Part 7
"'No,' I said, 'he never did, which is one of the many reasons of his divine genius. But he does speak of temperance, and simple life, and the superman, and all the other so-called discoveries of this age, with the full knowledge of a sage who has actually experienced those eccentricities.'
"My fascinating friend could stand it no longer. Interrupting me she said:
"'Why, every child knows that Plato talked of nothing else than of Platonic love. We all expected to hear about nothing else than that curious love which all of us desire, if it is not too long insisted upon. We went to the course to revive in ourselves long-lost shivers not only of idealism, but even of bimetallism, or as it were the double weight of it.
"'We thought, since Plato is evidently named after platinum, which we know to be the dearest of precious metals, his philosophy must treat of such emotions as cost us the greatest sacrifice.
"'Platonic love is the most comfortable of subjects to talk or think about. It makes you look innocent, and yet on its brink there are such nicely dreadful possibilities of plunging into delightful abysses. Each thing gets two values; one Platonic, the other,--the naughty value. A whole nude arm may be Platonic; but a voluptuous wrist peeping out of fine laces may be only--a tonic.
"'Now these are precisely the subjects of which we desired to hear in those lectures. Instead of which the man said nothing about them, nothing about that dear Platonic love; in fact, he said that Plato never speaks of what is now called Platonic love. And that man calls himself a scholar? Why, my very chamber-maid knows better. The other day she saw the lecturer's photo in a paper and, smiling in an embarrassed way, she said to the cook: "That's the man what talks at Cliradge's about miscarriages." Was she not right? Is not Platonic love the cause of so many miscarriages, before, during, or after the wedding ceremony?
"'And then,' she added with a gasp, 'we all knew that Plato was a mystic, full of that shivery, half-toney, gruesomely something or other which makes us feel that even in everyday life we are surrounded by asterisks, or, as they also call them, astral forces. Was not Plato an intimate friend of Mrs Blavatsky, the sister of Madame Badarzewska, who was the composer of "A Maiden's Prayer"? There! why then did that lecturer not talk about palmistry, auristry, sorcery, witchcraft, and other itch-crafts? Not a word about them! We were indignant.
"'A friend of mine, Mrs Oofry Blazing, who talks French admirably, and whose teeth are the envy of her nose, declared: "_Cet homme est un fumiste_." Of course, he sold us fumes, instead of perfumes. One amongst us, an American woman of the third sex, told the man publicly straight into his face, and with inimitable delicacy of touch: "Sir, what are you here for?" Quite so; what _was_ he there for? We wanted Plato, and nothing but Plato. One fairly expected him to begin every sentence with P's, or Pl's. Instead of that he wandered from one subject to another. One day he talked about the general and the particular; the other day about the particular and the general. But what particular is there in a general, I beg of you? Is an admiral not much more important? We do not trouble about the army at all. And then, and chiefly, what has a general to do with Plato? The lectures were not on military matters, but on the most immaterial matters, which yet matter materially. But, of course, now that you tell me that Socrates, Plato's master, was a he-midwife, I can very well understand that his modern disciples are philosophical miscarriages!'"
* * * * *
The gods laughed heartily, and Sappho asked Plato how he liked the remarks of Entréa. Plato smiled and made Sappho blush by reminding her what the little ones had at all times said of her, although not a tittle of truth was in it. "No ordinary citizen, nor his wife," he added, "ever wants to know persons or things as they really are. They only want to know what they imagine or desire to be the truth. This is the reason why so many men before the public take up a definite pose, the one demanded by the public. This they do, not out of sheer fatuity, but of necessity. A king could not afford to sing in public, no matter how well he sang; it does not fit the image the public likes to form about a king. In fact, the better he sang, the more harm it would do him. I have always impressed the little ones as a mystic, an enthusiast, a blessed spirit, as you Goethe used to call me. Yet my principal aim was Apollo, and not Dionysus; clearness, and not the _clair-obscur_ of trances."
Alcibiades, whose beautiful head added to the charms of Venice, then continued: "Nothing, O Plato, can be truer than your remark. My lady friend was a living example of your statement. To me, after so many hundreds of experiences, her made-up little mask was no hindrance,--I saw through her within less than a week. She was, at heart, as dry, as kippered, as intentionalist, and coldly self-conscious as the driest of Egyptian book-keepers in a great merchant firm at Corinth. Nothing really interested her; she was only ever running after what she imagined to be the fashion of the moment. What she really wanted was to be the earliest in 'the latest.' When she came to the bookshop, at five in the afternoon, when all the others came, she would ask the clerk after the latest fashion in novels. She did that so frequently, and with such exasperating regularity, that one day the clerk, who could stand it no longer, said to her: 'Madame, be seated for a few moments--the fashion is just changing.' She, not in the least disconcerted, eagerly retorted: 'I say, is that "the latest"?' The clerk gave notice to leave!
"One day I found her in a very bad humour. When pressed for an explanation, she told me that just at that moment an elegant funeral was going on, at which she was most anxious to attend. 'Why, then, do you not go?' I asked.
"'Because,' she replied, 'it is simply impossible. Just fancy, that good woman died of heart failure!'
"'?'--
"'You cannot see? Heart failure? Can you imagine anybody to die of heart failure, when the only correct thing to do is to die of appendicitis? I telephoned in due time to her doctor, imploring him to declare that she died of that smart disease. But he is a brute. He would not do it. Now I am for ever compromised by the friendship of that woman. Oh how true was the remark of your sage Salami, when he said that nobody can be said to be happy before all his friends have died!'"
Thereupon the gods and heroes congratulated Solon upon his change of profession: having been a sage, he was now a sausage.
"The next time I saw my lady friend," Alcibiades continued, "I found her in tears. Inquiring after the cause of her distress, I learnt:
"'Just imagine! You know my little pet-dog. I bought him of a lady-in-waiting. He has the most exquisite tact and feels happy only in genteel society. An hour ago my maid suddenly left my flat, and expecting, as I did, a lady of very high standing, I did a little dusting and cleaning in my room. When my Toto saw that; when he watched me actually doing housemaid's work, he cried bitterly. He could not bear the idea of my demeaning myself with work unfit for a lady. It was really too touching for words. When I saw the refined sense of genteeldom in Toto's eyes, I too began crying. And so we both cried.'
* * * * *
"When I had lived through several scenes of the character just described, I could not help thinking that we Athenians were perhaps much wiser than the modern men, in that we did not allow our women to appear in society. They were, it is true, seldom interesting, nor physically greatly developed. On the other hand they never bored us with types of what these little ones call society ladies. I cannot but remember the exquisite evenings which I spent at the house of Critias, where one of our wittiest _hetairai_, or emancipated women, imitated the false manners, hypocrisy and inane pomp of the society ladies of Thebes in Egypt. We laughed until we could see no longer. What Leontion, that _hetaira_, represented was exactly what I observed in my lady friend in London. The same disheartening dryness of soul; the same exasperating superficiality of intellect; the same lack of all real refinement, that I found a few centuries later in society in the times of the Roman Cæsars.
"London desiccates; whereas Athens or Paris animates. When I gave up my relation to Entréa, I met a woman of about thirty-four, whose head was so perfect that Evænetus himself has never engraved a more absolutely beautiful one. Her hair was not only golden of the most lovely tint, but also full of waves, from long curls in Doric _adagio_, to tantalising Corinthian _pizzicato_ frizzles all round. Her face was a cameo cut in onyx, and both lovely and severe. Her loveliness was in the upper part of her face; her severity round the mouth and the chin. This strange reversal of what is usually the case gave her a character of her own. Her stark blue eyes were big and cold, yet sympathetic and intelligent-looking; and her ears were the finest shells that Leucothea presented her mother with from the wine-coloured ocean, and inside the shells were the most enchanting pearls, which the sea-nymph then left in the mouth of the blessed babe as her teeth. She was not tall, but very neatly made; a _fausse maigre_. She wrote bright articles, in which from time to time she wrapped up a big truth in _bon-bon_ paper.
"There was in her the richest material for the most enchanting womanhood; a blend of Musarion and Aspasia; or to talk modern style, a blend of Mademoiselle l'Espinasse with Madame Récamier. She was neither. Not that she made any preposterous effort to be, what Paris calls, a Madame Récamier. But London desiccated her. From dry by nature, she became drier still by London. Being as dry as she was, she only cared for mystic things; for what is behind the curtain of things; for the borderland of knowledge and dream. As sand can never drink in enough rain, so dry souls want to intoxicate themselves with mystic alcohol. In vulgarly dry persons that rain from above becomes--mud; in refinedly dry souls it is atomised into an intellectual spray. Her whole soul was athirst of that spray.
"When I told her that I was the son of Clinias, she wanted to know first of all, what had been going on at the mysteries of Eleusis. I told her that, like all the Hellenes, I had sworn never to reveal what I had seen at the holy ceremonies. This she could not understand. In her religion the priests are but too anxious to initiate anybody that cares for it.
"'Initiate me--oh initiate me--I beg you,' she said, and looked more beautiful than ever. Her arm trembled; her voice faltered. Even if I did not respect my oath, I should not have told her the teachings of Eleusis. They were far too simple for her mystery-craving soul. So I told her of the Orphic mysteries, and the more she heard of the extravagant and mind-shaking rites and tenets, the more interested she became. Her mouth, usually so severe, swung again in pouty lines of youthful timidity, and her voice got a 'cello down of mellowness.
"'Let us introduce Orphism into this country,' she exclaimed. 'Will you be honorary treasurer?'
"I accepted," said Alcibiades. "Within three days Orphism was presented as the _Orphic Science_. The members were called priestesses, archontes, or acolytes, according to their degree. Within a month there were 843 members. Jamblichus was sent for and made secretary. Costumes were invented; pamphlets printed; cures promised; shares offered. It was declared that trances and mystic shivers would be procured 'while you wait'; dreams accounted for; inexplicables explained; the curtain of things raised every Friday at five, after tea. Finally the Orphics gave their first dinner at the Hotel Cecil.
"That was the worst blow. After that I abandoned Orphism."
FOURTH NIGHT
ALCIBIADES--CONTINUED
Hestia now interrupted Alcibiades with the question whether all the women in nebulous Britannia were as grotesque as those that he had described.
Alcibiades smiled and said:
"Not all of them, but all at times. Women must necessarily adapt themselves to the nature of their men, as clerks do to that of their patrons, or soldiers to that of their generals and officers. The Englishman buys his liberty at the expense of much human capital; which cannot but make him eccentric and grotesque. The women attune themselves to him, although no foreigner has a clearer nor a more depreciative idea of Englishmen's angularity than have English women. As women they do not, as a rule, care for liberty at all, and hence consider the sacrifices made by men for liberty as superfluous and uncalled-for. A woman wants in all things the human note, which the average Englishman hates. Hence the surprising power of Continental men over English women. A hundred picked Greeks from Athens, Sicyon and Syracuse could bring half of all English women to book--for Cytherea. How could it be otherwise? The animated, passionate, direct talk of a Greek is something so novel to an English woman that she is as it were hypnotised by it. She thinks it is she and her personality that has given her Continental admirer that _verve_ of expression which she has never before experienced in the men of her circle. This alone is such flattery to her that she loses her head.
"If one resolutely goes on scraping off the man-made chalk from the manners and actions of English women, one is frequently rewarded with the pleasure of arriving at last at the woman behind the chalk. This is more especially the case in women of the higher classes. The only time in England I felt something of that painful bliss that mortals call love, was in the case of a lady friend of mine who, under mountains of London clay, hid away a passionate, loving woman. She was tall and luxuriously built. Her hands were of perfect shape and condignly continued by lovely arms, that attached themselves into majestic shoulders with the ease of a rivulet entering a lake by a graceful curve. Over her shoulders the minaret of her neck stood watch. In charming contrast to the _legato cantabile_ of her body was the _staccato_ of her mind. Her words pecked at things like birds. Sometimes there appeared amongst the latter an ugly vulture or two; but there were more colibris and magpies. I had met her for months before I surmised that there was something behind that London clay. But when the moment came and the bells began sobbing in her minaret, then I knew that here was a heart aglow with true passion and with the dawn of hope divine. Like all women that do truly love, she would not believe me that I sincerely felt what I said. Doubt is to women what danger is to men: it sharpens the delight of love. She never became really tender; ay, she was amazed and moved to tears at my being so. Her heart was uneducated; it was _gauche_ at the game of love.
* * * * *
"Amongst the persons dressed in female attire I also met a number of beings whom, but for my long stay at Sparta, I should hardly have recognised as women. A French friend of mine remarked of them: '_Ce ne sont pas des femmes, ce sont des Américaines_.' The species is very much in evidence in London. They reminded me violently of the Spartan women. They are handsome, if more striking than beautiful. I noticed that in contrast to European women, American females gain in years what they lose in dress at night. They look older when undressed. They have excellent teeth, and execrable hands; they jump well, but walk badly. Their great speciality is their voice, which is strident, top-nasal, _falsetto_, disheartening. The most beautiful amongst them is murdered by her voice. It is as if out of the most perfect mouth, set in the most charming face, an ugly rat would jump at one. That voice, the English say, comes from the climate of America. (This I do not believe at all; for I have noticed that in England everything is ascribed to the climate, as to the thing most talked about by the people. Climate and weather are the most popular subjects in England; the one that is never out of fashion.) As a matter of fact it comes from the total lack of emotionality in the Americans; just as amongst musical instruments the more emotional ones, like the 'cello, have more pectoral tonality, whereas the fife, for instance, having no deep emotions at all to express, is high and thin toned.
"Nothing seemed to me more interesting than the way in which the American female reminded me of the Spartans and the Amazons. Could anything be more striking than the coincidence between two conversations, one of which I had, far over two thousand years ago, with the Queen of an Amazonian tribe in Thracia, and the other with the wife of an American flour dealer settled in London? When I called on Thamyris in her tent, one of her first questions was as to the latest dramatic piece by Sophocles. I at once saw that the Queen wanted to impress her _entourage_ with her great literary abilities. I gave her some news about Sophocles, whereupon she turned round to her one-breasted she-warriors and said with a superior smile:
"'You must know that Sophocles is the latest star in Athenian comedy.'
"She mixed you up, O Sophocles, with Aristophanes. With the American flour dealer's wife my experience was as follows: He had made my acquaintance in a bar-room, and invited me to his house. On the way there he said to me:
"'My missus is quite a linguist. She talks French like two natives. Do talk to her French.'
"When we arrived at the house and entered the drawing-room, a rather handsome woman rose from an arm-chair, and stepping up to me said something that sounded like '_Monsieur, je suis ravie de faire votre connaissance_'; I thanked her, also in French, when suddenly she bowed over me and whispered in American fifes:
"'Don't continue, that's all I know.'
"When I left, the husband accompanied me to the door. Before I took leave, he twinkled with his right eye, and asked me with a knowing look, 'Well, sir, what do you think of the linguistic range of my madame?'
"I did not quite know what to reply. At last I said: 'Like a true soldier she fights on the borderland.'
"One of the strangest things to note in London society is the fascination exercised by American women on Englishmen. Many of the really intelligent men among the English are practically lost as soon as the American woman begins playing with the little lasso of thin ropes which she carries about her in the shape of an acquired brightness and a studied vivacity. The most glaring defects of those women do not seem to exist for the average Englishman. He takes her loud brightness for French _esprit_ dished up to him in intelligible English. Her total lack of self-restraint and modesty he takes for a charming _abandon_. The real fact is that he is afraid of her. She may have many a bump: she certainly has not that of reverence. Her irreverent mind makes light of the _grandezza_ of Englishmen, and thus cows him by his fear of making himself ridiculous.
"The first American woman (--_sit venia verbo_, as you would say, O Cicero--) I met in London was one married to an English lord. She was tall, well-built, with rich arms and hips, an expressive head, very fond of the arts, more especially of music. Even her head, which was a trifle square, indicated that. When she learnt that I really was the famous Alcibiades, her excitement knew no bounds. She was good enough to explain it to me:
"'Just fancy that! Alcibiades! (They pronounce my name Elkibidees.) I am simply charmed! I have so far every year introduced some new and striking personage into drawing-rooms, in order to stun the natives of this obsolete island. I have brought into fashion one-legged dancers; three-legged calves; single-minded thought-readers; illusionists; disillusionists; disemotionists; dancers classical, mediæval, and hyper-modern; French lectures on the isle of Lesbos, after a series of discourses on the calves of the legs of Greek goddesses in marble; not to forget my unique course of lectures given at the drawing-room of the dearest of all duchesses, on the history of _décolletage_.
"'This year, to be quite frank with you, Mr Elkibidees, I meant to arrange in the magnificent drawing-room of an Oriental English lady, the uniquest and at the same time the boldest exhibition ever offered to the dear nerves of any class of women. I cannot quite tell you what it was going to be. I can only faintly indicate that it was to be a collection of all the oldest as well as latest inventions securing the tranquillity of enjoying just one child in the family. This, I have no doubt, would have been the greatest sensation of the season.
"'The city of Manchester and the town of Leeds would have publicly protested against so "immoral" an exhibition. Of course their councillors would have done so after careful study of the things exhibited. Three bishops would have threatened to preach publicly in Hyde Park; while five archdeacons would have volunteered to be the honorary secretaries of so interesting an exhibition.
"'I communicated the idea to Father Bowan, a virulent Jesuit, who in the creepiest of _capucinades_, delivered on most Sundays during the season, gives us the most delightful shivers of repentance, and likewise many an inkling of charming vice of which we did not know anything before we learned it from his pure lips. He was delighted. "Do, my lady, do do it. I am just a little short of horrors, and your exhibition will give me excellent material for at least four Sundays. I hope you have not forgotten to illustrate by wax figures certain methods, far more efficient than any instrument can be, and most completely enumerated and described in the works of members of our holy Order, such as Suarez, Sanchez, Escobar, and others. Should you not have these works, I will send you an accurate abridgment of their principal statements of facts."
"'When I heard the Rev. Father talk like that, I could scarcely control myself with enthusiasm in anticipating the huge sensation my exhibition was sure to make. It would have been the best fed, the best clad, and the most enlightened sensation ever made in England since the battle of Hastings. I really thought that nothing greater could be imagined.
"'And yet, when I now come to think what a draw you will be, Mr Elki, if properly taken in hand, duly advertised, adroitly paragraphed, constantly interviewed, and occasionally leadered,--when I think of all that, I cannot but think that I shall have in you the greatest catch that has ever been in any country under any sun. In fact, I have my plan quite ready.
"'I will announce a big reception, "to meet" you. Some ladies will, by request, arrive in Greek dress. The public orator of one of the great Universities will address you in Greek, and you will reply in the same language. Then three of the prettiest daughters of earls and marquesses will dance the dance of the Graces, after which there will be a dramatic piece made by Hall Caine and Shaw, each of them writing alternate pages, the subject of which will be the Thirty Years' War, in which you excelled so much.'
"I interrupted her," said Alcibiades, "remarking that the Thirty Years' War was two thousand years after my time; my war was the Peloponnesian War.
"'Very well,' she exclaimed, 'the Peloponnesian War. I do not care which. Hall Caine will praise everything in connection with war, in his best _Daily Nail_ style. He is, you know, our leading light. He always wants to indulge in great thoughts, and would do so too, but for the awkward fact that he cannot find any.
"'Shaw, on the other hand, will cry down in choicest Gaelic all the glories of war. It will be the biggest fun out.