A Christmas Garland by Max Beerbohm

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To have described divinely a Christmas party is something, but it is
not everything. The disengaging of the erotic motive is everything, is
the only touchstone. If while that is being done we are soothed into
a trance, a nebulous delirium of the nerves, then we know the novelist
to be a supreme novelist. If we retain consciousness, he is not
supreme, and to be less than supreme in art is to not exist....
Dickens disengages the erotic motive through two figures, Mr. Winkle,
a sportman, and Miss Arabella, "a young lady with fur-topped boots."
They go skating, he helps her over a stile. Can one not well see
her? She steps over the stile and her shin defines itself through her
balbriggan stocking. She is a knock-kneed girl, and she looks at Mr.
Winkle with that sensual regard that sometimes comes when the wind
is north-west. Yes, it is a north-west wind that is blowing over this
landscape that Hals or Winchoven might have painted--no, Winchoven
would have fumbled it with rose-madder, but Hals would have done it
well. Hals would have approved--would he not?--the pollard aspens,
these pollard aspens deciduous and wistful, which the rime makes
glistening. That field, how well ploughed it is, and are they not like
petticoats, those clouds low-hanging? Yes, Hals would have stated them
well, but only Manet could have stated the slope of the thighs of
the girl--how does she call herself?--Arabella--it is a so hard name
to remember--as she steps across the stile. Manet would have found
pleasure in her cheeks also. They are a little chapped with the
north-west wind that makes the pollard aspens to quiver. How adorable
a thing it is, a girl's nose that the north-west wind renders red! We
may tire of it sometimes, because we sometimes tire of all things,
but Winkle does not know this. Is Arabella his mistress? If she is
not, she has been, or at any rate she will be. How full she is of
temperament, is she not? Her shoulder-blades seem a little carelessly
modelled, but how good they are in intention! How well placed that
smut on her left cheek!

Strange thoughts of her surge up vaguely in me as I watch
her--thoughts that I cannot express in English.... Elle est plus
vieille que les roches entre lesquelles elle s'est assise; comme
le vampire elle a ete frequemment morte, et a appris les secrets du
tombeau; et s'est plongee dans des mers profondes, et conserve autour
d'elle leur jour ruine; et, comme Lede, etait mere d'Helene de Troie,
et, comme Sainte-Anne, mere de Maria; et tout cela n'a ete pour elle
que.... I desist, for not through French can be expressed the thoughts
that surge in me. French is a stale language. So are all the European
languages, one can say in them nothing fresh.... The stalest of them
all is Erse....

Deep down in my heart a sudden voice whispers me that there is only
one land wherein art may reveal herself once more. Of what avail to
await her anywhere else than in Mexico? Only there can the apocalypse
happen. I will take a ticket for Mexico, I will buy a Mexican grammar,
I will be a Mexican.... On a hillside, or beside some grey pool,
gazing out across those plains poor and arid, I will await the first
pale showings of the new dawn....

EUPHEMIA CLASHTHOUGHT[10]

AN IMITATION OF MEREDITH

[Footnote 10: It were not, as a general rule, well to republish after
a man's death the skit you made of his work while he lived. Meredith,
however, was so transcendent that such skits must ever be harmless,
and so lasting will his fame be that they can never lose what
freshness they may have had at first. So I have put this thing in
with the others, making improvements that were needed.--M.B.]

In the heart of insular Cosmos, remote by some scores of leagues of
Hodge-trod arable or pastoral, not more than a snuff-pinch for gaping
tourist nostrils accustomed to inhalation of prairie winds, but enough
for perspective, from those marginal sands, trident-scraped, we are
to fancy, by a helmeted Dame Abstract familiarly profiled on discs
of current bronze--price of a loaf for humbler maws disdainful of
Gallic side-dishes for the titillation of choicer palates--stands
Clashthought Park, a house of some pretension, mentioned at Runnymede,
with the spreading exception of wings given to it in later times
by Daedalean masters not to be baulked of billiards or traps for
Terpsichore, and owned for unbroken generations by a healthy line
of procreant Clashthoughts, to the undoing of collateral branches
eager for the birth of a female. Passengers through cushioned space,
flying top-speed or dallying with obscure stations not alighted at
apparently, have had it pointed out to them as beheld dimly for a
privileged instant before they sink back behind crackling barrier of
instructive paper with a "Thank you, Sir," or "Madam," as the case
may be. Guide-books praise it. I conceive they shall be studied for
a cock-shy of rainbow epithets slashed in at the target of Landed
Gentry, premonitorily. The tintinnabulation's enough. Periodical
footings of Clashthoughts into Mayfair or the Tyrol, signalled by the
slide from its mast of a crested index of Aeolian caprice, blazon of
their presence, give the curious a right to spin through the halls
and galleries under a cackle of housekeeper guideship--scramble for a
chuck of the dainties, dog fashion. There is something to be said for
the rope's twist. Wisdom skips.

It is recorded that the goblins of this same Lady Wisdom were all agog
one Christmas morning between the doors of the house and the village
church, which crouches on the outskirt of the park, with something of
a lodge in its look, you might say, more than of celestial twinkles,
even with Christmas hoar-frost bleaching the grey of it in sunlight,
as one sees imaged on seasonable missives for amity in the trays
marked "sixpence and upwards," here and there, on the counters of
barter.

Be sure these goblins made obeisance to Sir Peter Clashthought, as he
passed by, starched beacon of squirearchy, wife on arm, sons to heel.
After him, certain members of the household--rose-chapped males and
females, bearing books of worship. The pack of goblins glance up
the drive with nudging elbows and whisperings of "Where is daughter
Euphemia? Where Sir Rebus, her affianced?"

Off they scamper for a peep through the windows of the house. They
throng the sill of the library, ears acock and eyelids twittering
admiration of a prospect. Euphemia was in view of them--essence of
her. Sir Rebus was at her side. Nothing slips the goblins.

"Nymph in the Heavy Dragoons" was Mrs. Cryptic-Sparkler's famous
definition of her. The County took it for final--an uncut gem with
a fleck in the heart of it. Euphemia condoned the imagery. She had
breadth. Heels that spread ample curves over the ground she stood on,
and hands that might floor you with a clench of them, were hers. Grey
eyes looked out lucid and fearless under swelling temples that were
lost in a ruffling copse of hair. Her nose was virginal, with hints of
the Iron Duke at most angles. Square chin, cleft centrally, gave
her throat the look of a tower with a gun protrudent at top. She was
dressed for church evidently, but seemed no slave to Time. Her bonnet
was pushed well back from her head, and she was fingering the ribbons.
One saw she was a woman. She inspired deference.

"Forefinger for Shepherd's Crook" was what Mrs. Cryptic-Sparkler had
said of Sir Rebus. It shall stand at that.

"You have Prayer Book?" he queried.

She nodded. Juno catches the connubial trick.

"Hymns?"

"Ancient and Modern."

"I may share with you?"

"I know by heart. Parrots sing."

"Philomel carols," he bent to her.

"Complaints spoil a festival."

He waved hand to the door. "Lady, your father has started."

"He knows the adage. Copy-books instil it."

"Inexorable truth in it."

"We may dodge the scythe."

"To be choked with the sands?"

She flashed a smile. "I would not," he said, "that my Euphemia were
late for the Absolution."

She cast eyes to the carpet. He caught them at the rebound.

"It snows," she murmured, swimming to the window.

"A flake, no more. The season claims it."

"I have thin boots."

"Another pair?"

"My maid buttons. She is at church."

"My fingers?"

"Ten on each."

"Five," he corrected.

"Buttons."

"I beg your pardon."

She saw opportunity. She swam to the bell-rope and grasped it for a
tinkle. The action spread feminine curves to her lover's eyes. He was
a man.

Obsequiousness loomed in the doorway. Its mistress flashed an order
for port--two glasses. Sir Rebus sprang a pair of eyebrows on her.
Suspicion slid down the banisters of his mind, trailing a blue ribbon.
Inebriates were one of his hobbies. For an instant she was sunset.

"Medicinal," she murmured.

"Forgive me, Madam. A glass, certainly. 'Twill warm us for
worshipping."

The wine appeared, seemed to blink owlishly through the facets of
its decanter, like some hoary captive dragged forth into light after
years of subterraneous darkness--something querulous in the sudden
liberation of it. Or say that it gleamed benignant from its tray,
steady-borne by the hands of reverence, as one has seen Infallibility
pass with uplifting of jewelled fingers through genuflexions to the
Balcony. Port has this in it: that it compels obeisance, master of us;
as opposed to brother and sister wines wooing us with a coy flush in
the gold of them to a cursory tope or harlequin leap shimmering up the
veins with a sly wink at us through eyelets. Hussy vintages swim to a
cosset. We go to Port, mark you!

Sir Rebus sipped with an affectionate twirl of thumb at the glass's
stem. He said "One scents the cobwebs."

"Catches in them," Euphemia flung at him.

"I take you. Bacchus laughs in the web."

"Unspun but for Pallas."

"A lady's jealousy."

"Forethought, rather."

"Brewed in the paternal pate. Grant it!"

"For a spring in accoutrements."

Sir Rebus inclined gravely. Port precludes prolongment of the riposte.

She replenished glasses. Deprecation yielded. "A step," she said, "and
we are in time for the First Lesson."

"This," he agreed, "is a wine."

"There are blasphemies in posture. One should sit to it."

"Perhaps." He sank to commodious throne of leather indicated by her
finger.

Again she filled for him. "This time, no heel-taps," she was
imperative. "The Litany demands basis."

"True." He drained, not repelling the decanter placed at his elbow.

"It is a wine," he presently repeated with a rolling tongue over it.

"Laid down by my great-grandfather. Cloistral."

"Strange," he said, examining the stopper, "no date. Antediluvian.
Sound, though."

He drew out his note-book. "_The senses_" he wrote, "_are internecine.
They shall have learned esprit de corps before they enslave us._" This
was one of his happiest flings to general from particular. "_Visual
distraction cries havoc to ultimate delicacy of palate_" would but
have pinned us a butterfly best a-hover; nor even so should we have
had truth of why the aphorist, closing note-book and nestling back of
head against that of chair, closed eyes also.

As by some such law as lurks in meteorological toy for our guidance
in climes close-knit with Irony for bewilderment, making egress of old
woman synchronise inevitably with old man's ingress, or the other way
about, the force that closed the aphorist's eye-lids parted his lips
in degree according. Thus had Euphemia, erect on hearth-rug, a cavern
to gaze down into. Outworks of fortifying ivory cast but denser
shadows into the inexplorable. The solitudes here grew murmurous. To
and fro through secret passages in the recesses leading up deviously
to lesser twin caverns of nose above, the gnomes Morphean went about
their business, whispering at first, but presently bold to wind horns
in unison--Roland-wise, not less.

Euphemia had an ear for it; whim also to construe lord and master
relaxed but reboant and soaring above the verbal to harmonic truths
of abstract or transcendental, to be hummed subsequently by privileged
female audience of one bent on a hook-or-crook plucking out of pith
for salvation.

She caught tablets pendent at her girdle. "_How long_," queried her
stilus, "_has our sex had humour? Jael hammered._"

She might have hitched speculation further. But Mother Earth,
white-mantled, called to her.

Casting eye of caution at recumbence, she paddled across the carpet
and anon swam out over the snow.

Pagan young womanhood, six foot of it, spanned eight miles before
luncheon.

* * * * *

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,

BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

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