Part 6
Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oftimes hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
We never had nightingales in the United States until Edward W. Bok imported them into his Bird Paradise in Florida. Previous attempts to bring them over had failed; the birds invariably died. Some investigators declared that this tragedy was owing to the change of diet; but of course the real reason for their death was American poetry. After the nightingales had listened for centuries to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, etc., the change to the level of American verse was too much for them, and they died of shock.
The English skylark leaves the grass and soars aloft, singing his heart out, so that after he has disappeared in the sky, we hear his voice coming down out of the blue, like a revelation. One of the poets calls it a “sightless song.”
Shakespeare sends the skylark to the gate of heaven.
And Shelley’s poem on the skylark expresses the ethereal nature of the soaring voice of this bird:
Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and Soaring ever singest.
American blackbirds do not sing well; the so-called crow-blackbird, so common in flocks in autumn, makes a noise like tonsillitis, or as if he had a boy’s voice in process of changing, or as if he were a hinge that needed oiling. Our redwing blackbird, with his scarlet epaulets, has a good-natured and perky wheeze, which can hardly be called singing. But the English and Continental blackbird pours out of his throat the most heavenly melody. One Winter day in Munich, in the midst of a snowstorm, I saw a blackbird perched on a tree directly in front of the University building. He was “hove to,” that is, he had his beak turned directly into the wind, and as the snowflakes beat against his little face, he sent straight into the gale the loveliest music. Tennyson has observed how the voice of the blackbird loses its beauty in the hot Summer days.
A golden bill! the silver tongue, Cold February loved, is dry: Plenty corrupts the melody That made thee famous once, when young;
And in the sultry garden-squares, Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse, I hear thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares.
The nearest we Americans can get to the English cuckoo is the abominable cuckoo clock. The voice of the English cuckoo sounds exactly like the clock, only of course you can’t train him to strike right. In addition to his regular accomplishment, he is a ventriloquist and can throw his voice a tremendous distance. One day, crossing a field in Sussex, I heard the loud double note of the cuckoo, apparently directly behind me. He was in reality a furlong away.
Wordsworth says:
O blithe New-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?
While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear, From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off and near.
Concerning the all too common crimes of shooting, snaring, and eating little singing birds, the English poet, Ralph Hodgson, has expressed himself in words that ought to be everywhere read:
I saw with open eyes Singing birds sweet Sold in the shops For the people to eat, Sold in the shops of Stupidity Street.
I saw in a vision The worm in the wheat And in the shops nothing For people to eat: Nothing for sale in Stupidity Street.
XXI
RUSSIA BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
The best way to invade Russia is by sea; and I advise those who plan to visit the Soviet Republic to go via Stockholm. Copenhagen, Christiania, Stockholm are three interesting cities and should be seen in that order. Stockholm, the “Venice of the North,” is one of the most beautiful, most picturesque, and most attractive places in the world.
It is surprising that the short sea voyage from Stockholm to Saint Petersburg (now Leningrad) is not better known; it is enchantingly beautiful. We left Stockholm at six o’clock in the evening of a fine September day, and as our tiny steamer drew away, the sunset light over the fair city hung a new picture on the walls of my mind. It took some five hours to reach the Baltic, five hours of constantly changing scenery, one view melting into another like a succession of dissolving panoramas. Hundreds of miniature islands dotted with châteaux and country houses; winking lighthouse towers; “the grey sea and the long black land.”
An impossible half-moon lent the last touch of glory to the scene. We stood on the top deck and beheld the spacious firmament on high, thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; while the long level light of the crazy moon fell across the darkening water and the myriad islands.
In the middle of the night we crossed the Baltic, and in the whitening dawn entered the gulf of Finland. The air was nipping and eager, but the sun rose in a cloudless sky. All day long the steamer nosed her way through the blue sea, twisting and turning among the countless points of the earth’s surface that were just able to keep their heads above water. A few of these were covered with green grass, and supported white farm buildings where laughing children accompanied by dignified dogs ran out to see our transit; but for the most part these elevations were bald, with a tall lighthouse as sole decoration.
At five in the afternoon we reached Helsingfors (still my farthest north) and stepped ashore to spend six hours in seeing the town, the boat not proceeding toward Russia until late in the night. The clouded sky was low and harsh the next morning, and the sea was surly. Toward noon it cleared, and early in the afternoon we saw the gilded domes and spires of Holy Russia. After a long delay with passports, we drove across one of the bridges over the Neva to our hotel at a corner of the Nevski Prospekt. Although it was only September, the temperature was under fifty, and seemed colder.
I had a severe cold, which had its origin in a chill I had caught in rashly touching a piece of toast that a waiter brought me in a London hotel. But I was right in style. Accustomed as I was to see on the streets of any American city the healthy, cheerful, well-clad and well-shod men and women, I was appalled by the faces and the clothes of the Russians. What they look like today I know not, but a more unhappy looking crowd than I saw every day on the streets of Russian cities I have never seen outside of pictures of Hell. Many of the people had their ears and mouths bandaged and on their feet were (if they could afford it) enormous knee-boots. All seemed to be suffering from the foot and mouth disease.
Never shall I forget the boots and overcoats and uniforms on the Nevski Prospekt. The question of leg-clothes would have interested the author of _Sartor Resartus_. In Edinburgh all the men and some of the women wore knickers, with stockings that seemed an inch thick. Compared with Europeans, Americans are tropically clad. In order to avoid the glare of publicity, I bought in Scotland a homespun golf suit.
I tried these abbreviated trousers just once on the Nevski Prospekt. Everybody stopped to stare. Had I worn a flowing purple robe, I should not have attracted such attention. Military officers gazed at me in cold amazement, as though I had leprosy; while the more naïve passers made audible comment, which fortunately I could not translate. Then I tried the experiment of conventional clothing, but wore low shoes. Everyone gazed at my feet, some in wonder, some in admiration, some in terror. I felt as I did many years ago when I wore a striped cap in Brussels. A stranger looked at me earnestly and then said in an almost reverent tone, and he said it three times: _Nom de Dieu!_
In America our citizens show much the same interest in strange clothing. Professor E. B. Wilson, a distinguished mathematician, bought a suit of clothes in Paris. He wore it only once in America. A citizen gazed at him steadfastly, and said “J----!”
The faces of the common people in Russian cities were sad to behold, whether one saw them on the street or in church. Not only was there no hilarity, such as one sees everywhere in American towns; those faces indicated a total lack of illuminating intelligence. They were blank, dull, apathetic, helpless. Gorki said that the people in Russia had so little to look forward to that they were glad when their own houses burned down, as it made a break in the dull routine of life.
One afternoon I walked the entire length of the Nevski Prospekt, no mean achievement in a heavy overcoat. I began at the banks of the restless, blustering Neva, passed the extraordinary statue of Peter the Great, came through the garden by the statue of Gogol, and with the thin gold spire of the Admiralty at my back, entered the long avenue.
I followed the immense extension of the Nevski, clear to the cemetery, and stood reverently before the tomb of Dostoevski. Here in January, 1881, the body of the great novelist was laid in the grave, in the presence of forty thousand mourners.
In a corner of the enclosure I found the tomb of the composer Chaikovski; I gazed on the last resting-place of Glinka, father of Russian music. On account of the marshy soil, the graves are built above instead of below the surface of the ground, exactly as they are in New Orleans. It is in reality a city of the dead, the only place where a Russian finds peace. I passed out on the other side of the cemetery, walked through the grounds of the convent, and found myself abruptly clear from the city, on the edge of a vast plain.
XXII
THE DEVIL
It is rather a pity that the Devil has vanished with Santa Claus and other delectable myths; the universe is more theatrical with a “personal devil” roaming at large, seeking whom he may devour. In the book of Job the Devil played the part of the return of the native, coming along in the best society in the cosmos to appear before the Presence. And when he was asked where he came from, he replied in a devilishly debonair manner, “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”
There are so many things in this world that seem to be the Devil’s handiwork, and there are so many people who look like the devil, that it seems as if he could not be extinct. His chief service to the universal scene was to keep virtue from becoming monotonous; to warn even saints that they must mind their step; to prove that eternal vigilance is the price of safety. The Enemy of Mankind never took a holiday. Homer might nod, but not he. In fact, on human holidays he was, if possible, unusually efficient. The idleness of man was the opportunity of Satan.
The principle of evil is so active, so tireless, so penetrating that the simplest way to account for it is to suppose that men and things receive constantly the personal attention of the Devil. Weeds, and not vegetables, grow naturally; illness, not health, is contagious; children and day-labourers are not instinctively industrious; champagne tastes better than cocoa.
Throughout the Middle Ages, although every one believed steadfastly in the reality of the Devil and that he was the most unscrupulous of all foes, there was a certain friendliness with him, born, I suppose, of daily intimacy. It was like the way in which hostile sentries will hobnob with one another, swap tobacco, etc., in the less tense moments of war. The Devil was always just around the corner and would be glad of an invitation to drop in.
Thus in the mediæval mystery plays, the forerunners of our modern theatres, the Devil was always the Clown. He supplied “comic relief” and was usually the most popular personage in the performance. He appeared in the conventional makeup, a horrible mask, horns, cloven hoofs and prehensile tail, with smoke issuing from mouth, ears and posterior. He did all kinds of acrobatic feats, and his appearance was greeted with shouts of joy. In front of that part of the stage representing Hellmouth he was sometimes accompanied with “damned souls,” persons wearing black tights with yellow stripes. On an examination at Yale I set the question, “Describe the costume of the characters in the mystery plays.” One of the students wrote: “The damned souls wore Princeton colours.”
The modern circus clown comes straight from the Devil. When you see him stumble and fall all over himself, whirl his cap aloft and catch it on his head, distract the attention of the spectators away from the gymnasts to his own antics, he is doing exactly what his ancestor the Devil did in the mediæval plays.
It is at first thought singular that those audiences, who believed implicitly in a literal hell of burning flame, should have taken the Devil as the chief comic character. I suppose the only way to account for this is to remember how essential a feature of romantic art is the element of the grotesque, which is a mingling of horror and humour, like our modern spook plays. If you pretend that you are a hobgoblin and chase a child, the child will flee in real terror, but the moment you stop, the child will say, “Do that again.”
There are many legends of compacts with the Devil, where some individual has sold his soul to gain the whole world. The most famous of these stories is, of course, _Faust_, but there are innumerable others. Here is a story I read in an American magazine some fifty years ago.
A man, threatened with financial ruin, was sitting in his library when the maid brought in a visiting card and announced that a gentleman would like to be admitted. On the card was engraved
Mr. Apollo Lyon.
As the man looked at it his eyes blurred, the two words ran together, so they seemed to form the one word
Apollyon.
The gentleman was shown in; he was exquisitely dressed and was evidently a suave man of the world. He proposed that the one receiving him should have prosperity and happiness for twenty years. Then Mr. Lyon would call again and be asked three questions. If he failed to answer any of the three the man should keep his wealth and prosperity. If all three were correctly answered the man must accompany Mr. Lyon.
The terms were accepted; all went well for twenty years. At the appointed time appeared Mr. Lyon, who had not aged in the least; he was the same smiling, polished gentleman. He was asked a question that had floored all the theologians. Mr. Lyon answered it without hesitation. The second question had stumped all the philosophers, but it had no difficulties for Mr. Lyon.
Then there was a pause, and the sweat stood out on the questioner’s face. At that moment his wife came in from shopping. She was rosy and cheerful. After being introduced to Mr. Lyon she noticed her husband was nervous. He denied this, but said that he and Mr. Lyon were playing a little game of three questions and he did not want to lose. She asked permission to put the third question and in desperation her husband consented. She held out her new hat and asked: “Mr. Lyon, which is the front end of this hat?” Mr. Lyon turned it around and around, and then with a strange exclamation went straight through the ceiling, leaving behind him a strong smell of sulphur.
XXIII
THE FORSYTE SAGA
It is impossible to say what books of our time will be read at the close of this century; it is probable that many of the poems and tales of Kipling, the lyrics of Housman, dramatic narratives by Masefield, some plays by Shaw and Barrie, will for a long time survive their authors.
Among the novels, I do not know of any that has or ought to have a better chance for the future than the books written about the family of the Forsytes by John Galsworthy. They at present hold about the same place in contemporary English literature as is held in France by Romain Rolland’s _Jean Christophe_. Both are works of great length which reflect with remarkable accuracy the political, social, commercial, artistic life and activity of the twentieth century, the one in England, the other on the Continent.
Entirely apart from their appeal as good novels, that is to say, apart from one’s natural interest in the plot and in the characters, both are social documents of great value. If the future historian wishes to know English and Continental society in the first quarter of the twentieth century, he will do well to give attention and reflexion to these two works of “fiction.”
John Galsworthy was just under forty when in 1906 he published a novel called _The Man of Property_. He had produced very little before this, but it took no especial critical penetration to discover that the new book was a masterpiece. The family of the Forsytes bore a striking resemblance to one another in basic traits and ways of thinking, yet each was sharply individualised. A new group of persons had been added to British fiction. The word “Property,” as in Tennyson’s _Northern Farmer_, was the keynote, and before long it began to appear that one of the most dramatic of contrasts was to be used as the subject. This is the struggle between the idea of Property and the idea of Beauty--between the commercial, acquisitive temperament and the more detached, but equally passionate artistic temperament.
Even in the pursuit of beauty Mr. Soames Forsyte never forgot the idea of property. He was a first-class business man in the city, but he was also an expert judge of paintings, which he added to his collection. Oil and canvas do not completely satisfy any healthy business man; so Soames added to his collection, as the masterpiece in his gallery, an exquisitely beautiful woman whom he made his wife.
The philosophy of love comes in here. What is love? Is it exclusively the idea of possession, which often is no more dignified than the predatory instinct or is it the unalloyed wish that the object of one’s love should be as happy and secure as possible? No one can truly and sincerely love Beauty either in the abstract or in the concrete if one’s eyes are clouded by predatory desire. One must look at beauty without the wish to possess it if one is really to appreciate beauty. A first-class French chef would look into the big front window of a confectioner’s shop and fully appreciate the art and taste that created those delectable edibles; but a hungry boy who looked at the same objects would not appreciate them critically at all.
The wife of Soames finds him odious, so odious that we cannot altogether acquit her of guilt in marrying him; and Soames, who as a Man of Property expected her to fulfill her contract, did not make himself more physically attractive by insisting on his rights. She left him for a man of exactly the opposite temperament.
When Mr. Galsworthy finished this fine novel, he had no intention of going on with the history of the family. He wrote many other novels and some remarkable plays, but nothing made the impression on readers that had been produced by the Forsyte family. Nearly twenty years later he returned to the theme, and at once his power as a novelist seemed to rise; there is something in this family that calls out his highest powers. When he discovered that he had written five works of fiction on the Forsytes, three long novels and two short stories, of which the brief interlude called _Indian Summer of a Forsyte_ is an impeccable and I hope imperishable work of art, he hit upon the happy idea of assembling them into one prose epic, and calling the whole thing by the ironical title of _The Forsyte Saga_. It is my belief that for many years to come the name of John Galsworthy will be associated with this work, in what I fervently hope will be its expanded form.
For since the assembling of the five pieces Mr. Galsworthy has published several other novels dealing with the family--_The White Monkey_, _The Silver Spoon_ and in 1928 he wrote FINIS with _Swan Song_. Here he kills Soames, and while he probably does not feel quite so sad as Thackeray felt when he killed Colonel Newcome, I venture to say that he does not gaze on the corpse of Soames with indifferent eyes. For to my mind the most interesting single feature of this whole mighty epic is the development of the character of this man.
Clyde Fitch used to say something that is no doubt true of many works of the imagination; he said that he would carefully plan a play, write his first act, and definitely decide what the leading characters should say and do in the subsequent portions of the work. Then these provokingly independent characters seemed to acquire, not only an independent existence, but a power of will so strong that they insisted on doing and saying all kinds of things which he tried in vain to prevent.
In _The Man of Property_ Soames Forsyte is a repulsive character; he is hated by his wife, by the reader, and by the author. But in these later books Soames becomes almost an admirable person, and we may say of him at the end in reviewing his life, that nothing became him like the leaving of it--for he died nobly. Long before this catastrophe, however, we have learned to admire, respect, and almost to love Soames. Is it possible that Mr. Galsworthy had any notion of this spiritual progress when he wrote _The Man of Property_, or is it that in living so long with Soames he began to see his good points?
Dickens was a master in this kind of development. When we first meet Mr. Pickwick, he seems like the president of a service club as conceived by Sinclair Lewis; he is the butt of the whole company. Later Mr. Pickwick develops into a noble and magnanimous gentleman, whom every right-minded person loves. Look at Dick Swiveller--when we first see him, he is no more than a guttersnipe. He develops into a true knight.
XXIV
PROFESSION AND PRACTICE
Beautiful lines which show that the man who wrote them had a clear conception of true religion are these:
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And even his failings leaned to virtue’s side; But in his duty prompt at every call, He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all; And, as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.
The man who wrote them is thus described by James Boswell: “Those who were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so ridiculous an excess that the instances of it are hardly credible. When accompanying two beautiful young ladies with their mother on a tour of France, he was seriously angry that more attention was paid to them than to him.” Goldsmith wrote of virtue, modesty, sweet unselfishness in the most convincing manner; his words were more convincing than his behaviour. He allured to brighter worlds, but did not lead the way.
Schopenhauer, the great philosopher of pessimism, taught that absolute asceticism was the only true religion and method of escape from the ills of life; but he never practiced it, and told his disciples to mind his precepts and not his example. Unfortunately, whenever any one gives advice in the field of morality or religion, the first person on whom we test its practical value is the preacher. Emerson remarked, “What you are thunders so loud I cannot hear what you say.”