Part 4

During the engagement of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, when their communications had to be mainly through the post office, she wrote out her religious views, and he immediately responded in an unequivocal manner. Four years later he used these two letters as the basis of his poem _Christmas Eve_. Elizabeth pointed out the various characteristics of Christian worship, from Roman Catholics to Unitarians, saying that despite the irritating features in many church services she could worship in any of them, though she preferred those of the Dissenters. She was one of those rare persons who combine the most passionate convictions with the largest tolerance. Too often religious convictions produce bigoted narrow-mindedness; too often tolerance is merely a complimentary description of indifference.

There can be, then, genuine church unity without uniformity, and I repeat that in large cities this is well.

But there are, anyhow, two instances where Protestant churches should combine and agree on uniformity as well as on unity. These two are foreign missions and small country towns. The advantage of the former needs no argument; among the many advantages of the latter is one, often overlooked. The minister can omit in his public preaching all nonessential parts of his belief and confine his preaching sermons to the very heart of the Gospel.

I have the best of reasons for knowing this can be successfully accomplished, because in the small corner of Michigan where I am now writing we manage it every Sunday afternoon.

Huron City, on the nail of the “thumb” in Michigan, was in 1865 a very much larger town than it is today. In the old times of lumbering, when the vast pine forests came down to the shore of Lake Huron, this Huron City was a scene of fierce and profitable activity. But after the terrible forest fires of 1871 and 1881 the whole region passed from a timber to an agricultural district, not without difficulty. Gradually the people left and in most cases literally took their houses with them. Today Huron City has no post office, no railroad, no telegraph. It is composed of a schoolhouse, a Methodist church, a general store, a community house, two or three farmers’ dwellings and our summer home. I love it with all my heart.

Every year the Methodist pastor, who has two churches besides this one under his charge, yields me the courtesy of his Huron City Methodist pulpit for the summer, and here we have a service every Sunday afternoon to which farmers and “resorters” come from many miles around.

The point that I wish to emphasise is that in all isolated communities like this it is not only desirable but possible for members of widely different churches and denominations to unite. In order to find out how many religious sects were represented in the audience we distributed cards on which the members of the congregation were asked to write their names, home town and church. Here are the results on the last three Sundays:

Adventists, 2; Baptists, 57; Roman Catholics, 42; Community churches, 11; Congregational, 39; Episcopalian, 83; Evangelical, 30; Jew, 6; Latter Day Saints, 6; Lutheran, 29; Methodist, 549; Moravian, 1; Presbyterian, 170; German Reform, 13; Christian Scientist, 12; Swedenborgian, 2; Unitarian, 3; Universalist, 1; United Brethren, 1; United Church of Canada, 4; members of no church, 8.

XIII

POLITICAL HISTORY

The majority of intelligent men and a considerable number of intelligent women enjoy reading authoritative and well-written books on political history. I recommend to them the political history of Great Britain and Ireland during the last fifty years. I do not know of any country or period--anyhow, since the French Revolution in 1789--that affords so much interesting material for serious consideration. And this for two reasons.

First, I do not believe there has ever been a country or an epoch when so many distinguished men played so prominent parts in politics.

Second, I do not know of any time or place where we have so much definite, precise and intimate information supplied with so much detail by the leading actors themselves.

Consider the following list of statesmen: Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, Parnell, Morley, Bryce, Campbell-Bannerman, Chamberlain, Balfour, Salisbury, Roseberry, Asquith, McCarthy, Healy, O’Connor, Lloyd George, Haldane, Grey, Birrell, Baldwin, MacDonald, Churchill.

Nearly all of these men had a first-class education, were deeply read in the best literature, and many of them were authorities in some field of learning outside their profession as statesmen. It is doubtful if any period of history can show a group of politicians equal in intellectual culture and in high character to these.

Furthermore, to obtain intimate knowledge of the “inside politics” of the last fifty years, we have Morley’s monumental life of Gladstone, Morley’s own _Recollections_ and _Memorandum_, many Lives of Disraeli and Bright, T. P. O’Connor’s _Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian_, J. A. Spender’s _Life of Campbell-Bannerman_ and his _The Public Life_, Asquith’s _Memories and Reflections_, Churchill’s _The World Crisis_, Swift MacNeill’s _What I Have Seen and Heard_, Haldane’s _Autobiography_, Memoirs by Tim Healy, Memoirs by Lord Grey, and many other works.

The history of Charles Stewart Parnell is one of the most thrillingly dramatic and romantic that can be found in either biography or legend. His practical ability as a statesman is summed up in a sentence in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.

“His influence on the course of English and Irish history may be estimated by the fact that when he entered public life home-rule for Ireland was viewed by English politicians as a wild impracticable dream, while within 11 years he had induced a majority of one of the two great English political parties to treat it as an urgent necessity.”

Without meaning anything derogatory to his character as a public man, the portraits of Parnell, his attitude of command, and the methods by which he controlled his party have always brought to my mind the romantic pirate of melodrama. His bearded impassive face, the greatest “poker face” political history has ever known, his quiet tones, his utterly mysterious personality, his glacial manner, his iron resolution, his rule of his party, every member of which had to sign a pledge of absolute loyalty before he could be elected to Parliament, his intolerance of any partner in leadership, all combined to make him a romantically grim figure, hated and dreaded by his foes, dreaded and idolised by his followers.

They knew he alone could and would lead them to victory; and then, when the ten years in which he emerged from obscurity to dazzling eminence were over, and victory was in his grasp, he and his party went down to ruin through his infatuation for one woman, and in less than a year he was in his grave.

For he was drunk with power as well as with love; had he temporarily withdrawn from leadership, his party would have gone on to triumph, and within a very short period he would undoubtedly have been called back to the throne. But the absolute power he had enjoyed for years made him insensible to the rules of the game of life.

In September 1890, I saw Gladstone. He was eighty years old, full of confidence and vitality, for his partnership with Parnell, which had lost the election in 1886, was now the means of triumph, and it was a certainty that he would soon be in a position to make the dream of Home Rule a reality. But in November, in less than two months, the divorce suit brought by Captain O’Shea, in which Parnell was correspondent, and the terrible scenes in December in Committee Room No. 15 where Parnell tried in vain to maintain his rule over his party, changed the whole face of things.

After Gladstone brought in his Home Rule Bill in 1886, politics became violent. The Grand Old Man was hissed in London drawing-rooms. I remember talking in 1880 with that most extreme of Tories, Professor Mahaffy of the University of Dublin. I thought it strange that differences in political opinion should ruin personal friendship. “Why,” said Mahaffy excitedly, “Gladstone and I have been intimate friends for many years. If I met him on the street now, I would cut him dead.”

Then I asked him about Parnell, and he said contemptuously that Parnell’s relations with women were scandalous. But I think he was repeating the mere gossip of hatred; I do not think he knew anything about Mrs. O’Shea, and that he was as much surprised as anyone else when the truth came out the very next year.

Parnell was a great man. As the years pass, he will become more and more a legendary figure, and there will probably be dozens of biographies written about him. Already St. John Ervine, a man of Belfast who used to hate Parnell, has written a glowing, adulatory Life. I think we probably come nearest to the real Parnell in T. P. O’Connor’s _Memoirs_.

Those were the great days in Parliament. Listen to “T. P.” on Gladstone.

“The most remarkable thing in the appearance of Gladstone was his extraordinary eyes; they were large, black, and flashing; sometimes there came into them a look that was almost wild.... The blackness and the brightness of his eyes were brought into greater relief by the almost deadly pallor of his complexion.... As he walked up the floor of the House he seemed to be enveloped by a great solitude, so unmistakably did he stand out from all the figures around him.

I must add to this description of his extreme physical gifts the wonderful quality of his voice. It was a powerful voice, but sweet and melodious, and it was managed as exquisitely and as faithfully as the song of a great prima donna. If the speech were ringing, it came to your ears almost soft by that constant change of tone which the voice displayed; it could whisper, it could thunder.... I have seen many great figures, but, with all respect to the greatest among them, the House of Commons without Gladstone seems to me as great a contrast as a chamber illumined by a farthing dip when the electric light has failed.”

XIV

A ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW

What is the worst poem ever written by a man of genius? It is certain that if an anthology should be made of the most terrible verses of the English bards the results would be both surprising and appalling. I cannot at this moment think of any worse pair of lines in English literature than those offered in all seriousness by the seventeenth-century poet, Richard Crashaw. They occur in a poem containing many lovely passages. In comparing the tearful eyes of Mary Magdalene to many different things he perpetrated a couplet more remarkable for ingenuity than for beauty. Her eyes are

Two walking baths, two weeping motions, Portable and compendious oceans.

Alfred Tennyson, in his second volume of poems, bearing the date 1833, included the following, though it is only fair to say that he afterward suppressed it. It aroused the mirth of the critics and still is often resurrected as a specimen of what Tennyson could do when he was deserted by both inspiration and taste.

O DARLING ROOM

O darling room, my heart’s delight, Dear room, the apple of my sight, With thy two couches soft and white, There is no room so exquisite, No little room so warm and bright, Wherein to read, wherein to write.

For I the Nonnenwerth have seen, And Oberwinter’s vineyards green, Musical Lurlei; and between The hills to Bingen have I been, Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.

Yet never did there meet my sight, In any town, to left or right, A little room so exquisite, With two such couches soft and white; Not any room so warm and bright, Wherein to read, wherein to write.

Imagine the profanity and laughter this piffle must have aroused among the book reviewers; some of his severer critics called him “Miss Alfred,” not knowing that he was a six-footer, with a voice like a sea captain in a fog.

I have no mind to defend the poem. Apart from the fact that the reading of it ought to teach Americans the correct accent on the word “exquisite,” it must be admitted that when Tennyson wrote this stuff he not only nodded but snored.

But, although it is difficult for me to understand how he could have written it, have read it in proof and then published it, I perfectly understand and sympathise with his enthusiasm for the room.

It is often said that polygamous gentlemen are--at any rate, for a considerable period--monogamous; the Turk may have a long list of wives, but he will cleave to one, either because he wants to or because she compels him to. Thus, even in a house that has a variety of sitting rooms, or living rooms or whatever you choose to call them, the family will use only one. After the evening meal they will instinctively move toward this one favourite room.

There is no doubt that even as dogs and cats have their favourite corner or chair, or favourite cushion of nightly repose, men and women have favourite rooms. And if this is true of a family in general, it is especially true of a man or a woman whose professional occupation is writing; and he becomes so attached to his room that Tennyson’s sentiments, no matter how silly in expression, accurately represent his emotion.

Twice a year, once in June and once in September, circumstances force me to leave a room where I have for a long time spent the larger part of my waking hours; I always feel the pain of parting, look around the walls and at the desk and wish the place an affectionate farewell, hoping to see it again, either in the autumn or in the next summer, as the case may be. I love that room, as Tennyson loved his room. I love it not because of the view from the windows, for a working room should not have too good a view, but for the visions that have there appeared to the eyes of the mind. It is the place where I have sat in thought, where such ideas as are possible to my limited range have appeared to me and where I have endeavoured to express them in words.

And if I can have so strong a passion for a room, with what tremendous intensity must an inspired poet or novelist love the secluded chamber where his imagination has found free play!

We know that Hawthorne, after his graduation from college, spent twelve years in one room in Salem. When he revisited that room as a famous writer he looked at it with unspeakable affection and declared that if ever he had a biographer great mention must be made in his memoir of this chamber, for here his mind and character had been formed and here the immortal children of his fancy had played around him. He was alone and not alone. As far as a mortal man may understand the feelings of a man of genius, I understand the emotion of Hawthorne.

I think nearly every one, if he were able to afford it, would like to have a room all his own. I believe it to be an important factor in the development of the average boy or girl if in the family house each child could have one room sacred to its own personality. When I was a small boy, although I loved to be with family and friends, I also loved to escape to my own room and read and meditate in solitude.

The age of machinery is not so adverse to spiritual development as the age of hotels and apartment houses; there is no opportunity for solitude, and a certain amount of solitude, serene and secure from interruption, is almost essential for the growth of the mind. A great many girls and women could be saved from the curse of “nerves” if there were a place somewhere in the building where they could be for a time alone. One of the worst evils of poverty is that there is no solitude; eating, sleeping, living, all without privacy.

When I was a graduate student in the university I was fortunate enough to possess for one year exactly the right kind of room. The young philosopher, George Santayana, came to see me and exclaimed, “What a perfect room for a scholar! The windows high up, as they should be.” For if one is to have clear mental vision it is not well that the room should have a view.

XV

TEA

“Thank God,” said Sydney Smith, “thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?--how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.” Well, I get along very well without tea, though I rejoice to see that more and more in “big business” houses in American cities there is a fifteen-minute pause for afternoon tea.

One of the chief differences between the life of Englishmen and of Americans is tea. Millions of Englishmen take tea three times a day. Tea is brought to their bedside early in the morning, and thirstily swallowed while in a horizontal attitude. The first thing an Englishman thinks of, if he wakes at dawn, is tea. When Arnold Bennett was travelling in America he took a limited train from New York to Chicago. Early in the morning he rang for the porter and when that individual appeared he commanded nonchalantly a cup of tea. He might as well have asked for a pot of hashish. The porter mechanically remarked that the “diner” would be put on at such-and-such an hour. This unintelligible contribution to the conversation was ignored by the famous novelist, who repeated his demand for tea. He was amazed to find there was no tea. “And you call this a first-class train!”

Then at breakfast--a substantial meal in British homes, though having somewhat the air of a cafeteria--tea is drunk copiously. To the average American tea for breakfast is flat and unprofitable. We are accustomed to the most inspiring beverage in the world, actual coffee. The coffee in England is so detestable that when an American tastes it for the first time he thinks it is a mistake. And he is right. It is. Many Americans give it up and reluctantly order tea. In my judgment, for breakfast the worst coffee is better than the best tea.

There are many Americans who have tea served at luncheon. For some reason this seems to the Englishman sacrilegious. The late Professor Mahaffy, who is now (I suppose) drinking nectar, was absolutely horrified to find that in my house he was offered a cup of tea at lunch. “Tea for lunch!” he screamed, and talked about it for the rest of the meal.

I was invited by a charming American lady to meet an English author at her house for luncheon. Tea was served and she said deprecatingly to the British author, “I don’t suppose you have tea at this time in England.” “Oh, yes,” said he, “the servants often have it below stairs.” To my delight, the hostess said, “Now, Mr. ----, aren’t you really ashamed of offering me an insult like that? Isn’t that remark of yours exactly the kind of thing you are going to be ashamed of when you think it over, all by yourself?”

At precisely 4:13 P.M. every day the average Englishman has a thirst for the astringent taste of tea. He does not care for hot water or hot lemonade coloured with tea. He likes his tea so strong that to me it has a hairy flavour. Many years ago the famous Scot William Archer invited me to his rooms in the Hotel Belmont, New York, for afternoon tea at 4:15. He had several cups and at five o’clock excused himself, as he had to go out to an American home for tea. I suggested that he had already had it. “Oh, that makes no difference.”

There are several good reasons (besides bad coffee) for tea in England. Breakfast is often at nine (the middle of the morning to me), so that early tea is desirable. Dinner is often at eight-thirty, so that afternoon tea is by no means superfluous. Furthermore, of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year in England, very, very few are warm; and afternoon tea is not only cheerful and sociable but in most British interiors really necessary to start the blood circulating.

There are few more agreeable moments in life than tea in an English country house in winter. It is dark at four o’clock. The family and guests come in from the cold air. The curtains are drawn, the open wood fire is blazing, the people sit down around the table and with a delightful meal--for the most attractive food in England is served at afternoon tea--drink of the cheering beverage.

William Cowper, in the eighteenth century, gave an excellent description:

Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

Not long before this poem was written the traveller Jonas Hanway had the bad luck to publish an essay on tea, “considered as pernicious to health, obstructing industry, and impoverishing the nation,” which naturally drew the artillery fire of the great Dr. Johnson. Sir John Hawkins, in his life of Johnson, comments on this controversy. He says: “That it is pernicious to health is disputed by physicians”--where have I heard something like that recently? But Hawkins continues: “Bishop Burnet, for many years, drank sixteen large cups of it every morning, and never complained that it did him the least injury.”

As for Johnson, “he was a lover of tea to an excess hardly credible; whenever it appeared, he was almost raving, and by his impatience to be served, his incessant calls for those ingredients which make that liquor palatable, and the haste with which he swallowed it down, he seldom failed to make that a fatigue to every one else, which was intended as a general refreshment.”

In nearly every English novel I find the expression, “I am dying for my tea!” On a voyage to Alaska, where tea was served on deck every afternoon, at precisely the same moment an elderly British lady appeared from below with precisely the same exclamation: “Oh, is there tea going?” And on her face was a holy look.

Alfred Noyes told me that during the war, when he was writing up important incidents for the benefit of the public, he was assigned to interview the sailors immediately after the tremendous naval battle of Jutland. He found a bluejacket who had been sent aloft and kept there during the fearful engagement, when shells weighing half a ton came hurtling through the air and when ships blew up around him. Thinking he would get a marvellous “story” out of this sailor, Mr. Noyes asked him to describe his sensations during those frightful hours. All the man said was, “Well, of course, I had to miss my tea!”

XVI

THE WEATHER

Nearly all the great poetry of the world, ancient and modern, has been written in Europe. This fact should never be forgotten in reading literature that alludes to the weather. The reason every one talks about the weather is not that the average person has nothing else to say; it is that the weather is usually the most interesting topic available. It is the first thing we think of in the hour of waking; it affects our plans, projects and temperament.

When I was a little boy at school there was a song sung in unison called “Hail, Autumn, Jovial Fellow!” It seemed to me to express correctly the true character of autumn. It was not until I had reached maturity in years that I discovered that the song, as judged by the world’s most famous writers, was a misfit. Instead of autumn’s being jovial, it was dull, damp, dark, depressing. To be sure, I never really felt that way about it; the evidence of my eyes was in favour of the school song, but, as the great poets had given autumn a bad reputation, I supposed in some way she must have earned it.