinkling and sparkling in brazen finery, and vanished with the gloom;—then the whispered chatter of girls, the smothered merriment, became more loud, with expostulations and mirthful appeals for help. A very pleasant scene; but I loved also to awake at midnight, and observe that different picture. The councillors, taking no exercise, never turned in; all the night through they maundered, and dozed, and coughed, and chewed betel. Above them the teeth of the weazened “heads” glimmered through the smoke. A labyrinth of posts and beams was faintly outlined in their rear. Now and again a young form passed stealthily, for in the hours of darkness courtship is seriously pursued. Beneath the cave I caught a glimpse of azure sky, and palm fronds gleaming in the moonlight. Of all the odd quarters I have known this is still the dearest to memory.

Once upon a time I lost myself in the veldt, somewhere by the Vaal river. Leaving Pniel in a “spider cart,” with a mulatto groom, I inspected the wet-diggings as far as Gong-Gong, and then got off the track. They told me that to go wrong would be impossible, with an Africander to steer my course, but I contrived to do it. Some philosophers would have you think that every savage has an instinctive mastery of woodcraft, but experience leads me to think that fools are almost as common in Barbarie as in Christendom. We lost ourselves, and wandered two days, heading direct for the Atlantic—and for nothing else in particular, besides the Namaqualand desert. Settlements are very few in that veldt, and the only one we came across was Jantje’s kraal on the second evening;—Jantje has since rebelled, and is now an outlaw, I believe. It had some forty huts on the top of a mound, encompassed by raging brooks;—for the sky had been little better than a sieve since we started. There was no sign of life, but a swelling roar of voices directed me to a wooden church, which I entered. All the population were there, and the vehemence of their devotions was deafening. A fat man hurried up, not ceasing to howl with the rest—his mouth opened from ear to ear and nose to chin. He took my arm, and led me out like a stray dog, whilst the congregation bellowed and stared without a pause. So many white lips—and teeth—fixed on me, in a gathering darkness that obscured the black faces, had an effect indescribably gruesome and absurd.

Outside the church this personage turned to resume his place, singing all the time as loud as he could bawl. My groom coming up arrested certain demands of explanation, which began to take a serious form, but no help could be got from Jantje’s people. We annexed an empty hut and camped there supperless, wet through. My first experience of tompans was made that night. This curious insect dwells in deserted Kaffir buildings and nowhere else, I believe. He is armed after the best and newest suggestions of science for naval equipment—his vital parts and locomotive machinery protected by the cuirass, his artillery, of great weight and superior rifling, on the Moncrieff system, swift to attack and agile to retreat. You cannot crush him with any weapon less ponderous than a hammer; to ignore a beast as large and as flat as a threepenny bit is impossible, and moral influence seems to be quite ineffective. To sing hymns and cultivate tompans was the only visible employment of Jantje’s kraal. I cannot affect to regret that its inhabitants have been scattered to the winds. Wherever they have fled they have found an opportunity to study better manners.

But I was going to recall the odd quarters at Jacobsdaal which brought this adventure to a fitting close. We had no treaty of extradition with the Free State at that time—I do not know that we have one now. All sorts of criminals took refuge at Jacobsdaal, a tiny but prosperous settlement lying just across the frontier. During my absence a gust of indignation had swept over the Diamond Fields, and all the guilty, the suspected, and the alarmed had fled. The landlady of the best “Accommodation House” declared to me, almost with tears, that her dwelling, hitherto inveterate in virtue, was become a rendezvous of malefactors. She advised me to try the other shop for once, since even thieves would not go there by choice—naturally. I did so, and found the guests sitting down. In the place of honor was a canteen man, badly wanted by the New Rush police. I also recognized an acquaintance accused of cheating at cards in the “Pig and Whistle;” another who had been lately described to the magistrate as “tremendous delirious;” an American gentleman whom the police had vainly besought to render an account to his partners. One of these latter, in attendance on his fugitive associate, identified for me a man charged with murder, and two common thieves. The conversation was most polite. The chairman’s suasive tones in proposing a “leetle mutton” were as good as testimony to character. He had a trick of cocking the old smoking-cap upon his head before every observation, as if to point it with knowingness. The extreme propriety with which he guided the conversation so overawed the thieves that they were too hoarse to talk. My poor “tremendous” friend yielded to the same wholesome influence, and addressed everyone in the third person as “the honorable gentleman on my right,” or left, or opposite. As for the manslaughterer, he showed warm philanthropy, arguing with vehemence that black people have as good rights as white, and better in their own country. Circumstances made this topic embarrassing to the chairman. He cocked his smoking-cap from side to side, imploring everyone to take some more of everything. After supper he made a little speech, ending with a toast—“Home, lads, mothers and dads.” The company drank it with deep emotion.—_Belgravia._

SIR TRISTRAM DE LYONESSE.

BY E. M. SMITH.

The ancient adage that “there is no new thing under the sun,” has been recently applied by a popular writer of fiction to the romantic stories of the day. But surely nowhere are the words of the Preacher more abundantly illustrated than in the realm of narrative poetry. With whom did “The Canterbury Tales,” “The Fairy Queen,”“The Idylls of the King,” originate? Certainly not with Chaucer, Spenser, or Tennyson. The hidden sources of those delightful rivers of song lie far away, so far that few care to trace them. The same, or nearly the same, story is handed down from one man to another, till at last some master-mind catches its true significance, tells it for once as it was never told before, and links his name with it through all the ages. Sometimes though more rarely, different capabilities of the same story will strike more than one master-mind, and then the comparisons are full of interest, and bring out into sharp relief the idiosyncrasies of each narrator. It has been so with portions of the “Iliad,” of the “Nibelungen Lied,” and of our own “Morte D’Arthur.” It is so still with the story of Sir Tristram de Lyonesse, who, of all King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, seems to have gone the farthest and fared the best. Rarely indeed has the homage of poets so far apart in time, and varying so widely in spirit and conception, been tendered so persistently to one object. Arthur may pass away in peace to the cool valley of Avilion, Launcelot to his grave in Joyous Guard, Galahad to the Blessed Vision which last he saw with mortal eyes in the city of Estorause; but Tristram is of the earth, earthy, and on the earth he abides. Twelve centuries have not quenched the ardor of his love for fair Iseult, nor traced one wrinkle on his brow.

Briefly, the legend of his life is this: Sir Tristram de Lyonesse as his first great exploit slew Sir Marhaus, the deadly foe of his uncle, King Mark, but was by him so desperately wounded that he sailed to Ireland under the name of Tamtris, to be cured of his wound by the surgical arts of the Queen of Ireland, sister to Sir Marhaus, and mother of the beautiful Princess Iseult. On his return to Cornwall he described the Princess in words so glowing that King Mark resolved to marry her, and sent his nephew back to escort her over the sea. Fearful lest all should not go well, the Queen gave to her daughter’s faithful maid, Bragwaine, a magic potion, which the bride was to drink on the night of her marriage with King Mark, to ensure their mutual love. Unwittingly, however, Tristram and Iseult drank of it together on board the vessel; and, all their lives, it wrought them woe and misery, until at length they died together, and were buried side by side. The facts are always much the same—but the hero alters so completely as to change the whole aspect of the story, and make the interpretation put upon it different in every age.

When we first meet with him among the Welsh bards of the sixth century, he is simply Drystan, or Trystan, the Tumultuous; his name has not already doomed him to that _triste_ existence, which grows consistently more and more tragic throughout the later records of his life. He is the son, not of King Meliodas, but of Talwz; his lady is Essylt; his uncle, Mark Meirzion; and the chief points in his character are curiously brought out by his association with Greidial and Gwgon, as one of the three heralds of Britain; with Gwair and Cai, the diademed princes; with Call and Pryderi, the mighty swineherds; with Gwair and Eiddillig, the stubborn chiefs; with Caswallan and Cynon, the faithful lovers. Heraldry, obstinacy, fidelity—no very promising material for a hero nowadays; but then the lines on which a poet worked were simpler.

For three years this tumultuous being withdrew from Arthur’s Court in disgust at the issue of one of his quarrels, and the King, with almost incredible folly, instead of rejoicing at the deliverance, sent after him twenty-eight warriors in succession, all of whom Trystan overthrew. At last, Gwalzmai with the Golden Tongue (the Gawaine of later days) tried his fortune, accosting the fierce chieftain in these words:

Tumultuous is the wave naturally When the sea is its base: Who art thou, warrior incomprehensible?

To which Trystan Ossianically replies:

Tumultuous be a wave and a thunderstorm: While they be tumultuous in their course, In the day of conflict I am Trystan.

Finally the Golden-tongued prevails, and they return together.

Our next glimpse of him is in the kingdom of the _trouvères_ and _troubadours_, with whom he is a great favorite. The famous Mademoiselle Marie, in her translation, the “Lai Dee Chevrefoil,” written about the middle of the twelfth century, sings of a pretty episode in his love, which none of her successors have improved upon, and which most of them have omitted. There are allusions to him in Chrestien de Troyes, who wrote before the year 1191, and in the works of a poetical king of Navarre, about 1226. The date of the Auchinleck MS., “Sir Tristram,” which Scott raised such a tempest by ascribing to Thomas the Rhymer of Ercildoune, is said to be 1330. It is written in a curious and very effective metre; the short abrupt line of two syllables falling regularly near the end of each stanza reins in the full swing of the rest with great force and directness. The poem is full of life and vigor, and there are touches of naïf insight here and there in strange contrast with the rough, matter-of-fact tone of the whole. Many and quaint are the adventures of the hero, especially when he kills a dragon in Ireland for the sake of Iseult, that “brid bright, as blood upon snoweing,” and her mother cures him of the pain caused by its poisonous tongue, with treacle; or when, having overcome a terrible “geaunt” in Brittany, he requires him to adorn the walls of his castle with “images” of Iseult and Bragwaine, the beauty of which so astounds his young brother-in-law, evidently a novice in works of art, that he straightway falls backward and breaks his head!

This poem, or another much like it, was celebrated both at home and abroad, where “Thomas of Britain” was henceforth quoted as the great authority on the subject. About the same time lived Raoul de Beauvais, who also made it his study; Rusticien de Puise, whose work is in prose; and the authors of two metrical fragments in French, from one of which Scott completed the Auchinleck MS., though its end had not been unearthed when he became its editor. The translation, which carried the name of Tristram northward as far as Iceland, is still kept in the library at Copenhagen; and G. de le Flamma tells us that when the tomb of a Lombard king was opened in 1339, there was found inscribed on his sword, “This was the sword of Sir Tristram, who killed Amoroyt of Ireland.” Seghart von Bamberg wrote of him in 1403, and also Eylhard von Habergen. Of the same period is the Romance by Gotfried of Strasburg, who died in the midst of his work, leaving it to be finished in a less poetical spirit by Ulrich von Turheim and Heinrich von Vribert.

Our own Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first to draw Sir Tristram into the magic circle of Arthur’s knights, in whose good company he has ever since remained. Lady Juliana Berners mentions him as the inventor of “venery” or terms of hunting; and his name occurs in “The Temple of Glass,” and in Gower, who states that he fell by King Mark’s own hand, a tradition followed only by Sir Thomas Malory and Tennyson. In the “Orlando Furioso” we hear of the “Rocca di Tristano,” and Ariosto and Boiardo drew from his legend, old even then, their fountains of love and hatred. Dante places him next to Paris among the lovers flitting by like cranes in his “Inferno.” In 1485 Sir Thomas Malory, himself a knight, published his noble “Morte D’Arthur,” in which Tristram is one of the most striking figures; and it is remarkable that although he never seems to have thought there was anything to condemn greatly in the nephew’s conduct, he palliates it by defaming the uncle as much as possible—a moral concession not to be found in either of the earlier romances, which he must have consulted for his work. But we will not multiply references, lest the reader should be fain to cry with the author of “Sir Hain and Dame Anieuse,”

Or pues tu chanter de Tristan, Ou de plus longue, se tu sez.

The theme was getting wearisome. Le Seigneur Luce du château de Gast had exhausted it in his prose Romance (where, for the first time, Palamides, the Paynim lover of Iseult, and Dinadan, the foolish, knight, appear); and, besides this, there was a “Romance of Meliodas,” Tristram’s father, and afterwards a “Romance of Ysaie le Triste,” his son; so that all the details of his private life were nearly as well known as those of Mr. Carlyle’s to the present generation. “Ysaie le Triste” appeared in 1522; and in 1554, when no imagination, however vivid, could possibly add a single exploit to those which had been recounted already, Jean Maugin took a new departure, and turned the whole thing into an allegory, in which Sir Tristram became the type of Christian chivalry. His queer attempt is justly ridiculed by Scott; but it is not altogether without interest, as the first indication of the symbolic spirit in which modern poets have treated the legend—with the exception of Scott himself, whose beautiful Conclusion and Ballad are pure imitations of the mediæval spirit as well as of the mediæval form, and have nothing modern about them. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the taste for chivalrous romance died out in Europe—or rather fell asleep—and the name of Tristram was no more heard for more than two hundred years, except in a glowing stanza or two of Spenser’s “Fairy Queen.” Then came the revival of Scott and Southey to prepare the way, and lastly that signal triumph of the ancient story in our own day, when four of the greatest living poets singled it out for illustration, and it became a living power again in the hands of Wagner, Tennyson, Swinburne, and Matthew Arnold. But its power is of a different kind, for a change has come over the spirit of the dream, since it was first dreamed long ago among the Welsh mountains.

Accordingly Tristram, once the mere sport of existing circumstances, becomes a highly responsible person with correctly oppressive notions of duty. He has grown old along with the rest of the world; he rides no more light-hearted through the forest, sails no more gaily across the sea, forgetful of all but life and its deliciousness, woos no more whom he would. Nor, in the modern versions, does he die merrily, as he died in the “Morte D’Arthur” and in the “Book of Howth,” “harping afore his lady La Belle Isoud.”Wagner, to whom one might have fancied, _à priori_, that such an exit for his tenor would have been most welcome, sentences him to lingering death of a wound given him by the traitor Melot; Tennyson fells him with a blow of King Mark’s from behind; in Matthew Arnold he dies naturally; in Swinburne the false words of Iseult Les Blanches Mains finish the work of sickness. His love, his death, are all-important now; whereas of old the first was but an interesting episode in the life of a man who was second only to Sir Launcelot at a tourney, and the last so insignificant as to be disposed of in a single sentence. We hear nothing now of the Castle of Maidens, or of Lonazep; nothing of the wife of Sir Segwarides, or of other fair ladies; nothing at all of that great crisis in his life when he met Sir Launcelot at the peron, “and either wounded other wonderly sore, that the blood ran out upon the grass.”

Of course there may be a reason for this in the fact that we look upon Tristram as a hero by himself, and therefore have no need to illustrate his inferiority to Launcelot, and to Launcelot only, in love and in war. But where are ye now, Sir Palamides, Sir Bruno, and Sir Elias? Your very names have a forgotten sound.

The knights’ bones are dust, And their good swords rust, Their souls are with the saints, I trust.

But he who wishes to find any record of their doings with Sir Tristram must search through the length and breadth of Malory’s twenty-one books ere he find it. Nor is there any trace in the modern poems of the sweet old story, how after that “deep draughts of death” had taken the Lady Elizabeth, Tristram’s mother, and his father, King Maliodas, had “let call him Tristram, the sorrowful-born child,” and had actually, for love of her, “endured seven years without a wife,” he married a wicked lady, who tried to poison Tristram; and how she was condemned to death for the attempt, and he rescued her from his father’s wrath, and made them accorded, and how she “loved him ever after, and gave Tristram many great gifts.”

All these things, which relieved the sombre hues of the picture have faded into dimness. The martial glory of Tristram has passed away; nothing but tragedy remains—the sin, the sorrow, the inexplicable fate which linked two separated lives together. Long ago it was a bit of witchcraft pure and simple; now the magic drink has become the symbol of mystery and doom, and what not. Like Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, the guilty souls are hurried round and round without a moment’s respite by the whirlwind of their passion, in that wonderful opera which the most devoted followers of Wagner esteem his masterpiece of blended poetry and music. The fierce, dark, rapturous rejoicing of love on the very edge of death lights it up with a lurid glare, which makes everything else look pale and fanciful by comparison; it has no parallel in art, even among Wagner’s other works, nor can any one desire that it should have. The great difficulties which stand in the way of its representation may prevent it from ever becoming popular in the sense in which “Lohengrin” and “Tannhäuser” are popular; but those who have had the good fortune to hear it will not easily forget its unique and terrible power. It is strange that Wagner should have made King Mark an ideal uncle, tender and forgiving to the last degree, and so full of self-denial that had he but known of the fatal drink in time, he would have resigned his bride to his nephew with the best grace in the world. Dramatically the action loses by this change; the sympathies of the audience are baffled and divided; do what we will, the conduct of the hero seems mean and treacherous, and his death more arbitrary than it need have been, since Melot, the traitor who gives him his mortal wound, had far less reason to hate him than had the injured bridegroom. Indeed, it is difficult to see what Wagner himself thought that he gained by this amendment, unless that tragedy itself becomes more tragic by the needless suffering inflicted on a high and noble soul, ready to sacrifice its dearest hopes rather than undergo the agony of seeing another’s virtue tempted beyond endurance. There is also one dire offence against good taste, worthy of Wagner’s earliest models (and of Shakespeare in “King Lear”,) in the scene where Tristram tears the bandage from his wounds. But if the hero fares rather badly, until we forgive him for the sake of his death-cry, “Liebe!” the heroine has never in the course of her long life found such an interpreter. She has lost, indeed, her old, light-hearted innocence; but she has lost it to become one of the grandest and most original creations in the whole range of the drama. She surpasses even the bounds of passion; the very _fury_ of love is upon her, from the moment when, foreseeing that she can no longer live without him, she resolves to make Tristram drink with her of the death-drink, and the charm begins to work, to the moment when she falls dead besides his body. The magic only reveals what shame forbade her to confess. The key to her whole character lies in her answer to Bragwaine’s entreaty that she will not give the signal for Tristram’s approach by extinguishing the torch in the window of her tower in King Mark’s palace—

Und wär ’es meines Lebens Licht, Lachend es zu löschen Zag ’ich nicht.