Chapter 6

SIR AMYAS,—Take it not unkindly that a traveller (though less wide a wanderer than thou) dissuadeth thee from a new-found novelty—the wanton misuse, or rather the misuseful wantonness, of the Indian herb. It is a blind goose that knoweth not a fox from a fern-bush, and a strange temerity that mistaketh smoke for provender. The sow, when she is sick, eateth the sea-crab and is immediately recovered: why, then, should man, being whole and sound, haste to that which maketh many sick? The lobster flieth not in the air, nor doth the salamander wanton in the water; wherefore, then, will man betake him for nourishment or solace to the fire? Vesuvius bringeth not forth speech from his mouth, but man, like a volcano, will utter smoke. There is great difference between the table and the chimney; but thou art for making both alike. Though the Rose be sweet, yet will it prove less fragrant if it be wreathed about the skunk; and so an ill weed from the land where that beast hath its habitation defileth a courteous knight. Consider, if this practice delights thee, that the apples of Sodom are outwardly fair but inwardly full of ashes; the box-tree is always green, but his seed is poison. Mithridate must be taken inwardly, not spread on plasters. Of his nature smoke goeth upward and outward; why wilt thou make it go inward and downward? The manners of the Cannibal fit not the Englishman; and this thy poison is unlike Love, which maimeth every part before it kill the Liver, whereas tobacco doth vex the Liver before it harmeth any other part. Excuse this my boldness, and forswear thy weed, an thou lovest

EUPHUES.

* * * * *

_From Sir Amyas Leigh to Euphues_.

Whereas thou bringest in a rabble of reasons to convince me, I will answer thee in thine own kind. Thou art like those that proffer a man physic before he be sick, and, because his pleasure is not theirs, call him foolish that is but early advised. Nature maketh nothing without an end: the eye to see with, the ear to hear, the herb tobacco to be smoked. As wine strengtheneth and meat maketh full, tobacco maketh the heart at rest. Helen gave Nepenthe to them that sorrowed, and Heaven hath made this weed for such as lack comfort. Tobacco is the hungry man’s food, the wakeful man’s sleep, the weary man’s rest, the old man’s defence against melancholy, the busy man’s repose, the talkative man’s muzzle, the lonely man’s companion. Indeed, there was nothing but this one thing wanting to man, of those that earth can give; wherefore, having found it, let him so use as not abusing it, as now I am about doing.—Thy servant,

AMYAS LEIGH.

XVII.

_From Mr. Paul Rondelet to the Very Rev. Dean Maitland_. {139}

That Dean Maitland should have taken the political line indicated in Mr. Rondelet’s letter will amaze no reader of ‘The Silence of Dean Maitland.’ That Mr. Paul Rondelet flew from his penny paper to a Paradise meet for him is a matter of congratulation to all but his creditors. He really is now in the only true Monastery of Thelema, and is simply dressed in an eye-glass and a cincture of pandanus flowers. The natives worship him, and he is the First Æsthetic Beach-comber.

Te-a-Iti, The Pacific.

DEAR MAITLAND,—As my old friend and tutor at Lothian, you ask me to join the Oxford Home Rule Association. Excuse my delay in answering. Your letter was sent to that detested and long-deserted newspaper office in Fleet Street, and from Fleet Street to Te-a-Iti; thank Heaven! it is a long way. Were I at home, and still endeavouring to sway the masses, I might possibly accept your invitation. I dislike crowds, and I dislike shouting; but if shout I must, like you I would choose to chime in with the dingier and the larger and the more violent assembly. But, having perceived that the masses were very perceptibly learning to sway themselves, I have retired to Te-a-Iti. You have read “Epipsychidion,” my dear Dean? And, in your time, no doubt you have loved? {140} Well, this is the Isle of Love, described, as in a dream, by the rapt fancy of Shelley. Urged, perhaps, by a reminiscence of the Great Aryan wave of migration, I have moved westward to this Paradise. Like Obermann, I hide my head “from the wild tempest of the age,” but in a much dearer place than “chalets near the Alpine snow.” Long ago I said, to one who would not listen, that “all the religions of the world are based on false foundations, resting on the Family, and fatally unsound.” Here the Family, in our sense, has not been developed. Here no rules trammel the best and therefore the most evanescent of our affections. And as for Religion, it is based upon Me, on Rondelet of Lothian. Here nobody asks me why or how I am “superior.” The artless natives at once perceived the fact, recognised me as a god, and worship me (do not shudder, my good Dean) with floral services. In Te-a-Iti (vain to look for it on the map!) I have found my place—a place far from the babel of your brutal politics, a place where I am addressed in liquid accents of adoration.

You may ask whether I endeavour to raise the islanders to my own level? It is the last thing that I would attempt. Culture they do not need: their dainty hieratic precisions of ritual are a sufficient culture in themselves. As I said once before, “it is an absurdity to speak of married people being one.” Here we are an indefinite number; and no jealousy, no ambitious exclusiveness, mars the happiness of all. This is the Higher Life about which we used ignorantly to talk. Here the gross temporal necessities are satisfied with a breadfruit, a roasted fish, and a few pandanus flowers. The rest is all climate and the affections.

Conceive, my dear Dean, the undisturbed felicity of life without newspapers! Empires may fall, perhaps have fallen, since I left Fleet Street; Alan Dunlop may be a ditcher in good earnest on an estate no longer his; but here we fleet the time carelessly, as in the golden world. And you ask me to join a raucous political association for an object you detest in your heart, merely because you want to swim with the turbid democratic current! You are an historian, Maitland: did you ever know this policy succeed? Did you ever know the respectables prosper when they allied themselves with the vulgar? Ah, keep out of your second-hand revolutions. Keep your hands clean, whether you keep your head on your shoulders or not. You will never, I fear, be Bishop of Winkum, with all your historical handbooks and all your Oxford Liberalism.

But I am losing my temper, for the first time since I discovered Te-a-Iti. This must not be.—Yours regretfully,

PAUL RONDELET.

P.S.—Don’t give any one my address; some of these Oxford harpies are still unappeased. The only European I have seen was not an University man. He was a popular Scotch novelist, and carried Shorter Catechisms, which he distributed to my flock. I only hope he won’t make “copy” out of me and my situation.

P. R.

XVIII.

_From Harold Skimpole_, _Esq._, _to the Rev. Charles Honeyman_, _M.A._

These letters tell their own tale of Genius and Virtue indigent and in chains. The eloquence of a Honeyman, the accomplishments of a Skimpole, lead only to Cursitor Street.

Coavins’s, Cursitor Street, May 1.

MY DEAR HONEYMAN,—It is May-day, when even the chimney-sweeper, developing the pleasant unconscious poetry of his nature, forgets the flues, wreathes the flowers, and persuades himself that he is Jack-in-the-Green. Jack who? Was he Jack Sprat, or the young swain who mated with Jill! Who knows? The chimney-sweeper has all I ask, all that the butterflies possess, all that Common-sense and Business and Society deny to Harold Skimpole. He lives, he is free, he is “in the green!” I am in Coavins’s! In Cursitor Street I cannot hear the streams warble, the birds chant, the music roll through the stately fane, let us say, of Lady Whittlesea’s. Coavins’s (as Coavins’s man says) is “a ’ouse;” but how unlike, for example, the hospitable home of our friend Jarndyce! I can sketch Coavins’s, but I cannot alter it: I can set it to music, on Coavins’s piano; but how melancholy are the jingling strains of that dilapidated instrument! At Jarndyce’s house, when I am there, I am in possession of it: here Coavins’s is in possession of me—of the person of Harold Skimpole.

And why am I here? Why am I far from landscape, music, conversation? Why, merely because I will follow neither Fame nor Fortune nor Faith. They call to us in the market-place, but I will not dance. Fame blows her trumpet, and offers her shilling (the Queen’s). Faith peals her bells, and asks for _my_ shilling. Fortune rattles her banking-scales. They call, and the world joins the waltz; but I will not march with them. “Go after glory, commerce, creeds,” I cry; “only let Harold Skimpole live!” {146} The world pursues the jangling music; but in my ear sound the pipes of Pan, the voices of the river and the wood.

Yet I cannot be in the playground, whither they invite me. Harold Skimpole is fettered—by what? By items! I regret my incapacity for details. It may be the tinker or the tailor at whose suit I am detained. I am certain it is not at that of the soldier, or the sailor, or the ploughboy, or the thief. But, for the apothecary—why, yes—it _may_ be the apothecary! In the dawn of life I loved—who has not?—I wedded. I set about surrounding myself with rosy cheeks. These cheeks grow pallid. I call for the aid of Science—Science sends in her bill! “To the Mixture as Before,” so much to “the Tonic,” so much. The cheeks are rosy again. I pour forth the blessings of a father’s heart; but there stands Science inexorable, with her bill, her items. I vainly point out that the mixture has played its part, the tonic has played _its_ part; and that, in the nature of things, the transaction is ended. The bill is unappeasable. I forget the details; a certain number of pieces of yellow and white dross are spoken of. Ah, I see it is fifteen and some odd shillings and coppers. Let us say twenty.

My dear Honeyman, you who, as I hear, are about to follow the flutes of Aphrodite into a temple where Hymen gilds the horns of the victims {147}—you, I am sure, will hurry to my rescue. You may not have the specie actually in your coffers; but with your prospects, surely you can sign something, or make over something, or back something, say a _post obit_ or _post vincula_, or employ some other instrument? Excuse my inexperience; or, I should say, excuse my congenital inability to profit by experience, now considerable, of _difficulties_—and of friendship. Let not the sun of May-day go down on Harold Skimpole in Coavins’s!—Yours ever,

H. S.

P.S.—A youthful myrmidon of Coavins’s will wait for a reply. Shall we say, while we are about it, Twenty-five?

* * * * *

_From the Rev. Charles Honeyman to Harold Skimpole_, _Esq._

Cursitor Street, May 1.

MY DEAR SKIMPOLE,—How would I have joyed, had Providence placed it within my power to relieve your distress! But it cannot be. Like the Carthaginian Queen of whom we read in happier days at dear old Borhambury, I may say that I am _haud ignarus mali_. But, alas! the very evils in which I am not unlearned, make it impossible for me to add _miseris succurrere disco_! Rather am I myself in need of succour. You, my dear Harold, have fallen among thieves; I may too truly add that in this I am your neighbour. The dens in which we are lodged are contiguous; we are separated only by the bars. Your note was sent on hither from my rooms in Walpole Street. Since we met I have known the utmost that woman’s perfidy and the rich man’s contumely can inflict. But I can bear my punishment. I loved, I trusted. She to whose hand I aspired, she on whose affections I had based hopes at once of happiness in life and of extended usefulness in the clerical profession, _she_ was less confiding. She summoned to her council a minion of the Law, one Briggs. _His_ estimate of my position and prospects could not possibly tally with that of one whose _hopes_ are not set where the worldling places them. Let him, and such as he, take thought for the morrow and chaffer about settlements. I do not regret the gold to which you so delicately allude. I sorrow only for the bloom that has been brushed from the soaring pinions of a pure and disinterested affection. _Sunt lacrymæ rerum_, and the handkerchief in which I bury my face is dank with them.

Nor is this disappointment my only _cross_. The carrion-birds of commerce have marked down the stricken deer from their eyries in Bond Street and Jermyn Street. To know how Solomons has behaved, and the _black_ colours in which Moss (of Wardour Street) has shown himself, is to receive a new light on the character of a People chosen under a very different Dispensation! Detainers flock in, like ravens to a feast. At this moment I have endured the humiliation of meeting a sneering child of this world—Mr. Arthur Pendennis—the emissary of one {151} to whom I gave in other days the sweetest blossom in the garden of my affections—my sister—of one who has, indeed, behaved like a brother—_in law_! My word distrusted, my statements received with a chilling scepticism by this _Nabob_ Newcome, I am urged to make some “composition” with my creditors. The world is very censorious, the ear of a Bishop is easily won; who knows how those who have _envied_ talents not misused may turn my circumstances to my disadvantage? You will see that, far from aiding another, I am rather obliged to seek succour myself. But that saying about the sparrows abides with me to my comfort. Could aught be done, think you, with a bill backed by our joint names? On July 12 my pew-rents will come in. I swear to you that they _have not been anticipated_. Yours afflictedly,

CHARLES HONEYMAN.

P.S.—Would Jarndyce lend his name to a small bill at three months? You know him well, and I have heard that he is a man of benevolent character, and of substance. But “how hardly shall a rich man”—you remember the text.—C. H.

XIX.

_From Miss Harriet to M. Guy de Maupassant_.

This note, from one of the English damsels whom M. Guy de Maupassant dislikes so much, is written in such French as the lady could muster. It explains that recurrent mystery, _why Englishwomen abroad smell of gutta-percha_. The reason is not discreditable to our countrywomen, but if M. de Maupassant asks, as he often does, why Englishwomen dress like scarecrows when they are on the Continent, Miss Harriet does not provide the answer.

Miss Pinkerton’s, Stratford-atte-Bowe, Mars 12.

MONSIEUR,—Vous devez me connaître, quoique je ne vous connais pas le moins du monde. Il m’est défendu de lire vos romans, je ne sais trop pourquoi; mais j’ai bien lu la notice que M. Henry James a consacrée, dans le _Fortnightly Review_, à votre aimable talent. Vous n’aimez pas, à ce qu’il paraît, ni ‘la sale Angleterre’ ni les filles de ce pays immonde. Je figure moi-même dans vos romans (ou _moâ_-même, car les Anglais, il est convenu, prononcent ce pronom comme le nom d’un oiseau monstrueux et même préhistorique de New Zealand)—oui, ‘Miss Harriet’ se risque assez souvent dans vos contes assez risqués.

Vous avez posé, Monsieur, le sublime problème, ‘Comment se prennentelles les demoiselles anglaises pour sentir toujours le caoutchouc?’ (‘_to smell of india-rubber_’: traduction Henry James). En premier lieu, Monsieur, elles ne ‘smell of india-rubber’ quand elles se trouvent chez elles, dans les bouges infectes qu’on appelle les ‘stately homes of England.’ {154} C’est seulement à l’étranger que nous répandons l’odeur saine et réjouissante de caoutchouc. Et pourquoi? Parce que, Monsieur, Miss Harriet tient à son tub—ou tôb—la chose est anglaise; c’est permis pourtant à un galant homme d’en prononcer le nom comme il veut, ou comme il peut

Or, quand elle voyage, Miss Harriet trouve, assez souvent, que le ‘tub’ est une institution tout-à-fait inconnue à ses hôtes. Que fait-elle donc? Elle porte dans sa malle un tub de caoutchouc, ‘patent compressible india-rubber tub!’ Inutile à dire que ses vêtements se trouvent imprégnés du “smell of india-rubber.” Voici, Monsieur, la solution naturelle, et même fort louable, d’une question qui est faite pour désespérer les savants de la France!

Vous, Monsieur, qui êtes un _styliste_ accompli, veuillez bien me pardonner les torts que je viens de faire à la belle langue française. Dame, on fait ce qu’on peut (comme on dit dans les romans policiers) pour être intelligible à un écrivain si célèbre, qui ne lit couramment, peut-être, l’idiôme barbare et malsonnant de la sale Angleterre. M. Paul Bourget lui-même ne lit plus le Grec. _Non omnia possumus omnes_.

Agréez, Monsieur, mes sentiments les plus distingués.

MISS HARRIET.

XX.

_From S. Gandish_, _Esq._, _to the_ ‘_Newcome Independent_.’

THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

It appears that Mr. Gandish, at a great age—though he was not older than several industrious Academicans—withdrew from the active exercise of his art and employed his learning and experience as Art Critic of the “Newcome Independent.” The following critique appears to show traces of declining mental vigour in the veteran Gandish.

OUR great gallery has once more opened her doors, if not to the public, nor even to the fashionable _élite_, at least to the critics. They are a motley throng who lounge on Press Days in the sumptuous halls; ladies, small boys, clergymen are there, and among them but few, perhaps, who have received the training in High Art of your correspondent, and have had their eye, through a lifetime more than commonly prolonged, on the glorious Antique. And what shall we say of the present Academy? In some ways, things have improved a little since my “Boadishia” came back on my hands (1839) at a time when High Art and the Antique would not do in this country: they would not do. As far as the new exhibition shows, they do better now than when the century was younger and “Portrait of the Artist, by S. Gandish”—at thirty-three years of age—was offered in vain to the jealously Papist clique who then controlled the Uffizi. Foreigners are more affable now; they have taken Mr. Poynter’s of himself.

To return to the Antique, what the President’s “Captive Andromache” must have cost _in models alone_ is difficult to reckon. When times were cheaper, fifty years since, my ancient Britons in “Boadishia” stood me in thirty pounds: the central figures, however, were members of my own family. To give every one his due, “Andromache” is high art—yes, it is high—and the Antique has not been overlooked. About the back-view of the young party at the fountain Mr. Horsley may have something to say. For my part, there seems a want of muscle in vigorous action: where are the _biceps_, where are the thews of Michael Angelo? The President is a touch too quiet for a taste framed in the best schools. As to his colour, where is that nutty brown tone of the flesh? But the designs on the Greek vase are carefully rendered; though I have heard it remarked by a classical scholar that these kind of vases were not in use about Homer’s time. Still, the intention is good, though the costumes are not what _we_ should have called Ancient Roman when the President was a boy—ay, or earlier.

Then, Mr. Alma-Tadema, he has not turned _his_ back on the glorious Antique. “The Roses of Heliogabalus” are not explained in the catalogue. As far as I understand, there has been an earthquake at a banquet of this unprincipled monarch. The King himself, and his friends, are safe enough at a kind of high table; though which _is_ Heliogabalus (he being a consumptive-looking character in his coins in the Classical Dictionary) your critic has not made out. The earth having opened down below, the heads of some women, and of a man with a beard and his hair done up like a girl, are tossing about in a quantity of rose-leaves, which had doubtless been strown on the floor, as Martial tells us was the custom, _dum regnat rosa_. So I overheard a very erudite critic remarking. The composition of the piece would be thus accounted for; but I cannot pretend that Mr. Tadema reminds one of either Poussin or Annibale Carracci. However, rumour whispers that a high price has been paid for this curious performance. To my thinking the friends of Heliogabalus are a little flat and leathery in the handling of the flesh. The silver work, and the marble, will please admirers of this eccentric artist; but I can hardly call the whole effect “High.” But Mr. Armitage’s “Siren” will console people who remember the old school. This beautiful girl (somewhat careless in her attitude, though she has been sensible enough _not_ to sit down on the damp rock without putting her drapery beneath her) would have been a true gem in one of the old Books of Beauty, such as the Honourable Percy Popjoy and my old friend, Miss Bunnion, used to contribute to in the palmy days of the English school. Mr. Armitage’s “Juno,” standing in mid-air, with the moon in the neighbourhood, is also an example to youth, and very unlike the way such things are generally done now. Mr. Burne-Jones (who does not exhibit) never did anything like this. Poor Haydon, with whom I have smoked many a pipe, would have acknowledged that Mr. Goodall’s “David’s Promise to Bathsheba” and “By the Sea of Galilee” prove that his aspirations are nearly fulfilled. These are extremely large pictures, yet well hung. The figure of Abishag is a little too much in the French taste for an old-fashioned painter. _Ars longa_, _nuda veritas_! I hope (and so will the Liberal readers of the “Newcome Independent”) that it is by an accident the catalogue reads—“The Traitor.” “Earl Spencer, K.G.” “The Moonlighters.” (Nos. 220, 221, 225.) Some Tory _wag_ among the Hanging Committee may have taken this juxtaposition for wit: our readers will adopt a different view.

There is a fine dog in Mr. Briton Riviere’s “Requiescat,” but how did the relations of the dead knight in plate armour acquire the embroidery, at least three centuries later, on which he is laid to his last repose? This destroys the illusion, but does not diminish the pathos in the attitude of the faithful hound. Mr. Long’s large picture appears to exhibit an Oriental girl being tried by a jury of matrons—at least, not having my Diodorus Scriblerus by me, I can arrive at no other conclusion. From the number of models engaged, this picture must have been designed quite regardless of expense. It is a study of the Antique, but I doubt if Smee would have called it High Art.

Speaking of Smee reminds me of portraits. I miss “Portrait of a Lady,” “Portrait of a Gentleman;” the names of the sitters are now always given—a concession to the notoriety-hunting proclivities of the present period. Few portraits are more in the style of the palmy days of our school (just after Lawrence) than a study of a lady by Mr. Goodall (687). On the other hand, young Mr. Richmond goes back to the antiquated manner of Reynolds in one of his representations. I must admit that I hear this work much admired by many; to me it seems old-fashioned and lacking in blandness and affability. Mr Waterhouse has a study of a subject from a poem that Mr. Pendennis, the novelist (whom I knew well), was very fond of when he first came on the town: “The Lady of Shalott.” It represents a very delicate invalid, in a boat, under a counterpane. I remember the poem ran (it was by young Mr. Tennyson):—

They crossed themselves, their stars they blest, Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest. There lay a parchment on her breast That puzzled more than all the rest The well-fed wits of Camelot: “The web was woven curiously, The charm is broken utterly; Draw near and fear not, this is I The Lady of Shalott.”