GE MOORE
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OY or youth, which was he? Héloïse could not remember,
only that he was allowed to beg his living from door to door,
everybody throwing him a crust when there was one by that did not
seem wanted, and, when he grew stronger, claiming the right to send
him to the well, to give him an adze to chop wood in a backyard, and
to pay him for his day's work with broken meats and two sheaves of
straw to lie on in a barn. Everybody's drudge, she said, and nobody
taking thought to teach him a trade, not caring even to ask him who
his parents were or what manner of life his was before he strayed
into the village of Saint-Jean-de-Braie. A mere child of seven or
eight, she continued as she sat in the convent library biting the end
of her quill.
And having recalled all she had heard in Brittany of his story,
her pen kept pace with her memories of Peronnik—how he had
wandered out of the forest and had since forgotten everything ex-
cept the forest, whither it was still his wont to return (compelled,
maybe, by some homesickness) sometimes staying away for three or
four days, setting the folk talking, asking each other if they had lost
their Peronnik for ever. She had heard that he once stayed away so
NOTE: In my narrative of Héloïse and Abélard it is related that Héloïse wrote
a story in French prose entitled Peronnik the Fool so that she might teach her
son French (he had been away in Brittany for a long time and come back
to her speaking Breton). But the story, had it been included in the pub-
lished book, would have distracted the reader's attention from Héloise's
own story. It may be that in some future edition of Héloïse and Abélard
the story will be included, but it will be easier for me to make up my mind if
it would be wise to do this after reading Peronnik the Fool in print, and it
is for this reason that I now offer it to the public through the medium
of a review.-G. M.


498
PERONNIK THE FOOL
long that the folk had gone forth to seek him, getting tidings of him
as they passed through the fringes of the forest. He passed us by at
daybreak, singing like a lark in the morning, the woodmen cried;
and these tidings were enough for the searchers, who turned back,
saying, We shall find him begging his breakfast from somebody, and
from us he'll get the thrashing he deserves for having put us to such
pains. Why, there he is! cried one, in the doorway of Farmer Le-
roux's house. Whereupon they stood waiting, fidgeting at their
sticks, whilst Peronnik enjoyed such cheer as he could get out of a
wooden bowl that all the spoons of the house had already been over.
As he scraped and picked the clotted meal from the sides he talked
so pleasantly, flattering the goodwife so well that she bethought
herself of some crusts in her cupboard and returned with her hands
full, throwing them one by one into the bowl, for which Peronnik
was thankful, gobbling them up with such good appetite that a
knight in armour riding by could not do else than rein in his horse
to watch him.
Thou hast a hungry boy with thee, he said, addressing the house-
wife. And well might he be hungry, she answered, for not a bite
nor a sup has passed his lips these three days or more. Which is it,
Peronnik, three days or five? Peronnik held up his hand, for his
fingers were his accounts. Five days, as much as that, said the
housewife. And with nothing in my belly but berries, of that I am
sure, said Peronnik; and the housewife began to tell the knight of
the mischief how searchers had gone forth to seek him in the forest.
And are still seeking him, maybe. . . . But, in troth, they are back
again, having gotten tidings of him. You see them at yon house,
waiting till you've gone, sir, to come hither to enquire out his ad-
ventures. So he knows the forest ? the knight asked. As none other
knows it, she answered, laughing, and began to tell stories of Per-
onnik's rambles, the knight cutting her short, saying, If he be
knowledgeable in the forest paths, he is the boy I am looking for;
I
and, turning to Peronnik, he asked him if he could tell the way to
the Grey Castle. In the name of the Holy Virgin and God himself!
cried the housewife, it cannot be that a noble knight like you, sir,
should be going to the Grey Castle ? By my faith, I am, the knight
replied, if I can find it; for three months I have been seeking it, and
for as many years my companions-in-arms have been on their way
thither.


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a
At these words Peronnik lifted his head from the wooden bowl
out of which he was feeding, and with his eyes on the knight he
hearkened, hearing that the Diamond Spear and the Golden Bowl
were the greatest treasures the world could bestow on any man. For
in the Golden Bowl, said the knight, he will find all food and drink
that he may wish for and every kind of wealth. Faith and troth!
that bowl is the bowl for me, said Peronnik to himself. Every kind
of wealth, the knight continued, and also health, for if he eat and
drink from the Golden Bowl he shall be healed, whatever his sick-
nesses may be; and though he may be dead, if not for more than
three days, life will come back to him if the Bowl be put to his lips.
What a wonderful bowl this is ! said Peronnik. I would have it for
myself. Well, tell us now about the Spear, good knight.
The Spear, the knight said, will destroy everything it touches. And
who owns the Bowl and the Spear? asked Peronnik. Good knight, ,
cried the housewife, you will not lead the poor boy astray? Ah!
said the knight, so thou hast heard of the Bowl and the Spear. And
thou too hast heard of them? he added, turning to Peronnik. And
who would have heard of them if I hadn't, Peronnik answered, for I
was born and bred in the forest and have often seen in the days gone
the enchantress Redemonde riding by, the Spear in rest and the
Bowl at her girdle. But would she ride about the forest with the
Spear and the Bowl? the knight asked, and this time it was the
housewife who answered him. Faith, said the woman, the sorceress
would be of no high degree in her arts if she left the castle without
the Spear and the Bowl, for without them she would be no more
than ourselves and it would be easy to invade her castle. Thou
speakest well, woman, said the knight; none can prevail against her
while she have the Spear. She lays the Spear aside when she enters
the castle, continued the woman. And the Bowl and the Spear sink
down into a vault with a door that no key can open but hers, said
the knight; and my plan is to make show to fall in with her humour
and to steal her keys while she sleeps. I have heard of plans no bet-
ter and no worse than yours, sir knight, from many of your company
that have passed by my house asking the way to the Grey Castle,
but none of them returned from thence. Thou sayest well, an-
swered the knight; none of them returned from the castle, for none
of them took counsel of the hermit of Blavet. And did you do that,
,
good knight? asked Peronnik.


500
PERONNIK THE FOOL
a
I did indeed, replied the knight; and was told by him that a hard
task was before me, for out of the Wood of Deceits, he said, will
come to meet me all kinds of fears and terrors, and if my heart be
staunch and I do not yield to them, flowers will bend down from
their stalks and sweet perfumes assail my nostrils; at the end of the
vistas fair, shadowy forms will beckon me, and if I follow them
they will lead me into deserts where I shall perish from cold and
hunger, like those that went before me. But if I pass, as I shall pass,
through the Wood of Deceits in safety, I shall meet a dwarf waving
a fiery dart which burns up everything around it within twenty
paces of the apple-tree from which I must pluck an Apple. If I es-
cape the flames and get the Apple, I shall have to go in search of the
Laughing Flower, but to pluck this I must beguile a lion whose
mane is of living snakes. I shall wait till the lion sleeps (the snakes
are for ever wakeful, but I must get the Flower); and having gotten
the Flower I shall seek a passage through the dragon-haunted lake,
and on reaching the thither side a fight will begin between me and
the Black Man, whose weapon is an iron ball that returns of itself
to the master after every throw. After that I shall enter the Valley
of Delights to conquer every kind of temptation with which the
Devil may assail a Christian. My courage will weaken, but it will
become strong again, for I shall resort to prayers and fare onwards
till I come to a river by whose bank sits a lady clad in black. She
will say to me, Good knight, thou must carry me across the ford,
for it is said I may not instruct thee on the hither side, but on the
thither thou'lt learn from me what next thou hast to do. All these
perils await me, said the knight, but I go to meet them without fear
and asking no help from anybody but Peronnik, who will point out
the way to the Grey Castle in the woods.
The goodwife would have stopped Peronnik from telling the
knight the way, for her heart was moved at the thought that a man
of good appearance and fair words should be lost to the world,
which sadly needed such men, but before she could pluck the Fool
by the sleeve he had pointed out the way to the knight, who at once
pricked forward. Redemonde will get his life and his armour, the
woman said, and was moved to pull Peronnik by the ears. But of
what good to pull a fool's ears? she asked herself, and threw him in-
stead two or three more crusts, bidding him go his way and never
,
return to her again, for after his wanton words she hoped to see his
a


GEORGE MOORE
501
a
face no more. Of reproofs Peronnik understood nothing, but he was
used to being told to go his way, and he was about to do as he was
bidden when the housewife caught sight of her husband coming
across the fields. In an evil humour my good man comes to me, she
said, his gait tells it to me plainly; and she began to ask herself, Has
he come upon a lamb dead in the fields, or has the mare cast her
foal? Before any words passed his lips Leroux's eyes fell on Per-
onnik, and he said, Now then, my boy, my neat-herd has gone for
disobedience to my orders, and thou’rt the lad I want to take his
place. At which the goodwife held her peace, for the time was not
one to arouse his anger further; and she bethought herself of the
great rise in life this was for Peronnik.
From that day Peronnik minded the farmer's cows, the white and
the brown and the black, keeping them together in the pasture the
farmer told him they were to feed in, forgetful at first of the Dia-
mond Spear and the Golden Bowl; stories did not stay long in Per-
onnik's head, and of all at the time he was in, for he had the weather
to think of, and very bad weather it was at the time, the country
withering since midsummer under a blue sky with never a cloud in it
except the one that appeared about three o'clock every day and fed
away southward, breaking Peronnik's heart, for all his heart was
with his cattle. If the clouds will not gather and there be no more
rain, whither shall I drive my cows to pasture? he said. There's
little grass anywhere, and what there is is dry and crisped, with little
diet in it. Whither shall I drive them for water? The pools that
were are but baked mud, and the river that was is but heaps of hot
shingle, with only a trickle round the middle rocks.
And it was as Peronnik said, the country seemed to have fallen
out of its luck. Rain is our need and without it we perish, was the
cry of man and beast and bird. Even when the chains of the deepest
wells were lengthened the buckets came up but half-filled. The
spells of the sorceress have caused this drought, for we will not wor-
ship Satan with her, the folk replied to the knights who came riding
by asking to be shown the way to the Grey Castle, everyone gather-
ing a crowd of villagers about his saddle bow crying, Let the Spear
and the Bowl be raped from the sorceress else we perish. At which
words the knights pricked on hastily, promising to return with both.
But none returned, and the villagers fell into steady despair, say-
ing, We are undone; we thirst in our houses and the cattle thirst in


1
.
502
PERONNIK THE FOOL
a
the fields even unto death; our hens thirst, and the ducks and the
geese return from their quest for water sadly; the flowers wither in
the gardens, and no honey will be gathered by the bees this season.
We are undone utterly if rain do not fall. We have no armour to
besiege the Grey Castle, and the knights who have armour meet
their fate, for whosoever has the Spear is all-powerful. Will no
true knight come who, by the power of God and his virtue, will over-
come the sorceress? If we pray will he come?
And the folk fell to praying till some began to doubt if God's
power availed against Redemonde. See, they cried, no knights come.
Hast seen a knight? they cried to Peronnik, who came by, return-
ing with his cattle from a distant river. Hast seen a knight journey-
ing? Never a one, he answered; the sorceress has had them all.
And in the river did thy beasts get their fill? They wetted their
nozzles in the leavings of the birds, replied Peronnik, for thou-
sands of birds have come down from the woods and have drunk up
what remains of the Arduzon. We perish utterly, were the words
that Peronnik heard wailed behind him, if no knight come to save
us from the woman in the Grey Castle. Wicked above all other
women she is, Peronnik said to himself, and continued on his way,
asking himself why she sought to destroy the poor folk who had no
castle to live in. What have we done, he said, to merit this re-
venge? And what have the poor cows, who in other days gave their
milk so cheerfully, done to deserve her terrible hatred? And that
he might think more fully he sat himself by the roadside. Another
knight comes, he said, catching the sound of hooves, whom I shall
direct to his doom; for Peronnik was not without a heart. But see-
ing that the horseman wore no armour, he said to himself, No knight
is this one.
Why now, my lad, said the horseman, reining in his steed beside
Peronnik, what grief is this that sets such young eyes as thine weep-
ing? Grief there is enough in the world for men and women, but
for lads and lasses the world should be naught but songs and flowers.
For what art thou weeping? I am weeping, good sir, Peronnik an-
swered, for the witch of the Grey Castle in the wood has laid a curse
upon
the land. And who told these evil tidings of the lady in the
Grey Castle? the knight asked. Good sir, replied Peronnik, I am
but telling the stories that are told in the village. It may be that her
ladyship knows none of these things, and that the curse that has


GEORGE MOORE
503
fallen is not her curse. But if no rain fall within the next few days
my cows and young heifers will lie down and die and be eaten by
wolves. But the wolves, too, have to drink, said the knight, and he
asked whither they went for it and learnt from Peronnik that the
wolves knew of pools untouched by the curse lying far away in the
depths of the forest. Hearken, sir, to that poor heifer calling
me from the well-head, but were I to let down the bucket again
it might come up dry. I have no heart to disappoint her, nor have I
heart to see her die. I grieve for my cows and for my master, who
will be as poor as I am this winter if the curse be not lifted from
the land.
At these words the horseman covered his face with his hands, and
Peronnik guessed him to be weeping. You are weeping, good sir,
he said, for my dying kine; and if the ways of the forest be not
known to you I will point them out, and maybe (though a knight
you are not, for you wear no armour) the witch of the Grey Castle
will listen to your prayers and give back the Diamond Spear and
the Golden Bowl, and the country be saved from famine. Alas,
Peronnik, I know the ways through the forest and need no guide.
Look into my face and tell me if thou rememberest me. And that
Peronnik might judge him better the horseman stepped down from
the saddle and, leading his horse by the bridle, stood by Peronnik,
saying, Look into my face and say if thou hast not seen it before.
Good sir, said Peronnik, you are the knight who stopped to watch
me cleaning out the porridge bowl when I returned from the forest.
For as many days as I have fingers I was in the forest with naught
but berries in my belly; I was hungry; and the goodwife was bid-
ding me away, never to come to her door again for food or lodging,
for pointing out the way to you, sir. That day was a dark one for
me, the knight answered, but for thee it was a bright day; for I have
not forgotten Farmer Ledoux coming from his fields angry at his
neat-herd's disobedience to his orders, and, seeing thee, he said, Va-
grant though thou art, I will trust thee till I find thee disobedient.
My luck came, sir knight, just as you tell it. Such luck as mine
never came before to a hind like me, for those who were gone in
search of me stood waiting at the corner of the street to beat me, as
I heard afterwards. But, sir, your countenance is so rueful that I
,
gather a great misfortune must have overtaken you.
A great misfortune truly overtook me, the knight replied; a


504
PERONNIK THE FOOL
knight without sword or shield or lance is indeed unfortunate even
amid the unfortunate. And who robbed
you
of
your armour? asked
Peronnik. Myself robbed myself, was the answer that he got, and
Peronnik sat wondering, for the knight bade h heep his seat, say-
ing that it was he who should stand. But m crippled knee forbids
it, he said, and I will sit beside thee instead on this fallen tree, and
we will talk, Peronnik, of the day that I rode away confident into
the forest in quest of the Grey Castle. You spoke, said Peronnik,
about the Wood of Deceits and the Valley of Delights, through
which you would pass with your eyes closed lest lovely shapen
fairies—I have forgotten what the dangers were, sir knight, but did
you overcome them and reach the castle? I did indeed, the knight
replied, and so came into my misfortune. I remember my cattle and
would know them among hundreds, said Peronnik, but have little
memory for words, yet I have not forgotten that you said that who-
soever owned the Golden Bowl would find in it all the food and
drink and wealth he wished for, and that whosoever owned the Dia-
mond Spear would be master of the world, for it destroys every-
thing it touches. Whilst driving my cattle from pasture to pasture
I have often thought that if I were a knight I would go
in
quest
of
the Spear and the Bowl and save my country from the curse that
the woman in the Grey Castle has put upon it, without telling my
thoughts to anybody, for were a word to go forth that I was think-
ing such things I would have all the village laughing at me. But
you, sir knight, have not joined with the village against me? Joined
with the village against thee, Peronnik ? said the knight. Putting
a joke upon me, answered Peronnik, for it is hard to believe that
you passed through all the great perils you told us of and have come
back from the Grey Castle without the Spear and the Bowl. It may
be, Peronnik, that thine eyes have never dwelt with rapture upon a
woman's beautiful face? Your words, sir knight, are hard for a
neat-herd, a stray come into the village of Saint Jean-de-Braie
without a story to tell of his father or mother.
A woman's beautiful face! Peronnik repeated, and he asked the
knight if all the beautiful ones were good and the ugly ones wicked.
To which the knight replied that he would not go so far as to say
that, but believed that a fine open countenance never foreshadowed
a base soul, words that were too hard for Peronnik to find an answer
for. Moreover, he was minded to ask the knight how he might know
a


GEORGE MOORE
505
beauty when it passed him by, if it were sinful to be beautiful, and
if men were beautiful as well as women, getting from the knight
the answer that beauty was not given to men and women only, but
was shared by the birds and the beasts. The lowing heifer ap-
proaching us, Peronnik, is beautiful. If you were milking her, sir
knight, Peronnik answered, you'd have a different word for her,
for however hard I pull at the teats I cannot fill the pail. Flow-
ers are more beautiful than grass, said the knight. Not in my eyes,
replied Peronnik, for I would give all the flowers in the world for
a field of juicy grass into which I might turn my kine. But great
knights like you, sir, can praise milkless udders and set flowers above
useful grass; hinds like me cannot think and do as you knights do,
ride by on quests, turning verses as you ride about flowering meads
and girls with rosy cheeks and white legs. Leaving the sallow faces
and the tough skins songless, said the knight. Are there no lads in
thy village whose hearts ache after rosy cheeks and white legs?
There are many such, said Peronnik. But thou'rt not one of them?
the knight asked. My mother may have kissed me, but I have no
memory of her, Peronnik replied.
I would hear from you, sir knight, how you passed through the
Wood of Deceits and the Valley of Delights. And cheated the
dwarf, said the knight, who guards the apple-tree, and the lion
whose mane is of live snakes. To have overcome such a beast as
that you must be possessed of a great secret, sir knight, said Peron-
nik; for those who went before you had doubtless stout hearts, but
a stout heart is not enough to overcome a lion whose mane is of live
snakes. It is as thou sayest, Peronnik, for the snakes are wakeful,
and when the lion sleeps a snake is always ready to awake him at
the approach of danger. But I went to the hermit of Blavet, who
told me how I might deceive the lion and poison the dragons in the
lake; but he gave me no secret to save me from the beauty of the
Lady Redemonde, who came to my saddle bow to welcome me when
I reached the castle, and held a goblet of sweet wine to my lips and
pressed into my hand spiced cakes on a silver salver. These I might
have resisted, but not her sweet smile nor the sunny gold of her
hair. But of these things thou knowest nothing, Peronnik. Nothing
indeed, Peronnik replied; much more of porridge and crusts, and not
enough of them at the end of a hard day's work. But for the sake
of my kine and of the village of Saint-Jean-de-Braie I would have


506
PERONNIK THE FOOL
turned my eyes from the cakes and wine and said, Sorceress, I have
come for the Diamond Spear and the Golden Bowl. Then it may
be, the knight said, that thou art the lad I am seeking. Now, sir
knight, you must be mocking me, for why should a knight, even one
who has trespassed, seek such a boy as I am?
Thou wouldst hear, asked the knight, what happened to me? I
would indeed, Peronnik answered, and the knight said, Besides the
beauty of the Lady Redemonde there was music and dancing and
sweet singing and fine linen in her castle, and I dallied with her in
pleasure for several days. And when the day came for me to ride
round the castle ramparts, the last task through which a knight must
pass before he claim the Bowl and the Spear, my will was not free
to conquer, and I rode weakly at the great abyss; and myself and my
horse were thrown into it, my horse being killed and myself carried
a cripple to the castle, where my limbs were mended as best they
might be. And since then I have had no will but the will of the
Lady Redemonde, whose power over me is such that I go forth at
her bidding to lure other knights, knowing well that they will fail
in the Wood of Deceits or the Valley of Delights, they not having
gone to the hermit of Blavet, who will tell a good and true knight
how he may secure himself against these dangers.
So you, sir knight, were the only one to reach the castle? Peron-
nik asked, and the knight answered that the others perished in the
Wood or in the Valley, some, by the aid of heart-felt prayers, get-
ting through those places, only to perish in the desert that lay out-
side. Thou'lt see their bones— But shall I have to go in search
of the Diamond Spear and the Golden Bowl? Peronnik asked. If
the country is to be saved, thou'lt have to go, replied the knight;
possessed of the secrets that will bring thee to the castle unscathed.
For all secrets are in my power for giving save how to harden thy
heart against Lady Redemonde's beauty. I have that myself, said
Peronnik, so think no more of it. But while I am away seeking the
Spear and the Bowl who will let down the buckets in the wells and
wind them up again? Think not of thy herd but of thy country, the
knight replied; thy herd matters little, for the herds of all the world
will be thine if thou returnest with the Spear and the Bowl. I am
but a hind, sir knight, and would be driven away from her castle.
We can put knighthood upon thee, the knight said. But, answered
Peronnik, I should never dare to ride through the streets of Saint-


GEORGE MOORE
507
a
Jean-de-Braie with a shield on my arm and a lance in my hand and
a
a sword by my side, none of which I have had any practice with, all
the boys and girls throwing things at me, saying, Lord! there goeth
Peronnik, a greater fool than ever he was before. To which the
knight answered that he could give Peronnik his horse only. Ar-
mour he had none, neither sword nor lance. She having taken mine
from me. But, said Peronnik, I know where there is a lance and a
a
sword and a shield and a helmet. You know that! cried the knight;
well then let us go to find them. There may be no sword and there
may be no shield and there may be no lance, answered Peronnik, but
there's a helmet in a blasted tree on a heath. But this the knight
could not believe, saying: How should a helmet have come down a
hollow tree? It may be only one of Peronnik's thoughts, he said to
himself, which are little considered in Saint-Jean-de-Braie; and they
fared onward into the forest.
a
a
II
And through shady dells, over sunlit hill-tops, out of sight of
watchers, out of hearing of eavesdroppers, the twain wandered, the
knight in deep thought, Peronnik leading the horse half-forgetful
of the Grey Castle and his approaching knighthood, happy in the
enchantment of the forest, and at home in it even as the birds and
animals.
At noon the knight dismounted, and whilst the horse grazed at
tether he talked to Peronnik of the honour of knighthood and its
duties, the chime of his words, of which Peronnik understood noth-
ing, bringing sleep into Peronnik's eyes. But remembering, as he
always did, that courtesy should be lacking in nobody, he strug-
gled against the weariness that the warmth of the sunlight and the
monotonous murmur of the forest imposed upon his eyelids, till the
knight's talk became in his mind a green and golden mystery, full
of vague sounds, with somebody talking whose voice Peronnik had
heard before in the streets of Saint-Jean-de-Braie, but whose name
kept slipping from his memory, try hard as he might to remember
it. And this was the last that Peronnik heard of the pardoner, who
had stopped in front of the knight to rest for a while, the afternoon
being hot and his pack heavy, and who, sitting on a fallen bole, had
fallen to deploring the evil times, saying that he had traversed many
a


508
PERONNIK THE FOOL
villages without selling a single relic, and in a country renowned for
its piety. And this pause of faith among the peasantry he set down
to the drought, for having addressed themselves to God without
avail, the peasantry were now offering prayers to the Devil every
evening in the village of Saint-Jean-de-Braie, a favourite retreat for
worship being a dusky garden or orchard. On the knight asking the
reason for these conversions, the pardoner said that the folk had put
aside the priest, saying that the same power could not be the creator
of both good and evil. He had often heard mutterings among the
crowd that collected about him: God is deaf; the Devil may have
a readier ear to our prayers. He and the priest, though often at
variance, were agreed that Devil-worship was of all sins the worst,
and they had striven against the heresy. If he had had some relics
of the evil one, some clippings of the hooves and a few bristles or
hairs from his hinder-parts, he could have driven a fine trade in
Saint-Jean-de-Braie in these days of drought. But neither Satan
nor Beelzebub nor any of the inferior fallen angels had abided on
earth, so there was little of their bodies that he could collect; smells
there were in plenty, but smells could not be collected. Moreover,
he was not one of those who turned their backs on their benefactors.
He had thriven in the belief that God was the creator of both good
and evil and in this belief he would abide, selling only relics of the
saints and holy men and women.
On these words the pardoner broke into an extraordinary enu-
meration of his wares, laying special stress on a bit of the sail of St
Peter's boat. And this not proving a temptation, he displayed
teeth from the jaws of nearly all the Apostles; and as these did not
tempt the knight he continued his prattle unavailingly till he pro-
duced a bunch of feathers plucked from the cock that crowed the
morning of the day that Christ died, adding happily that any one of
these would keep the wearer safe from the curse of the sorceress in
the Grey Castle. Now is this true what you are telling me? the
knight asked; shall my thoughts be safe from her, for she is a great
reader of thoughts? As long as you wear this feather your thoughts
will be your own, the pardoner replied; and he picked the finest
feather from the bunch and gave it to the knight in return for a
piece of money. And then strapping his pack together he departed
quickly, leaving the knight in a pretty humour of smiling satisfac-
tion, for what he feared more than all else were Redemonde's eyes.


GEORGE MOORE
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But they will read no more from me, he muttered, for this feather I
shall wear in my bosom. And calling upon Peronnik, who did not
answer, the lad having rolled over asleep under a holly, he kicked
him up and bade him lay his hand on the bridle and lead on to the
hollow tree where the needed armour was hidden. Is our way to
the right or to the left, to the west or to the east, to the north or
to the south ? the knight asked. Such questions as these Peronnik
could not answer, and the knight, angered by his dulness of wit,
was about to bid him away from him back to Farmer Leroux to
get beaten for his neglect of the herd. But before he could speak
the words, like one bidden from within, Peronnik seized the bridle
of the knight's horse, and they went forward till evening, seeing
only hawks at hover above the tree-tops and foxes slinking through
the underwood. Only hawks and foxes have we seen, said the
knight, since we started forth this morning, and Peronnik answered
him that in all his forest faring he had never seen before the trees
they were among. Nor this boulder, he said, nor yon stunted pines;
it is not my forest but another. And the knight was about to lay
his lance about Peronnik's shoulders, but kept himself from doing
so lest he should run away; and Peronnik could easily outstrip him
by dodging from tree to tree, passing under the thick bushes and
round rocks where a horseman could not go. And were this to hap-
pen, he said to himself, I am lost indeed; Peronnik is my chance to
escape from the forest.
And as courtesy is always better than hard words in such circum-
stances he spoke encouragingly to Peronnik, who fared on at hazard
till the night was near upon them, when he cried out, Sir, yonder
are three ravens just come up from the rocks. Yes, the knight re-
plied, I see three black birds of ill omen in the air. Not so, an-
swered Peronnik, this evening the ravens are birds of good omen, for
their way is to their roosting-tree, and we have but to follow them
to come upon the buried armour. Nor had they fared far when
Peronnik began to remember the part of the forest he was in, and
he begged the knight to take courage, saying that they were within
a quarter of a league, or less than that, of the helmet he had heard
the birds speak about. And the knight, putting confidence in Per-
onnik's wood-lore, fared onward with him in silence until the eve-
ning star burst into flame in the heavens and the tree was before
them with the three ravens on its branches. It was from them, said


510
PERONNIK THE FOOL
Peronnik, that I heard of the armour hidden in the tree. So thou
hast told me already, the knight answered; but what knowest thou
of the talk of birds? More than you think for, sir knight, for
there is a raven in Farmer Leroux's yard that speaks as plainly as
you
do; when he has hidden anything he goes hopping about, crying
to us, Look here, look there, look everywhere, and the very same
words I have heard the ravens in yon tree speak before tucking their
heads under their wings. Now give your ear to them, sir knight,
and what I tell you you will hear.
The knight listened to the chatter above in the branches, but he
could not divide it into words for a long time, and once more he
began to think that Peronnik was fooling him; all the same, he could
not do else than listen to the birds. Now, sir knight, Peronnik
whispered, tell me what you think you hear; and the knight an-
swered, Methinks I hear one bird say, Look here, and the next an-
swer: Look there, and the three cry together: Look everywhere,
for the-Helmet is in the tree, Peronnik whispered; put your hand
to your ear, sir knight. The knight raised his hand, hearing this
time, so it seemed to him, the word helmet in the birds' talk. It
may be as thou thinkest, Peronnik, that we are within reach of what
we need to win the Bowl and Spear from the sorceress. So now up
with thee into the tree; as easy to climb it is as any ladder, and I will
hoist thee into the first branches.
With a great clatter of wings and hoarse cries of anger the ravens
flopped away into the forest, and Peronnik, reaching the hollow
bole, looked down into it, crying to the knight, who waited below
for tidings, The ravens have not lied to us; a helmet there is in the
tree, and it being no more than six feet from the ground mayhap
the rest of the knight is underneath it. Now why should the knight
be underneath it and how could he be ? asked the knight. None but
a fool could think to find a live knight in a hollow tree. To which
Peronnik replied, If he be not a live knight he must be a dead one.
Thine answer is worthy of thee, said the knight, for a man is always
alive or dead; and the helmet may have fallen from the knight's
head as he looked down into the tree for buried treasure, to be
caught midway. It may be that, answered Peronnik, or something
worser, it being in his mind that the ravens would not trouble much
about a steel helmet. Now what meanest thou by something wor-
ser? And the two began to dispute together, the knight trying to
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a
а
persuade Peronnik to go down into the tree after the helmet, and
Peronnik answering that if he did he might not be able to climb out
of the tree again. Nor would you, sir, be able to lend a hand to get
me out of the hole. My lame leg, it is true, replied the knight, unfits
me for climbing. Whereupon they were friends again, with the
knight taking advice from Peronnik, it seeming true to him that
they would have to go to work with adze and saw to get the whole
of the armour, if the whole of it-helmet, sword, shield, lance, and
chain surcoat—were hidden in the tree. If you will remain by the
tree, sir knight, said Peronnik, I will go whither I think I can buy
an adze and saw; a hammer, too, it will be as well to bring. But
without money thou'lt not be able to buy these things, the knight
answered, so I will give thee money for them and for the many
other things that we shall need, among them a leathern coat to wear
under thy surcoat of mail; and to escape the several dangers that
beset the way to the castle, to overcome the spells with which Rede-
monde has surrounded herself, thou'lt need a linen bag, and let it be
filled with larks' feathers—not sparrows, but larks, to be sure; some
bird-lime, too, and a garland of roses—forget it not, nor a pipe made
out of a stem of elderwood. These things come to my mind readily,
but others will be needed, and I will tell them to thee and impress
them upon thy memory as we journey to the village. Which is not
far, Peronnik interjected. It will be well indeed that you accom-
pany me thither, for- That I should go with thee, Peronnik, is a
thought that has been in my head while speaking to thee. It's a
good thought, too, for who would believe that I had gotten so much
money honestly as you will have to give me? cried Peronnik. What
story could I tell them, and of whom should I tell it? My name,
said the knight, is Sir Gilles de Lacenaire.
Sir Gilles' straightforward speech reassured Peronnik, and he kept
pace beside the knight's charger all the way, now and then clinging
to the stirrup leather. And in this way they came into the village,
where they were followed by eyes open with admiration, Sir Gilles'
martial bearing overawing the women and children, the men, whose
shrewdness might have led them to ask what business brought a
knight and a shepherd lad to the village after sundown to buy saw
and adze, being away in the harvest fields. The larks' feathers, the
bird-lime, the pipe made out of elderwood, and the garland of roses
awakened astonishment, but it was enough to remember that knights


512
PERONNIK THE FOOL
were not as other men. And so favoured Sir Gilles and Peronnik
returned to the heath with all they needed, and once arrived they
came to their work without delay on the blasted tree, putting to
flight the ravens, who had returned thither. We are well rid of
those croakers, who have tongues in their beaks to tell all they see
and hear, said Peronnik. Thou art not the fool that I thought
thee, Peronnik; a mind is awaking in thee. And without more
words Sir Gilles dealt the hollow tree some great blows with the
adze; but the tree was tougher than they thought for and yielded
but little. Our work will take us till daybreak, he said, and spat
upon his hands to get a better grip of the slippery handle. Peronnik
worked with chisel and hammer, and when he and Sir Gilles stopped
to take breath they saw the moon rising into the pure summer sky,
sending long shadows of the tree over the heath. It may be that
the evil birds are roosting in yonder wood and watching us; if so, it
would be well to drive them out of it, said Peronnik. On this er-
rand they went and drove the ravens further away lest they should
have the story to tell to whomsoever might listen to them in the
morning; and hearkening from time to time to birds winging their
way high overhead to some pool or mere known only to themselves,
where they would stay till morning, and to the footfalls (foxes and
badgers, mayhap) they plied adze and saw. Once the tread was
heavier, and Peronnik whispered, A bear. My horse, said Sir Gilles,
has winded him; and they clung to the horse's bridle, striving to
quieten him with words, but he plunged out of their hands and
nearly broke his tether. If we had lost him! Sir Gilles muttered,
leaving the rest of his thought to be spoken by Peronnik, who said,
It would be a bad luck indeed if we were to lose our horse now, for
if the morning light makes a knight of me I must have a horse to
take me to the Grey Castle. And if we had lost mine, where should
we have found another? Sir Gilles asked, for all my money is now
spent. If that be so, said Peronnik, we would do well to light a fire,
for if wolves be about (and there's no reason why they are not on
the prowl) your horse will break his tether; there is naught that a
horse fears like the smell of a wolf. Thereat the twain set to work
to build a fire, and having done this they returned to the tree and
worked for another hour or more.
We are just on daylight, said Peronnik, and when Sir Gilles asked
him how he knew that daylight was nigh, Peronnik pointed to the
a
а


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a
a
stars, saying, They are no longer near us, Sir Gilles, for they follow
the night; and he asked Sir Gilles if he did not feel a chillness in the
air. Sir Gilles answered that the sky was greyer, and Peronnik
pointed to a heron flapping through the greyness on his way to the
reeds that the ducks had left for the corn-fields, where he will bide
all day. All the noises of the night have ceased, Sir Gilles said, and
they fell once more to their work, chopping and hacking and break-
ing the old tree away in parts, without, however, being able to widen
a hole big enough to allow the tree to be searched to the roots. And
it was not till the line of the forest began to show under a streak of
green sky that they discovered a skeleton in armour. So it was the
smell of the corpse that drew the ravens to the tree, said Sir Gilles.
And the birds mighty angry at not being able to get a bite out of
him, Peronnik answered. Are we on the spot where some foul mur-
der was done and the body hidden in a hollow tree? Sir Gilles said,
speaking more to himself than to Peronnik. Or the knight may have
climbed into the tree to take counsel from the ravens and toppled
into the hole, answered Peronnik, and once down in it, it would take
a chimney-sweeper, and the best in France, to get out again. It may
be as thou sayest, Peronnik, and weighed down by his armour he
perished. We all perish, said Peronnik, one way or the other, leav-
ing our goods behind for another's use and benefit, maybe for an
enemy's. The armour we have gotten is of more worth than thy
moralities, Peronnik. Now into it. Upon thy head I place the hel-
met and over thy shoulders the mail surcoat reaching to the waist.
Thy shoon are stricken, but thy excuse to the lady of the Grey Castle
will be that thou hast been long on thine errand.
With his sword by thy side and his shield on thine arm, kneel be-
fore me, and with a blow of my sword I will dub thee Sir Peronnik,
and bid thee arise to start on an adventure in which many have
fallen but in which thou'lt win renown. Hie thee into thy saddle,
and as my broken knee does not allow me to walk far I'll seat myself
behind thee, telling thee how to manage the charger, how to turn
him to the right or to the left, how to rein him in, and how to escape
the spells with which thy way will be beset on entering the Wood of
Deceits and the Valley of Delights. To escape the dangers of the
way I can help thee, but the greatest danger is the sorceress, and
from her spell the purity of thy heart will save thee. It was then
her beauty that caused your downfall, Sir Gilles ? To which Sir
a


514
PERONNIK THE FOOL
a
Gilles answered furtively that it was the man within him that
yielded to the wiles of Redemonde. Then there is no danger for
me, Peronnik replied, for the man is not yet born within me. But I
would hear of the wiles and the spells she casts upon the knights.
The spell of her beauty, answered Sir Gilles, which is everywhere,
in her hands, in her hair, in her eyes, in her foot; at which Peronnik
was perplexed. But if you know not, sir, how the knights were be-
guiled, you can tell me what spell she cast upon you, for you are a
true and valiant knight and must have yielded to some mightier
force than her foot.
The traps, Sir Gilles answered, that the sorceress sets are mani.
fold, and she never sets the same trap twice. But before telling
of the trap in which I was caught, it behoves thee to hear that the
Diamond Spear and the Golden Bowl were brought from Palestine
in a ship by the Crusaders; and that tidings of the argosy were
wafted to a great magician in Italy, Rogéar, brother of the sorceress
Redemonde, who by his spells called the vessel on the rocks, thereby
possessing himself of a talisman that gives him power over the whole
world. And how is it, asked Peronnik, that Rogéar has yielded his
power to his sister? He has not yielded it, Sir Gilles answered, for
they share it together; sometimes the Spear and the Bowl are in
France, sometimes in Italy; at which answer Peronnik was per-
plexed and subdued. But brightening a little, he said, Well, Sir
Gilles, tell me of the trap that laid you low, to which Sir Gilles an-
swered, She invited me first to a great feast, and after we had eaten
and drunken she called me to her side, and, having confidence that
my prayers would save me from the snare of her beauty, I gave ear
to the lulling music of her voice, till in the middle of a story a great
noise was heard—voices in the courtyard of the castle and after-
wards trampling of feet on the stairs. My brother, Rogéar, has re-
turned, she said, and if he finds thee with me he will kill thee or
change thee into some animal shape. But I love thee and will not
open to him, and he cannot enter against my will, my spells being as
strong as his. And myself, unsuspicious that the tumult and Rogéar's
voice was but an enchantment of the senses wrought by Redemonde
herself to bring me to her purpose, shook with terror, half smothered
by the stench of the Devil behind the door. At last hooves were
heard departing, and we stood waiting till we could bear it no
longer, and fell into each other's arms, my mouth upon her mouth.


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I know not how the other knights were undone, but I was undone
by the lifting of the dread that followed after Rogéar's departure.
But let not my downfall dishearten thee, Peronnik, for thine inno-
cence will cast a shield over thee. I shall be near thee, and though I
know not all the snares she will set I can divine most of them; and
when the snare is set for thee I will awaken thee by the shuffle of
my feet, by a cough, or by words suddenly addressed to her. Many
victories, however, will have to be won before thou reachest Rede-
monde. Yonder is the Wood of Deceits, through which thou'lt have
to pass; and here we part. At these words Sir Gilles slipped from
the horse's quarters, and with his hand on the bridle he sought in his
memory, afraid that he had forgotten some danger that Peronnik
would meet on his way to the castle. But in his thoughtfulness his
hand loosened on the bridle and the horse sprang forward, and no
sooner were the first trees passed than the predicted dangers began
to appear, and Sir Peronnik could think of no better way to save
himself from the allurements of the flowers than to pull his visor
over his eyes, in this way shunning the danger of sight. But the
delicious scent of the flowers penetrated the woof of his armour,
causing him to reel in his saddle, and he said, I must draw breath
through my mouth, and he rode through the wood in safety till he
came upon a great plain on the thither side littered with the skele-
tons of many men and horses and pieces of rusty armour. The
bones of those, said Sir Peronnik, who were beguiled by visionary
hosts, so Sir Gilles told me, images of beauty to which my eyes
have never been opened, and to which I hope my eyes will never
be opened; for beauty must be in itself a gift from the Devil, since
those who have it are wicked. Redemonde has it and she is a
sorceress, and girls in the village that have it are often good for
naught but decking themselves with ribbons, whilst those who have
it not sit in the cottage doorways spinning their lives away in lone-
liness. Beauty therefore cannot be else than a gift from the Devil,
since no good comes of it. From the beasts in the fields I learn the
same lesson; the cow that gives but two pints of milk daily found
more favour in Sir Gilles' eyes than the cow that gives two quarts.
But what did he say? That beauty drew the world together, mean-
ing thereby that without beauty the world would come to an end.
But is that so?
And Sir Peronnik bethought himself of the spring season, which


516
PERONNIK THE FOOL
is always a season of bleating and lowing in the fields and singing
in the woods. The ram and the yoe, he said, know naught of
beauty, nor the birds in the branches, so it is not beauty that draws
the world together. At that moment his eyes caught sight of two
butterflies on love's quest high up in the blue air, and he said, Even
the insects are drawn together, but not by beauty, for if I know
little of beauty the butterflies must know less, for a fool is wiser
than an insect. The beasts and the birds, and for aught I know,
the fishes, he said, come to no harm, likewise monks and nuns;
but not the good knights in search of the Bowl and the Spear, every
one of whom has fallen, even Sir Gilles.
Sir Gilles had told him that though many had failed to get the
Spear and the Bowl from the sorceress a pure knight would get
them, one who had never looked yearningly into a woman's face nor
sought a woman's kisses, if such a one could be found. Sir Gilles
thought that he, Peronnik, was such a one, for he had strayed out
of the forest without knowledge of his father and mother. Never
before had the thought come to him that his father and mother
met as all things that fly or walk, crawl or swim, meet, and that
if his father and mother had not met he would not be. Only by
the recovery of the Spear and the Bowl would God's purposes be
justified. For God's ends he had come to be, and for God's ends
Nature's secret was withheld from him. Would he live and die
without knowing it, or would the knowledge that all possessed
but he fall upon him suddenly? Let it not fall, he prayed, till I
reach the castle and wrest the Spear and the Bowl from the sor-
ceress. Till then, Holy Virgin, let me be without the knowledge,
and, if it be your will, for ever afterwards. And as he rode he
prayed to the Virgin for help, vowing himself to honourable chas-
tity, saying, Let all be as you will it, Lady of Heaven; you'll be my
guide now and for ever, he said, raising his eyes.
At that moment a scream hoarser than that of a sea-crow inter-
rupted his meditation, and he saw a fair green meadow with an
apple-tree in the middle of it. The very apple-tree, no doubt, said
Peronnik, from which Sir Gilles told me I must pluck the Apple;
and there is the dwarf preparing to launch his dart at me. So he
doffed his helmet, and the dwarf, who was not accustomed to such
courtesy, hesitated, and Peronnik had an opportunity of addressing
him. Let me pass, dear little friend, he said, for I am the new bird-


GEORGE MOORE
517
catcher that my Lady Redemonde has engaged to snare the birds
that are robbing her garden. She has told you of my coming?
?
She has told me nothing about it, said the dwarf, and I read a lie
on your face. If you continue to fouish your dart, good sir, my
horse will rear and throw me, but if you'll lay it aside and come
hither
you will discover the Lady Redemonde's crest on the accoutre-
ments that my horse wears. And these words seeming fair to the
dwarf he laid aside his dart and examined them, and finding the
Lady Redemonde's name engraved upon them he began with a
changed mien to ask Peronnik if he had brought the bird-lime with
which to catch the birds that infested the apple-tree. You must
think me a fool indeed to come without it, answered Peronnik, and
alighting from his horse he began to smear the branches; and when
this was done, pretending that he needed the dwarf's help to hold
the end of the twine out of which he was weaving a snare, he said,
Put your head into the bag, good sir. And the dwarf, being now
unsuspicious, did as he was bidden, and as soon as the bag was over
his shoulders Peronnik tied the snare up so tightly that the dwarf
could not scream. His struggles grew fainter, for the holy water
in which the bag had been dipped kept the knot tight, and Peronnik
had time to pluck the Apple and ride on his way.
It was very soon after leaving the meadow and the apple-tree
and the dwarf dead beneath it that Peronnik found himself in front
of a beautiful garden, in which were roses of all colours, and he
said to himself, This is the garden in which the Laughing Flower
grows; but how shall I pass the lion with the mane of snakes? And
well might he ask himself that question, for he had barely reached
the garden gate when he was met by a great lion with all his snakes
hissing furiously. But courtesy, said Peronnik, is never lost, even
upon a lion; and doffing his helmet he addressed himself to the lion
with fair words, asking the beast after himself and his family, and
begging to be directed forthwith to the Grey Castle. Now what
do you seek in the Grey Castle? growled the lion, and Peronnik
answered, I am the bringer of the gift of a pasty of larks for my
Lady Redemonde. Larks! said the lion, licking his chops, I have
not tasted larks for many hundred years. Have you any larks to
spare? Plenty, said Peronnik, for this sack is full of larks; and
he began to imitate the twittering of larks, which he did so well
that the lion was deceived. Look in and see how many larks there


518
PERONNIK THE FOOL
a
are, the lad said, opening the sack. The lion thrust his head there-
in and Peronnik drew the cord tightly, just as he had done about
the dwarf's neck.
After plucking the Laughing Flower Peronnik rode to the dragon-
haunted lake rejoicing, and seeing no bridge whereby he might
cross it, he drove his horse into the water, saying to himself, Horses
swim very well and as good as a boat mine will be to me. Nor was
he deceived in this, for his horse bore him as well as any boat. But
half-way across the lake the dragons began to swarm about him
with gaping jaws, unable, however, to swallow him, for when their
jaws were about to snap him up Peronnik plucked a rose from his
garland and threw it down the black gullet; and immediately after
swallowing the rose the dragon turned over and sank to the bottom,
just as Sir Gilles had told him, advising him, however, never to
throw a rose vainly; every one he threw must find its mark, for the
dragons were very plentiful in the lake.
After crossing the lake Peronnik came to a valley which was
guarded by a Black Man armed with an iron ball, who was chained
by his feet to a rock. A terrible monster he was, with eyes all round
his head, six of them in number, so that it mattered little on which
side Peronnik stood, for the Black Man could see him; and he re-
membered that if the man's eyes fell upon him he would fling the
ball before Peronnik could say a word. So dismounting Peronnik
crept up, and hiding himself carefully behind bushes and rocks till
he was within a few yards of the Black Man, he began singing the
Church Service. He had not reached the end of the Introit before
one of the eyes fell asleep, a couple more closed at the Kyrie, an-
other began to wink when he was half-way through the Credo, and
by the time he had reached the Magnificat all the eyes were shut.
.
And after assuring himself that the Black Man was sound asleep
Peronnik led his horse through the Valley of Delights, in great per-
plexity, it is true, for along the pathways were tables, and the
savoury smell of the meat and wine rose to his nostrils, tempting
him. But Peronnik knew he could overcome these temptations, for
Sir Gilles and himself had eaten well of the food purchased over-
night. More than of gluttony he was afraid that the sense he
lacked might be revealed to him suddenly, and that with increased
knowledge he might become prone, like his predecessors, to the
temptations of the maidens who beckoned and called to him from


GEORGE MOORE
519
the stream in which they were bathing and from the trees under
which they danced. Come and join us, they cried; and their shapes
and voices were so soft and sweet that the thought came to Peron-
nik to tether his horse and mix with them; but he invoked all the
saints of Brittany to his help, and the faint thought passed out of
his mind altogether when he made the sign of the cross, which he
did again and again. But in spite of his invocations and his signs
his horse's hooves went slower and slower till he bethought himself
of dismounting and cutting a bough from a tree to belabour him
with. If he had done this he might have fallen a prey to the maid-
ens, for they continued their beguiling dances through the mazy
ways of the gardens and the orchards in front of him all the way
to the castle. At every step his horse took the voices seemed to
grow sweeter, and to escape from the temptation (which was not
really upon him, but which might fall upon him at any moment) he
began to play on his pipe of elderwood; and to save his eyes from
looking at the maidens' shapes he fixed them on his horse's ears
steadfastly, and was able to pursue his way in safety through the
Valley, the most dangerous of all trials except the sorceress herself.
On emerging from the Valley he came upon the Ford at which
the Black Lady, of whom he had heard from Sir Gilles, sat, and
though her face was dusky yellow, like that of a Moor, he offered
to carry her across the river. I thank you, good knight, for your
courtesy, she said. All your companions fled from me. I am sorry,
Peronnik answered, that my companions-in-arms should have been
lacking in courtesy. Then the lady mounted before him and they
went into the water together, and when they were midway in the
stream the lady asked Peronnik if he knew who she was. Not I,
said Peronnik, but by your mien and raiment you would seem to be
a noble and mighty lady. Noble I may be, for my race dates from
,
the fall of Adam, and mighty also, for all the world would retreat
from me, all except you, sir knight, in whose heart there is still in-
nocence. Know, sir knight, that I am the Plague. At which words
Peronnik sought to draw himself away from her, and was about to
throw himself from his saddle into the stream when the lady said,
Fear nothing, for the one I am seeking is not you, sir, but the sor-
ceress Redemonde, who, though immortal, will become subject to
death if she eats of the Apple which you plucked from her tree,
grown from a seed of the Tree of Good in the Garden of Eden.


520
PERONNIK THE FOOL
Let her taste of that Apple and I have but to touch her and she will
die at once. But how shall I find the Bowl and the Spear? asked
Peronnik, for I hear she keeps them underground in a vault to
which there is no key. The Laughing Flower, said the Plague, can
open all doors and make bright the darkest corner in the world.
Well, said Peronnik, I will do as I am bidden, and if I can get you
the sorceress's life you shall have it.
III
Now whilst Peronnik was performing the aforesaid great deeds
Sir Gilles lay in very direful plight beneath an oak-tree in the for-
est, unable to move by reason of his broken or disjointed knee,
which he had forgotten whilst giving last instructions to Peronnik,
holding on as he talked by the stirrup leather. His last words to
the new knight were that he must hold himself forbidden from any
food or drink that might be offered to him in the Grey Castle. And
these words had barely passed his lips when the horse began to
plunge and to strike out with his forelegs, and to escape the dan-
gerous hooves Sir Gilles loosened his hand on the bridle. A ino-
ment after the Wood of Deceits engulfed Peronnik, and Sir Gilles
set out to walk to the castle, distant about half a league, he judged
it to be; far too far for him to walk, as his knee soon began to warn
him, till at last he could not do else than fling himself upon the
ground, overpowered by the pain.
As the pain in his knee dwindled thoughts began of Peronnik
arriving at the castle before him, for the lad would not succumb to
the singing of the maidens—he was sure of that; but his youth,
while protecting him from some temptations, would leave him more
susceptible than a man to those of the fruit and honey cakes that
the sorceress would offer him; the cups of sweet wine, too, she would
raise to his lips might tempt him after his long ride. And were he
to yield a search would be begun for the lost Sir Gilles at once, who,
when he was found, would be brought back to the castle and laid
by the heels in some dark dungeon amid damp and rats, for the
sorceress was without mercy for those who sought to thwart her.
Peronnik would be exalted in his place (a poor exaltation!) for
when she was weary of him she would send him, just as he was sent,
to beguile other knights to their doom.


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All seemed lost to Sir Gilles till he remembered the plume from
the tail of the cock that crew after Peter's third denial that he knew
not Christ, a relic so powerful, the pardoner had told him, that it
would protect his thoughts from Redemonde's knowledge, though
he were in the sorceress's presence, and himself from any danger
he might find himself in. But the forest would be searched and his
relic taken from him if he did not reach the castle before Peronnik.
Need brings a man courage, he said, and climbing to his feet Sir
Gilles started on the journey, but had not gone far when the pain
again brought him to the ground; and searching in his bosom for
his relic he drew it forth and besought Jesus, reminding him that
he had never doubted his power to be above that of Satan. Help
me in this great extremity, he cried, and the words had barely passed
his lips when his eyes were directed to a broken branch that he had
not seen before, and out of which an excellent crutch could be made.
It lay some little distance away, and while dragging himself slow-
ly to it he prayed with such good effect that the branch lent itself
to be trimmed into a crutch even easier than he thought for; and
having a sharp knife in his girdle he made it into an excellent crutch,
by the help of which he hobbled to the castle, reaching it, to his
great joy, before Peronnik. For, said he to himself, if Peronnik
were before me Redemonde would be sitting with him, whereas she
is sitting by herself on the terrace muttering her spells, counting
them over and taking great joy from them one by one, for all the
world like a countess in front of her jewel-box.
But I must fortify myself, he said, and stopping behind a lilac-
bush he addressed himself to St Peter, whom he had almost for-
gotten till now. By virtue of the relic in my bosom, he muttered,
the plume from the tail of the cock that warned thee of thy sin, I
beg thee to go to him with whom thy lot was cast on earth, and with
whom thy lot is cast in Heaven, and bid him strengthen me in ad-
versity; bid him give me courage and foresight to overcome the
sorceress, the ally of Satan; tell him that her belief is that while
God rules in Heaven Satan rules the earth, gaining in power daily,
that very soon the demons will be under the battlements of Heaven
again, at war with the Cherubim and Seraphim. The saints, male
and female, are all on my side, said Gilles to himself; it is a match
between Heaven and earth, between God and Satan. And may
all the saints and the Holy Virgin herself protect me from her if
a


522
PERONNIK THE FOOL
a
she should guess that I gave my horse to Sir Peronnik, unless in-
deed I invent a tale that will seem to her truthful. A better story
I shall not find than that Sir Peronnik's horse reared and fell back-
wards and escaped before the knight could recover his feet, being
unused to and hampered by his armour. His youth will awaken
pity in her, he said; she will ask for news of him.
And being now out of the shelter of the lilac-bush, Sir Gilles
was mindful to whistle a tune to start Redemonde out of her brood.
ing of wicked spells; and he continued to whistle till she raised her
eyes, but the sun was in her eyes and she put up her hand to shade
them. Sir Gilles continued for a few more bars till Redemonde
rose to her feet and started to meet him, saying to herself, The
minstrel can be none other than my own cripple! How is it, said
Redemonde, that thou comest to me on a crutch instead of a horse,
and in such great pain that to-morrow will be spent in thy bed?
But how did she know that I was in pain? Sir Gilles asked him-
self, for he was always suspicious when with her. It is written in
my face, maybe, he added; and to discover if his thoughts were
known to her he kept his eyes upon her face and, reading no knowl-
edge of them upon it, he said, My relic holds good. And with
greater courage than he believed himself to be possessed of he began
to prattle the story already arranged in his mind for telling. My
relic, said he to himself, is more powerful than her spells; and he
prattled on, lengthening his story out till she, wearying of it, picked
up
her magic mirror and looked into it for news of Peronnik.
He must have passed the dwarf and the lion and the dragon-
haunted lake and the river, too, she said, rising from her seat, for
hark, the sirens are singing. He will not listen to them and will
arrive safely, be not afraid, Sir Gilles answered. We must pre-
pare to welcome him, she said; come with me and bind up my hair,
for none but thee can do it beautifully. I would wait here to meet
him, Gilles answered, at which Redemonde's face fushed, and she
bade him follow her, saying that she would change her raiment.
None knows like thee which is most becoming to me.
hair is coming down. Come, Gilles, I need thee to bind up my hair;
come at once. It is the last time I shall perform these servile duties
for her, Sir Gilles muttered, for though I have pandered to her
pleasures wickedly, my love of her shall not turn me into her maid-
servant.
On the threshold of the portal they stayed their steps for a mo-
See, my


GEORGE MOORE
523
a
a
ment, and at the same moment the Black Lady asked Peronnik's
leave to descend from his horse, saying that she would follow him
to the castle.
So Sir Peronnik rode alone up the lawns that encircled the castle,
where, after blowing the first fanfare, he waited, thinking that it
would show little courtesy to the sorceress for him to blow a second.
As if I wished to hurry her, he said to himself. But after waiting
some minutes he bethought himself that she might not have heard
the first, so he blew a second; and it was as he raised his horn to
his lips to blow a third that Redemonde came from the castle to
meet him, saying, In my mirror I have watched your triumphs, Sir
Peronnik, over the dwarf and the lion. It was by the help of God
and the Holy Virgin that I did these things, Peronnik replied, dof-
fing his helmet, and I am glad to be of service to you, lady. But
the ride round the ramparts, the greatest task of all, is still undone,
and I would undertake it without delay, for the day is waning.
But
you would not, sir knight, attempt so hard a task on the day of
your arrival without eating and drinking? And heedless of his de-
nials she called to her maidens, who, bowing to signify their ac-
ceptance of her orders, entered the castle, to return soon after with
jewelled dishes piled high with delicious cakes and wine in golden
goblets. I thank you, lady of the castle, many times, Peronnik
said, but the day is waning and I should be bringing back the Dia-
mond Spear and the Golden Bowl to my village, where they are
badly wanted. But a goblet of wine and a slice of cake will be
welcome after your ride. The day is hot, Lady Redemonde, an-
.
swered Peronnik, and he was about to partake of the refreshment,
but the lightning flash of expectant triumph in the sorceress's eyes
reminded him that he must not partake of meat or drink in the
castle. Forgive me, lady, but I have not a moment to lose for a
bite or a sup, he said, not even for the eating of this Apple, which I
hope you will not refuse to accept; and he doffed his helmet while
handing it to her. Redemonde put the Apple in her bosom and
Peronnik's face wore an abashment. Which becomes him not ill,
said Redemonde, covering herself with her cloak coyly. Satan must
look after his own, Peronnik said to himself, and if he doesn't the
world will be none the worse without a wicked sorceress who has
laid my country waste by spells; and then aloud said, You will
forgive me, lady, if I ask Sir Gilles, whom I see coming from the
castle, the way to the ramparts. The way to the ramparts, Sir


524
PERONNIK THE FOOL
Gilles said, will be found by riding round the castle to the right; not
very far, a little way round after passing the second tower, you will
a
come upon a staircase of a hundred steps, which your horse will
have to climb, and should he miss his footing he will not stop falling
till he reaches the bottom. You hear what Sir Gilles says, Rede-
,
monde cried; but Sir Peronnik pricked on, and when he was out of
sight Redemonde turned to Sir Gilles.
Now why didst thou tell him the way to the staircase? she asked.
But he could not have failed to find it, and it would be no gain to
thee that he should delay his ride, Sir Gilles answered, till to-mor-
row or the day after, for he has, as thou must have seen, little else in
his mind except the quest of the Spear and the Bowl, and thy best
chance that he shall get neither is that he rides to-night in the dusk.
Thinkest that he'll come to his death in the chasm? Redemonde
asked. Sir Gilles did not answer, and heedless of his silence, as
if she had not noticed it, she began to ask him how it was that in
passing through the Wood of Deceits and the Valley of Delights
other knights, all but thou, were turned from their quests by some
enticing vision, the spells of my brother Rogéar; but this one rode
on unmoved, plucking an Apple from my apple-tree, despite my
faithful dwarf, dead, alas, maybe! It is not by my will that he rides
safely. How was it that this last adventurer overcame the lion and
the dragons in the lake, and that his eyes did not kindle when we
exchanged glances and no huskiness came into his voice when he
spoke to me? Gilles, I fear impending doom. But thou'lt not de-
sert me now? Thine eyes cloud and the wavering spirit finds an
echo in me. Thou hast not faith in Satan and thine unfaith undoes
my faith. My spells will be cast unavailingly.
And, leaving her whilom lover, Redemonde crossed the tesselated
pavement towards a chamber that Gilles judged to be one of puri-
fications, for on either side of the doorway were vases. Containing,
no doubt, lustral water from the sacred river, he said, and to assure
himself he moved towards them, but stopped, bewildered. Lost to
me, she said, for ever in this world and the next. Did she speak of
two worlds? And to which God am I to pray? Which is the
stronger? Which do I love the better, my flesh or my soul? My
flesh I know always, my soul only in rare whisperings. But the
minutes are going by and I must ally myself to one God or the
other. The thought of a prayer to Satan frightened him, and find-
a


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ing that he could not repent his sins with Redemonde his eyes wan-
dered round the temple, and he began incontinently to count the
arcades that led hither. There are five, he said, and to his aston-
ishment he remembered that the ceilings were of chalk ribbed with
hard stone. But why do I think of chalk and hard stone, things
of interest only to builders ? Satan puts these thoughts into my
mind, for he would accomplish my ruin. Whereupon he began to
beseech God to give him strength to resist Satan. But Gilles' heart
was dry and his God mute, and in great perplexity he began to con-
sider the style of architecture in which the temple was built. In
Ionian or Doric, one or the other, he said; and his thoughts went
back to the ten Doric columns that supported the pediment. There
are four more, he said, on either side, and the sanctuary is square
and vaulted, and the roof is of tiles; and he began to examine the
statues in the niches, recognizing those of whom Redemonde had
spoken to him.
From the statues his eyes wandered to the pictures with which
the walls were decorated, each one representing men and women en-
gaged in agriculture, wreathing vines from tree to tree, wains laden
with corn, girls dancing in the vats, crushing the grapes under their
feet. And seeing two palm-trees carved in marble Sir Gilles asked
himself why they were there, but remembered suddenly that the
palm puts forth a branch every month and is therefore sculptured in
Nature's temple. But Redemonde will be here in a few moments
and all hope of escape for me will be lost. My soul will burn for
ever, he cried; and his thoughts began to wander from the burning
of souls to the lamps, the goblets, the cruets, the vases, the sprinklers,
the mitres, the censers, the jewelled ornaments worn by the priests
and priestesses of Satan, the timbrels, the trumpets, and the cymbals.
Along the walls were seats in silver and ivory, and in a great per-
plexity he strove to read the strange inscriptions interwoven through
the pavement under his feet; and then forgetful of them he gave
ear to the music with which the temple was slowly filling, voices
coming from the arcades and the galleries! Devil music, he cried,
for as his ears became accustomed to the rhythms he began to re-
cognize them as litanies sung to an accompaniment of timbrels and
flutes. And walking to the measure of the music, Redemonde came,
her long, thick hair falling into ringlets, floating over her shoulders;
a many-shapen and many-coloured crown decked her head, and a sil-
a


526
PERONNIK THE FOOL
ver moon shone upon her forehead, on either side of which serpents
writhed amid ripe ears of wheat; her gown of shifting colours
changed with every movement of the folds from the purest white
to saffron-yellow, or seemed to catch the redness of flame; her cloak
of deepest black was sown with stars and bordered with a luminous
fringe; her right hand held a timbrel, which gave forth a clear
sound, and in her left she carried a waxen image.
As she approached the brazier the singers seemed to Sir Gilles to
have drawn nearer, or it may have been that his ears had grown
accustomed to the music and could now distinguish individual voices
and instruments; and the shapes, too, of those in the processions
passing through the different arcades and aisles and grouped in the
galleries grew precise and then melted into shadow shapes and were
lost in the great fume of incense rising from the brazier.
O great Nature, Redemonde said, worshipped by man under dif-
ferent names till his eyes were turned from the kingdom of earth to
the kingdom of Heaven and sin was born unto man, we, thy wor-
shippers, implore thee to come once again to the grapple with thy
rival, Sabaoth, at the edge of the chasm, for a knight who knows
thee not is riding thither. O great Nature—Cybele in Phrygia,
Minerva in Athens, Ceres in Eleusis, Isis in Egypt, Satan through-
out Christendom—help us or see thy kingdom pass away. I bring
to the brazier a waxen image, and as the wax melts, as the image
begins to droop out of human shape, the Christian knight loses
strength. The spell works well. Hold up the mirror, Gilles, that
I may see whither he rides. He rides, Sir Gilles answered, towards
the chasm wherein I fell. Before he reaches it, Redemonde replied,
the image must pass into uncouth wax again. But the embers in
the brazier are dying, Gilles; heap some more charcoal upon them
quickly, for live embers are wanted to melt the wax. Two handfuls
of charcoal will revive the dying embers; quickly, Gilles, quickly.
Is thy faith still with the Christian God? Art betraying me? she
cried, and seeing that the brazier was not giving enough heat to
melt the wax she threw the image upon the dying embers.
He has crossed the chasm, Sir Gilles cried, rising from the mir-
ror, and I have lost thee, Redemonde, and for centuries the world is
delivered over to Satan's wrath. Redemonde passed from the bra-
zier and sank upon a seat, waiting for the doom that she knew was
imminent. The kingdom of Satan passes and the kingdom of the
Lord God is at hand, she muttered, and Sir Gilles saw her take the


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Apple that Peronnik had given her from her bosom and eat. Will
she not speak again? Have I lost her, have I lost her? he cried,
never to see her again? And the triumph that God had won over
Satan passed out of his mind, and he was about to throw himself
at her feet and confess his betrayal when Sir Peronnik came into the
temple and took the keys from the sorceress's girdle. Whither is
the way? asked Sir Peronnik, and the words awoke a fierce exalta-
tion in Sir Gilles' heart. I will point out the way, he said, through
the labyrinths of the castle to the dungeon in which the Spear and
the Bowl are hidden. But we shall need a lantern. We have one
here, said Peronnik, displaying the Laughing Flower, and holding
the Flower high like a lantern he followed Gilles out of the temple.
And their feet were barely on the steps leading to the vault when
the Black Lady moved from out of the shadows of the pillars and,
advancing towards Redemonde, touched her upon the shoulder. At
the touch of the Plague Redemonde fell dead, and the Plague, now
no more than a mote in the air, floated out of the high windows.
And when Peronnik and Sir Gilles returned with the Spear and the
Bowl, Gilles, said Peronnik, touch her not. Why are you weep-
ing for her? Why askest thou me this ? Sir Gilles answered. I am
wondering, Peronnik replied, why men set such store on women, and
of all on wicked women. Life will reveal that secret to thee sooner
or later, Peronnik; mayhap never. I have no head for thinking
things out, said Peronnik, but now I must return to my village and
redeem my country from a cruel drought.
а
IV
The many rooks were settling themselves in the branches of the
beeches when the knights came from the castle, and the rooks con-
tinued for a long while to flop home through the evening sky. Hast
thou no ears for what I am saying to thee, Peronnik, and no eyes to
watch for a path that might lead us to a village? I thought, an-
swered Peronnik, that I knew all the forest, but nobody knows all
the trees and dells and hill-tops in it. To which Sir Gilles made no
answer, it seeming to him that he was in the power of Peronnik to
lead him out of or to lose him in the forest. But, Peronnik, for
what art thou loitering? Wouldst thou return to the Grey Castle
and give back the Spear and the Bowl to Redemonde? The Plague
has gotten her, Peronnik answered; and your lameness has departed


528
PERONNIK THE FOOL
a
a
from you, Sir Gilles. My lameness, Sir Gilles replied, was part of
her and has gone with her. And her spells, he added, so thought-
fully that Peronnik began to wonder if he rued his swinging gait
and wished himself back in the old pain. But of what art thou
thinking, Peronnik? Of what they are saying about me in the vil-
lage, of the herd of cows I left behind before watering them at the
well. There was barely half a bucket to give them, poor animals,
after much winding. Would indeed that I may live to see them
supping the cool stream again.
The conqueror of Redemonde's spells thinking of cows, forgetful
that he is no longer Peronnik the Fool but a knight of whom all
the world will soon be talking, Sir Gilles said. One can't forget
oneself all in a day and a night, Peronnik answered; nor am I think-
ing altogether of the cows, nor of the farmer at the head of a search
party, but of the way we have lost, for the forest we're in seems
more unlike my forest at every step we take. But we are in a path,
said Sir Gilles, and have but to follow it. We are in a path, it is
,
true, replied Peronnik, but who made the path? I am asking my-
self; not the feet of men nor of cows, but the hooves of deer. Or
goats, maybe, Sir Gilles answered him. Deer, replied Peronnik. A
little further on Peronnik stooped again, and spying some new
tracks he said, A bear has been paddling about here. But as long as
the Spear is with us no man or beast can harm us. That is so, Sir
Gilles replied. All the same, said Peronnik, it would be well for us
to seek a comfortable tree, with large thick branches, where we
might snooze. And fall out of, mayhap, Sir Gilles interrupted, and
the Spear being up in the branches we should be eaten like common
folk. And Peronnik having no reply to make, they wandered on
and on in the hope of coming upon a path that would lead them to
a village, till at last weariness overcame them, and, sitting down to
rest, they fell asleep, forgetful of the wolves that might be about.
Out of this sleep Peronnik was the first to awake, and he cried to Sir
Gilles that he must come to his feet at once.
And through the dusk and through the day they fared, finding
themselves sometimes in roads that seemed to lead direct to a vil-
lage, but which stopped short or were lost in dense undergrowths.
Sometimes it seemed to them that they were by the Grey Castle;
about them was the rookery, but no castle. Yet it was not carried
away as a rook's nest is by a storm, said Peronnik, a great big castle


GEORGE MOORE
529
built with stones half as big as an ox cart. No, it cannot have been
here, he continued, that the castle stood, and I'm thinking that the
sorceress's spells are upon this wood. Speak not so, Sir Gilles re-
plied, else my courage fails me altogether. Yet here, returned
Peronnik, is the rookery that we passed yesterevening; and a dispute
arose between the twain whether it was the same rookery or another
one.
a
а
а
And for two days more they wandered, living on berries, slaking
their thirst with such water as collects in hollows, till in a quiet sun-
down, overworn, weary, and hopeless, they lay in the belief that the
wood they were in was spellbound. We are lost beyond hope of
this world or the next, said Sir Gilles, and it might be well to lie
down and die without further fatigue or dread of the phantoms that
have their ghostly habitation here. Let us walk into yon morass
and smother in it. Do you think, said Peronnik, his soul catching
fear, that a dead sorceress is a greater peril to knights than a living
one? The power of the dead over the living is great, Sir Gilles re-
plied. But your relic, Sir Gilles. My relic! I had forgotten it,
Sir Gilles muttered, and forgetfulness of a relic robs it of its power.
But as it is our last hope let us both put our trust in it. And to-
gether they spoke of the stars above the Sea of Galilee until the for-
est was black about them. After each sleep they prayed, and at
dawn Peronnik said, Let us put all our faith in the relic; and since
I am a knight and wandering with thee in the forest, let it be “thou”
and "thee.” “Thou” and “thee” let it be then, Sir Gilles answered,
till the time, not far away, when we shall bid each other good-bye
for ever. Speak not so lest the relic fail us, Peronnik replied.
And they wandered on till Sir Gilles fell lame, not with the old
lameness which Redemonde's spells cast upon him to retain him in
her service, a lameness which was that of Satan or Vulcan when they
were cast out of Heaven, but a natural lameness that comes upon a
man after wandering three days in a forest without rest or food. I
can go no further, Peronnik, he said, laying himself upon the
ground; let death come. Take away thy berries; I cannot eat. If
thou canst not eat thou canst still open thine eyes, said Peronnik;
look, we've wandered to within half a league of the village. Thou
speakest to hearten me, said Sir Gilles. Not so, answered Peronnik;
courage, Gilles, for my promise to thee is that within an hour we
shall be in my village. Go thou to the village, said Sir Gilles, and
9


530
PERONNIK THE FOOL
I will lie here and await thy coming. And be eaten by a wolf or a
bear, perhaps, replied Peronnik. No, no; we fare on to the end to-
gether.
A weary faring this last half-league was to Sir Gilles, barely able
to bear the pain of his feet and the sickness of hunger. Look round
thee, Gilles, said Peronnik, and tell me if we are not hard by the
village. And looking round Sir Gilles answered, It seems to me that
I have seen yon fields shining between these trees before. In very
truth we are on the verge of the forest. At the sight of the corn Sir
Gilles was again heartened, and walked steadfastly till Peronnik
stopped suddenly and said, Yonder! What seest thou yonder, Per-
onnik? Farmer Leroux, Peronnik whispered; and his knighthood
fallen from him he was again Farmer Leroux's neat-herd, with no
thought in his mind but how to escape from him into the forest. It
was now the turn of Sir Gilles to grasp him by the arm and remind
him again that he was no longer Peronnik the Fool, but the valiant
knight who overcame Redemonde in her enchanted castle. And,
leading him to Farmer Leroux, Sir Gilles asked him for news of a
lad named Peronnik. Would indeed that I had news of him, said
the farmer, for if I had I'd be quickly about my own business, which
is to thrash the rascal for his desertion of the herd he was given in
charge of four or five days ago. I have chosen my stoutest stick to
lay across his back, and not an inch of unblackened skin will I leave
on it, and if I kill him not his luck will never desert him.
The farmer might have continued in this way for a long time if
Sir Gilles had not interrupted him with these words, But thine eyes
are upon him now, farmer. My eyes upon him! How am I to
understand your words, sir knight? What covert meaning — I
am bringing back to thee, said Sir Gilles, a knight of valiant deeds
in and about the Grey Castle, the conqueror of the sorceress who
cursed the land with a great drought. How bringing back to me?
inquired Leroux. The knight who stands before thee, Sir Gilles an-
swered, was once thy neat-herd. My Peronnik, the farmer stut-
tered, my Peronnik in a suit of mail! And who may you be, sir
knight? I am Sir Gilles de Lacenaire, who admitted Sir Peronnik
into the Order of Knighthood that he might overcome the sorceress's
spells. My Peronnik, the farmer began again—No longer thy
,
Peronnik, Sir Gilles interrupted, but a knight of whom all the world
will be talking before many weeks are over, for he brings the Spear
and the Bowl. But will the Spear bring down the rain that will


GEORGE MOORE
531
save the rest of my herd, asked Leroux, or is it a mere spear of chiv-
alry that concerns me not? Soon after the hurling of the Spear into
the air, said Sir Gilles, the desert about us will be a green country
again, fresh as in May-time. Then let the Spear be hurled at once,
answered the farmer, and my poor cows put out of the pain of thirst.
We have neither eaten nor drunken for three days, Sir Gilles re-
plied; we are starving men; but as soon as we are rested— In my
house yonder, cried Farmer Leroux, you will find bread and wine
and cheese and butter and other things the goodwife may have in
her larder. So you have gotten the Spear, the holy Spear that will
bring us rain, and the story thereof will be glad in the villagers'
ears. But here we are at my house, Sir Gilles; and now, wife, make
ready the house to receive the knights who have come back with the
Spear that brings the rain.
And who may they be? the wife asked. First pile the table with
bread and wine and cheese and butter, and strike off from the car-
cass above thee as much bacon as will end the hunger of men who
have not eaten for three days. But this is Peronnik, our Peronnik!
Thine eyes are quicker than mine, Leroux replied, and while the
knights eat a tale of many marvels thou shalt hear from me. Be-
fore
you,
sir knights, is all my house has of meat and drink; and
fall to your food, Sir Peronnik, for you will need all your strength
for the hurling of the Spear. Sir Peronnik! the wife stuttered.
Life is a miracle, wife, full to the brim of wonders. But take
thine eyes off him and listen to his story. So Peronnik got the Spear
from her, said the goodwife, which doesn't surprise me overmuch
now I come to get my mind to it, for we all knew there was some-
thing wonderful in him. Begin thy story, husband. When they
have eaten they will tell it, answered the farmer. We will, we will,
cried the famished knights. And while they eat I'll be up the street
telling the folk that Peronnik has returned with the Spear. Nor
was she long away when voices began to be heard about the door-
way. In a little while calls for Peronnik broke forth, and when he
appeared in all his mail in the doorway the villagers could not show
their joy enough. Even the great drought that the Spear was to
bring to an end was forgotten, and before Peronnik had told his
story the folk were telling new stories among themselves, how the
sorceress's castle had been scaled and how she had come by her
death. It was said, too, that Sir Gilles had overcome the magical
arts of Redemonde's brother Rogéar, and that Rogéar had pro-


532
PERONNIK THE FOOL
nounced a great curse upon the Spear before it was captured which
would bring ill luck to whomsoever possessed it.
But as long as it brings down the rain, what matter? cried a
woman. The Spear may lose its virtue, cried another. What mat-
ter? cried a third, for God has conquered Satan in a last battle and
he will see that we do not want for rain any more nor sunshine when
we need it. At these words a great hymn of thanksgiving came
upon the folk suddenly, words and music together, and till the hill-
top was reached no word was spoken. If the Spear bringeth rain
from yon sky, said a man, then it is God's own Spear, and the reign
of Satan is over, as Marguerite Lebrun said on our way hither. And
then a peasant, Pierre le Gros, spoke of the great fire that would
break out in the forest if the Spear were not hurled quickly. The
Spear has not come too soon, for after this drought the country
would burn for months, covering the country with ashes. Hush,
woman, hush, for Sir Peronnik is about to hurl the Spear.
The hurling of the Spear was the signal for the renewal of the
hymn of thanksgiving, and the crowd sang it all through the after-
noon and evening; and men, women, and children were out of their
beds singing to each other from window to window across the street-
way
till rain began to fall so heavily that they were driven back to
their beds. After the first shower it seemed as if the storm were
about to pass over, but after a pause the thunder crashed so loudly
that in the village of Saint-Jean-de-Braie the world seemed to be
overturning. The rain has come at last in right earnest, the vil-
lagers cried, returning to their beds, their ears open to the sound of
water gurgling down the gutters. The folk listened, and fell asleep
at last, happy in the knowledge that the Spear had saved their coun-
try from famine.
All next day it rained and all through the week. The ruts filled
with water and the fields were green again with new grass. A sec-
ond springtime, the villagers said; and then the rain came down
fiercely and beat in the windows, and then it fell straight like a
sheet. At the end of each day there were bright intervals of a few
hours, but next day rain fell again and the farmers spoke of the
great stock of wheat still uncarried. Our wheat will be spoilt if this
rain does not cease, they said. Maybe it would have been as well
for us if some of our cows had died for want of water and for us to
have had our wheat. And July passed over and August was well
a


GEORGE MOORE
533
begun before the rain ceased. We have rested long enough, Gilles
said to Peronnik, in Saint-Jean-de-Braie. Our business is to the
rescuing of honest men from thieves and maidens from lustful
rogues.
When the news that the knights were leaving them was about
many villagers came to Sir Peronnik to offer him in return for his
services the beginning of a herd. Three young heifers are all I
would ask, said Peronnik. Beware, replied Gilles, for no man re-
turns whence he came. Thou hast entered the Order of Knight-
hood, and whosoever enters it never leaves it till he dies, if he leave
it then. So we must on, Peronnik, taking from the village only a
horse, for thou must be horsed according to thy quality. But shall
we never see you again? Will you not return to us? the villagers
cried as the twain rode forth. That mayhap and it may not hap;
all is in the hand of God, said Sir Gilles as he waved farewell to the
folk who ran alongside and between the horses; and at last to escape
them he pricked on. Though we never see Saint-Jean-de-Braie
again, he said, we have done deeds that will bear fruit that the folk
will find sweet under the tooth for many a day.
And it was as Sir Gilles foresaw, for during the winter of the
same year the folk of Saint-Jean-de-Braie were telling the story of
a beleaguered city in which Sir Peronnik fed the starving and with
his lance routed the French. And the next year further exploits
were related—that Sir Peronnik had conquered Anjou, Poitou, and
Normandy, and was away now on the Crusades winning great tri-
umphs over the Saracens, obliging Saladin to accept baptism and
give to him his daughter in marriage. The years went by, and it
became common gossip in Saint-Jean-de-Braie that the Saracen lady
had borne him a hundred sons and that he had given to each a king-
dom to rule over. And as the years passed over and generations
came and went it came to be believed in Saint-Jean-de-Braie that
by virtue of the Golden Bowl Sir Peronnik and many of his sons
were still living. And then heresies, or shadows of heresies, came
over. Whence they came none knew, but it was whispered certainly
by a sceptical generation that the enchanter Rogéar at last won the
Spear and the Bowl back from the Christians, that he has them now,
and that anybody who wants them may go and search for them
like Peronnik the Fool.
a


PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN
BY CONSTANCE MAYFIELD ROURKE
TION
a
a
HERE is fruit in the huge bowl which holds the centre of the
long dark table: green grapes with a white dusk of bloom,
oranges and lemons, a bright apple, some apricots, a softly moulded
cantaloup. The bowl itself is a reproduction of a late Renaissance
piece. Big candlesticks which precisely match it stand upon the long
sideboard. Even in the dim light their gilded and coloured detail
is emphatic. The dining-room is avowedly palatial, with its huge
pieces of Tudor furniture, its heavy carving and panelling.
A young woman sits tranquilly alone at the end of the table,
eating an ice, and in the moist warmth of the shaded room—for
the day is very hot-her pallor has the rich and subtle quality of
a white magnolia. Her eyes are brown, with a sudden slant up-
wards at the ends of the lower lids; her hair shows bronze and
green; her throat is heavy, though it has beauty. Manet would have
liked her short thick hands and the firm set of her bust and hips.
She always has this air of exotic tranquillity. Yet she is for ever
at war, a quiet, submerged, unceasing war; and as she plants her
elbows on the table she seems a formidable adversary. She is full
of negations—denials—refusals—affirmations which are phrased
as negatives—negatives which are masked as affirmations. With
scarcely a ripple of expression she breathes, proclaims, "No, no, no,
no, no!” Tranquil as she looks she lives with her thumbs down,
her thick thumbs. She can use a sledgehammer when she chooses;
she can be cruel in minor, almost negligible ways. Yet in all her
contentions she is singularly transparent; if she is malicious, she is
also without guile. She never has a plan, she is almost totally lack-
ing in forethought and afterthought, her opinions are variable and
contradictory. But she never really retreats. She keeps her even,
unbroken front; her brow remains smooth, her mouth soft and un-
formulated.
For years her father had been comfortably prosperous in the
manufacture of an intricate kind of machine-belt; then, during the
war, the demand for his product became fabulous. Now he is in the


CONSTANCE MAYFIELD ROURKE
535
midst of a boyish efflorescence of spending. He is a lithe, active,
youngist man, something of an exquisite within conventional limits;
he makes friends easily; he would like to have his daughter make
a place for herself in his new circle, for he has no other children;
his wife died when his daughter was a little girl of six, and he
has not married again. But she declares that these people bore
her. However, the debates on this topic do not bore her. She en-
joys them. She is voluble and obstinate, and curiously, awkwardly
coy.
In spite of her lavish allowance she becomes absorbed periodically
in a fever of hat and dress making. The results are bizarre; she is
clumsy, she has little sense of her own type. She faces hats with
purple or yellow or a harsh blue-green, and decorates them with long
feathers. Once she made a frilled and trailing tea-gown; another
time she achieved a half-mediaeval cape, which almost became her,
even with its doubtful cut and poor sewing. She works with a great
litter of materials around her, in an untroubled ecstasy of creation;
she admires her products innocently and extravagantly. Her father
is likely to exercise his rapid gift for satire upon them; but she over-
whelms him, envelops him, with explanations—always with her
consistent negative undercurrent. She declares that she never can
find what she wants in the shops, that the materials are never so
good as those which she can buy herself, that even the higher-priced
dressmakers always fail to turn out what she wants. Triumphant,
she wears her creations. She is vain; it apparently does not occur
to her that she can ever look anything but well.
Her most apparent bond with her father is a delight in fast driv-
ing. She sits, as tranquilly impassive as ever, at the wheel of an ex-
pensive car, her grasp close and firm, a glitter in her brown eyes as
she strikes a particularly good stretch of road or perfectly negotiates
a dangerous turn. When she drives she suggests that she might do
something spectacular—from caprice-not with the car but with her
own life: something which her father, at least, would regard as spec-
tacular. She might perhaps elope with the mechanician who takes
care of his cars and her own, except that he happens to be a squat,
bespectacled, beaver-like creature who barely elicits her notice.
She might go off with a trick air-plane pilot; but she probably
would be happier if she could become one; she will in any case be
likely to take a husband as a passenger. But marriage at present does


536
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN
not seem in prospect for her, though she has a knack which amounts
almost to genius for picking up acquaintance with men, always by
conventional but slightly circuitous, adventurous methods. A bank
clerk, a canvassing salesman for books of knowledge, a motor dem-
onstrator, a promoter, a reporter, an illustrator of fashion maga-
zines; these are only a few of a long procession which she began,
hesitatingly, to create when she was a shy sullen schoolgirl of six-
teen, nine or ten years ago. They nearly always have a picturesque-
ness of character or history, these young men: but they have all been
casuals, acquaintances of a week, a month, two or three months. She
seems to look them over with her absorbed smile: then she
puts
them
bluntly aside.
She may seize or hew out for herself a portion of happiness some-
how, for she has, in spite of the sombre effect of her denials and ne-
gations, an elementary capacity for happiness, something sudden
and unexpected and clear, like a waterfall in a dark forest. At times
a
she talks on about anything, everything, nothing, with a free and
singing undertone; she becomes tolerant, almost charming. But even
then she keeps intact the soft impregnable armour of her personality.
She is naïve, but she is unapproachable. She sits in the long jade and
gold drawing-room and seems to capture for herself what glamour it
has, for the enhancement of her rich hair, her pallor; she thrusts
others out of the picture. The jade and gold drawing-room was her
own idea; she regards it as a setting. At the same time her broad
and subtle beauty shows the expensive decorations for the tawdry,
flimsy, characterless things they are. With a sudden surge of quiet
movement she could reduce them all to kindling wood and fling
them to the wind.
a


I

03
}
h
38
el
Courtesy of the Knoedler Galleries
AN ETCHING. BY KENNETH HAYES MILLER


!
i



steinton
Courtesy of the Knoedler Galleries
AN ETCHING. BY THEOPHILE ALEXANDRE STEINLEN


1
1


DICKENS
BY G. SANTAYANA
IR
a
F Christendom should lose everything that is now in the melting-
pot, human life would still remain amiable and quite adequately
human. I draw this comforting assurance from the pages of Dickens.
,
Who could not be happy in his world? Yet there is nothing essen-
tial to it which the most destructive revolution would be able to
destroy. People would still be as different, as absurd, and as
charming as are his characters; the springs of kindness and folly in
their lives would not be dried up. Indeed, there is much in Dickens
which communism, if it came, would only emphasize and render
universal. Those schools, those poor-houses, those prisons, with
those surviving shreds of family life in them, show us what in the
coming age (with some sanitary improvements) would be the
nursery and home of everybody. Everybody would be a waif, like
Oliver Twist, like Smike, like Pip, and like David Copperfield; and
amongst the agents and underlings of social government, to whom
all these waifs would be entrusted, there would surely be a goodly
sprinkling of Pecksniffs, Squeers's, and Fangs; whilst the Fagins
would be everywhere commissioners of the people. Nor would
there fail to be, in high places and in low, the occasional sparkle of
some Pickwick or Cheeryble Brothers or Sam Weller or Mark Tap-
ley; and the voluble Flora Finchings would be everywhere in evi-
dence, and the strong-minded Betsy Trotwoods in office. There
would also be, among the inefficient, many a Dora and Agnes and
Little Emily--with her charm but without her tragedy, since this
is one of the things which the promised social reform would hap-
pily render impossible; I mean, by removing all the disgrace of it.
The only element in the world of Dickens which would become
obsolete would be the setting, the atmosphere of material instru-
mentalities and arrangements, as travelling by coach is obsolete;
but travelling by rail, by motor, or by air-ship will emotionally be
much the same thing. It is worth noting how such instrumentalities,
which absorb modern life, are admired and enjoyed by Dickens, as
they were by Homer. The poets ought not to be afraid of them;
they exercise the mind congenially, and can be played with joyfully.


538
DICKENS
a
Consider the black ships and the chariots of Homer, the coaches and
riverboats of Dickens, and the aeroplanes of to-day; to what would
an unspoiled young mind turn with more interest? Dickens tells
us little of English sports, but he shares the sporting nature of the
Englishman, to whom the whole material world is a playing-field,
the scene giving ample scope to his love of action, legality, and
pleasant achievement. His art is to sport according to the rules of
the
game, and to do things for the sake of doing them, rather than
for any ulterior motive.
It is remarkable, in spite of his ardent simplicity and openness
of heart, how insensible Dickens was to the greater themes of the
human imagination—religion, science, politics, art. He was a waif
himself, and utterly disinherited. For example, the terrible heri-
tage of contentious religions which fills the world seems not to exist
for him. In this matter he was like a sensitive child, with a most
religious disposition, but no religious ideas. Perhaps, properly
speaking, he had no ideas on any subject; what he had was a vast
sympathetic participation in the daily life of mankind; and what
he saw of ancient institutions made him hate them, as needless
sources of oppression, misery, selfishness, and rancour. His one
political passion was philanthropy, genuine but felt only on its
negative, reforming side; of positive utopias or enthusiasms we
hear nothing. The political background of Christendom is only, so
to speak, an old faded back-drop for his stage; a castle, a frigate, a
gallows, and a large female angel with white wings standing above
an orphan by an open grave-a decoration which has to serve for
all the melodramas in his theatre, intellectually so provincial and
poor. Common life as it is lived was varied and lovable enough
for Dickens, if only the pests and cruelties could be removed from
it. Suffering wounded him, but not vulgarity; whatever pleased
his senses and whatever shocked them filled his mind alike with
romantic wonder, with the endless delight of observation. Vulgarity
-and what can we relish, if we recoil at vulgarity ?—was innocent
and amusing; in fact, for the humorist, it was the spice of life.
There was more piety in being human than in being pious. In
reviving Christmas, Dickens transformed it from the celebration of
a metaphysical mystery into a feast of overflowing simple kindness
and good cheer; the church bells were still there—in the orchestra;
and the angels of Bethlehem were still there-painted on the back-
drop. Churches, in his novels, are vague desolate places where one
a


G. SANTAYANA
539
has ghastly experiences, and where only the pew-opener is human;
and such religious and political conflicts as he depicts in Barnaby
Rudge and in A Tale of Two Cities are street brawls and prison
scenes and conspiracies in taverns, without any indication of the
contrasts in mind or interests between the opposed parties. Nor
had Dickens any lively sense for fine art, classical tradition, science,
or even the manners and feelings of the upper classes in his own
time and country: in his novels we may almost say there is no
army, no navy, no church, no sport, no distant travel, no daring
adventure, no feeling for the watery wastes and the motley nations
of the planet, and—luckily, with his notion of them—no lords and
ladies. Even love of the traditional sort is hardly in Dickens'
sphere-I mean the soldierly passion in which a rather rakish gal-
lantry was sobered by devotion, and loyalty rested on pride. In
Dickens love is sentimental or benevolent or merry or sneaking or
canine; in his last book he was going to describe a love that was
passionate and criminal; but love for him was never chivalrous,
never poetical. What he paints most tragically is a quasi-paternal
devotion in the old to the young, the love of Mr Peggoty for Little
Emily, or of Solomon Gills for Walter Gay. A series of shabby
little adventures, such as might absorb the interest of an average
youth, were romantic enough for Dickens.
I say he was disinherited, but he inherited the most terrible
negations. Religion lay on him like the weight of the atmosphere,
sixteen pounds to the square inch, yet never noticed nor mentioned.
He lived and wrote in the shadow of the most awful prohibitions.
Hearts petrified by legality and falsified by worldliness offered, in-
deed, a good subject for a novelist, and Dickens availed himself of
it to the extent of always contrasting natural goodness and happi-
ness with whatever is morose; but his morose people were wicked,
not virtuous in their own way; so that the protest of his tempera-
ment against his environment never took a radical form nor went
back to first principles. He needed to feel, in his writing, that he
was carrying the sympathies of every man with him. In him con-
science was single, and he could not conceive how it could ever be
divided in other men. He denounced scandals without exposing
shams, and conformed willingly and scrupulously to the proprie-
ties. Lady Dedlock's secret, for instance, he treats as if it were
the sin of Adam, remote, mysterious, inexpiable. Mrs Dombey is
not allowed to deceive her husband except by pretending to deceive


540
DICKENS
him. The seduction of Little Emily is left out altogether, with the
whole character of Steerforth, the development of which would
have been so important in the moral experience of David Copper-
field himself. But it is not public prejudice alone that plays the
censor over Dickens' art; his own kindness and even weakness of
heart act sometimes as marplots. The character of Miss Mowcher,
for example, so brilliantly introduced, was evidently intended to
be shady, and to play a very important part in the story; but its
original in real life, which was recognized, had to be conciliated,
and the sequel was omitted and patched up with an apology-itself
admirable—for the poor dwarf. Such a sacrifice does honour to
Dickens' heart; but artists should meditate on their works in time,
and it is easy to remove any too great likeness in a portrait by a few
touches making it more consistent than real people are apt to be;
and in this case, if the little creature had been really guilty, how
much more subtle and tragic her apology for herself might have
been, like that of the bastard Edmund in King Lear! So too in
Dombey and Son, Dickens could not bear to let Walter Gay turn
out badly, as he had been meant to do, and to break his uncle's
heart as well as the heroine's; he was accordingly transformed into
a stage hero miraculously saved from shipwreck, and Florence was
not allowed to reward the admirable Toots, as she should have done,
with her trembling hand. But Dickens was no free artist; he had
more genius than taste, a warm fancy not aided by a thorough
understanding of complex characters. He worked under pressure,
for money and applause, and often had to cheapen in execution
what his inspiration had so vividly conceived.
What, then, is there left, if Dickens has all these limitations?
In our romantic disgust we might be tempted to say, Nothing. But
in fact almost everything is left, almost everything that counts in
the daily life of mankind, or that by its presence or absence can
determine whether life shall be worth living or not; because a sim-
ple good life is worth living, and an elaborate bad life is not. There
remains in the first place eating and drinking; relished not bestially
but humanly, jovially, as the sane and exhilarating basis for every-
thing else. This is a sound English beginning; but the immediate
sequel, as the England of that day presented it to Dickens, is no
less delightful. .There is the ruddy glow of the hearth; the sparkle
I
of glasses and brasses and well-scrubbed pewter; the
savoury fumes
of the hot punch, after the tingle of the wintry air; the coaching.
a


G. SANTAYANA
541
scenes, the motley figures and absurd incidents of travel; the
changing sights and joys of the road. And then, to balance this, the
traffic of ports and cities, the hubbub of crowded streets, the luxury
of shop-windows and of palaces not to be entered; the procession of
the passers-by, shabby or ludicrously genteel; the dingy look and
musty smell of their lodgings; the labyrinth of back-alleys, courts,
and mews, with their crying children, and scolding old women, and
listless half-drunken loiterers. These sights, like fables, have a
sort of moral in them to which Dickens was very sensitive; the
important airs of nobodies on great occasions, the sadness and pre-
occupation of the great as they hasten by in their mourning or on
their pressing affairs; the sadly comic characters of the tavern; the
diligence of shop-keepers, like squirrels turning in their cages; the
children peeping out everywhere like grass in an untrodden street;
the charm of humble things, the nobleness of humble people, the
horror of crime, the ghastliness of vice, the deft hand and shining
face of virtue passing through the midst of it all; and finally a
fresh wind of indifference and change blowing across our troubles
and clearing the most lurid sky.
I do not know whether it was Christian charity or naturalistic
insight, or a mixture of both (for they are closely akin) that
attracted Dickens particularly to the deformed, the half-witted, the
abandoned, or those impeded or misunderstood by virtue of some
singular inner consecration. The visible moral of these things,
when brutal prejudice does not blind us to it, comes very near to
true philosophy; one turn of the screw, one flash of reflection, and
we have understood nature and human morality and the relation
between them.
In his love of roads and wayfarers, of river-ports and wharves
and the idle or sinister figures that lounge about them, Dickens was
like Walt Whitman; and I think a second Dickens may any day
appear in America, when it is possible in that land of hurry to reach
the same degree of saturation, the same unquestioning pleasure in
the familiar facts. The spirit of Dickens would be better able to
do justice to America than was that of Walt Whitman; because
America, although it may seem nothing but a noisy nebula to the
impressionist, is not a nebula but a concourse of very distinct indi-
vidual bodies, natural and social, each with its definite interests
and story. Walt Whitman had a sort of transcendental philosophy
which swallowed the universe whole, supposing there was a univer-


542
DICKENS
sal spirit in things identical with the absolute spirit that observed
them; but Dickens was innocent of any such clap-trap, and
remained a true spirit in his own person. Kindly and clear-sighted,
but self-identical and unequivocally human, he glided through the
slums like one of his own little heroes, uncontaminated by their
squalor and confusion, courageous and firm in his clear allegiances
amid the Aux of things, a pale angel at the Carnival, his heart
aflame, his voice always flute-like in its tenderness and warning.
This is the true relation of spirit to existence, not the other which
confuses them; for this earth (I cannot speak for the universe at
large) has no spirit of its own, but brings forth spirits only at cer-
tain points, in the hearts and brains of frail living creatures, who
like insects fit through it, buzzing and gathering what sweets they
can; and it is the spaces they traverse in this career, charged with
their own moral burden, that they can report on or describe, not
things rolling on to infinity in their vain tides. To be hypnotized
by that flood would be a heathen idolatry. Accordingly Walt Whit-
man, in his comprehensive democratic vistas, could never see the
trees for the wood, and remained incapable, for all his diffuse love
of the human herd, of ever painting a character or telling a story;
the very things in which Dickens was a master. It is this life of
the individual, as it may be lived in a given nation, that determines
the whole value of that nation to the poet, to the moralist, and to
the judicious historian. But for the excellence of the typical single
life, no nation deserves to be remembered, more than the sands of
the sea; and America will not be a success, if every American is a
failure.
Dickens entered the theatre of this world by the stage door; the
shabby little adventures of the actors in their private capacity re-
place for him the mock tragedies which they enact before a dream-
ing public. Mediocrity of circumstances and mediocrity of soul
for ever return to the centre of his stage; a more wretched or a
grander existence is sometimes broached, but the pendulum soon
swings back, and we return, with the relief with which we put on
our slippers after the most romantic excursion, to a golden medioc-
rity—to mutton and beer, and to love and babies in a suburban
villa with one frowzy maid. Dickens is the poet of those acres of
yellow brick streets which the traveller sees from the railway via-
ducts as he approaches London; they need a poet, and they de-
serve one, since a complete human life may very well be lived there.


G. SANTAYANA
543
Their little excitements and sorrows, their hopes and humours
are like those of the Wooden Midshipman in Dombey and Son;
but the sea is not far off, and the sky—Dickens never forgets it-
is above all those brief troubles. He had a sentiment in the pres-
ence of this vast flatness of human fates, in spite of their individual
pungency, which I think might well be the dominant sentiment of
mankind in the future; a sense of happy freedom in littleness, an
open-eyed reverence and religion without words. This universal
human anonymity is like a sea, an infinite democratic desert,
chock-full and yet the very image of emptiness, with nothing in it
for the mind, except, as the Moslems say, the presence of Allah.
Awe is the counterpart of humility—and this is perhaps religion
enough. The atom in the universal vortex ought to be humble; he
ought to see that, materially, he doesn't much matter, and that
morally his loves are merely his own, without authority over the
universe. He can admit without obloquy that he is what he is;
and he can rejoice in his own being, and in that of all other things
in so far as he can share it sympathetically. The apportionment of
existence and of fortune is in Other Hands; his own portion is
contentment, vision, love, and laughter.
Having humility, that most liberating of sentiments, having a
true vision of human existence and joy in that vision, Dickens had
in a superlative degree the gift of humour, of mimicry, of unre-
strained farce. He was the perfect comedian. When people say
Dickens exaggerates, it seems to me they can have no eyes
ears. They probably have only notions of what things and people
are; they accept them conventionally, at their diplomatic value.
Their minds run on in the region of discourse, where there are
masks only and no faces, ideas and no facts; they have little sense
for those living grimaces that play from moment to moment upon
the countenance of the world. The world is a perpetual caricature
of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction
of what it is pretending to be. But as it nevertheless intends all
the time to be something different and highly dignified, at the next
moment it corrects and checks and tries to cover up the absurd
thing it was; so that a conventional world, a world of masks, is
superimposed on the reality, and passes in every sphere of human
interest for the reality itself. Humour is the perception of this
illusion, the fact allowed to pierce here and there through the con-
vention, whilst the convention continues to be maintained, as if we
and no


544
DICKENS
a
>
had not observed its absurdity. Pure comedy is more radical,
cruder, in a certain sense less human; because comedy throws the
convention over altogether, revels for a moment in the fact, and
brutally says to the notions of mankind, as if it slapped them in
the face, There, take that! That's what you really are! At this
the polite world pretends to laugh, not tolerantly as it does at
humour, but a little angrily. It does not like to see itself by chance
in the glass, without having had time to compose its features for
demure self-contemplation. "What a bad mirror,” it exclaims; "it
must be concave or convex; for surely I never looked like that.
Mere caricature, farce, and horse-play. Dickens exaggerates; I
never was so sentimental as that; I never saw anything so dreadful;
I don't believe there were ever any people like Quilp, or Squeers,
or Sergeant Buzfuz.” But the polite world is lying; there are
such people; we are such people ourselves in our true moments, in
our veritable impulses; but we are careful to stifle and to hide those
moments from ourselves and from the world; to purse and pucker
ourselves into the mask of our conventional personality; and so
simpering, we profess that it is very coarse and inartistic of Dickens
to undo our life's work for us in an instant, and remind us of what
we are. And as to other people, though we may allow that consid-
ered superficially they are often absurd, we do not wish to dwell on
their eccentricities, nor to mimic them. On the contrary, it is good
manners to look away quickly, to suppress a smile, and to say to our-
selves that the ludicrous figure in the street is not at all comic, but
a dull ordinary Christian, and that it is foolish to give any impor-
tance to the fact that its hat has blown off, that it has slipped on an
orange-peel and unintentionally sat on the pavement, that it has a
pimple on its nose, that its one tooth projects over its lower lip, that
it is angry with things in general, and that it is looking everywhere
for the penny which it holds tightly in its hand. That may fairly
represent the moral condition of most of us at most times; but we
do not want to think of it; we do not want to see; we gloss the fact
over; we console ourselves before we are grieved, and re-assert our
composure before we have laughed. We are afraid, ashamed, anx-
ious to be spared. What displeases us in Dickens is that he does not
spare us; he mimics things to the full; he dilates and exhausts and
repeats; he wallows. He is too intent on the passing experience to
look over his shoulder, and consider whether we have not already
understood, and had enough. He is not thinking of us; he is obey-


G. SANTAYANA
545
ing the impulse of the passion, the person, or the story he is enact-
ing. This faculty, which renders him a consummate comedian, is
just what alienated from him a later generation in which people of
taste were aesthetes and virtuous people were higher snobs; they
wanted a mincing art, and he gave them copious improvisation,
they wanted analysis and development, and he gave them absolute
comedy. I must confess, though the fault is mine and not his, that
sometimes his absoluteness is too much for me. When I come to the
death of Little Nell, or to What the Waves were always Saying, or
even to the incorrigible perversities of the pretty Dora, I skip. I
can't take my liquor neat in such draughts, and my inner man says
to Dickens, Please don't. But then I am a coward in so many ways!
There are so many things in this world that I skip, as I skip the
undiluted Dickens! When I reach Dover on a rough day, I wait
there until the Channel is smoother; am I not travelling for pleas-
ure? But my prudence does not blind me to the admirable virtues
of the sailors that cross in all weathers, nor even to the automatic
determination of the seasick ladies, who might so easily have fol-
lowed my example, if they were not the slaves of their railway
tickets and of their labelled luggage. They are loyal to their tour,
and I to my philosophy. Yet as wrapped in my ulster and sure of
a good dinner, I pace the windy pier and soliloquize, I feel the
superiority of the bluff tar, glad of breeze, stretching a firm arm to
the unsteady passenger, and watching with a masterful thrill of
emotion the home cliffs receding and the foreign coasts ahead. It is
only courage (which Dickens had without knowing it) and uni-
versal kindness (which he knew he had) that are requisite to nerve
us for a true vision of this world. And as some of us are cowards
about crossing the Channel, and others about “crossing the bar," so
almost everybody is a coward about his own humanity. We do
not consent to be absurd, though absurd we are. We have no fun-
damental humility. For that reason we don't like Dickens, and
don't like comedy, and don't like the truth. We do not wish the
moments of our lives to be caught by a quick eye in their grotesque
initiative, and to be pilloried in this way before our own eyes.
Dickens could don the comic mask with innocent courage; he could
wear it with a grace, ease, and irresistible vivacity seldom given to
men. We must go back for anything like it to the very greatest
comic poets, to Shakespeare or to Aristophanes. Who else, for
instance, could have penned this:


546
DICKENS
“ 'It was all Mrs Bumble. She would do it,' urged Mr Bumble;
first looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room.
‘That is no excuse,' replied Mr Brownlow. You were present on
the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are the
more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes
that your wife acts under your
direction.'
'If the law supposes that,' said Mr Bumble, squeezing his hat
emphatically in both hands, 'the law is a ass, a idiot. If that's the
eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law
is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.'
Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr
Bumble fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his
pockets, followed his helpmate down stairs.”
a
>
This is high comedy; the irresistible, absurd, intense dream of
the old fool, personifying the law in order to convince and to punish
it. I can understand that this sort of thing should not be common
in English literature, nor much relished; because pure comedy is
scornful, merciless, devastating, holding no door open to anything
beyond. Cultivated English feeling winces at this brutality, al-
though the common people love it in clowns and in puppet shows;
and I think they are right. Dickens, who surely was tender enough,
had so irresistible a comic genius that it carried him beyond the
gentle humour which most Englishmen possess to the absolute
grotesque reality. Squeers, for instance, when he sips the wretched
dilution which he has prepared for his starved and shivering little
pupils, smacks his lips and cries: "Here's richness!" It is savage
comedy; humour would come in if we understood (what Dickens
does not tell us) that the little creatures were duly impressed and
thought the thin liquid truly delicious. I suspect that English sen-
sibility prefers the humour and wit of Hamlet to the pure comedy
of Falstaff; and that even in Aristophanes it seeks consolation in the
lyrical poetry for the flaying of human life in the comedy itself.
Tastes are free; but we should not deny that in merciless and rol-
licking comedy life is caught in the act. The most grotesque crea-
tures of Dickens are not exaggerations or mockeries of something
other than themselves; they arise because nature generates them,
like toadstools; they exist because they can't help it, as we all do.
The fact that these perfectly self-justified beings are absurd appears
only by comparison, and from outside; circumstances, or the expec-


G. SANTAYANA
547
a
tations of other people, make them ridiculous and force them to
contradict themselves; but in nature it is no crime to be exceptional.
Often, but for the savagery of the average man, it would not even
be a misfortune. The sleepy fat boy in Pickwick looks foolish; but
in himself he is no more foolish, nor less solidly self-justified, than
a pumpkin lying on the ground. Toots seems ridiculous; and we
laugh heartily at his incoherence, his beautiful waistcoats, and his
extreme modesty; but when did anybody more obviously grow into
what he is because he couldn't grow otherwise ? So with Mr Pick-
wick, and Sam Weller, and Mrs Gamp, and Micawber, and all the
rest of this wonderful gallery; they are ridiculous only by accident,
and in a context in which they never intended to appear. If Oedipus
and Lear and Cleopatra do not seem ridiculous, it is only because
tragic reflection has taken them out of the context in which, in real
life, thy would have figured. If we saw them as facts, and not as
emanations of a poet's dream, we should laugh at them till dooms-
day; what grotesque presumption, what silly whims, what mad
contradiction of the simplest realities! Yet we should not laugh
at them without feeling how real their griefs were; as real and
terrible as the griefs of children and of dreams. But facts, how-
ever serious inwardly, are always absurd outwardly; and the just
critic of life sees both truths at once, as Cervantes did in Don
Quixote. A pompous idealist who does not see the ridiculous in all
things is the dupe of his sympathy and abstraction; and a clown,
who does not see that these ridiculous creatures are living quite in
earnest, is the dupe of his egotism. Dickens saw the absurdity, and
understood the life; I think he was a good philosopher.
It is usual to compare Dickens with Thackeray, which is like
comparing the grape with the gooseberry; there are obvious points
of resemblance, and the gooseberry has some superior qualities of its
own; but you can't make red wine of it. The wine of Dickens is of
the richest, the purest, the sweetest, the most fortifying to the
blood; there is distilled in it, with the perfection of comedy, the
perfection of morals. I do not mean, of course, that Dickens appre-
ciated all the values that human life has or might have; that is
beyond any man. Even the greatest philosophers, such as Aris-
totle, have not always much imagination to conceive forms of
happiness or folly other than those which their age or their tempera-
ment reveals to them; their insight runs only to discovering the
principle of happiness, that it is spontaneous life of any sort har-


548
DICKENS
monized with circumstances. The sympathies and imagination of
Dickens, vivid in their sphere, were no less limited in range; and of
course it was not his business to find philosophic formulas never-
theless I call his the perfection of morals for two reasons; that he
put the distinction between good and evil in the right place, and
that he felt this distinction intensely. A moralist might have excel-
lent judgement, he might see what sort of life is spontaneous in a
given being and how far it may be harmonized with circumstances,
yet his heart might remain cold, he might not suffer nor rejoice with
the suffering or joy he foresaw. Humanitarians like Bentham and
Mill, who talked about the greatest happiness of the greatest num-
ber, might conceivably be moral prigs in their own persons, and
they might have been chilled to the bone in their theoretic love of
mankind, if they had had the wit to imagine in what, as a matter
of fact, the majority would place their happiness. Even if their
theory had been correct (which I think it was in intention, though
not in statement) they would then not have been perfect moralists,
because their maxims would not have expressed their hearts. In
expressing their hearts, they ought to have embraced one of those
forms of “idealism” by which men fortify themselves in their bitter
passions or in their helpless commitments; for they do not wish
mankind to be happy in its own way, but in theirs. Dickens was
not one of those moralists who summon every man to do himself
the greatest violence so that he may not offend them, nor defeat
their ideals. Love of the good of others is something that shines in
every page of Dickens with a truly celestial splendour. How en-
tirely limpid is his sympathy with life-a sympathy uncontami-
nated by dogma or pedantry or snobbery or bias of any kind! How
generous is this keen, light spirit, how pure this open heart! And
yet, in spite of this extreme sensibility, not the least wobbling; no
deviation from a just severity of judgement, from an uncompromis-
ing distinction between white and black. And this happens as it
ought to happen; sympathy is not checked by a flatly contrary
prejudice or commandment, by some categorical imperative irrele-
vant to human nature; the check, like the cheer, comes by tracing
the course of spontaneous impulse amid circumstances that inexo-
rably lead it to success or to failure. There is a bed to this stream,
freely as the water may flow; when it comes to this precipice it must
leap, when it runs over these pebbles it must sing, and when it


G. SANTAYANA
549
spreads into that marsh it must become livid and malarial. The
very sympathy with human impulse quickens in Dickens the sense
of danger; his very joy in joy makes him stern to what kills it. How
admirably drawn are his surly villains! No rhetorical vilification
of them, as in a sermon; no exaggeration of their qualms or fears;
rather a sense of how obvious and human all their courses seem from
their own point of view; and yet no sentimental apology for them,
no romantic worship of rebels in their madness or crime. The pity
of it, the waste of it all, are seen not by a second vision but by the
same original vision which revealed the lure and the drift of the
passion. Vice is a monster here of such sorry mien, that the longer
we see it the more we deplore it; that other sort of vice which Pope
found so seductive was perhaps only some innocent impulse artifi-
cially suppressed, and called a vice because it broke out inconven-
iently and displeased the company. True vice is human nature,
strangled by the suicide of attempting the impossible. Those so
self-justified villains of Dickens never elude their fates. Bill Sykes
is not let off, neither is Nancy; the oddly benevolent Magwitch does
not escape from the net, nor does the unfortunate
Richard
Carstone, victim of the Circumlocution Office. The horror and
ugliness of their fall are rendered with the hand of a master; we
see here, as in the world, that in spite of the romanticists it is not
virtue to rush enthusiastically along any road. I think Dickens is
one of the best friends mankind has ever had. He has held the
mirror up to nature, and of its reflected fragments has composed a
fresh world, where the men and women differ from real people only
in that they live in a literary medium, so that all ages and places
may know them. And they are worth knowing, just as one's neigh-
bours are, for their picturesque characters and their pathetic fates.
Their names should be in every child's mouth; they ought to be
adopted members of every household. Their stories cause the mer-
riest and the sweetest chimes to ring in the fancy, without confusing
our moral judgement nor alienating our interest from the motley
commonplaces of daily life. In every English-speaking home, in
the four quarters of the globe, parents and children will do well to
read Dickens aloud of a winter's evening; they will love winter, and
young
a
one another, and God the better for it. What a wreath that will be
of ever-fresh holly, thick with bright berries, to hang to this poet's
memory—the very crown he would have chosen!


IN A FAR LAND
BY PADRAIC COLUM
I
The crows still fly to that wood, and out of that wood she comes,
Carrying her load of sticks, a little less now than before,
Her strength being less; she bends as the hoar rush bends in the
wind:
She will sit by the fire, in the smoke, her thoughts on the root and
the living branch no more.
The crows still Ay to that wood, that wood that is sparse and
gapped;
The last one left of the herd makes way by the lane to the stall,
Lowing distress as she goes; the great trees there are all down;
No fiddle sounds in the hut to-night, and a candle only gives light
to the hall.
The trees are sparse and gapped, yet a sapling spreads on the
joints
Of the wall till the Castle stones fall down into the moat;
The last who minds that our race once stood as a spreading tree,
She goes, and the thorns are bare where the blackbird, his summer
songs done, strikes the one metal note.
II
a
The bond-woman comes to the boorie;
She sings with a heart beguiled
How a hundred rivers are flowing
Between herself and her child.
Then comes the lad with the hazel,
And the folding-star's in the rack:
“Night's a good herd,” to the cattle
He sings, "She brings all things back.”


RAIN-IN-THE-FACE





POEMS
BY MARY AUSTIN
WOMEN'S WAR THOUGHTS
A room in Time from which a window looks on the Present.
THE TRUMPETS:
Wake, O Women!
A WOMAN AT THE WINDOW:
Oh, no more for women
Shall the trumpets tear their throats!
No more the white riders,
Strong thewed and breastless
Come reiving and raiding.
We modern women are undone by our own preciousness.
Like viols of few strings
Plucked at by lovers in their silken intervals,
Live in the prelude to our womanness.
Our music seldom swings
From the apassionata's opening phrases
Into the star-built theme of mastery.
Not even like the Spartan women,
Guardians of the Gate whereby life entering is made man
By virtue of that clean divinity
That lives in women's flesh.
Not ours to turn,
Whose sons return not
Borne on their shields or bearing them,
To rear a sterner offspring to our conquerors.
Trumpets sound, and summoning drums.
Our sons are too much ours!
Too much the child, that means,


552
POEMS
Too prone to keep us
The condoning lap, the leaned on bosom,
The ever pleased spectator of their plays
Filling the gaps with ready make believe.
We talk of giving,
Who cannot throb to world adventure
Save through the still unsevered stalk of being.
Who suffer, deep in the womb of our affection,
Perpetual pangs
of
parturition.
Suddenly the drums
Quicken the male pulse of the world,
The questing trumpets
Seek out the part of them that is not us,
And with a sword
Time heals us of a too prolonged maternity.
Flags go by, and the tips of bayonets, passing the window
in full procession.
Strange they should look so much alike!
1
I cannot find my son's
Among the lean brown shanks,
Crossing and uncrossing like the shears of Atropos
To cut the thread of over-ripe autocracy.
Nor trace the alien strains
Gave rise to that steel glinting river,
Frothed bright with banners.
What tongues do trumpets speak,
Welding all men into one moving unit?
Women are welded at heart
By the rhythm of rocking cradles.
World-wide, they are starting awake to feel if one is well covered,
Who at that moment may be lying stark in the trenches.
Women of any nation,
For the sake of a long sheared curl
Between two leaves of a prayer book,
Will weep on each other's shoulders.


MARY AUSTIN
553
But the word of the trumpet to men
Is the seed of a forthright intention.
The drums go by, and the Allied banners.
When I was young, my son,
I dreamed of a life exempted as yours is to-day,
From the claims of the
past
and the
present,
A tiny, two-penny candle to burn on the altar of Now.
a
a
But the cant of a world made sleek by soul stroking phrases,
Offered your life for mine.
As though your life were a thing I could make
For my soul's diversion,
To dangle before
my
mind
And quiet its hunger.
Oh, my son, how times like these give the lie
To that smug maternal illusion!
Voices of YOUNG SOLDIERS (singing):
Land, my Land!
Thy sons are going
Where like a wind from the west we feel God blowing
Kings from their seats and Empire from its stays.
Land where the Vision blessed our fathers,
Perfect in us thy praise!
The Woman (repeating the word of the inner Voice):
You are no more to the making
Than the nozzle is to the fountain.
I am the source and the stream
And the deeps to which I have called him.
I will drink up the life of your son
To quicken my harvest.
I will take up his life and lay it
To the lips of my larger purpose,
Trumpeting forth my power,
And my will to Freedom
Young SOLDIERS (singing):
Land, my Land!
Thy sons go singing


554
POEMS
Forth to the work of our God, our lives free flinging
Nothing withholden or scamped, for thy sake;
Land, by whose voice the larger Freedom
Has called the world awake!
The WOMAN (muses):
Life that passed through us,
Did it leave no tang of the man strain, mordant, unruly
The Red Cross nurses go by.
Yonder the barren women
Women whose breasts are scarcely grown
But whose hearts are steadied with skill,
Will sit on the Pit's red edge
And hold back death with laughter.
.
Bite back the moan in your throat, O my son,
If the shrapnel tears you.
Lest the unwed women say
I was too woman-soft when I shaped you,
I that am left to hand-waving, balcony service!
The music grows faint in the distance.
Why should we weep
Who taught them to follow the music;
We who attuned them
To feints, pursuits, and surprises?
Have we ever denied them the game that we should wonder
When they go roaring forth to hunt one another?
Blood
.
There is no virtue in blood
Any woman will tell you!
.
Torn flesh
and a gay endurance
I did as much for you in the bearing.
War is a sickness sucked from your shiny toy maleness.
When your
teeth have met on hard metal awhile
You will be cured of your sickness.
And then


MARY AUSTIN
555
We will go back to our playing,
Sally, retreat, and ambush, handling and stroking,
Till Peace is choked with the rising scum
Of our passionate prepossessions.
Was it you or I, son,
Made this war, I wonder!
GLYPHS
Rendered from the Amerind
I
Your face is strange
And the fashion of your garments,
But your soul to mine is familiar.
As if in dreams
We had visited one another.
Often
From unremembering sleep
I come delicately glowing.
Now I know
What my heart has been doing.
Now I know why when we met
It slipped so easily into loving.
II
A girl wearing a green ribbon,
As if it had been my girl;
(The green
green ribbon I gave her for remembrance)
Knowing it was not my girl,
Suddenly,
Such was the magic of the ribbon,
My girl existed inside me.


AFTER THE MURDER
BY LOCKIE PARKER
morning, but still they kept coming—the little black buggies
and rattling wagons. Down the Anton turnpike they came and up
from the East Road. A few from the rich country around Manitou
came in automobiles and some from the rough country up north of
the mines rode in on horseback. Still there was not as big a crowd as
you would have expected; for most of the vehicles contained only
one man. Nobody brought his wife or children, and they had
come too suddenly to think of inviting friends and neighbours.
It was wonderful how fast the news had travelled. It had
reached the most remote parts of the county almost before day-
light of the short November day. Old Biggs on his way into town
saw young Jo Stevens mending fences down in his wheat field.
Jo had been out since dawn and had heard nothing. Old Biggs
stopped to tell him. "A nigger shot the sheriff last night.
Emptied a shot gun into his belly.” Jo listened and went on
working, but ever so often he raised his eyes and looked uneasily
in the direction the other had disappeared. Finally he picked up
his tools and went towards the house. He stopped for a drink at
the well and his wife came out. He rubbed his hand awkwardly
across his chin and told her the news. She had heard it already.
He nodded, rubbed his chin again, and said he thought he'd go to
town.
“You'd much better stay where you are, Jo Stevens !” she an-
swered in a loud, angry tone.
He said nothing to this, but presently he went down to the barn
and harnessed the team—the horses needed shoeing anyway.
In town the news was slower spreading. People slept later
there and were more absorbed in their own affairs. They wouldn't
thank you for waking them before dawn even with news like that.
A good many of them didn't hear it until they went to the post-
office for their morning mail. Editor Andrews and Lawyer Hunt
met at the usual corner and went into the post-office, slapping each


LOCKIE PARKER
557
other on the back and laughing at the same joke they had been
using all summer. They came out separately and both looked
serious and tired and had deeper lines in their faces than you
had
noticed there before.
In the square, the crowd was already getting thick. The homely,
familiar square, its ugly red brick court-house with the squat pillars
and cheese-box cupola, the little squares of green, precisely marked
off by cement walks, the nondescript roof line of the buildings be-
yond—the Blue Front grocery, the Grand Leader, the new concrete
garage, and the gaudy bills of a burlesque show to begin that night
-all had a false, flat look like the back-drop of a theatre. Every-
one faced this and watched and waited uneasily. The centre of at-
tention was a black knot of a score or more men, county officials and
friends of the dead man, standing near the front steps of the court-
house. They were consulting together and occasionally one of them
went into the court-house or hurried off on some errand.
The mood of the crowd, at first, was varied. There were the
spruce clerks from the department stores, who merely kicked their
heels in the frosty air and looked blank. Down by the bank a few
negroes were standing apart from the crowd, not talking even to
each other. Their faces looked heavy and sullen and, though their
patient eyes never ceased to follow the movements of the group by
the court-house, they seemed to expect but one outcome. No one ap-
proached them or seemed to take any notice of them whatever. The
rest of the crowd, town loafers, half-grown boys, and farmers of all
sorts—some who hadn't been seen in the town for weeks and months
—formed a ragged fringe to the central group and straggled all over
the square. It was odd the people this event had unearthed. Men
were there who never so much as showed their faces at the county
fair, whom not even a circus attracted, men whom the most sensa-
tional revivalist could not have budged from their barns and fur-
rows, and men too indifferent to public affairs to come out even for
election. Some extraordinarily strong instinct, prejudice, passion,
was at work here. If any one stayed home, it was the careful, sub-
stantial farmers, the prudent souls, the complacent, who detested
violence and asked only that all disturbing issues pass them by.
The crowd was not attractive to look at. No one was dressed
up
or even cleaned up, as on most occasions when they gathered to-
gether. They wore drab, shapeless, dirty work-clothes. Most of


558
AFTER THE MURDER
a
them had lined, weathered faces with a prominent bony structure,
lank, slow-moving limbs, pale eyes, and long, unshaven chins. The
expression was almost invariably the same—vague, unfocussed,
waiting. They moved aimlessly about or stood on the curb and
chewed tobacco waiting.
There were no women in the crowd-this was tacitly admitted
to be a man's affair. There was, in fact, not a woman to be seen
on the whole square, which was rather remarkable at this time
of morning. But the women were talking of it. Standing by
back fences, their checked aprons rolled up about their bare arms,
they were asking each other how many small children the dead
man had left and whether there was any property or insurance.
And they told, or were told, that his wife was expecting another
child. Then they shook their heads gravely and looked towards
town where their men were.
About nine, someone reported that the negro had been seen
crossing the railroad tracks and making for Grapevine woods.
This relieved matters a little. The surcharged atmosphere be-
came less painful, men moved a bit more briskly. The negro was
reported to be heavily armed. Volunteers were called for to sur-
round Grapevine woods and possibly search them. All of the
young fellows were eager to go and a few of the old ones whose
blood still ran hot. A surprising number of pistols and other
A
weapons were speedily collected to equip them and about a hun-
dred set off. This made a change in the crowd, the knot in front
of the court-house disappeared, but the straggling fringe remained
much the same. It was these that Lawyer Hunt watched uneasily
from his window, his ruddy face and bright blue eyes wearing an in-
congruous air of depression. Farther up the street, Editor Andrews
sat at his desk, writing a long editorial, entitled Let the Law Take
its Course. Both of them kept pretty closely within doors, and one
of them was thinking that if-well, if anything did happen, the
sheriff himself had been the only person really capable of handling
such a situation.
Presently old Jim Wilts was seen coming up the street. He had
been one of the last persons to hear about it. He had a night job
and slept until the middle of the morning and, even when he woke,
his negro servant had told him nothing of it. It was only after
breakfast, when he sat on the front steps lighting his pipe, that a


LOCKIE PARKER
559
neighbour woman passed and told him. He had started for town
at once and, when he arrived, he still held his pipe halfway to his
mouth, as though his arm had been petrified in the uncompleted
gesture. His good, kindly face was all wrinkled up with concern.
He went into Lawyer Hunt's office and said, “John, what about
this? But the lawyer was inclined to be rather short and didn't
want to talk about it. He went back to the street and walked
about, talking now to this one, now to that, even approaching the
negroes in his everyday, friendly manner. What he said was bro-
midic, the purest commonplaces, but nobody repulsed him. Some
nodded and walked away to get their dinners. This seemed to
encourage him. A few of the more serious and intelligent young
farmers got their horses and went home, but the total effect was
negligible, and this was the only effort made to restore normality,
if we except that editorial—which was not yet printed.
Now and then a rumour started that the negro had been seen in
the woods, or boarding a freight, or in half a dozen entirely differ-
ent places. Everyone had his description now. It was as though
it were painted on all the signboards and blank walls in town, like
a circus bill, so familiar and vivid had it suddenly become-a
heavy, black negro, with receding forehead, prominent lower jaw,
an exaggeratedly flat nose and thick lips, medium height, long arms,
and a finger gone from his right hand. He was wearing khaki trou-
sers, an old red sweater, and a cap. He was heavily armed. The
crowd fixed its attention on this image and waited.
About two, they heard that the watchers, tired of waiting, were
going to beat through the woods. Men's eyes lighted, they nodded
their heads with approval, and talked more than they had done
that day. The confidence that he was in the woods grew and they
assured each other that the nigger would be in town before night.
They even cracked jokes about it and laughed grimly. Laughter!
-how odd it sounded after the oppression of the morning. The
department store clerks came out to look and Lawyer Hunt opened
his window. Jim Wilts, who had been talking with a young farmer,
took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at them in amazement.
After that, for a long time, no news came, and the crowd grew
restless. A murmur started and swelled ominously. At four,
they brought in from the woods a boy who had sprained his ankle.
No news yet and the strain was beginning to tell on men's tempers.


560
AFTER THE MURDER
They were restless and irritable with each other. In one case,
there was almost a fight.
At five, suddenly the hunters returned in a bunch—very tired,
very dispirited. They had gone over every inch of the woods and
not a sign. Men looked at each other blankly. No one seemed to
have been prepared for this issue. It quite took the wind from their
sails and abruptly they lost faith in all the other rumours. They
seemed to feel that they had been finally cheated and, one by one,
they drifted off spiritlessly to get their horses and start home.
In the dusk, the roads were full of them, a procession of solitary
drivers behind patient horses, and each man wore the same expres-
sion-wistful, puzzled, thwarted.



E
1
12
Dalil
A HEAD. BY ADOLPH DEHN


1
1


LA VIE EN FLEUR
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
II
THOUGHTS ABOUT HAPPINESS
O
NE morning Fontanet came to tell me that an intimate friend
of his, a lady of riches and title who gave magnificent parties
and entertained the most beautiful women in Paris, had asked him
to bring men who danced to her balls and he had immediately
thought of me. I told him that I did not know how to dance. This
was a fact; Fontanet knew it, and had invited me for the pleasure of
hearing me say so.
Several days later Fontanet informed me that he was taking les-
sons at a riding academy and that he was soon going to go for a
ride in the Bois with some friends. He invited me to hire a horse
and come along. I liked horses, but I had no money. I declined.
Fontanet pretended to misunderstand my motive.
"You're silly; the stable would give you a perfectly tame horse,
that you needn't be afraid of.”
At that time I used to see in the windows of Verdier's famous
shop on the Boulevard des Capucines a malacca cane with a lapis
lazuli head; I was drawn to it by an emotion that in tenderness and
violence was not far from love. It was handsome, too! I was des-
tined never to see it, except through the shop window. The Boule-
vard des Capucines was then very smart and Verdier's shop was
expensive to a degree that forbade my entering it.
I was far from being a good-looking young man and what was
worse I lacked assurance. This spoiled my chances with women.
The beautiful ones, the most feminine, I mean, I loved desperately,
and the excitement with which they affected me, robbed me when
with them of all my faculties, so that I got along only with the ugly
ones, whom I regarded with horror. For I believed that a woman's
greatest sin is to be not beautiful. I observed that in society many
young men who were inferior to myself succeeded in pleasing better
a


562
LA VIE EN FLEUR
than I. I was not consoled, but I was already old enough not to be
surprised.
It was in such circumstances that I learned that nature and for-
tune had not favoured me, and my first impulse was of self-pity. I
,
have always believed that the only reasonable thing to do is to look
for pleasure, and if, as seemed likely, I was ill fitted to succeed in
this quest, I had, like La Fontaine's reed, good reason for reproach-
ing nature. But I soon made an important discovery: it is not diffi-
cult to tell whether a man is happy or unhappy. Joy and grief are
what one hides the least, especially when one is young. After a
rapid survey I perceived that my friends, though better looking
and better off than I, were not happier, and on looking closer, that
life brought me satisfactions which were unknown to them. Their
barren, unhappy talk, their worried, nervous ways, were proof
enough. I was light-hearted, they were not; my thoughts ran easily
and freely while theirs dragged on the ground. From this I con-
cluded that, if my disgrace was indeed real, something good in my
nature or condition must compensate for the evil. First I observed
the difference in our characters and saw that the passions of my
friends were violent where mine were gentle, and that they suffered
from theirs whereas I enjoyed mine. They were jealous, spiteful,
ambitious. I was indulgent and peaceful; I did not know ambition.
Here was no reason for my thinking too highly of myself. Violent
passions are what great men are made of, there is none of that stuff
in me; but this is outside the question anyway. I have confined my-
self to describing how I came to see that my passions, very different
from those of the majority of men, afforded me peace and a sort of
happiness. I was much longer in discovering that my situation in
life, in spite of numerous disadvantages, had its compensations. I
am speaking of course about a condition of mediocrity like my own,
not of that state of misery which can break the most courageous.
The lack of money deprived me of a multitude of pleasant things,
which are not always appreciated by those who can get them, but
which would have ministered to my sensuality. Desire is no doubt
importunate, and sometimes cruel. I saw that right away. But
what I saw after long observation was that while desire embellishes
the objects on which it rests its fiery wings, the satisfaction of de-
sire is as often as not a betrayal and ruins illusion, man's only genu-
ine asset; and kills desire which alone gives charm to life. All my
a


ANATOLE FRANCE
563
desires were for beauty and I recognized that this love of beauty,
which unlike the majority of men I felt so keenly, is a well-spring
of pleasure and joy. These successive discoveries were invaluable
to me. They persuaded me that my character and estate did not
at all forbid my aspiration to happiness.
One thing which my youth, small experience, and sheltered life
kept me from seeing, was the fickleness of fortune, fortune which
triumphs over the firmest characters and changes in an instant the
estates of men.
O Thébains! Jusqu'au jour qui termine la vie
Ne regardons personne avec un oeil d'envie.
Peut-on jamais prévoir les derniers coups du sort?
Ne proclamons heureux nul homme avant sa mort.
The first example I had of the vicissitudes of fortune was not one
of the most tragic; I recall it, nevertheless, because it made a very
strong impression on me. It came to me in this way.
One day in a café of the rue Soufflot where I was waiting for
Fontanet, I recognized at a nearby table Joseph Vernier, the young
aeronaut whom I had heard six years before deliver a lecture, at
Grenelle, applauded by a large audience. Two members of the In-
stitute, superhumanly ugly, resembling the two cynocephaloi which
flanked the corpse in the funeral rites of ancient Egypt, were seated
on the platform on either side of the lecturer; a lady in a green
dress had given him a bouquet of flowers. He was pale like Bona-
parte, and I was admiringly envious of his glory and his honours.
To-day Joseph Vernier was writing a letter on a restaurant table,
chewing the while at a penny cigar. His linen was soiled, his coat
shabby, his trousers threadbare, his shoes down at heel, his com-
plexion flushed, his hand feverish. What, was this the young hero
I had envied and wanted to imitate? Alas, what had become of the
two cynocephaloi of the Institut de France, the green lady, the en-
thusiastic crowd, the flowers, the acclamations? When Fontanet
appeared I told him in a low voice who our neighbour was and by
what exploits he had distinguished himself.
"Joseph Vernier! I know him,” said Fontanet with assurance.
I was very sure that he did not know him even by name and
that he was seeing him for the first time. Nevertheless, as soon as
a


564
LA VIE EN FLEUR
Joseph Vernier stopped writing, Fontanet turned in his direction,
greeted him, and asked him when he was going to make another
flight.
“I don't go up any more,” replied the aeronaut in a weary voice.
“I cannot find the money to build with. Nobody understands the
great advantages of my sort of balloon; they find fault with my
propeller and say it's fragile; but a propeller has got to be light. I
a I
have been turned down. Everything is done now for Tissandier
and Nadar. I have just written a letter to the ministry but it will
go unanswered like the others.”
He made a gesture as if to brush away the worries that assailed
him, bowed his head, and was silent.
Incapable as I was of discerning whether or not Joseph Vernier
had the character and talents for success, I saw in him a wretch be-
a
trayed by fortune, and this spectacle which was a new one to me
filled me with grief and foreboding.
a
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER
I had to choose a career for myself without delay. My parents
were not rich enough to keep me for long. The thought of my fu-
ture worried and alarmed me. I foresaw at once that I should not
easily find a place in a society where one must push oneself forward
with one's elbows; that was an art of which I was ignorant.
I saw that I was different from others without knowing whether
it was for good or for ill, and this frightened me. Finally I was
grievously surprised to see my parents leaving me without advice or
direction as though they could find no suitable employment for me.
I consulted Fontanet who had already entered himself at the Law
School. He advised me to prepare myself for the bar, certain as he
was that I should be less successful there than he. And certainly
with the penny horn which he had in his throat and all the various
facts from newspapers pasted up in his brain he was sure to make
as good a lawyer as another. At first glance the bar did not dis-
please me. I was fond of eloquence. I told myself: I shall brilliant-
ly defend a young widow who will fall in love with me. For I
brought everything back to love.
By way of going over the ground, I accompanied Fontanet to the


ANATOLE FRANCE
565
Law School. I was an amateur of the antiquities and illustrious
haunts of my city, and I inhaled respectfully the dust of the learned
hill.
When we were at the end of the rue Soufflot, we entered the
beautiful square flanked on our right hand and on our left by the
strong façades of the Mairie and the Law School. Above stood the
majestic Pantheon and its perfectly curving dome. On our left,
the Library of Sainte-Geneviève, its solid walls covered with in-
scriptions, seemed less a building consecrated to study than a vast
mausoleum copied from antiquity. At the end, the royal church of
Saint-Etienne-du-Mont spread pompously the jewelled fretwork of
its façade, and the cloister of the Génovéfains raised its ancient
deformed ogives. O centuries! O memories! O august monuments
of generations gone!
But Fontanet was in no humour to stand gaping at stones and
he pushed me into the great amphitheatre where Professor Deman-
geat was teaching Roman law.
Numerous students were listening to him in profound silence and
making notes so rapidly that they seemed to take down every word.
“Old Bugnet gives the same course,” said Fontanet, “but he has
few students. He is a dirty old fellow. He runs at the nose per-
petually and wipes it with a red handkerchief as big as a sheet.
Demangeat’s courses are well attended, as you see, and much appre-
ciated.”
This Demangeat did not please me particularly. I found his
voice mealy and his delivery monotonous. I was right. But with
more intelligence I should have understood that the students
prop-
erly appreciated the orderly clearness of his statements.
Fontanet who knew no rest for himself or for others, took me
breathlessly from the big amphitheatre to the room where the can-
didates were passing the examination for their degrees. The ex-
aminers there went about their work with considerable solemnity
and in a manner calculated to impress the imagination. With their
robes on they sat at a table, the green cover of which fell in ample
folds; they sat three together like the judges of Hell and overbore
the shrunken and flattened candidate before them. The judge at the
centre of the table was voluminous, important, and filthy. It was
he who was asking questions when we entered the room. He evi-
dently thought only of displaying his power and making himself


566
LA VIE EN FLEUR
a
redoubtable. He lent his questions an imposing solemnity, he en-
veloped them at times in formidable obscurity, like that cruel vir-
gin the Sphinx, and he uttered them in the voice of a bull, to which
the candidate replied with weak and trembling sighs. The judge
at the right next took up the questioning. He was small, thin, green
like a paroqueet, and spoke in a sharp voice that came out on top
of his head. As far as one could see he conducted his examination
less to find out about the candidate than to riddle his fat colleague
with sarcasm. He referred to him without using his name, and they
exchanged venomous glances with propriety. The three judges
hated one another exclusively; they had no other hatreds. Satisfied
with having made the candidate tremble, they accepted him; every-
thing finished without tears or gnashing of teeth. To make it a full
day we went to see an examination at the Medical School. This
was quite another matter. The candidate, fat and bald, seemed to
be no longer particularly young. He cut hesitatingly with his knife
at a sneering body stretched before him, the little body of an old
man. A professor with moustaches like a Tartar's, lying in an arm-
chair, was saying to the student:
"Well, how about that gland? Is it for to-day or for to-morrow?"
He received no answer. His two assistants wrote letters or cor-
rected proofs. One of them was wearing an unusual cap of extra-
ordinary size, trimmed with fur, more like a chapska than a cap.
Fontanet told me it was the model for a head-dress designed in 1792
by Louis David. It had been kept in a glass case at the school, but
this professor had demanded it from an employee in a tone which
allowed no refusal. The examiner, his head lower than his heels,
asked again:
“How about that gland ?”
This time he received an answer.
“It is atrophied.”
To which the professor replied that it was the body's fault, that
he would give the body a bad mark.
And yet in spite of the carelessness and indifference of the pro-
fessors, this examination was obviously at bottom more serious than
the law examination which we had just seen; the gravity of science
relieved the absurdity.
I left the examination room with a mild desire to study medi-
a


ANATOLE FRANCE
567
cine. This desire was indeed not firm enough to force me to under-
take the long and difficult courses in which I was not prepared.
Fearing that, like the fat student, I might come to the end of my
youth without finding the gland in the neck of the mocking body,
I gave up my project almost before it was formed.
I have since often regretted this. I know nothing in the world
more beautiful than the life of a Claude Bernard, and I know coun-
a
try doctors the fulness and kindness of whose lives makes me jeal-
ous. My father practised his profession with rigorous enthusiasm;
but he did not intend it for me.
During dinner I decided to study law; but at night when I was
alone and quiet in my room, I told myself forcibly that miserly
nature had refused me the precious gift of speech, that I had not
once been able to improvise four words, and that if there was one
thing for ever beyond me it was the delivery of a speech in court.
As I did not dream for many reasons of making myself a consulting
attorney, a judge, or a notary, I understood that my law studies
would require useless sacrifice on the part of my family and I gave
up the mastery of the Institutes of Justinian and the Napoleonic
Code. And simultaneously I regretted not having prepared for
Saint-Cyr. It seemed to me that it would be beautiful to be an offi-
cer, provided, of course, the officer was Alfred de Vigny's sort, mag-
nanimous and melancholy. I had read Servitude et Grandeur Mili-
taires with ardour and admired myself crossing the courtyard of the
barracks, with slow steps, taciturn, my heart full of all devotions
and all sacrifices, my form wrapped in an elegant dolman. Then we
should be informed at mess that war was declared. Preparations
would be made with imposing calm and with that resolution which
David was able to impart to Leonidas and his three hundred Spar-
tans. We set off. I ride with my men; the roads fly beneath our
feet, and with them endless fields, villages, forests, rocks, streams.
All at once we encounter the enemy. I fight without hatred. We
take prisoners. I treat them humanely and watch to see that their
wounded receive the same care as ours. At the second encounter,
which is frightful, I am decorated on the field of battle. To tell
the truth I make an excellent officer. I am lodged with several com-
rades in a chateau overlooking the woods, occupied by a lone coun-
tess of great beauty whose husband is a general; but he is a brute


568
LA VIE EN FLEUR
and she does not love him. We love each other with a love heart-
rending and ravishing. The enemy is beaten, whereupon they all
become my dear friends.
The next morning I doubted whether I had pictured military life
as it really was.
>
а
Fontanet came to see me early and greeted me with that superior
air which never left him. He warned me that I must register
without delay and said that he would accompany me that same day
to the office of the Law School, where they knew him. I begged him
to do nothing about it; I said that I was giving up the law and told
him why. He would hear nothing of the sort, and assured me that
with a little practice I should be pleading as well as any one, that
superior faculties were not required. He went often to the Palais;
he knew a lawyer there who was the victim of a very nearly com-
plete amnesia but who managed to speak well enough from notes on
a piece of paper the size of his hand. He had heard a lawyer, a
stutterer with a tongue that tripped constantly, and, who had, in
addition, the habit of barking suddenly like a dog, who still de-
fended a hard case very decently and finally won it.
“I don't claim,” Fontanet went on, “that you are especially
gifted. But one can do marvels with hard work. Labor improbus
as Crottu said when he was scolding you for being lazy. You
must practise speaking, that's the whole secret. Come, try it right
away. I'll coach
I'll coach you and you'll be surprised at the way you get
along."
I had the misfortune to let him see by too sharp a refusal that
this would be disagreeable to me. He already suspected it; when
he was sure he became implacable. He pushed the table, the chairs,
and even the bed into a disorder that was supposed to represent
the tribunal, jostled my books, shuffled my papers, overturned my
inkwell, emptied my water pitcher on the carpet, and pushing me
violently between the wall and the ravaged dressing table, cried
in an imperious voice:
“You stand there! That's the bar. You are the lawyer for the
defence. I am the judge; you will begin when I tell you.”
He was terrifying.
| I was astonished daily at my faculty for finding professions that
didn't suit me.


ANATOLE FRANCE
569
It was a game at which I excelled. For example I thought it
would be splendid to be an engineer, to superintend, with the aid
of applied mathematics, the construction of bridges, highways, ma-
chinery, and to be the soul of thousands of workmen. Engineers
enjoyed at that time a position in society which they haven't quite
retained. They were less numerous then than they are to-day and
earned more money. In comedies at the Odéon the young engineer
was seen leading the cotillion at the ball, upsetting the girls' hearts
and making a brilliant match. Alas, the bifurcation, in steering me
towards the arts, had closed the way to a scientific career. Farewell
highways, bridges, mines, and brilliant marriage.
It was necessary to find some other way.
The diplomatic career would have pleased me since it is looked
upon with respect; the hope of becoming an ambassador and rep-
resenting my country in foreign courts would have been a pleasant
one. If I cherished such ambitions it was only in order to laugh at
my poor self; for I can tell you that if I have been a mocker all
my
life, I have mocked no one so cruelly as myself, nor with so much
delight. In conformity, however, with the precept that every good
joke be a short one, I fell back on the consular service and decided
on Naples, where I should live in a vine-covered villa, beside the
blue sea.
At this time I went to see Mouron who lived with his mother and
sisters in a pretty apartment in the rue des Saint-Pères. I found
the farmer Chazal there; he had grown a thick cross-grained beard.
With pleasure I shook Mouron's little warm hand and Chazal's
palm, square-hewn like a bat. Chazal was passing through Paris
and in a hurry to get back to Sologne where he was managing an
agricultural enterprise. I confided in these two good friends the dif-
ficulty I found in choosing a career.
Mouron asked me if I had not considered a government position,
especially a position in the Treasury Department, where one might
with talent or favour obtain an inspectorship. He advised me to
knock at this door. As I promised him to do so, he told me that there
was an examination which was not especially difficult; his cousin
had passed it easily; a little arithmetic, a knowledge of French, and
a good handwriting, he believed, were what was required.
“I advise you,” he added, “to go to a coach named Duployer. He
is a young fellow, blunt and candid. Everybody who wants to enter
9


570
LA VIE EN FLEUR
the Treasury service goes to him: he lives at seven or nine rue
d'Alger."
Chazal did not agree that I ought to shut myself up in a govern-
ment office.
"Why should you have to make a prisoner of yourself?” he asked.
“Do what I do: cultivate the land. The only good life is in the coun-
try. You work hard but you stay healthy. Believe me, the thing for
you is cattle breeding. There is nothing more interesting; one is
right there at the sources of life. But all work in the country is in-
toxicating. I had to study variations in the vegetable species. You
can't imagine what I found. I have seen monstrous variations spring
up suddenly and become fixed in generation after generation. Do
you know, I saw a hawthorn in rich soil lose its thorns and multiply
its flowers a hundredfold. What about that? It's a fact."
He was beside himself. I found him wilder and stronger than
ever. He was growing in vigour, whereas Mouron was shrunken
and diminished; but I was at an age where one does not foresee mis-
fortunes.
The following day I went to the little ground floor apartment on
the rue d'Alger where Duployer gave lessons. He questioned me
about my parents, was very familiar and quite cold at the same
time. He said he would put me to work with the son of a promi-
nent official of the Empire, young Fabio Falcone, who was also pre-
paring to take examinations for admission to the Treasury service.
After all, nothing else went on at Duployer's place, though he
seemed to be running a business office much more than a cramming
school. I took lessons for a fortnight, during which time Duployer
never gave me the slightest hope of success, although he always
showed himself perfectly assured of the future of Falcone who did
not excel me in arithmetic, was worse in composition, and had the
handwriting of a cat. I understood on what Duployer founded his
presentiments. I was obliged to him for this frankness and stopped
taking useless lessons. I knew later that I had been right in not pre-
senting myself for an examination the sole purpose of which was to
eliminate without fuss the candidates who were not sufficiently rec-
ommended.
I continued like Jerome Paturot to seek a position. I could not
persuade myself to follow Chazal's advice. I loved the country, I
loved it with trembling languor and delicious trouble. I was fated


ANATOLE FRANCE
571
to love nothing else. In the country I was to pour out the sweetest
years of my life. But the time was not yet come.
I could not then consent to quit for ever the city of art and beauty,
the stones that sang. I had a good reason, besides, for not cultivat-
ing my land: I had no land. But if I could not be a labourer, taught
by experience to worship mediocrity, at least I hoped to be a mer-
chant. I came upon this notion while reading some eighteenth cen-
tury English novels in which the merchants looked quite respectable
in their suits of red or maroon cloth, with warehouses full of cases
and bales. At the Théâtre-Français I had seen a worthy trader, in a
piece by Sedaine, who maintained a great retinue and when at home
wore a superb dressing-gown. I had also seen business men in real
life who were not bad. But I paid them less attention. Having final-
ly decided to become a dealer or rather a salesman, since I had
neither goods nor money to buy with, I looked about to see what sort
of business I should go in for. And it was there that the trouble
began. Among so many businesses, how was I, knowing neither the
advantages nor the disadvantages of any of them, to choose? With
a trade directory in hand I asked myself whether I should be a
brewer, cement-dealer, coal-dealer, cobbler, coppersmith, gunsmith,
jeweller, joiner, landscape-gardener, machinist, marble-cutter, opti-
cian, pharmacist, and I found no answer. What lessened my em-
barrassment, I admit this between ourselves, was that I foresaw that
I should be no more capable of selling arms, jewellery, or beer, than
of selling coal, kettles, cement, shoes, or spectacles. This reflection
relieved me of having to choose, but it made me desperate.
I was put right when I least expected it. This occurred on a Sat-
urday at twenty minutes past four. I was walking on the quai de
la Conférence, more rural then than now, more deserted, and more
beautiful; I encountered M Louis de Ronchaud who had come from
Ternes where he had a little apartment full of books and engrav-
ings. I loved him dearly, but seldom went to see him, not thinking
my conversation would be interesting to him. Perhaps a few are
still living who remember this excellent man. Without knowing
them I am in communion with them. Louis de Ronchaud left poems
which bore testimony to the beauty of his soul, and books of great
merit on Greek art which he loved wisely and with ardour. Lamar-
tine, whose friend he was, consecrated a chapter of his Cours Fami-
lier de Littérature to him. At the time to which my memories take


572
LA VIE EN FLEUR
me back, M de Ronchaud was no longer young and was not yet old.
Those who knew him know that he was not old at any moment in
his long life; he never ceased to love. Threads of gold still wandered
among the bleached strands of his hair. The delicate skin of his fore-
head was like pinkish marble. His once fiery moustache had begun
to droop. He wore elegantly a suit cut in the French style, covered
with spots, and seedy. His voice was warm, his rather heavy man-
ner was pleasant and winning. He told me with enthusiasm about
a Roman mosaic just discovered at Lambessa, of which he had re-
ceived a copy in water-colours. He talked of the Empire and called
for and predicted its fall. He seemed curious about some new book,
the name of which I no longer remember, which was making a stir.
He had already taken leave of me and was walking away, when he
had an afterthought.
“I was going to ask you to come to see me," he said, “I must talk
to you. I and several friends of mine are publishing with one of the
big firms a new Lives of the Painters, in parts; it is to replace Charles
Blanc's which is no longer adequate. The enterprise is a big one.
Will you help us by assembling the various articles, correcting
proof, and write something for it yourself if necessary? You would
be like the Editor's assistant on a magazine. It will be a lot of
work, every day, but it will interest you. The payment is arranged
for by the publisher who has a room for you in his building.”
Three days later I was filling a very agreeable position and if it
was not to last all my life long at least it could help me to find other
work to suit my taste; and I was working for a large book-firm in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain in a room covered with great photographs
of Saskia, of Lavinia, and of The Man With the Torn Glove.
M INGRES
I loved the arts passionately. As I had only to cross the Seine
to go from my house to the Louvre I went nearly every day and I
can say that my youth was spent in a splendid palace. I must do
justice to my professors for one thing: they made me understand
the Greek genius which they did not understand themselves. I spent
long hours at the Campana collection which had just been installed


ANATOLE FRANCE
573
and in the rooms with the Greek vases which were still generally
known as Etruscan. While I studied the decorations painted on
them I developed a taste for beauty of form and it was thus that
without suspecting it I came to understand the genius of Ingres.
It cannot be said that Ingres gave us back the much misunderstood
drawing of the ancients. He did not try to. His methods were those
of his time, but there is in Greek art a good taste which can be found
again only in him. Enthusiasms are abundant and diverse in a youth
of twenty. I admired Delacroix. The chapel of the angels at Saint-
Sulpice was a marvel to me and when people said that murals de-
manded less relief and greater tranquillity I thought that it must be
an ecstacy of wonder to put magnificent colonnades, houses, angels,
mountains, the heavy foliage of trees, luminous distances, the sky
—all in the space of twenty square feet. I thank Heaven that I did
not underrate Delacroix.
But Ingres inspired a stronger emotion: love. I knew well that
his art was too lofty to be accessible and I was grateful for having
penetrated to it. Love alone accomplishes such miracles. I under-
stood his drawing which clinging close to nature achieves perfect
beauty; with magnificent gravity I loved this most sensual and vo-
luptuous painting. Ingres lived two hundred feet away from my
home, on the quai Voltaire. I knew him by sight. He was more
than eighty years old. Age which is a disaster for ordinary mortals is
an apotheosis for men of genius. Whenever I met him I used to see
him escorted by a cortège of his masterpieces, and I was thrilled.
I was in the Théâtre du Châtelet on the night when The Magic
Flute was sung for the first time by Christine Nilsson. I had an or-
chestra seat. Long before the curtain rose the theatre was full. I
saw M Ingres coming towards me. It was he, his head like a bull,
his eyes still black and piercing, his short stature, his powerful gait.
It was known that he loved music. I realized that having the entrée
to the theatre he had come in and was vainly looking for a seat. I
was about to offer him mine; he did not give me the chance.
"Young man,” he said, "give me your place, I am Monsieur In-
a
a
gres.
I rose, radiant. The venerable old man had done me the honour
of choosing me to give up my place to M Ingres.
There is another painter of the French School who recovered


574
LA VIE EN FLEUR
something of the ancient beauty. It is Poussin; he is classic in the
disposition of his scene, in the attitudes and style of his figures. But
Ingres alone gives us pagan sensuality in his design. He does not go
back to the ancients by the quite uncertain methods of archaeolgy
but by the flight of genius.
MARIE BAGRATION
("Ήρατο δ'ου μάλοις, ουδε ρόδω, ουδέ κικκίνοις...)
ΘΕΟΚΡΙΤΟΥ. Κύκλωψ.
I was not much to look at, I danced badly: in conversation my
natural tendency was either towards serious ideas or fantastic bur-
lesque, and never towards notions facile or pleasing: I was always
at an extreme, being either more stupid or more intelligent than the
others, and was equally insufferable in either case; my liking for
women was too excessive to be shown and made me timid in their
presence; all of these were so many reasons for not getting on in the
world. I began to see that I was never invited again to many houses
where I had been introduced; there was, however, one salon in
which I seemed to be not too unwelcome; that of Madame Airiau,
wife of the engineer Airiau who was beginning to make his fortune.
In her luxurious apartment in the Place Vendôme she received ar-
tists, scientists, men of affairs, and women of qualities diverse
enough but all enhanced by the glitter of jewels and the majesty of
crinolines. I think that many Jews came, but no one noticed it, so
little did anti-Semitism exist in France at that time. What do I
say? The Jews were highly considered for having filled the high-
est offices, with the Foulds and the Péreires, in the July Govern-
ment and in the early days of the Empire. In this salon foreigners
were welcomed: Turks, Austrians, Germans, English, Spaniards,
Italians, and no one found anything to criticize. Paris, under Na-
poleon III, was the hostelry of the world. Guests from all the
countries of the globe were treated with cordial magnificence. Noth-
ing foreshadowed the xenophobia which later darkened the Third
Republic, those enmities, those suspicions, the poisoned fruit of
defeat which victory, fifty years later, multiplied and which, now,
will never die out. What charmed me most in Mme Airiau's salon
was Mme Airiau, quietly beautiful, slender, delicate, who talked


ANATOLE FRANCE
575
a
well and had shown herself sympathetic to me. One evening when
I called, I found among several familiars of the house, Turks most-
ly, a woman whom I did not know and to whom Mme Airiau pre-
sented me, the Princess Marie Bagration. I scarcely saw her, my
eyes dazzled; I could not say a word. I felt myself suddenly the
most miserable of men. In one moment I had lost the use of
my
senses, of all my faculties, my self-possession, my reason, on ac-
count of a woman from whom I felt farther removed than I could
be from any other human being. Prompt enough, usually, to seize
the detail of a toilette, I saw only that she was dressed in white and
wore a pearl necklace, that her arms were bare, but even that was
indistinct. Her very gentle splendour hid her from me. Little by
little I saw that she had quite dark chestnut hair, her eyes were black
and gold, her complexion even, and that she was a large woman,
with a figure full and free. I trembled when I heard her voice which
caressed and tormented me deliciously, a strange voice, a little bar-
baric, which sang. I do not know how long I was unable to speak.
Without my being aware of it, the salon had filled. I found myself
next to M Milsent whom I liked much and who was in my confi-
dence. It would be impossible for me to tell what subjects he
touched on at first and how he came to speak of the Princess Bagra-
tion; the rest of the conversation, on the contrary, has remained with
me. When he learned that I had never heard her spoken of he
showed his surprise. He himself knew only what everyone said of
her, which he summed up:
“She is a Russian princess, separated from her husband who is
constantly travelling. She lives,” he told me, “in Paris with her
mother who drinks ether and whom no one has ever seen. They are
supposed to be rich but suspected of not being real Bagrations. The
Princess is a sculptor. Her life is mysterious. What do you
think
of her ?"
I could not answer. M Milsent resumed:
"Well, since you have met her, go and call on her. She's at
home every day in her studio in the rue Basse-du-Rempart after five
o'clock. You meet interesting people there. Turgenev, Monsieur and
Madame Viardot, the pianist Alexandre Max, and queer women.”
I promised myself that I would not go to see her, I swore it; but
I knew very well that I should go and the rue Basse-du-Rempart
was already photographed on my brain.
>


576
LA VIE EN FLEUR
a
When the Princess took tea I came close to her; I still saw her in
a haze and yet with that firmness of line which was her chief char-
acteristic; her movements were broad, a bit brusque, but more ryth-
mic and more musical than those of other women. What struck me
with a sort of terror was the air of indifference upon her features,
the beautiful face was shut like a tomb. If, at that time, I had had
to define the emotion I felt for this woman I think I would have
said: it is hate, but hate as disarmed, as tranquil, and as beautiful as
its object. She left early. I experienced, at her departure, an im-
pression that she had not gone from me and that henceforth, wher-
ever she was, she would be close to me. And now, in truth, I saw her
more distinctly than I could have in her presence. I rediscovered
all of her, her little forehead which met the bridge of her nose in an
almost straight line; the disks of her eyes where gold swam deep
against a sky which was almost black; the nostrils proud as wings;
the lips half-open, the two red arcs meeting for the most beautiful
of solitary kisses; the powerful white neck; the breasts far apart on
her wide bosom. Yes, I hated her for taking my life without know-
ing it, for giving me nothing in its place but a phantom, for I had i
not a moment's illusion that I could be anything to her; at that time
I felt a timidity in the presence of women which I was to be a long
time curing; but it was not timidity I felt before her; it was fright,
terror, a blessed horror. Mme Airiau, when I came to take my leave,
said to me sharply:
“Au revoir, monsieur. And come back with a different expres-
sion.”
I perceived that my hurt was greater than I had thought, that
I was letting it show and bore publicly the signs of my
emotion. I
was overwhelmed. Even more: when I returned to my room which
was not beautiful but which I loved, I was filled with disgust.
Whatever was not she, was insipid or odious. But I did not know
where to dodge the phantom I had brought back with me.
The next day I found the phantom again.
I went to the Bibliothèque Nationale and asked for the books I
needed. I had to write an article on Paolo Ucello. Incapable of
reflection and without control over my intelligence, I acquitted my-
self well of my task and realized that when you have a natural
disposition for it, mechanical application is enough for success in
any intellectual work and most often it is out of disgraceful lazi-
ness that we wait for inspiration. It was the sixth of May; I fixed


ANATOLE FRANCE
577
upon the fourteenth for my visit to the studio in the rue Basse-du-
Rempart. Meanwhile my obsession grew daily more calm and
more lovable. I felt that I was wrong to revisit her who had left
her shade with me, but I did not go back on my word. On the four-
teenth of May I dressed with unusual care and chose my newest
cravat. I had two scarf-pins; one a flower in enamel half open
between two golden leaves; the other was made of a silver medal
of Alexandria with the head of Jupiter Ammon. I chose the medal
as being better art. Remembering my silence and my awkwardness
when I had been presented to the Princess Bagration, I thought that
she would not recognize me and would refuse to see me. But what
matter? I had nothing to fear, having nothing to hope. The house
was low; a little staircase led, in three flights, to the studio. I en-
tered. She received me as if she had known me always and without
letting go of her modelling-tool excused herself for not giving me
her hand which was full of clay. She was dressed in a grey smock
which hung straight down. This blouse was a precious and astonish-
ing revelation at a time when women did not dress in accordance
with their figures and superposed a dressmaker's edifice on their
natural foundation. To-day it is impossible to conceive the glory
given to a woman like Marie Bagration by this rough envelope
which bore her as on sails far from the vulgarity of the world to
the happy regions of nymphs and goddesses. Her flesh was no
longer touched with gold, as I had seen it, by the light of candles
and lamps; but the studio light, coming from the ceiling, fell with-
out a break on her forehead and nose, which were on the same plane,
and gave a divine purity to her face. She was finishing the bust of
M Viardot who was old and posed half-asleep. Her steps when she
withdrew from the bust to criticize and returned to work upon it
were quite short and indicated a slight myopia. It seemed to me that
her modelling was vigorous and had a certain brutality. The studio
was cluttered with casts and old ikons; Persian stuffs were scattered
carelessly about. M Viardot whom I had already seen many times,
was not alone with her. Three men, one young, the other two old,
were sitting on the divans in a heap of cushions. At first I did not
know who they were for the mistress of the house never made in-
troductions. They were smoking cigarettes and hardly spoke. I had
been there some twenty minutes when Marie Bagration spoke to
a tall blond young man.
“Cyrille,” she said, “play something for me.”


578
LA VIE EN FLEUR
1
He went to the piano and played with prodigious virtuosity. I
had the humiliation not to know what he was playing. I read
Chopin, Scherzo, on the music. I was regarding the movements of
the woman who was the most beautiful music in the world for me.
When he was allowed to stop posing and while Marie Bagration
spread a damp cloth over the bust, M Viardot shook himself and
little by little came out of his daze. He was a great lover of art
and had published some highly esteemed books on Spanish paint-
ing. He was also an excellent man. He congratulated me kindly
on my collaboration in a great work on painting. Himself the hus-
band of the most perfect singer of her time, he congratulated Cyrille
Balachow on his impassioned and ardent playing. It was from him
that I learned the name of the young virtuoso. I was in a new
world of which I knew nothing. I departed without having ex-
changed two words with Marie Bagration.
I did not know her and perhaps I did not want to know her.
Wiser than I will seem to those who read this story, wiser than I
myself thought, I had penetrated to the secret of Eros, which is that
true love desires mystery. In truth we love only what we do not
know. By what road had I reached this inaccessible truth? I had
all that can be had of love: a phantom. I walked with my phantom
in the woods of Meudon and Saint-Cloud. And I was happy. I
paid a visit to Mme Airiau who received me almost as affectionately
as usual, but she did not speak of the Princess Bagration. M Milsent
whom I found there, took advantage of a moment when we were not
observed and asked me whether I was visiting the studio in the rue
Basse-du-Rempart. I answered yes; but rarely.
“She does not know how to receive,” he replied, "she is a sav-
age.
My visits to the rue Basse-du-Rempart continued without varia-
tions. Always as I crossed the threshold of the studio I seemed to
be transported to another planet. Once I found Marie Bagration
alone, standing before her tripod and caressing a little figure of a
naked woman with her finger. I wanted to talk to her about her art
and, trying to avoid banal praise, I congratulated her on a firmness
of accent infrequent in women. She did not appear dissatisfied at
what I said, but she let the conversation drop. I thought to keep it
up by speaking about Greek art which I admired madly. She did
not follow me into these distant regions and the conversation fell
.


ANATOLE FRANCE
579
this time not to be revived. Letting the sculptor work in peace, I
was silent. After twenty minutes of quiet she showed me a re-sewn
book which was lying on the divan and told me to read her the pas-
sage where she had turned down the page. It was a volume of a
very common edition of Plato, translated into French by some pro-
fessor. The page was turned down at this place in The Banquet
which I read in a loud voice:
“Although many had achieved many noble acts, to only some,
to be easily counted, did the gods grant this as a gift, for the soul
to return from Hades; but that of Alcestis seemed so beautiful to
men and gods alike that they sent her back, struck with admiration
of the deed. Thus do even the gods especially honour the zeal be-
stowed on love and valour.
“But Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, did the gods send back from
Hades with his object unaccomplished, by showing him the phan-
tom merely of his wife, for whom he went, and not restoring her
real self; because he appeared to act the coward, as being a harper,
and not daring, like Alcestis, to die for Love, but continuing to go
alive to Hades. Hence on this very account did the gods impose
on him a punishment, and caused his death to take place at the
hands of women."
She had listened to my reading with the apathy she had in all
things. But at the last phrase she interrupted me with this reflec-
tion:
“So Plato knew that women are more courageous than men. Then
why does he base his theory of love in The Banquet on the contrary
idea ?”
She made me continue my reading. At the end of a quarter of
an hour came a Russian woman whose name, I soon discovered, was
Nathalie Scherer. They kissed and treated each other as old friends.
Nathalie might have been thirty-five; her flat face, her high cheek-
bones, gave her something of the hardy beauty of a faun.
For six months I haunted the home of Marie Bagration without
'making the least progress towards intimacy with her who received
me, without even growing accustomed to the beauty whose very
splendour hid it from me. But this woman who was so foreign to
me when I came near her became familiar as soon as I left her pres-
a


580
LA VIE EN FLEUR
ence.
When I could escape and flee to the woods around Ver-
sailles, I took her with me. I can say that, because it is true. And
arm in arm we followed the secret paths, drunk with joy and suffer-
ing.
One day I read in a newspaper:
“The Princess Marie Bagration died at midnight yesterday at her
home, rue Basse-du-Rempart.
The
paper said nothing more. I knew her who had gone too lit-
tle to weep at her loss, but I was destroyed. It was devastating,
the earth had opened, engulfing my treasure, destroying what had
been all the beauty of the world for me.
I rushed to M Viardot. I found him with Cyrille Balachow, the
pianist.
“This death!" I cried.
The voice of Cyrille echoed:
"This death."
“Marie Bagration committed suicide,” said Viardot, "and in an
unusual manner for a woman. She was found in the morning lying
on her bed in a white dress, her string of pearls around her neck, her
right temple pierced by a bullet, and the revolver in her hand.”
I asked if the cause were known.
“Her mother is mad,” said Viardot. “Her father, General Ba-
gration, was a suicide. There is certainly an immediate cause. But
I do not know it."
Cyrille's lean hands shook for a long time. Then:
"The public ascribed many and diverse loves to her. A strange
thing—those who were always at her house, like me, never knew of
a lover. But what can we know? Let us go bid her good-bye.”
The sculptor's studio had been transformed into a Star-chamber.
She lay upon a bed, a little round spot marked on her temple. The
shifting flames of the candles animated her face. Her tragic pallor
alone told of death. In her features we found still the apathy she
had always shown while she was alive-possibly because she, like
the ancients, regarded expression as the enemy of beauty. They had
dressed her in a high-necked white dress. Her mother, seated beside
her, thin, dishevelled, peered about her like a witch. Friends came
in little groups and slowly departed.
To be concluded



PRIDE.
BY DAVID EDSTRÖM


1
|



FIAT LUX.
BY DAVID EDSTRÖM





STROPHES
BY O. W. DE LUBICZ-MILOSZ
Translated by Ezra Pound
It will be as it is in this life, the same room,
Yes, the same! and at daybreak, the bird of time in the leafage,
Pale as a dead woman's face; and the servants
Moving; and the icy, hollow noise of the fountain-taps,
Terrible, terrible youth; and the heart empty.
Oh! it will be as it is in this life; the poor voices,
The winter voices in the worn-out suburbs;
And the window-mender's cracked street-cry;
The dirty bonnet, with an old woman under it
Howling a catalogue of stale fish, and the blue-apron'd fellow
Spitting on his chapped hands
And bellowing like an angel of judgement,
It will be exactly as here and in this life, and the table,
The bible, Goethe, the ink with the same temporal odour,
Paper, pale; woman, white thought-reader!
Pen, the portrait,
It will be the same,
My child, as in this life, the same garden,
Long, long, tufted, darkish, and, at lunch-time,
Pleasure of being together; that is-
People unacquainted, having only in common
A knowledge of their unacquaintance-
And that one must put on one's best clothes
To go into the night—at the end of things,
Loveless and lampless;
It will be the same as in this life,


582
STROPHES
The same lane in the forest; and at mid-day, in mid-autumn
When the clean road turns like a weeping woman
To gather the valley flowers,
We will cross in our walks,
As in the yesterday you have forgotten,
In the gown whose colour you have forgotten.


SEA AND SARDINIA
BY D. H. LAWRENCE
II
CAGLIARI
Stone
TRANGE the feeling round the harbour: as if everybody had
gone away. Yet there are people about. It is festa however,
Epiphany. But it is so different from Sicily: none of the suave
Greek-Italian charms, none of the airs and graces, none of the glam-
our. Rather bare, rather stark, rather cold and yellow-somehow
like Malta, without Malta's foreign liveliness. Thank Goodness
no one wants to carry my knapsack. Thank Goodness no one has a
fit at the sight of it. Thank Heaven no one takes any notice. They
stand cold and aloof, and don't move.
a
On the great parapet above the Municipal Hall and above the
corkscrew high-street a thick fringe of people is hanging, looking
down. We go to look too: and behold, below there is the entrance
to a costume ball. Yes, there is a china shepherdess in pale blue and
powdered hair, crook, ribbons, Marie Antoinette satin daintiness
and all, slowly and haughtily walking up the road, and gazing su-
perbly round. She is not more than twelve years old, moreover.
Two servants accompany her. She gazes supremely from right to
left as she goes, mincingly, and I would give her the prize for haugh-
,
tiness. She is perfect-a little too haughty for Watteau, but “mar-
quise” to a T. The people watch in silence. There is no yelling and
screaming and running. They watch in a suitable silence.
Comes a carriage with two fat bay horses slithering, almost swim-
ming up the corkscrew high-street. That in itself is a tour-de-force:
for Cagliari doesn't have carriages. Imagine a street like a cork-
screw stair, paved with slippery stones. And imagine two bay horses
rowing their way up it: they did not walk a single stride. But they
arrived. And there fluttered out three strangely exquisite children,
two frail, white satin Pierrots and a white satin Pierrette. They
a


584
SEA AND SARDINIA
were like fragile winter butterflies with black spots. They had a
curious, indefinable remote elegance, something conventional and
fin-de-siècle. But not our century. The wonderful artificial delicacy
of the eighteenth. The boys had big, perfect ruffs round their necks:
and behind were slung old, cream-coloured Spanish shawls, for
warmth. They were frail as tobacco flowers, and with remote, cold
elegance they fluttered by the carriage, from which emerged a large
black-satin Mama. Fluttering their queer little butterfly feet on the
pavement, hovering round the large Mama like three frail-tissued
ghosts, they found their way past the solid, seated Carabinieri into
the hall.
Followed another white satin marquise with a maid-servant. They
a
are strong on the eighteenth century in Cagliari. Perhaps it is the
last bright reality to them. The nineteenth hardly counts.
I see my first peasant in costume. He is an elderly, upright, hand-
some man, beautiful in the black-and-white costume. He wears the
full-sleeved white shirt and the close black bodice of thick, native
frieze, cut low. From this sticks out a short kilt or frill, of the same
black frieze, a band of which goes between the legs, between the
full, loose drawers of coarse linen. The drawers are banded below
the knee into tight black frieze gaiters. On his head he has the long
black stocking cap, hanging down behind. How handsome he is,
and so beautifully male! He walks with his hands loose behind his
back, slowly, upright, and aloof. The lovely unapproachableness,
indomitable. And the flash of the black and white, the slow stride
of the full white drawers, the black gaiters and black cuirass with
the bolero, then the great white sleeves and white breast again, and
once more the black cap—what marvellous massing of the contrast,
marvellous, and superb, as on a magpie! How beautiful maleness
is, if it finds its right expression—and how perfectly ridiculous it is
made in modern clothes.
There is another peasant too, a young one with a swift eye and
hard cheek and hard, dangerous thighs. He has folded his stocking
cap, so that it comes forward to his brow like a Phrygian cap. He
wears close knee-breeches and close sleeved waistcoat of thick brown-
ish stuff that looks like leather. Over the waistcoat a sort of cuirass
of black, rusty sheepskin, the curly wool outside. So he strides, talk-
ing to a comrade. How fascinating it is, after the soft Italians, to
see these limbs in their close knee-breeches, so definite, so manly,
with the old fierceness in them still. One realizes, with horror, that


D. H. LAWRENCE
585
the race of men is almost extinct in Europe. Only Christlike heroes
and woman-worshipping Don Juans, and rabid equality-mongrels.
The old, hardy, indomitable male is gone. His fierce singleness is
quenched. The last sparks are dying out in Sardinia and Spain.
Nothing left but the herd-proletariat and the herd-equality mon-
grelism, and the wistful poisonous self-sacrificial cultured soul.
How detestable!
But that curious, flashing, black-and-white costume! I seem to
have known it before: to have worn it even: to have dreamed it.
To have dreamed it: to have had actual contact with it. It belongs
in some way to something in me—to my past, perhaps. I don't
know. But the uneasy sense of blood-familiarity haunts me. I know
I have known it before. It is something of the same uneasiness I
feel before Mount Eryx: but without the awe this time.
streets, and
They are amusing, these peasant girls and women: so brisk and
defiant. They have straight backs, like little walls, and decided,
well-drawn brows. And they are amusingly on the alert. There is
no eastern creeping. Like sharp, brisk birds they dart along the
you feel they would fetch you a bang over the head as
lief as look at you. Tenderness, thank Heaven, does not seem to be
a Sardinian quality. Italy is so tender-like cooked macaroni-
yards and yards of soft tenderness ravelled round everything. Here
men don't idealize women, by the looks of things. Here they don't
make those great leering eyes, the inevitable yours-to-command look
of Italian males. When the men from the country look at these
women, then it is Mind-yourself, my lady. I should think the grov-
elling Madonna-worship is not much of a Sardinian feature. These
women have to look out for themselves, keep their own backbones
stiff and their knuckles hard. Man is going to be male Lord if he
can. And woman isn't going to give him too much of his own way,
either. So there you have it, the fine old martial split between the
sexes. It is tonic and splendid, really, after so much sticky inter-
mingling and backboneless Madonna-worship. The Sardinian isn't
looking for the "noble woman nobly planned.” No, thank you. He
wants that young madam over there, a young stiff-necked genera-
tion that she is. Far better sport than with the nobly-planned sort:
hollow frauds that they are. Better sport too than with a Carmen,
who gives herself away too much. In these women there is some-
thing shy and defiant and un-get-at-able. The defiant, splendid split
.


586
SEA AND SARDINIA
between the sexes, each absolutely determined to defend his side, her
side from assault. So the meeting has a certain wild, salty savour,
each the deadly unknown to the other. And at the same time, each
his own, her own native pride and courage, taking the dangerous
leap and scrambling back.
Give me the old, salty way of love. How I am nauseated with
sentiment and nobility, the macaroni slithery-slobbery mess of mod-
ern adorations.
TO MANDAS
The coach was fairly full of people, returning from market. On
these railways the third class coaches are not divided into compart-
ments. They are left open, so that one sees everybody, as down a
room. The attractive saddle-bags, bercole, were disposed anywhere,
and the bulk of the people settled down to a lively conversazione.
It is much nicest, on the whole, to travel third class on the railway.
There is space, there is air, and it is like being in a lively inn, every-
body in good spirits.
At our end was plenty of room. Just across the gangway was an
elderly couple, like two children, coming home very happily. He
was fat, fat all over, with a white moustache and a little not-unami-
able frown. She was a tall, lean, brown woman, in a brown full-
skirted dress and black apron, with huge pocket. She wore no head
covering, and her iron-grey hair was parted smoothly. They were
rather pleased and excited being in the train. She took all her money
out of her big pocket, and counted it and gave it to him: all the ten
lira notes, and the five lira, and the two and the one, peering at the
dirty scraps of pink-backed one lira notes to see if they were good.
Then she gave him her halfpennies. And he stowed them away in
the trouser pocket, standing up to push them down his fat leg. And
then one saw, to one's amazement, that the whole of his shirt-tail
was left out behind, like a sort of apron worn backwards. Why—a
mystery. He was one of those fat, good-natured, unheeding men
with a little masterful frown, such as usually have tall, lean, hard-
faced, obedient wives. They were very happy.
After a long pull, we come to a station after a stretch of loneli-
ness. Each time, it looks as if there were nothing beyond-no more
habitations. And each time we come to a station.
a


D. H. LAWRENCE
587
a
a
Most of the people have left the train. And as with men driving
in a gig, who get down at every public-house, so the passengers usu-
a
ally alight for an airing at each station. Our old fat friend stands
up and tucks his shirt-tail comfortably in his trousers, which trou-
sers all the time make one hold one's breath, for they seem at each
very moment to be just dropping right down: and he clambers out,
followed by the long, brown stalk of a wife.
So the train sits comfortably for five or ten minutes, in the way
they have. At last we hear whistles and horns, and our fat friend
running and clinging like a fat crab to the very end of the train as
it sets off. At the same instant a loud shriek and a bunch of shouts
from outside. We all jump up. There, down the line, is the long
brown stalk of a wife. She had just walked back to a house some
hundred yards off, for a few words, and has now seen the train mov-
ing.
Now behold her with hands thrown to heaven, and hear the wild
shriek "Madonna !” through all the hubbub. But she picks up her
two skirt-knees, and with her thin legs in grey stockings starts with
a mad rush after the train. In vain. The train inexorably pursues
its course. Prancing, she reaches one end of the platform as we
leave the other end. Then she realizes it is not going to stop for
her. And then, O horror, her long arms thrown out in wild suppli-
cation after the retreating train: then flung aloft to God: then
brought down in absolute despair on her head. And this is the last
sight we have of her, clutching her poor head in agony and doubling
forward. She is left-abandoned.
The poor fat husband has been all the time on the little outside
platform at the end of the carriage, holding out his hand to her and
shouting frenzied scolding to her and frenzied yells for the train to
stop. And the train has not stopped. And she is left-left on that
.
God-forsaken station in the waning light.
So, his face all bright, his eyes round and bright as two stars, ab-
solutely transfigured by dismay, chagrin, anger, and distress, he
comes and sits in his seat, ablaze, stiff, speechless. His face is almost
beautiful in its blaze of conflicting emotions. For some time he is
as if unconscious in the midst of his feelings. Then anger and re-
sentment crop out of his consternation. He turns with a flash to the
long-nosed, insidious, Phoenician-looking guard. Why couldn't
--
they stop the train for her! And immediately, as if someone had set


588
SEA AND SARDINIA
fire to him, off flares the guard. Heh!-the train can't stop for
every person's convenience! The train is a train—the time-table is
a
a time-table. What did the old woman want to take her trips down
the line for? Heh! She pays the penalty for her own inconsider-
ateness. Had she paid for the train-heh? And the fat man all the
time firing off his unheeding and unheeded answers. One minute-
only one minute—if he, the conductor had told the driver! If he,
the conductor, had shouted! A poor woman! Not another train!
What was she going to do! Her ticket? And no money. A poor
woman
There was a train back to Cagliari that night, said the conductor,
at which the fat man nearly burst out of his clothing like a bursting
seed-pod. He bounced on his seat. What good was that? What
good was a train back to Cagliari, when their home was in Snelli!
Making matters worse-
So they bounced and jerked and argued at one another, to their
hearts' content. Then the conductor retired, smiling subtly, in a
way they have. Our fat friend looked at us with hot, angry,
ashamed, grieved eyes and said it was a shame. Yes, we chimed, it
was a shame.
SORGONO: THE INN
In the bar a wretched candle was weeping light—uneasy, gloomy
men were drinking their Saturday-evening-home-coming dram. Cat-
tle lay down in the road, in the cold air, as if hopeless.
Had the milk come?
No.
When would it come?
He didn't know.
Well, what were we to do? Was there no room? Was there
nowhere where we could sit?
Yes, there was the "stanza' now.
Now! Taking the only weed of a candle, and leaving the drink-
ers in the dark, he led us down a dark and stumbly earthen passage,
over loose stones and an odd plank, as it would seem underground,
to the stanza: the room.
The stanza! It was pitch dark. But suddenly I saw a big fire of
a


D. H. LAWRENCE
589
a
oak-root, a brilliant, flamy, rich fire, and my rage in that second dis-
appeared.
The host, and the candle, forsook us at the door. The stanza
would have been in complete darkness, save for that rushing bou-
quet of new flames in the chimney, like fresh flowers. By this fire-
light we saw the room. It was like a dungeon, absolutely empty,
with an uneven, earthen floor, quite dry, and high bare walls,
gloomy, with a handbreadth of window high up. There was no fur-
niture at all, save a little wooden bench, a foot high, before the fire,
and several home-made-looking rush mats rolled up and leaning
against the walls. Furthermore a chair before the fire on which
hung wet table-napkins. Apart from this, it was a high, dark, naked
prison-dungeon.
But it was quite dry, it had an open chimney, and a gorgeous new
fire rushing like a waterfall upwards among the craggy stubs of a
pile of dry oak roots. I hastily put the chair and the wet corpse-
cloths to one side. We sat on the low bench side by side in the dark,
in front of this rippling rich fire, in front of the cavern of the open
chimney, and we did not care any more about the dungeon and the
darkness. Man can live without food, but he can't live without fire.
It is an Italian proverb. We had found the fire, like new gold. And
we sat in front of it, a little way back, side by side on the low form,
our feet on the uneven earthen floor, and felt the flame-light rip-
pling upwards over our faces, as if we were bathing in some gor-
geous stream of fieriness. I forgave the dirty-breasted host every-
thing and was as glad as if I had come into a kingdom.
So we sat alone for half an hour, smiling into the flames, bathing
our faces in the glow. From time to time I was aware of steps in the
tunnel-like passage outside, and of presences peering. But no one
came. I was aware too of the faint steaming of the beastly table-
napkins, the only other occupants of the room.
In dithers a candle, and an elderly, bearded man in gold-coloured
corduroys, and an amazing object on a long, long spear. He put the
candle on the mantel-ledge, and crouched at the side of the fire, ar-
ranging the oak-roots. He peered strangely and fixedly in the fire.
And he held up the speared object before our faces.
It was a kid that he ha
come to roast. But it was a kid opened


590
SEA AND SARDINIA
out, made quite flat, and speared like a flat fan on a long iron stalk.
a
It was a really curious sight. And it must have taken some doing.
The whole of the skinned kid was there, the head curled in against
a shoulder, the stubby cut ears, the eyes, the teeth, the few hairs
of the nostrils: and the feet curled curiously round, like an animal
that puts its forepaw over its ducked head: and the hindlegs twisted
indescribably up: and all skewered flat-wise upon the long iron rod,
so that it was a complete flat pattern. It reminded me intensely of
those distorted, slim-limbed, dog-like animals which figure on the
old Lombard ornaments, distorted and curiously infolded upon
themselves. Celtic illuminations also have these distorted, involut-
ed creatures.
The old man flourished the flat kid like a bannerette, whilst he
arranged the fire. Then, in one side of the fire-place wall he poked
the point of the rod. He himself crouched on the hearth-end, in the
half-shadow at the other side of the fire-place, holding the further
end of the long iron rod. The kid was thus extended before the fire,
like a hand-screen. And he could spin it round at will.
But the hole in the masonry of the chimney-piece was not satis-
factory. The point of the rod kept slipping, and the kid came down
against the fire. He muttered and muttered to himself, and tried
again. Then at length he reared up the kid-banner whilst he got
large stones from a dark corner. He arranged these stones so that
the iron point rested on them. He himself sat away on the opposite
side of the fire-place, on the shadowy hearth-end, and with queer,
spell-bound black eyes and completely immovable face, he watched
the flames and the kid, and held the handle end of the rod.
We asked him if the kid was for the evening meal—and he said
it was. It would be good! And he said yes, and looked with chagrin
at the bit of ash on the meat, where it had slipped. It is a point of
honour that it should never touch the ash. Did they do all their
meat this way? He said they did. And wasn't it difficult to put
the kid thus on the iron rod? He said it was not easy, and he eyed
the joint closely, and felt one of the forelegs, and muttered that it
was not fixed properly.
He spoke with a very soft mutter, hard to catch, and sideways,
never to us direct. But his manner was gentle, soft, muttering, ret-
icent, sensitive. He asked us where we came from, and where we
were going: always in his soft mutter. And what nation were we,
were we French? Then he went on to say there was a war—but he


D. H. LAWRENCE
591
thought it was finished. There was a war because the Austrians
wanted to come into Italy again. But the French and the English
came to help Italy. A lot of Sardinians had gone to it. But let us
hope it was all finished. He thought it was—young men of Sorgono
had been killed. He hoped it was finished.
Then he reached for the candle and peered at the kid. It was evi-
dent he was the born roaster. He held the candle and looked for a
long time at the sizzling side of the meat, as if he would read por-
tents. Then he held his spit to the fire again. And it was as if time
immemorial were roasting itself another meal. I sat holding the
candle.
TO NUORO
The bus starts at half past nine. The campanile is clanging nine.
Two or three girls go down the road in their Sunday costume of
purplish brown. We go up the road, into the clear, ringing frosty
air, to find the lane.
And again, from above, how beautiful it is in the sharp morning!
The whole village lies in bluish shadow, the hills with their thin
pale oak-trees are in bluish shadow still, only in the distance the
frost-glowing sun makes a wonderful, jewel-like radiance on the
pleasant hills, wild and thinly-wooded, of this interior region. Real
fresh wonder-beauty all around. And such humanity.
Returning to the village we find a little shop and get biscuits and
a
cigarettes. And we find our friends the bus-men. They are shy this
morning. They are ready for us when we are ready.
The automobile took us rushing and winding up the hill, some-
times through cold, solid-seeming shadow, sometimes across a patch
of sun. There was thin, bright ice in the ruts, and deep grey hoar-
frost on the grass. I cannot tell how the sight of the grass and bushes
heavy with frost and wild in their own primitive wildness charmed
me. The slopes of the steep wild hills came down shaggy and bushy,
with a few berries lingering, and the long grass-stalks sere with the
frost. Again the dark valley sank below like a ravine, but shaggy,
bosky, unbroken. It came upon me how I loved the sight of the
blue-shadowed, tawny-tangled winter with its frosty standstill. The
young oaks keep their brown leaves. And doing so, surely they are
best with a thin edge of rime.
a


592
SEA AND SARDINIA
One begins to realize how old the real Italy is, how man-gripped,
and how withered. England is far more wild and savage and lonely,
in her country parts. Here since endless centuries man has tamed
the impossible mountain side into terraces, he has quarried the rock,
he has fed his sheep among the thin woods, he has cut his boughs
and burnt his charcoal, he has been half domesticated even among
the wildest fastnesses. This is what is so attractive about the remote
places, the Abruzzi, for example. Life is so primitive, so pagan, so
strangely heathen and half savage. And yet it is human life. And
the wildest country is half humanized, half brought under. It is all
conscious. Wherever one is in Italy, either one is conscious of the
present, or of the mediaeval influences, or of the far, mysterious gods
of the early Mediterranean. Wherever one is, the place has its con-
scious genius. Man has lived there and brought forth his conscious-
ness there and in some way brought that place to consciousness,
given it its expression, and, really, finished it. The expression may
be Proserpine, or Pan, or even the strange “shrouded gods” of the
Etruscans or the Sikels, none the less it is an expression. The land
has been humanized, through and through: and we in our own tis-
sued consciousness bear the results of this humanization. So that
for us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascin-
ating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time.
Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after
many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.
And then—and then—there is a final feeling of sterility. It is all
worked out. It is all known: connu, connu!
This Sunday morning, seeing the frost among the tangled, still
savage bushes of Sardinia, my soul thrilled again. This was not all
known. This was not all worked out. Life was not only a process
of rediscovering backwards. It is that, also: and it is that intensely.
Italy has given me back I know not what of myself, but a very, very
great
deal. She has found for me so much that was lost: like a re-
stored Osiris. But this morning in the omnibus I realize that, apart
from the great re-discovery backwards, which one must make before
one can be whole at all, there is a move forwards. There are un-
known, unworked lands where the salt has not lost its savour. But
one must have perfected oneself in the great past first.
-
The End



Tanah
Courtesy of Scott and Fowles
BY JOHN FLAXMAN
VOLGITI, CHE FAI? VEDI LÀ FARINATA
INFERNO: 10.


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Courtesy of Scott and Fowles
PURGATORIO: 27. BY JOHN FLAXMAN
CIASCUN DI NOI D'UN GRADO FECE LETTO
.





DUBLIN LETTER
October, 1921.
THP
HE possible consequences to Irish literature of the revolu-
tionary changes impending in this country, suggest the subject
of this letter. These changes may perhaps best be summarized as
the passing of Kathleen ni Hoolihan. The Irish citizen will no
longer be an idealist by right of birth, and Irish literature will cease
to enjoy a sort of literary compensation for its acknowledged po-
litical misfortunes. To some extent, Sinn Fein has prepared Ire-
land for this transformation; for the doctrine of Sinn Fein has
always been that the Ireland of the past couple of centuries, out of
which the figure of Kathleen ni Hoolihan emerged, was not so much
a nation under the eclipse as a nation afflicted by a profound demor-
alization. Ireland had but to remember herself to become once
again the final seat of the conquerors of Western Europe and its
first civilizers, the proud race which had allowed herself to be vic-
timized by a mongrel breed of foreigners, but would still be what
it had been. Nay, all through the period of English domination,
.
Sinn Fein has taught that Irish civilization has remained in being,
maintaining in its language the potentiality of a lofty and self-
sufficient culture. Even in its degradation and suppression, Ireland
has affected the course of human history: McArthur Griffith, for
example, in The Resurrection of Hungary (Third edition, 1918)
shows how the Great War followed logically from the Act of
Union; and in the same work he demonstrates that Irish ideas have
been the main agents in building up both modern Germany and the
United States of America. And now this negative influence which
Ireland has exercised is to be converted into a positive one, to be
expressed presumably in modern Gaelic literature. The part as-
signed to this literature might seem beyond its energies; but under
the influence of Sinn Fein ideas, Ireland has acquired a happy ca-
pacity for regarding possibilities and potentialities as the true facts.
A professor of the National University has recently recorded his
opinion that “the age of Pearse will, in after time, have a glory like
the age of Pericles” (Arthur Clery: Dublin Essays. Maunsel).


594
DUBLIN LETTER
I quote these utterances, not at all to invite ridicule, but to illus-
trate the mood of exaltation engendered in Ireland by the political
movement, and to indicate that the traditional rôle of literature in
Ireland is already changed completely. Anglo-Irish literature,
from the time of Moore, has adapted itself to the notion of Ireland
as a disinherited political entity; modern Irish literature, in fact,
has arisen out of the sense of Ireland's privation of political inde-
pendence, almost as the idealism of the Jews originated in exile
and oppression. Would we have heard of the New Jerusalem
but for the Babylonian captivity? And would we have heard
that other-worldly strain in Irish literature, which we call the Celtic
spirit, but for the barbarities of Mountjoy and Cromwell, the Penal
Laws, and the suppression of Irish manufactures? One might go
on to ask, would the Irish, any more than the Jews, have realized
themselves as they have done, had there been no Dispersal? In
spite of all the misfortunes of their country, the Irish have, one
way or another, played a considerable part in the world; and all
their achievements, in which not only Sinn Feiners glory, might be
adduced in proof of the assertion that in blending with other races
they have hitherto found their true vocation.
In this connexion, it is permissible to doubt whether political
independence is particularly favourable to, or indeed has anything
to do with, the exercise of that form of human power which we call
literature. While debarred from political responsibility, the power
of a nation may go into literature, and this perhaps has happened
in Ireland during the last century. What is far more important
than political independence, from the point of view of national
literature, is the existence of tradition; and the literary tradition
of the Anglo-Irish has not been definite enough to hold or greatly
influence those more stirring spirits who have found Ireland too
small for them and have added to the achievements of English lit-
erature. Yet within Ireland itself, Anglo-Irish literature has af-
firmed the principle of nationality. It has almost reached the point
of claiming for Ireland a kingdom not of this world; an affiliation
to antiquity which has saved it from modern vulgarity; an un-
earthly vision which has come to it from privation, and preserved
it from the follies of infidelity. And now this tradition is already
overthrown, or is about to be reconstituted, and the world of lit-
erature, perhaps, need not expect to hear from Ireland for some
time: until, in fact, some new tradition has come into being.


JOHN EGLINTON
595
a
What will this tradition be? The bright young men who inter-
pret Sinn Fein to us have no hesitation in their answer; it will be
a resumption of the Gaelic tradition. This very day I read in a
newspaper,
in an article on Mediaeval Ireland: "Our national life
is resuming to-day the course which it was taking six hundred years
ago. . . . In the Gaeltacht even the advance guard of Renaissance
ideals has never found a footing." The Sinn Fein President has
even declared that “Ireland with its language and without freedom
is preferable to Ireland with freedom and without its language."
In face of such energies of belief as Sinn Fein carries with it, any
attempt to estimate the degree of vitality in the Irish language
would be invidious. We hear continual reports of its wonderful
activities, but feel at times with regard to these somewhat as one
feels in reading the daily bulletins as to the health of some infirm
sovereign, whose life is so important to the existing régime that the
truth is perhaps not allowed to reach the public. The continued
life of the Irish language is, in fact, not only essential to the claim
of Sinn Fein to a distinct Irish civilization, but is not without im-
portance to Anglo-Irish literature.
I have myself been seduced by the almost Hellenic aspect of a
page of printed Irish, to attempt an entrance into that ancient Irish
world through the gateway of its language. When learning a mod-
ern European language, you find yourself at once within an ordered
system of things, with roads leading to the citadel, the Olympic
abode of poets and philosophers, whither you press forwards gradu-
ally dropping your text-books; but as you advance in the knowledge
of Irish, you seem to penetrate further and further into a pathless
expanse, without a citadel in sight: you meet no passengers to and
from a capital, only wayfarers with a vague errand like your own,
who stop for a moment to practise their “Irish” upon you, and leave
you in the waste again. This is no doubt the charm of the Irish
language, that you can get away in it from the pavement and the
newspaper; but I have long been of opinion that Nature in Ireland
is a full equivalent for its ancient language, and offers you all that
a
the language can offer, and much which it cannot. They say that
the secret of the soil is unknown to the mere English-speaker: the
truth is that there is more than one Ireland, just as archaeologists
are acquainted with several cities of Rome, and I know not how
many Troy towns. The Ireland at present on the surface and with
which I am acquainted, is an English-speaking country. I need


596
DUBLIN LETTER
only mention the fact that the extreme claim for the Irish language
—for instance, that put forward by Mr Griffith in his Resurrection
of Hungary—is expressed in the most excellent and nervous
English.
It is therefore to be anticipated that if Ireland is ever again to
be, in Dr Johnson's phrase, the "quiet habitation of literature and
sanctity,” it will use the English language as the natural medium
of its thought and devotion. The English language, after all, will
have lost a good deal of its invidiousness when it is no longer the
language of the conquering but of the subject-race; and it will be
enough for the Anglo-Irish tradition that the English occupation
has established the English language as the vehicle of thought in
Ireland. As to which of the traditions—Gaelic or Anglo-Irish-
is the more productive, there can be little doubt. The creative spirit
has manifested itself within the Anglo-Irish tradition. Even where
the Gaelic tradition appears to succeed, it is only doing what the
Anglo-Irish have done, not always satisfactorily to Catholic Ireland,
but with a regard for the truth of things which has on the whole
satisfied the world. Our laws may hereafter be promulgated in
Gaelic; but it will be for the Anglo-Irish to say, with Andrew
Fletcher of Saltoun, “If a man be permitted to make all the ballads,
he need not care who should make the laws of a nation."
a
JOHN EGLINTON


BOOK REVIEWS
ARRIVISTE AND ARISTOCRAT
Erik Dorn. By Ben Hecht. 12mo. 409 pages. G. P.
Putnam's Sons. $2.
THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM. By Stephen Vincent
Benét. 12m0. 359 pages. Henry Holt and Company.
$1.90.
MR
R BEN HECHT'S friends have been tugging prematurely
at the mantle of James Joyce. Ulysses in the definitive edi-
tion which will permit us to judge its qualities is not yet off the
press, but with Mr Wyndham Lewis Mr Joyce has been mentioned
as the writer to whom Mr Hecht is nearest. I confess to taking
little pleasure in the thought and if Mr Hecht cannot bear being
lonely and unclothed in Amercia I would suggest that his friends
import the purple waistcoat of M Theophile Gautier for his not
perceptibly shrinking form.
Few books have been so wilfully written pour épater as Erik
Dorn. It is very good of Mr Hecht to abandon the stupid game of
trying to shock the unintelligent and to snipe the intelligentsia in-
stead. He has any number of shots in his locker and a really im-
pressive array of pistols. There is form and within the form there
is chaos; there is poetry and cynicism about the poetry and senti-
mentality about the cynicism; economy of means and prodigality
of words; there is the old trick of mocking at the illusion one has
created and the comparatively new trick of taking pride in not cre-
ating the illusion at all; the book is a bombardment in which the
very
duds are intentional. The fact that the attack never comes off
is perhaps the neatest trick in the lot.
Manipulations without magic, dazzle-paint, arrivisme, are so ir-
ritating in this book that I could forgive any one for not seeing the
many good things in it. It is not frightfully important to put down
Mr Hecht's sources; he has staged a paper-chase and each flutter-


598
ARRIVISTE AND ARISTOCRAT
ing scrap has a name on it, from Rochefoucauld to Maxwell Boden-
heim. But complete originality except in a man of universal genius
would imply that the author had rejected civilization altogether and
was too far off centre for us to understand him at all. Mr Hecht
has chosen paradox where others choose platitudes, cynicism for
sentiment, irony for sympathy. It is true that his tongue is always
in someone else's cheek; but that is better than Mr Benét who is
continually being caught with his in someone else's saucer.
Erik Dorn gives the effect of being a non-autobiographical novel
and is certainly not a photographic study of American life. Coming
swift on the heels of some commercially successful examples of these
types it gives the impression of being powerful in imagination and
artistic in composition. I do not think it is either, but I do think
I
that it is courageous. Mr Hecht has neither created nor described
a type; he has renounced the pleasure of being told that his charac-
ters are true to life, are recognizably real. Whenever I hear readers
say that they know people just like the characters in a book I feel
certain of one of two things: either the book is bad or the critics are
liars. There never were people exactly like Emma Bovary or Becky
Sharp or Sam Weller or Milly Theale or Hamlet or Stephen Deda-
lus or Ursula Brangwyn. Mr Hecht has failed but at least he has
failed in the legitimate and honourable pursuit of an artist—to
make us accept the specific credibility of his particular characters
and his particular circumstances and events. There are far too
many novels in which one can verify the existence of one's neigh-
bours, a totally superfluous activity, and far too few in which one
can recognize the characters themselves.
I think that the reasons for Mr Hecht's failure ought to be fairly
evident from the things said in his praise. It is notable that his
book is being constantly compared with something mechanical: "a
gaudy and fantastic panorama," "a Kaleidoscope," "verbal pat-
terns, the pungently evocative word combinations," "a distinct new
model in mechanics of expression,” “Pain's Destruction of Pompeii”
(this from the publisher, to be sure) or with something essentially a
stunt, like acrobatics and juggling. The idea that we must make
our creations conform to the spirit of our inventions, as if trees had
stopped growing and rivers no longer ran, has been pretty well
knocked in the head by that passage from La Noce Massacrée which
Mr Ezra Pound recently quoted: “Gabriele d'Annunzio looking at
>


GILBERT SELDES
599
a
a locomotive thinks of the Victory of Samothrace, Marinetti look-
ing at the Victory of Samothrace thinks of a locomotive. There is
not much to choose between them.” Mr Hecht looking at life thinks
of a cinematograph. He is successful only in his action and even
here the movie technique is obvious for he is alternately retard-
ing and speeding up his film. You get at moments the beautiful
rhythm of the athlete poised breathless in the air or the fantastic
nightmare fury of a motor journey through New York City in four
minutes. It may surprise Mr Hecht to realize that these are the
metronomic rhythms which himself and his hero detest; the rhythm
of life, as simple and as unpredictable as the pulse-beat, has escaped
Mr Hecht entirely.
For the most part it has been lost in a torrent of words. Just as
Mr Benét writes about a poet and quotes his poetry so Mr Hecht
presenting the figure of one who is dazzled by his own verbal ex-
cesses quotes these excesses with an uncritical Boswellian fidelity.
The words that Erik said, is saying, was about to say but didn't, are
all quoted; and oddly when Erik is through Mr Hecht begins on his
own and in a voice that is strangely like Erik's recites long epigram-
matic and imagist prose pieces about the city, about newspapers,
about the war. This is tactics but it indicates that in the presenta-
tion of character Mr Hecht hasn't mastered the simplest problems
of foreshortening. I can understand his not wanting to read Henry
James but surely he can read May Sinclair and study the presenta-
tion of five minor characters in Mr Waddington of Wyck as a
primer of perspective.
Erik Dorn is one of the noisiest books ever written; The Begin-
ning of Wisdom, in spite of the fact that the hero goes to one of the
more vocal of our colleges, takes part in the Bisbee deportations,
does time in the movies, and joins the army, is one of the most lan-
guid. Mr Hecht's lusty and vulgar pleasure in the ideas he has just
discovered leads him to try them on everybody; you have no sooner
set foot in his house with all the latest improvements and none of
the comforts when he declares you are flabby and drags you off to
the electric showers; he is possessed by his marvelous inventions and
discoveries. He goes at life feet first. Mr Benét's book is the work
of a gentleman; like those European aristocrats who employ a sale
juif to conduct the more detestably imperative of their financial af-
fairs, Mr Benét knows that there is something futile and vulgar


600
ARRIVISTE AND ARISTOCRAT
a
about experience and ideas both; he writes as one whose ancestors
for generations have always inherited ideas and did not have to
work for them; his thoughts are fresh and new, but they are not his
by conquest and he properly refuses to handle them. In his own
person he calls The Rainbow of Mr D. H. Lawrence “that aston-
ishing sexual raree-show," and his hero "passed out cold at 10 P. M.
in a minor dive quoting 'The Shropshire Lad.'” There is a page in
‘
which Mr Benét describes his hero putting out tentacles in a dozen
different directions and he names names: John Leitsch, Danton, “a
cross between Abraham and Andrew Carnegie” "a Wellsian
intellectual aristocracy,” Whitman, Nathan Hale, Cambronne.
'
Such a nostalgia for the experiences of other people is remarkable.
Philip marries while at college, rolls the bones, leaves his coat in the
hands of the harlot, thinks and suffers and loves, but he never breaks
through the bell-jar under which his author has imprisoned him.
Mr Benét writes smoothly, monotonously as Mr George Moore in
his present manner but without Mr Moore's beauty, and has a gift
of metaphor. But of creative power this book does not show the
faintest indication. The evasion, boggling, and final disintegration
of the scene in which Millie gives herself to Philip is worse than
weakness :
“They are sleeping with the abstracted smiles of the happy dead
and the saturated peace of babies after a bottle. ..."
The chapter is called “Frankie and Johnny Were Lovers.”
GILBERT SELDES


IRISH FAIRY TALES
Irish Fairy Tales. By James Stephens. Illustrated
by Arthur Rackham. 8vo. 318 pages. The Macmillan
Company. $4.
EADER, have you ever perused Standish Hayes O'Grady's
hSilva Gadelica? Or have you ever read the stories that are
given as illustrations of the Celtic doctrine of the Other World in
Kuno Meyer's and Alfred Nutt's Voyage of Bran? If you have not
done such reading you are not in a position to appreciate the
achievement that is in James Stephens' Irish Fairy Tales.
But one has to begin by insisting that the title is the least ade-
quate thing about the book. It suggests the nursery and the book
is for the nursery and for every other place as well. There are peo-
ple of Faerie in the book—there are as many of them as there are
men and women of this world—but these are not the accepted
fairies, the fairies of the tradition that has been fixed by the Grimms
and by Hans Christian Andersen. These are the people of the Shi,
the Irish Fairies who are gods divested of all creative and over-
ruling functions. They belong to a self-determining world that
interpenetrates with our self-determining world. As the old poem
says of them:
“Good are they at man-slaying feats,
Melodious over meats and ale;
Of woven verse they have the spell,
At chess-play they excel the Gael.”
No, these are not Fairy Tales in the accepted meaning of the termn;
they are re-creations—re-creations of the court romances of mediae-
val Ireland.
It is only when we think of them as such that we appreciate
James Stephens' imaginative and technical achievement. I want
to refer again to the stories given in Silva Gadelica and to the mar-
ginal stories of the Voyage of Bran. Could such stories ever be
made readable for any except those who had a craze for Celtic lit-


602
IRISH FAIRY TALES
erature, one might wonder as one read them. Other stories are com-
plicated. Other stories are inconsequential. But these stories have a
complicated inconsequence and an inconsequential complicatedness.
There is another thing about this literature in the original that
makes it difficult for us. We do not get its tone. Mediaeval Irish
literature has humour, but how much of it is humorous? Then
there is its curious elaboration. We know from Standish Hayes
O'Grady's translations that these stories have an extravagant ped-
antry of style. He makes us see a warrior "carrying on his dorsal
dimension a huge irrefrangible shield.” But is this pedantry the
.
exuberance of language or is it the decay of language? The tradi-
tion that would enable us to judge would seem to have been lost,
and moving through this literature we feel ourselves like the two di-
mensional creatures of Tertium Organum moving in a three-dimen-
sional world.
Then James Stephens comes along and he starts to re-tell these
very stories. He does not make them two-dimensional as a less
imaginative and courageous story-teller would be sure to make
them; he leaves them three-dimensional. But somehow or another
he makes his readers three-dimensional too, and he lets us move
through this world without the consciousness that we are on a plane
that is outrageously alien.
He does this by creating a norm. He creates a norm of friendli-
ness. Everyone in the stories is friendly. "But,” says he at the end
of The Enchanted Cave of Cesh Corran:
“But that did not prevent Goll from killing Fionn's brother
Cairell later on, nor did it prevent Fionn from killing Goll later on
again, and the last did not prevent Goll from rescuing Fionn out of
hell when the Fianna-Finn were sent there under the new God.
Nor is there any reason to complain or to be astonished at these
things, for it is a mutual world we live in, a give-and-take world,
and there is no great harm in it."
The stories are made human by this friendliness and affection; a
norm is thus established, and we are then at liberty to stray into
and out of many worlds of enchantment. But without this norm of
human friendliness the tales would be only remarkable instances of
how not to tell a story. Only James Stephens could have estab-


PADRAIC COLUM
603
lished this norm; by establishing it he has been able to bring us into
the world of Irish mediaeval romance a world of enchantment,
compared to which the enchantment in Marie de France's Lays and
in the Mabinogion of the Welsh story-tellers is only a far-flung
echo.
We are made believe that James Stephens' fulness of humorous,
fantastic, and lovely descriptiveness is the equivalent of the bardic
exuberance of language that Standish Hayes O'Grady indicates. It
would certainly take one of the Gaelic shanachies to better the de-
scription of the dog which Mananan produced from under his cloak.
But it is not only in descriptions of what is grotesque that James
Stephens has this abundance and this mastery. His descriptions of
things that have loveliness and grace are masterful too. The book
has all the glamour of Celtic romance, but it has also the humour
and the conscious extravagance that are in that romance. Anglo-
Irish renderings of Celtic stories have created a legend of tragedy
and distress. “They went forth to battle but they always fell” has
been made the key-note of that romance. But the mediaeval Irish
rejoiced in boisterous humour. Here, for instance, out of the
Speckled Book that was written six hundred years ago is a descrip-
tion that might well describe the re-creator of that age to-day—the
writer of Irish Fairy Tales:
“A youngster of deep lore, entertaining and delightful. And he
must be well-served; for he is melancholy, passionate, impetuous,
violent, and impatient; and he is eager, fond of eating early; and
he is voracious, niggardly, greedy; and yet he is mild and gentle
and easily moved to laughter. And he is a man great in
thanksgiving and in upbraidings. And no wonder; for he has wit
both to censure and to praise the hearth of a well-appointed, gentle,
fine, mirthful house with a mead-hall."
PADRAIC COLUM
a


THE MAN IN THE GUTTER
The Man in the STREET. By Meredith Nicholson.
8vo. 271 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.
WHA
THAT really does Mr Meredith Nicholson mean by the sim-
ple faith which he here professes? These are papers on
American topics written by one who can speak for the man in the
street. Yesterday Mr Nicholson hummed some bars of music over
the telephone and a friend told him from which of Beethoven's sym-
phonies the theme was taken. Had he hummed them into a phono-
graph, the Victor and Columbia research offices would have been
glad to oblige. Mr Nicholson, attesting to these and similar evi-
dences of civilization, ends his essay, Let Main Street Alone, with
the remark that “after all, it's only the remnant of Israel that can be
saved,” and I do not know whether that doctrine is more repugnant
to Christianity or to Democracy. Perhaps the explanation lies in
this:
a
“I am not sure but that a town is better advertised by enlightened
sanitary ordinances duly enforced than by the number of its citizens
who are acquainted with the writings of Walter Pater. A little
while ago I should have looked upon such a thought as blasphemy.”
a
I am not sure but that he is indulging in loose thinking.
Mr Nicholson against Mr Sinclair Lewis is parochial and there-
fore emotionally sound. Mr Nicholson saying in defence of Main
Street that “if there's any manifestation on earth of a divine order-
ing of things, it is here in America,” is an entertaining jingo or a
blasphemer against the universality of God's love, a mocker of the
proverb about the rain falling without prejudice on the Americans
and the Prussians alike. Mr Nicholson speculating on the discovery
“in some far day” of a banjo in the ruins of an American college,
says we “do not know but that” the instrument may be accounted
nobler than the lyre and the lute.
Mr Nicholson is the same man when he writes of American fic-
tion, of religion, politics, bungalows, love, municipal graft, and
James Whitcomb Riley. He always says some perfectly agreeable
a


VIVIAN SHAW
605
and true things, and always stops short of saying anything impor-
tant. The reason, I think, is that he is not a good American. He
deplores the visits paid by Hawthorne and Howells to Europe; the
expatriation of Henry James and Edith Wharton is a tragedy-for
them, to be sure; if Mr Howells had not seen Venice in the '60's, if
Mr James "had been stationed at Chicago, close to the deep currents
of national feeling, what a monumental library of vital fiction they
might have given us !” I do not want to quarrel with this idea of
local contacts, only to say that the deracination of Mr James was
complete before he left America, only to point out that those who
were stationed have given us pitifully little in the way of great fic-
tion (I evade vitality) and that if we let Main Street alone we are
likely to drive out and compel to be alien many another James. The
fear of Europe is the beginning of our ignorance. For if Mr Nich-
olson had understood Europe he might have understood America.
The static Europe, the moribund Europe is the background for that
America which is always becoming, which is always a flux and a
change, and which has escaped Mr Nicholson entirely. His America
is, if not a British province, a New England settlement. The Amer-
ica which thinks and suffers and creates, which will some day care
less for sanitary ordinances duly enforced and more for civilization,
which may be rent by industrial wars and crystallize on a new axis
out of its chaos, the America which is always a pioneer and always a
home for the dispossessed, is not his.
For those who accept America as Mr Nicholson describes it, this
book will be no great illumination; for those who know another
America, it will be a deep irritation. But it seems to me that both
will feel something less than complete pleasure at this:
a
“At a small dinner in honor of Henry James he [James Whit-
comb Riley] maintained a strict silence until one of the other guests,
in an effort to draw out the novelist, spoke of Thomas Hardy and
the felicity of his titles, mentioning Under the Greenwood Tree and
A Pair of Blue Eyes. Riley, for the first time addressing the table,
remarked quietly of the second of these, 'It's an odd thing about
eyes, that they usually come in sets!'-a comment which did not, as
I remember, strike Mr James as being funny.”
Is it the Street or the Gutter?
VIVIAN SHAW


A MORALIST IN THE ARMY
THREE SOLDIERS. By John Dos Passos. 12mo. 433
pages. George H. Doran Company. $2.
.
.
NUNC demum redit animus.
. . Pauci, ut ita dixerim, non
modo aliorum, sed etiam nostri superstites sumus; exemptis e
media vita tot annis, quibus iuvenes ad senectutem. . . . per silen-
tium venimus."
For those of us who are not in Leavenworth senectutem is a little
strong. During several years we were silenced right enough, but the
war is over and we are not all middle-aged yet. If there were still
any doubt about its being over, the Doran publication of this book
about the army by Mr Dos Passos should settle the question. Other
people here have dared to cock an eye at the old monster; Mr Dos
Passos inspects him composedly and at his leisure. He shows that
there is no longer any reason for American books about the war be-
ing worse than books about other things.
He writes much about private soldiers, and very little about
officers whom he treats as a species of wild animal, distinct from
mankind. What he tells of the officers has distressed Mr Coningsby
Dawson but it is not particularly atrocious; it was no secret except
in the newspapers. It is not for what they did after becoming offi-
cers that he judges them, it is for having allowed themselves to be-
come officers in the first place. Charitable or uncharitable, they put
themselves outside human consideration; at a time of public misfor-
tune they sold themselves to the engine of misfortune.
seem an odd notion to-day, but in 1917 when the war was expected
to last five or ten years longer, it was not unusual. Suppose when-
ever you saw a man with a piece of metal attached to his shoulder,
your liver turned over, your eyes stared into his, and your right hand
flew to your hat brim at an angle of approximately 45°. Suppose
that although a good soldier (most were) you had never quite got
the nobility of it all into your thick head. You might very well
have learned to dislike men with metal on their shoulders and you
would have decided either to become one yourself as quickly as pos-
This may


W. C. BLUM
607
а
sible or you would have said with Mr Dos Passos' hero: they'll
never make that sort of monkey out of me. Certainly there were
a surprising number of soldiers, educated and uneducated, who re-
fused all chances of promotion, who insisted on retaining, in the
face of "all these pompous words: detachment, battalion, command-
ing officer," the decent status of an individual in the soup. And it
is from their point of view that this story is written.
Like novels by Zola or Frank Norris, Three Soldiers is frankly
a book with a thesis; it is planned in divisions: Making the Mould,
The Metal Cools, Machines, Rust. Three principal characters and
a multitude of minor ones are seen through the process. Fuselli is
perhaps the most clearly drawn; docile, stupid, with a pathetic de-
sire to make good, to keep in right, swallowing whatever his superi-
ors choose to tell him, asking "where do you get that stuff?” of a
man who says that the Germans notified hospitals before bombard-
ing them, he is the typical parrot who was everywhere. Chrisfield
from Indiana talks like a Southerner and "doesn't give a hoot in hell
what they do.” Of the details of army life we are spared only what
the publisher was obliged to spare us. At intervals of six or seven
pages a paragraph orients the reader in all five senses; then vividly
and often beautifully an abominable little adventure in routine is
presented. Somebody is seasick, gets drunk, takes a swim in the
river; men drill, men desert, disobey orders and get away with it or
do not get away with it; girls oblige; officers and Y men trail a more
poignant humiliation across the scene. It is done with descriptive
flourishes but without sarcasm.
The author does not need to be
ironical. He sits still, and the unforgettable idiocy of everybody in
sight supplies the irony:
a
“As he was leaving the hut (after a Y. M. C. A. movie of Ger-
man atrocities) pressed in a tight stream of soldiers moving towards
the door, Andrews heard a man say:
'I never raped a woman in my life, but by God, I'm going to. I'd
give a lot to rape some of those goddam German women.'
'I hate 'em too,' came another voice, ‘men, women, children and
unborn children. They're either jackasses or full of the lust for
power like their rulers are, to let themselves be governed by a bunch
of warlords like that.'
Ah'd lahk te cepture a German officer an' make him shine ma


608
A MORALIST IN THE ARMY
boots an' then shoot him dead,” said Chris to Andrews as they
walked down the long row towards their barracks.
You would?
‘But Ah'd a damn side rather shoot somebody else Ah know,
went on Chris intensely. “Don't stay far from here either. An'
Ah'll do it too, if he don't let off pickin' on me.'
ورو
a
John Andrews, the third soldier, is an educated young man, who
like almost all educated young Americans thinks and feels in terms
of foreign literature (in this case Flaubert). The last third of the
book is devoted mostly to his experiences in Paris, still a soldier but
studying at the Sorbonne. Women, or the shadows which serve as
women in the mind of a young man (Geneviève Rod begins to exist
towards the end) enter the story. The bootlicking intrigues neces-
sary to getting loose from the rusty machine, irrevocably turn his
stomach. He deserts, throws away his uniform, and finally gets
caught by M. P.'s with automatic pistols who presumably beat him
to a pulp and see him to Leavenworth for twenty years. If the book
had ended with an appeal for contributions to get him out of jail,
contributions would have been forthcoming.
In comparison with the first part of the book, however, this last
third seems nightmarish, almost allegorical, a return to the more
sentimental manner of One Man's Initiation. What makes Three
Soldiers so indubitably count is its story of the army, its concentra-
tion of the rancours of countless individuals into something not at
all mean or plaintive, the harmonious expression of a well-chewed
rage.
W. C. BLUM


BRIEFER MENTION
QUIET INTERIOR, by E. B. C. Jones (12mo, 285 pages ; Boni & Liveright:
$2) is a first novel of exceptional subtlety, delicacy, and quiet strength.
The author writes in the tone of Forster's Howards End, but with such an
overflowing of emotion that the book becomes thoroughly her own. There
is, also, a tendency to end chapters in the rhythms of Mr Conrad's prose. .
Miss Jones has written a book with decency and without supplying the least
subject for publicity—an achievement in itself, but bettered by the skill
and command of her composition. Among first novels it is easily the most
distinguished of many seasons.
GREEN APPLE HARVEST, by Sheila Kaye-Smith (12mo, 312 pages; Dutton :
$2) perhaps the most flawless of her novels, is the story of a Sussex youth,
driven mad by women and Methodism, who oscillates between jail and the
pulpit, and who ends pathetically in a horse pond. Miss Kaye-Smith has
cultivated one field till its yield has become monotonously perfect. Charac-
ters and situations from her earlier books are beginning to sprout up again;
it is almost time for her to broaden her field.
THE THIRTEEN TRAVELLERS, by Hugh Walpole (12mo, 279 pages; Doran:
$2). Mr Walpole paints his characters well, yet his situations are not
always convincing; he explains a vast amount, yet often leaves the prime
essential unexplained; his stories would perhaps be more successful if
divested of action and presented simply as character studies.
GOLD SHOD, by Newton Fuessle (12mo, 243 pages; Boni & Liveright: $2)
is divided somewhat artificially into three parts; the Strings, the Brass, the
Wood-Wind. After a thin and awkward prelude, the author blares forth
with more assurance in describing the hero's amours and successful business
career. But he is so intent upon discounting this success by his plea for the
baffled artist within the triumphant automobile manufacturer that he fails
to give either theme the emphasis of actuality. The writing is at times
tersely vigorous but is often trite and forced, and one seldom escapes the
sense of a very self-conscious orchestration.
FOR ME ALONE, by André Corthis, translated by Frederic Taber Cooper
(12mo, 267 pages; Stokes : $1.90) has unfortunately been hailed by the
London Times as a second Madame Bovary. It has also been awarded the
Grand Prix du Roman for 1920. The concatenation of two such terrific
events is sufficient to make the judicious sceptical. But for once the goose
has laid the golden egg. M Corthis’ novel is a psychological study of such
extreme subtlety and power, and its translation sounds so nearly like origi-
nal English, that the reader's delight in Mr Cooper's craftsmanship is
matched only by his pleasure in coming into the presence of a heroine who
a
lives a convincing and moving drama without having to commit adultery,
murder, or suicide.


610
BRIEFER MENTION
BRASS: A NoveL OF MARRIAGE, by Charles G. Norris (12mo, 452 pages;
Dutton : $2) is a detailed account of how unhappy married people often are
when they are not happy. Neither adorning his platitude with any visible
ecstasy of manner, nor pointing his tale with sharp and illuminating ges-
tures, the author of Salt tells this second story with the gravid exuberance
of Dreiser.
Pan, by Knut Hamsun, translated by W. W. Worster (12mo, 202 pages;
Knopf: $2) is an arcadian interlude to the symphonic soil-poems of the
Norwegian. The ostensible autobiography of a hermit who falls in love
with a sophisticated hamadryad, it is structurally weakened by the cadence
which the author tacks on at the end. As a study in moods it is chiefly in-
teresting in that its melodies are formed almost entirely of overtones. The
author, winner of the Nobel prize for 1920, is given a panegyric introduc-
tion by Edwin Björkman.
ORPHAN Dinah, by Eden Phillpotts (12mo, 433 pages; Macmillan: $2.50)
is an invitation to the Dartmoor country to display its "Welcome Home”
banner. After philandering with fantasies and murder mysteries, Mr
Phillpotts is back in the fertile soil of his major successes, soberly unfolding
a solid and deliberate tale. As usual, he erects a theme which has to be
walked round and round by everybody, as if it were a newly unveiled statue
in a public park, but in the end the story emerges from rural bustle and
talky animation and stands out clearly defined.
TORCHLIGHT, by Leonie Aminoff (12mo, 365 pages; Dutton : $2) flares occa-
sionally and sputters through interminable chatter. It is designed as the
initial volume of a Napoleonic cycle, wherein affairs of state are constant-
ly being halted in order that pretty ladies may "fervently admire,” “affec-
tionately stare at,” and otherwise adore their own ankles. The style is
flowery; the conversation is all of a pattern; the significance of the his.
torical setting rarely emerges with sufficient force to reach the reader's con-
sciousness. The book is inscribed to the author's twin sister and her three
little daughters, "who have taken a flattering interest in the work."
MOGENS AND OTHER STORIES, by Jens Peter Jacobsen, translated by Anna
Grabow (10mo, 150 pages; Nicholas L. Brown : $1.50). A collection of
four stories, the first and longest of which is much after the manner of
Theodor Storm. Mogens, who is one of nature's gentlemen, sees her hiding
under a bush, and they finally become engaged. But she is destroyed in
a fire, which drives Mogens into some years of riotous living. This, for-
tunately, is cut short when he meets the right woman; they marry, and the
next night we see him stalking about the library: “There was a love, pure
and noble, without any coarse, earthly passion; yes, there was, and if there
was not, there was going to be one.” A few pages further on, however :
‘My own little wife! and he lifted her up in his arms and carried her in."
The next day, with everything cleared up, “They went out into the fresh-
ness of the morning.” The closing story suggests with a more convincing
freshness a situation which arises between children and a mother when the
mother takes another husband.
>


BRIEFER MENTION
611
BABETTE BOMBERLING's BRIDEGROOMS, by Alice Berend (12mo, 216 pages;
Boni & Liveright: $1.75). This delightfully amusing novel has the
sparkle and effervescence of sea-foam, yet occasionally is pierced by rays
that illumine the obscure depths of character. Sketchy and superficial as it
is, it yet shines with the soft glow of humour as well as with the hard
brilliance of wit.
IN THE GARRET, by Carl Van Vechten (12mo, 347 pages; Knopf: $2.50) is a
collection of literary and musical essays in the art of historical non-assimila-
lation. The essays are always informing and frequently witty. The
dyspeptic pallor of their presentation, however, makes one wish that Mr
Van Vechten would come out of his attic.
LORDS OF THE HOUSETOPs, by Carl Van Vechten (12mo, 238 pages; Knopf:
$2.50) is an appropriately named and well chosen collection of cat stories,
compiled by the author of The Tiger in the House. The thirteen tales-
some well known, others practically unknown-show the cat in as many
different aspects, best summed up, perhaps, in the words of one of the hu-
man characters: "Cats do what they like, not what you want them to do.”
Mr Van Vechten contributes an illuminating preface discussing the stories.
SAVITRI AND OTHER Women, by Marjorie Strachey (12mo, 169 pages; Put-
nam: $1.75). This is a book of stories freely adapted from the folk-lore of
many lands. The tales are told with the naïveté of a child, with the eerie
fancy and the poetic abandon of the primitive mind, and at times with the
wisdom and the simple dignity of the sage. If they lose in appeal to the
sophisticated adult because of their resemblance to children's fairy tales,
they are none the less well worth reading because of their imaginative
range, their symbolism, and their beauty of expression.
THE HAPPY PRINCE and other tales, by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Charles
Robinson (8vo, 134 pages ; Brentano's: $4) is one of several classics done
for children, handsomely done, and with a consciousness that children do
not resent classics. Others are GARGANTUA (4to; Duffield: $2.50) the
sheets of which, plus the pictures by Adrien Leroy, promise a magnificent
book. Jane Porter's Scottish CHIEFS, edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin
(4to, 504 pages; Scribner's: $3.50) has colour illustrations by N. C.
Wyeth, and reminds one that while grown-ups read Thaddeus of Warsaw,
children show a taste for something better.
Eddie ELEPHANT, by Johnny Gruelle (12mo, unnumbered; Volland : 754)
and TALES OF LITTLE Dogs, by Carrie Jacobs-Bond (12mo, unnumbered;
Volland: 754) are two slender volumes done with pretty trimmings, with
whimsical children and humorous animals disporting themselves over the
pages. Mrs Bond's innocuous verses, in which baby slang is made to serve
for humour, will nevertheless satisfy a child's enormous craving for rhythm
and rhyme. Johnny Gruelle is not so happy with Eddie Elephant as he
was with Raggedy Ann, but it is comforting to have invincible goodness re-
warded with twenty palm-leaf fans, fifty-seven jelly tarts, ninety-six fluffy
doughnuts, and twenty boiled ostrich eggs.


612
BRIEFER MENTION
ALADDIN, by Arthur Ransome (8vo, unnumbered; Brentano: $6) is told in
gently satiric and often galloping verse, the old good story remaining bet-
ter than anything done to it, but coming out of the re-telling with credit to
the versifier; the pictures in colour by Mackenzie are particularly entertain.
ing. The Golden Fleece, by Padraic Colum (12mo, 300 pages; Mac-
millan: $2.50) is another of Mr Colum's extraordinary successes in prose,
the fourth in his series of classic myths, and at least the eighth of his books
for children, not one of which fails of perfect construction, constant hu-
mour and seduction of the mind, and lovely English. The pictures are
Willy Pogány's, and exhibit his characteristic qualities.
The Royal Book of Oz (8vo, 312 pages; Reilly & Lee: $2) was compiled
and put into book form by Ruth Plumly Thompson from some notes by
Mr Baum. Throughout the first half of the book she has admirably main-
tained the style of the "Royal Historian." Her own style, into which she
lapses towards the end, though inferior to Baum's, is not displeasing. The
Oz books are something like an inversion of Gulliver's Travels. In The
Voyage to Lilliput Swift sought to ridicule the petty human follies and in-
cidentally succeeded in amusing thousands of children. Baum, writing
with the purpose of amusing children, takes an occasional crack at their
parents, but with no sign of either the venom or the genius that character-
ized the great Dean's work.
THE BLUE FAIRY Book, edited by Andrew Lang (illus., 8vo, 303 pages;
'McKay: $3.50) and STORIES ALWAYS New, by Cora Morris (12mo, 197
pages; Lothrop, Lee & Shepherd: $1.75) bear about the same relation to
most of the pretty things concocted for children as a full course dinner to
an oyster cocktail. The first is a delightful reprint of the familiar collec-
tion. Like the original authors, Lang escaped Pollyannaism and gives us
that country "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" unspoiled by unc-
tion. Frank Godwin's full page colour illustrations fall short at times, but
some of those in black and white are fanciful and vigorous. As far as bind-
ing and illustrations are concerned, Stories Always New might have been
published years ago before imagination and a degree of artistic ability were
applied to the making of children's books. But the stories are well selected
from American, English, Italian, Belgian, and French sources and told by a
professional story teller in prim English but with an ear for the rhythms
indispensable to a good yarn.
My Book House, edited by Olive Beaupré Miller (4to, 6 volumes, 2,500
pages; Book House for Children) is a child's library of stories and poems
drawing on all phases of the world's literature, from the Bible to Shake-
speare, from ancient times to the present day. Although it is evident that
the stories have been chosen with a purpose to make "right" attractive and
"wrong" distasteful, they have nothing of the flavour of a Sunday-school
paper. The high literary tone maintained throughout the six volumes al-
lows a grown-up to read them to his children without contracting a bad
headache. Excellent binding and illustrations combine with intelligent ar-
rangement of the contents to make them one of the most attractive of juve-
nile libraries.


BRIEFER MENTION
613
SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY and other Literary Pieces, by Sir James George
Fraser (8vo, 319 pages ; Macmillan: $3.40). The scholarly author of The
Golden Bough turns in the present volume from graver studies to the ver-
dant margins and captivating interludes of a career faithfully devoted to
learning. In his eyes the noblest aim of scholarly leisure seems to be to
crowd every rift with the crystalline ore of a most delicate prose rhythm.
From, say, Totemism and Exogamy to A Visit to Coverley Hall is a far cry
indeed, but one well worth the long halloo. Throughout the reading of
these excursions one feels that the author must have murmured to himself
softly: "Où il n'y a pas de la délicatesse, il n'y a pas de la littérature.”
a
a
NATURALISM IN ENGLISH POETRY, by Stopford A. Brooke (12mo, 289 pages;
Dutton : $3). Naturalism, it is obvious, is rather a misnomer when applied
to the spirit of manumission which prevailed in English poetry beginning
with such men as Young, Thomson, Collins, Gray, and Burns. To be sure,
as a result of the French Revolution, a sloughing off of clogging armour
ensued, but Naturalism has too positive a meaning for us to-day to evaluate
this movement as such. While Stopford Brooke's lecture notes, herein
published, are quite readable, they are on the other hand nowise stimu-
lating, nor do they throw open any windows on untilled glebes. There are
times, in fact, when the misuse of the term Naturalism is irritating. The
lectures were delivered in 1902, when Naturalism had already achieved,
if not surpassed, a maturity of definition, owing to the world-wide influence
of Dostoevsky and Zola in the novel, Whitman in poetry, and Cézanne in
art. And the sheer absurdity of Stopford Brooke's exploitation of this
epithet is revealed, precisely, when we find that he includes within its mean-
ing Romanticism, which stood sponsor for mystery and the renascence of
mediaevalism in its day.
As The Larks Rise, by Theodosia Garrison (12mo, 119 pages; Putnam:
$1.75). These verses stir the scalp with the vigour of their rhythms. Like
the rhymes of Mr Noyes, they go marching along to music. They have
sentiment, but are without passion; the words fall as they may, without
charm, chime, or the effect of astonishment. All are agreeable, and a few
are not without a certain direct and simple beauty.
Hugh Lane's LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENT, by Lady Gregory (illus., 8vo, 290
pages; Dutton : $4). This is the biography of Lady Gregory's nephew, by
his aunt, who was fond of him. A great many people, purposes, and opera-
tions come between the author and her subject. She thinks of herself, of
Mr Yeats, of Mancini, of many others; their letters, portraits, and opinions
fill her book, which is the picture of a time rather than the story of a man.
HINTS TO PILGRIMS, by Charles S. Brooks (illus., 8vo, 192 pages; Yale Uni-
versity Press : $2.50). In this beautifully printed book, Mr Brooks writes
about such things as walks in England, toys, authors, lawn-mowers, and the
two kings, Zooks and Muffin. : : . He has been compared to Lamb, but
the comparison is a bad one. His writing is a play of nervous fancy, of
eager and engaging whimsy. It is full of poetic imagery and delicate feel.
ing. But it is never a vehicle for serene thoughts and mellow reflections.


614
BRIEFER MENTION
ORACLE, arranged, edited, and introduced by Claude Bragdon (12mo, 64
pages; Manas Press). Unlike "spirit communications" and their material
proofs of the immortality of safety razors, these personal oracles have the
strength and good sense of the writings of the mystics. The language is at
once expressive and touched with the oddness of conversation remembered
from a dream. Underlying them all is the old assurance that consciousness
alone is important, that the expansion of consciousness is what will change
the world. They belong less among the mystical writings which describe a
technique of emotional living than among those which induce immediately
a mood of receptiveness and convince without argument.
MANHOOD OF HUMANITY: The Science and Art of Human Engineering, by
Alfred Korzybski (12mo, 264 pages; Dutton: $3). Not a few students
have interpreted mathematics in terms of human values; this author inter-
prets human values in terms of mathematics. For example, he takes the
position that war and revolution are due to the fact that while technological
science has advanced by geometrical progression, social science has ad-
vanced only by arithmetical progression. The most conspicuous feature of
the book is a dimensional analysis of organisms plants as "chemistry-
binding,” animals as in addition "space-binding,” and man as “time-bind-
ing" while possessing the other two characteristics also. The time-binding
faculty enables man to make the past live in the present and the present for
the future. Thus the author holds that human capacities are "exponential
functions of time.” Current beliefs and institutions are criticized, and "hu-
man engineering,” based of course on exact science, is presented as the ideal
for the future. The book raises many intricate questions.
а
THE ENGINEERS AND THE PRICE SYSTEM, by Thorstein Veblen (12mo, 169
pages; Huebsch: $1.50) is a series of papers in which Jeremiah, tongue in
cheek, flays the weaknesses of the present industrial system, going behind
the word to the fact which it obscures. If he could do as much for his own
argument the book would be invaluable, but when it comes to the Soviet of
Technicians wielding their limitless powers with an eye single to the com-
mon weal, irony, originality, and “perspicacious learning" all desert