Part 4

But of one island I have not yet spoken. I can get no description of it save that it lies sleeping in the summer sun, washed by the sapphire tides and fanned by the cool south winds, its olive slopes rising softly from the beach, marked by a grove of fruit trees at the crest. More the owner will not tell, for Celestine says there is no use for a deserted island after it is charted; but by these signs I shall know the place, and my trees are felled and my sails are plaited that shall yet bear me over towards the southwest!

*The Sense of Humour*

Much as one may look through the small end of a telescope and find an unique and intrinsic charm in the spectacle there offered, so to certain eyes the whole visible universe is humorous. From the apparition of this dignified little ball, rolling soberly through the starry field of the firmament, to the unwarrantable gravity of a neighbour's straw hat, macrocosm and microcosm may minister to the merriment of man. There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in the philosophy of the Realist.

It is one attribute of a man of parts that he shall have, in his mental vision, what corresponds to the "accommodation" of his eye, a flexibility of observation that enables him to adapt his mind to the focus of humour. Myopia and strabismus we know; the dullard can point their analogies in the mental optics, but for this other misunderstood function we have no name; and yet, failing that, we have dignified it as a sense apart--the sense of humour. But no form of lens has been discovered to correct its aberration and transfer the message in pleasurable terms to the lagging brain; and, unless we attempt hypnotism as a last resort, the prosiest must go purblind for life, missing all but the baldest jokes of existence.

Is it not significant, that from the ancient terminology of leechcraft, this word "humour" has survived in modern medicine, to be applied only to the vitreous fluid of the eye? For humour is the medium through which all the phenomena of human intercourse may be witnessed, and for those normal minds that possess it, tints this world with a rare colour--like that of the mysterious ultra-violet rays of the spectrum. And indeed, to push further into modern science and speculation, perhaps this ray does not undulate, but shoots forth undeviating as Truth itself, like that from the Cathode Pole. Or, does it not strike our mental retina from some secret Fourth Direction?

But this is mere verbiage; similes, flattering to the elect, but unconvincing to the uninitiate. Yet, as I am resolved that humour is essentially a point of view, I would have a try at proselytizing for the doctrine. For here is a religion ready made to my hand; I have but to raise my voice and become its prophet. The seeds are all sown, the Fraternity broods, hidden in hidden Chapters, guarding the Grand Hailing Sign; who knows but that a spark might not touch off this seasoned fuel, and the flame carry everything before it. O my readers, I give you the Philosophy of Mirth, the Cult of Laughter! Yet it is an esoteric faith, mind you, unattainable by the multitude. Not of the "Te-he! Papa's dead!" school, nor of the giggling punster's are its devotees. No comic weekly shall be its organ. It must be hymned not by the hoarse guffaw, but in the quiet inward smile--and for its ritual, I submit the invisible humour of the Commonplace. O Paradox!

Brethren, from this flimsy pulpit, I assert with sincerity, that everything on two legs (and most on four) sleeping or awake, bow-legged or knock-kneed, has its humorous aspect. The curtain never falls on the diversion. You will tell me, no doubt, that here I ride too hard. Adam, you will say with reason, set aside in the beginning certain animals for our perpetual amusement--to wit: the goose, the monkey, the ostrich, the kangaroo, and, as a sublime afterthought--symbol of the Eternal Feminine--the hen. Civilization, you may admit, has added to these the goat--but, save in rare moods of insanity, as when the puppy pursues the mad orbit of his tail, the sight of only the aforesaid beasts makes for risibility. The cat, you will say, is never ridiculous. But here again we must hark back to the major premise, unrecognized though it be by the science of AEsthetic, that humour lies in the point of view. If I could prove it by mere iteration it would go without further saying that it is essentially subjective rather than objective. Surely there is no humour in insensate nature, as there is little enough in Art and Music. The bees, the trees, the fountains and the mountains take themselves seriously enough, and though, according to the minor poets, the fields and the brooks are at times moved to laughter, it is from a vegetable, pointless joy of life. Through the human wit alone, and that too rarely, the rays of thought are refracted in the angle of mirth, and split into whimsical rays of complementary sensations and contrasts.

When we lay off the mantle of seriousness and relax the flexors and extensors, if we are well fed, healthy, and of a peaceful mood and capable of indolence, men and women, and even we ourselves, should become to our view players on the stage of life. And what then is comedy but tragedy seen backward or downside-up? It is the negative or corollary of what is vital in this great game of life. The custom has been, however, to give it a place apart and unrelated to the higher unities, as the newspapers assign their witticisms to isolated columns. Rather is it the subtle polarity induced by graver thought, the reading between the lines of the page. And as, to the vigorous intellect, rest does not come through inactivity so much as by a change of occupation, the happy humourist is refreshed by the solace of impersonality.

For, to the initiate, his own inconsistencies and indiscretions are no less diverting than those of his associates, and should frequently give rise to emotions that impel him to hurry into a corner and scream aloud with mirth. It is ever the situation that is absurd, and never the victim; and in this lies the secret of his ability to appreciate a farce of which he himself is the hero. He must disincarnate himself as the whim blows, and hang in the air, a god for the time, gazing with amusement at the play of his own ridiculous failures. In some such way, perhaps, do the curious turn over the patterned fabric, to discover, on the reverse, the threads and stitches that explain the construction of the design.

This faculty, then, gives one the stamp of caste by which one may know his brethren the world over, an Order of whose very existence many shall never be aware, till, in some after life, some grinning god conducts them to the verge of the heavens, and, leaning over a cloud, bids them behold the spectacle of this little planet swarming with its absurdly near-sighted denizens.

_Ohe la Renaissance!_ for this is to be the Age of Humour. We travail for the blithe rebirth of joy into the world. The Decadence, with its morbid personalities and accursed analysis of exotic emotion, is over, please God; yet we may adopt its methods and refine the simplicity of primary impulse, thus increasing the whole sum of pleasure with the delicate nuances that amplify the waves of feeling. Hark, O my reader! Do you not hear them, rising like overtones and turning the melody into a divine harmony?

*The Game of Correspondence*

The receipt of a letter is no longer the event it was in the old stage-coach days; railways and the penny postage have robbed it of all excitement. One expects now one's little pile of white, blue and green envelopes beside one's plate at breakfast, along with one's toast and coffee, and one tastes its contents as one opens the matutinal egg. We have forgotten how to write interesting letters as we have forgotten how to fold and wafer a sheet of foolscap or sharpen a quill. Some of our missives are not even worth a cursory glance, many by no means deserve an answer, and most are speedily forgotten in the columns of the morning journal.

Yet, at times, on red-letter days, we find one amongst the number which demands epicurean perusal; it is not to be ripped open and devoured in haste, it insists on privacy and attention. This has a flavour which the salt of silence alone can bring out; a dash of interruption destroys its exquisite delicacy. More than this, it must be answered while it is still fresh and sparkling, after which, if it be of the true vintage, it can afford still another sip to inspire your postscript.

To your room then with this, and lock the door, or else save it for a more impregnable leisure. Open it daintily and entertain it with distinction and respect; efface any previous mood and hold yourself passive to its enchantment. It is no love message, and need depend upon no excited interest in the writer for its reception, for it has an intrinsic merit; it is the work of an artist; it is a fascinating move on the chess-board of the most alluring, most accessible game in the world.

Though the fire of such a letter need have neither the artificiality of flirtation nor the intensity of love, yet it must both light and warm the reader. It is not valuable for the news it brings, for if it be a work of art the tidings it bears are not so important as the telling of them. It must be sincere and alive, revealing and confessing, a letter more from the writer than to the reader, as if it were written in face of a mirror rather than before the photograph of the receiver; and yet the communication must be spelled in the cypher of your friendship, to which only you have the key. We have our separate languages, each with the other, and there are emotions we cannot duplicate. This missive is for you, and for you only, or it ranks with a business communication. It is minted thought, invested, put out at loan for a time, bringing back interest to stimulate new speculations. There are no superfluous words, for the master strikes a clean sharp blow, forging his mood all of a single piece, welding your whim to his, and, fusing his sentences, there glows a spirit, a quality of style that bears no affectation; it must not, of all things, become literary, it must be direct, not showing signs of operose polish. It must be writ in the native dialect of the heart.

If it be a risk to write frankly, it is one that gains interest in the same proportion; it makes the game the better sport. But after all, how many letters, so fearfully burned, so carefully hid away, but what, in after years, would seem innocuous? You are seduced by the moment, and your mood seems, and impulses seem, dangerous, incendiary. You grow perfervid in your indiscretion, not knowing that the whole world is stirred by the same recklessness, and that each one is profoundly bored by all save his own yearnings. Not many of our epistles will bear the test of print on their own merit, expurgate them as you will; you need only fear, rather, that the letter will grow dull even before it reaches its destination. The best of them, moreover, are written in sympathetic ink, and unless your correspondent has the proper reagent at hand, the sheets will be empty or incomprehensible even to him. Answer speedily as you may, too, it will be hard to overtake your correspondent's mood; he has overburdened his mind, precipitated the solution, and is off to another experiment by the time his stamp is affixed. But you must do your best in return; reflect enough of his ray to show him he has shot straight, and then flash your own colour back.

There are virtues of omission and commission. It is not enough to answer questions; one must not add the active annoyance of apology to the passive offense of neglect. One must not hint at things untellable; one must give the crisp satisfaction of confidences wholly shared. Who has not received that dash of feminine inconsequence in the sentence, "I have just written you two long letters, and have torn them both up"? What letter could make up for such an exasperation? Your master letter-writer does not fear to stop when he is done, either, and a blank page at the end of the folio does not threaten his conscience.

If one has not the commonplace view of things, and escapes the obvious, it matters little whether one uses the telescope or the microscope. One may deal with the abstract or concrete, discuss philosophy and systems, or gild homely little common things till they shine and twinkle with joy. Indeed, the perfect letter-writer must do both, and change from the intensely subjective to the intensely objective point of view. He must, as it were, look you in the eye and hold you by the hand. Two masters whose letters have recently been printed may illustrate these two different phases of expression, though each could do both as well. And this first, from Browning's love letters, describes what the perfect letter should be:

"I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my friend.... I kept the letter in my hand, and only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of what was inside. Not _all_, however, happily for me! or my friend would have seen in my eyes what _they_ did not see."

To this, the twittering, delightful familiarities of Stevenson:

"Two Sundays ago the sad word was brought that the sow was out again; this time she had brought another in her flight. Moors and I and Fanny were strolling up to the garden, and there by the waterside we saw the black sow looking guilty. It seemed to me beyond words; but Fanny's _cri du coeur_ was delicious. 'G-r-r!' she cried; 'nobody loves you!'"

It was the same art in big and little, for each stripped off pretense and boldly revealed his moment's personality.

And yet, and yet, a letter does not depend upon any artistic quality or glib facility with words, for its interest. The one test of a letter is that it must bring the writer close to your side. You must fasten your mood on me, so that I shall be you for hours afterward. It sounds easy enough, but it is the most difficult thing in the world, to be one's self. "I long for you, I long for you so much that I thank God upon my knees that you are not here!" There, now, is a letter that promises well, but I dare not quote more of it, for the subject must be seen from another side.

*The Caste of the Articulate*

Fair or unfair though it be, I have come to accept a letter as the final test of the personality of a new acquaintance. Not of his or her intellect or moral worth, perhaps, but the register of that rare power which dominates all attributes--that peculiar aroma, flavour, _timbre_, or colour which makes some of our friends eternally exceptional. "Who dares classify him and label him, sins against the Holy Ghost; I, for one, think I know him only inasmuch as I refuse to sum him up. I cannot find his name in the dictionary; I cannot make a map of him; I cannot write his epitaph." So writes Sonia of a friend with such a personality, and you will see by this that Sonia herself is of the caste of the Articulate.

We are influenced first by sight, then by sound, and, lastly, by the written word. "She spoke, and lo! her loveliness methought she damaged with her tongue!" is the description of many a woman who appeals to the eye alone. And in something the same way many who fascinate us with their glamour while face to face, shock us by the dreary commonplaceness of their letters.

It would seem that an interesting person must inevitably write an interesting letter,--indeed, that should be a part of the definition of the term interesting. But many decent folk are gagged with constraint and self-consciousness, and never seem to get free.

"I wonder," says Little Sister, "whether these wordless folk may not, after all, really feel much more deeply than we who write?" That is a troublesome question, and in its very nature unanswerable, since the witnesses are dumb. No doubt they feel more simply and unquestioningly, for as soon as a thing is once said its opposite and contradictory side, as true and as necessary, reacts upon us. But it seems to me that expression does not so much depend upon any spiritual insight, or even upon especial training, as it does upon the capacity for being one's self frankly and simply. That is the only thing necessary to make the humblest person interesting, and yet nothing is so difficult as to be one's self in this wild, whirling world.

Expression is but another name for revelation. Unless one is willing to expose one's self like Lady Godiva, or protected only by such beauty and sincerity as hers, one can go but a little way in the direction of individuality. We must sacrifice ourselves at every turn, show good and bad alike, and laugh at ourselves too. "Would that mine enemy might write a book!" is no insignificant curse, and yet there are tepid, colourless authors who might hazard it with safety; no one would ever discover the element of personality.

"After our quarrel I felt as if I had a pebble in my shoe all day," Little Sister once wrote me. Let that be an example of the articulate manner, for by such vivid and homely metaphors she strews her pages. Did she reserve such phrases for her written words, I would feel bound to claim for letter-writing the distinction of being an art of itself, unrelated to any other faculty; but no, she talks in the same way--she is herself every moment. "My temper is violent and sudden, but it soon evaporates," she tells me; "it is like milk spilt on a hot stove."

The inspiration which impels one so to illustrate an abstract statement with a concrete example, illuminating and convincing, is a spark of the divine fire of personality. This is the _crux_ of the articulate caste. An ounce of illustration is worth a pound of proof. Rob poetry of metaphor and it would be but prose; a simile, in verse, is usually merely ornament. The true purpose of tropes, however, is more virile and sustaining; they should reinforce logic, not decorate it. See how agilely Perilla can compress the whole history of a flirtation into six lines, defying the old saying that "there is nothing so difficult to relight as a dead love."

I thought I saw a stiffened form A-lying in its shroud; I looked again and saw it was The love we once avowed. "They told me you were dead!" I cried. The corpse sat up and bowed!

When one has a few such acquaintances as these, books are superfluous. Who would read a dead romance when one can have it warm and living, vibrant, human, coming like instalments of a serial story, a perpetual revelation of character! Many pride themselves upon their proficiency in matter and many in manner,--there are those, even, who boast of mere quantity, but your professional writer is usually cool and calm, if not affected and pretentious. A letter, though, should be impregnate with living fire--it should boil. It is a treat of exceptional human nature. If the sentences be not spontaneous and unstudied the pleasure is lost. One may write fiery nonsense, but one must mean it at the time. One's mind must, as Sonia says, be hospitable, keep open house, and have the knack of making one's friends at home, to throb with one's own delights and despairs. One must give every mood open-handed, and mention nothing one may not say outright with gusto. But it is not everyone who can "bathe in rich, young feeling, and steep at day-dawning in green bedewed grasses" like my little Sonia. If I were dead she could still strike sparks out of me with her letters.

"Oh, if you could only see my new hat! I've been sitting in fetish worship half the evening, and I'll never dare tell how much I paid for it. You never need be good-looking under such a hat as that, for no one will ever see you!" Does not this quotation bring Little Sister very near to you, and make her very human and real? Ah, Little Sister is not afraid to be herself! She knows that she can do nothing better. "It's a terrible handy thing to have a smashing adjective in your pocket," she confesses. Little Sister has a good aim, too; she always hits my heart. And yet she acknowledges that "there are days when letters are blankly impossible."

Such friends write the kind of letters that one keeps always, the kind that can be re-read without skipping. It is their own talk, their own lives, their own selves put up like fruit preserves of various flavours, moods and colours, warranted not to turn or spoil.

And as for the gagged, wordless folk, it is my opinion that too much sensibility has been accredited to them. To any rich exotic nature expression must come as a demand not to be refused. It is feeling bubbling over into words. Other souls are compressed and silent; they have the possibilities of the bud--something warm and inspiring may at any time make them expand and free them from the constraint--but there is not much perfume until the flower blooms.

*The Tyranny of the Lares*

No, I have never been tainted with a mania for collecting. It has never particularly interested me, because I already happened to have two of a kind, to possess a third. I prefer things to be different rather than alike, and the few things I really care for I like for themselves alone, and not because they are one of a family, set or series.

But there are so few things to be envious of, even then! After one's necessities are provided for, there are not many things worth possessing, and fewer still worth the struggle of collecting. Acquisition seems to rob most things of their intrinsic value, of the extreme desirability they seemed to possess, and yet it does not follow that the practice of collecting is not worth while. It is worth while for itself, but not for the things collected. It is like hunting. The enjoyment, to your true sportsman, does not depend entirely upon the game that is bagged. If the hunter went out solely for the purpose of obtaining food he would better go to the nearest poulterer.

We have a habit of associating the idea of pleasure with the possession of certain objects, and we fancy such pleasure is permanent. But in nine cases out of ten the enjoyment is effervescent, and the thing must be gazed at, touched and admired while the charm is new. Then only can one feel the sharp joy of possession, and, even though its value remain as an object of art, we must after that enjoy it impersonally; its delight must be shared with other spectators. As far as the satisfaction of ownership is concerned the thing is dead for us, and though we would not give it up, our greed gilds it but cheaply, after all.

Of all things, pictures are most commonly regarded as giving pleasure. A painting is universally regarded as a desirable possession of more or less value, according to personal appreciation. In fact, most men would say that a poor picture is better than none, since one of its recognized functions is to fill a space on the wall. And yet how few pictures are looked at once a day, or once a week. How many persons accept them only as decoration, as spots on the wall, and pass them by, in their familiarity, as unworthy of especial notice!