Prose Fancies by Richard Le Gallienne
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Richard Le Gallienne >> Prose Fancies
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Besides, there were so many hundreds in the streets I should have to
address in the same way: formidable people, too, clad in respectability as
in a coat of mail. The pompous policeman yonder: I longed to go and say to
him that there had been policemen before; that he was only the ephemeral
example of a world-old type, and needn't take himself so seriously. It was
an irresistible temptation to ask him: 'Canst thou bind the sweet
influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring
forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his
sons?' But I forbore, and just then, glancing into an oyster shop, I was
fascinated by the oysterman. He was rapidly opening a dozen for a new
customer, and wore the while the solemnest face I ever saw. Oysters were
so evidently, so pathetically, all the world to him. All his surroundings
suggested oysters, legends of their prices and qualities made the art on
his walls, printed price-lists on his counter made his literature, the
prospects and rivalries of trade made his politics: oysters were, in fact,
his _raison d'etre_. His associations from boyhood had been oysters, I
felt certain that his relatives, even his ancestors, must be oysters, too;
and that if he had any idea of a supreme being, it must take the form of
an oyster. Indeed, a sort of nightmare seemed suddenly to take possession
of the world, in which alternately policemen swallowed oysters and oysters
policemen. How sad it all was--that masterly flourish of the knife with
which the oysterman ruthlessly hurried dozen after dozen into eternity;
that deferential 'Sir' in his voice to every demand of his customer; that
brisk alacrity with which he bid his assistant bring 'the gentleman's
half-stout.'
There seemed a world of tears in these simple operations, and the plain
oysterman had grown suddenly mystical as an astrological symbol. And,
indeed, there was planetary influence in the thing, for there was Jupiter
high above us, sneering at our little world of policemen and oystermen.
His grin disagreeably reminded me--had I not myself that very night
ignorantly flourished on a brass knocker?
It is so hard to remember the respect we owe to death. Yet for me there is
always a feeling that if we direct our lives cautiously, with
proportionate seriousness and no more, not presuming on life as our
natural birthright, but taking it with simple thankfulness as a boon which
we have done nothing to deserve, and which may be snatched from us before
our next breath: that, if we so order our days, Death may respect our
humility.
'The lusty lord, rejoicing in his pride,
He draweth down; before the armed knight
With jingling bridle-rein he still doth ride;
He crosseth the strong captain in the fight';
but such are proud people, arrogant in beauty and strength. With a humble
person, who is careful not to flourish beneath his signature, who knocks
just as much as he means on the knocker, bows just as much as he respects,
smiles cautiously, and never fails to touch his hat to the King of
Terrors--may he not deal more gently with such a one?
And yet Death is not a pleasant companion at Life's feast, however kindly
disposed. One cannot quite trust him, and he doesn't go well with flowers.
Perhaps, after all, they are wisest who forget him, and happy indeed are
they who have not yet caught sight of him grinning to himself among the
green branches of their Paradise.
Yes, it is good that youth should go with a feather in his cap, that
spring should garland herself with blossom, and love's vows make light of
death. He is a bad companion for young people. But for older folk the
wisdom of that knocker in Gray's Inn applies.
A TAVERN NIGHT
Looking back, in weak moments, we are sometimes heard to say: 'After all,
youth was a great fool. Look at the tinsel he was sure was solid gold. Can
you imagine it? This tawdry tinkling bit of womanhood, a silly doll that
says "Don't" when you squeeze it,--he actually mistook her for a goddess.'
Ah! reader, don't you wish you could make such a splendid mistake? I do.
I'd give anything to be once more sitting before the footlights for the
first time, with the wonderful overture just beginning to steal through my
senses.
Ah! violins, whither would you take my soul? You call to it like the voice
of one waiting by the sea, bathed in sunset. Why do you call me? What are
these wonderful things you are whispering to my soul? You promise--ah!
what things you promise, strange voices of the string!
O sirens, have pity! It is the soul of a boy comes out to meet you. His
heart is pure, his body sweet as apples. Oh, be faithful, betray him not,
beautiful voices of the wondrous world!
David and I sat together in a theatre. The overture had succeeded. Our
souls had followed it over the footlights, and, floating in the limelight,
shone there awaiting the fulfilment of the promise. The play was
'Pygmalion and Galatea.' I almost forget now how the scenes go, I only
know that at the appearance of Galatea we knew that the overture had not
lied. There, in dazzling white flesh, was all it had promised; and when
she called 'Pyg-ma-lion!' how our hearts thumped! for we knew it was
really us she was calling.
'Pyg-ma-lion!' 'Pyg-ma-lion!'
It was as though Cleopatra called us from the tomb.
Our hands met. We could hear each other's blood singing. And was not the
play itself an allegory of our coming lives? Did not Galatea symbolise all
the sleeping beauty of the world that was to awaken warm and fragrant at
the kiss of our youth? And somewhere, too, shrouded in enchanted quiet,
such a white white woman waited for our kiss.
In a vision we saw life like the treasure cave of the Arabian thief, and
we said to our beating hearts that we had the secret of the magic word:
that the 'Open Sesame' was youth.
No fall of the curtain could hide the vision from our young eyes. It
transfigured the faces of our fellow-pittites, it made another stage of
the embers of the sunset, a distant bridge of silver far down the street.
Then we took it with us to the tavern: and, as I think of the solemn
libations of that night, I know not whether to laugh or cry. Doubtless,
you will do the laughing and I the crying.
We had got our own corner. Turning down the gas, the fire played at day
and night with our faces. Imagine us in one of the flashes, solemnly
raising our glasses, hands clasped across the table, earnest gleaming eyes
holding each other above it. 'Old man! some day, somewhere, a woman like
that!'
There was still a sequel. At home at last and in bed, how could I sleep?
It seemed as if I had got into a rosy sunset cloud in mistake for my bed.
The candle was out, and yet the room was full of rolling light.
I'll swear I could have seen to read by it, whatever it was.
It was no use. I must get up. I struck a light, and in a moment was deep
in the composition of a fiery sonnet. It was evidently that which had
caused all the phosphorescence. But a sonnet is a mere pill-box. It holds
nothing. A mere cockleshell. And, oh! the raging sea it could not hold!
Besides, being confessedly an art-form, duly licensed to lie, it is apt to
be misunderstood. It could not say in plain English, 'Meet me at the pier
to-morrow at three in the afternoon'; it could make no assignation nearer
than the Isles of the Blest, 'after life's fitful fever.' Therefore, it
seemed well to add a postscript to that effect in prose.
And then, how was she to receive it? Needless to say, there was nothing to
be hoped from the post; and I should have said before that Tyre and Sidon
face each other on opposite sides of the river, and that my home was in
Sidon, three miles from the ferry.
Likewise, it was now nearing three in the morning. Just time to catch the
half-past three boat, run up to the theatre, a mile away, and meet the
return boat. So down down through the creaking house, gingerly, as though
I were a Jason picking my way among the coils of the sleeping dragon. Soon
I was shooting along the phantom streets, like Mercury on a message
through Hades.
At last the river came in sight, growing slate-colour in the earliest
dawn. I could see the boat nuzzling up against the pier, and snoring in
its sleep. I said to myself that this was Styx and the fare an obolus. As
I jumped on board, with hot face and hotter heart, Charon clicked his
signal to the engines, the boat slowly snuffled itself half awake, and we
shoved out into the sleepy water.
As we crossed, the light grew, and the gas-lamps of Tyre beaconed with
fading gleam. Overhead began a restlessness in the clouds, as of a giant
drowsily shuffling off some of his bedclothes; but as yet he slept, and
only the silver bosom of his spouse the moon was uncovered.
When we landed, the streets of Tyre were already light, but empty: as
though they had got up early to meet some one who had not arrived. I sped
through them like a seagull that has the harbour to itself, and was not
long in reaching the theatre. How desolate the playbills looked that had
been so companionable but two or three hours before. And there was her
photograph! Surely it was an omen. Ah, my angel! See, I am bringing you my
heart in a song 'All my heart in this my singing!'
I dropped the letter into the box: but, as I turned away, momentarily
glancing up the long street, I caught sight of an approaching figure that
could hardly be mistaken. Good Heavens! it was David, and he too was
carrying a letter.
SANDRA BELLONI'S PINEWOOD
(TO THE SWEET MEMORY OF FRANCES WYNNE)
I felt jaded and dusty, I needed flowers and sunshine; and remembering
that some one had told me--erroneously, I have since discovered!--that the
pinewood wherein Sandra Belloni used to sing to her harp, like a nixie, in
the moonlit nights, lay near Oxshott in Surrey, I vowed myself there and
then to the Meredithian pilgrimage.
The very resolution uplifted me with lyric gladness, and I went swinging
out of the old Inn where I live with the heart of a boy. Across Lincoln's
Inn Fields, down by the Law Courts, and so to Waterloo. I felt I must have
a confidante, so I told the slate-coloured pigeons in the square where I
was off--out among the thrushes, the broom, and the may. But they wouldn't
come. They evidently deemed that a legal purlieu was a better place for
'pickings.'
Half-a-crown return to Oxshott and a train at 12.35. You know the ride
better than I, probably, and what Surrey is at the beginning of June. The
first gush of green on our getting clear of Clapham was like the big drink
after an afternoon's haymaking. There was but one cloud on the little
journey. She got into the next carriage.
I dreamed all the way. On arriving at Oxshott I immediately became
systematic. Having a very practical belief in the material basis of all
exquisite experience, I simply nodded to the great pinewoods half a mile
off, on the brow of long heathy downs to the left of the railway
bridge--as who should say, 'I shall enjoy you all the better presently for
some sandwiches and a pint of ale'--and promptly, not to say
scientifically, turned down the Oxshott road in search of an inn.
Oxshott is a quaint little hamlet, one of the hundred villages where we
are going to live when we have written great novels; but I didn't care
for the village inn, so walked a quarter of a mile nearer Leatherhead,
till the Old Bear came in sight.
There I sat in the drowsy parlour, the humming afternoon coming in at the
door, 'the blue fly' singing on the hot pane, dreaming all kinds of
gauzy-winged dreams, while my body absorbed ham sandwiches and some
excellent ale. Of course I did not leave the place without the inevitable
reflection on Lamb and the inns _he_ had immortalised. Outside again my
thoughts were oddly turned to the nature of my expedition by two figures
in the road--an unhappy-looking couple, evidently 'belonging to each
other,' the young woman with babe at breast, trudging together side by
side--
'One was a girl with a babe that throve,
Her ruin and her bliss;
One was a youth with a lawless love,
Who claspt it the more for this.'
The quotation was surely inevitable for any one who knows Mr. Meredith's
tragic little picture of 'The Meeting.'
Thus I was brought to think of Sandra again, and of the night when the
Brookfield ladies had heard her singing like a spirit in the heart of the
moon-dappled pinewood, and impresario Pericles had first prophesied the
future prima donna.
Do you remember his inimitable outburst?--'I am made my mind! I send her
abroad to ze Academie for one, two, tree year. She shall be instructed as
was not before. Zen a noise at La Scala. No--Paris! No--London! She shall
astonish London fairst. Yez! if I take a theatre! Yez! if I buy a
newspaper! Yez! if I pay feefty-sossand pound!'
Of course, as one does, I had gone expecting to distinguish the actual
sandy mound among the firs where she sat with her harp, the young
countryman waiting close by for escort, and the final 'Giles Scroggins,
native British, beer-begotten air' with which she rewarded him for his
patience in suffering so much classical music. Mr. Meredith certainly
gives a description of the spot close enough for identification, with time
and perseverance. But, reader, I had gone out this afternoon in the
interest rather of fresh air than of sentimental topography; and it was
quite enough for me to feel that somewhere in that great belt of pinewood
it had all been true, and that it was through those fir-branches and none
other in the world that that 'sleepy fire of early moonlight' had so
wonderfully hung.
After crossing the railway bridge the road rises sharply for a few yards,
and then a whole stretch of undulating woodland is before one: to the
right bosky green, but on the left a rough dark heath with a shaggy
wilderness of pine for background, heightened here and there with a sudden
surprise of gentle silver birch. How freshly the wind met one at the top
of the road: a southwest wind soft and blithe enough to have blown through
'Diana of the Crossways.'
'You saucy south wind, setting all the budded beech boughs swinging
Above the wood anemones that flutter, flushed and white,
When far across the wide salt waves your quick way you were winging,
Oh! tell me, tell me, did you pass my sweetheart's ship last night?
Ah! let the daisies be,
South wind! and answer me;
Did you my sailor see?
Wind, whisper very low,
For none but you must know
I love my lover so.'
I had been keeping that question to ask it for two or three days, since a
good friend had told me of some lyrics by Miss Frances Wynne; and the
little volume, charmingly entitled _Whisper_, was close under my arm as I
turned from the road across the heath--a wild scramble of scrubby
chance-children, wind-sown from the pines behind. And then presently, like
a much greater person, 'I found me in a gloomy wood astray.'
But I soon realised that it wasn't the day for pinewoods, however rich in
associations. Dark days are their Opportunity. Then one is in sympathy.
But on days when the sunshine is poured forth like yellow wine, when the
broom is ablaze, and the sky blue as particular eyes, the contrast of
those dark aisles without one green blade is uncanny. Its listening
loneliness almost frightens one. Brurrhh! One must find a greenwood where
things are companionable: birds within call, butterflies in waiting, and a
bee now and again to bump one, and be off again with a grumbled 'Beg your
pardon. Confound you!' So presently imagine me 'prone at the foot of
yonder' sappy chestnut, nice little cushions of moss around me, one for
_Whisper_, one for a pillow; above, a world of luminous green leaves,
filtered sunlight lying about in sovereigns and half-sovereigns, and at a
distance in the open shine a patch of hyacinths, 'like a little heaven
below.'
_Whisper_! Tis the sweetest little book of lyrics since Mrs. Dollie
Radford's _Light Load_. Whitman, you will remember, always used to take
his songs out into the presence of the fields and skies to try them. A
severe test, but a little book may bear it as well as a great one. The
_Leaves of Grass_ claims measurement with oaks; but _Whisper_ I tried by
speedwell and cinquefoil, and many other tiny sweet things for which I
know no name, by all airs and sounds coming to me through the wood, quaint
little notes of hidden birds,--and the songs were just as much at home
there as the rest, because they also had grown out of Nature's heart, and
were as much hers as any leaf or bird. So I dotted speedwell all amongst
them, because I felt they ought to know each other.
I wonder if you love to fill your books with flowers. It is a real
bookish delight, and they make such a pretty diary. My poets are full of
them, and they all mean a memory--old spring mornings, lost sunsets, walks
forgotten and unforgotten. Here a buttercup pressed like finely beaten
brass, there a great yellow rose--in my Keats; my Chaucer is like his old
meadows, 'ypoudred with daisie,' and my Herrick is full of violets. The
only thing is that they haunt me sometimes. But then, again, they bloom
afresh every spring. As Mr. Monkhouse sings:--
'Sweet as the rose that died last year is the rose that is born to-day.'
But I grow melancholy with an Englishman's afterthought, for I coined no
such reflections dreaming there in the wood. It is only on paper that one
moralises--just where one shouldn't.
My one or two regrets were quite practical--that I had not learnt botany
at school, and that the return train went so early.
WHITE SOUL
What is so white in the world, my love,
As thy maiden soul--
The dove that flies
Softly all day within thine eyes,
And nests within thine heart at night?
Nothing so white.
One has heard poets speak of a quill dropped from an angel's wing. That is
the kind of nib of which I feel in need to-night. If I could but have it
just for to-night only,--I would willingly bequeath it to the British
Museum to-morrow. As a rule I am very well satisfied with the particular
brand of gilt 'J' with which I write to the dictation of the Muse of Daily
Bread; but to-night it is different. Though it come not, I must make ready
to receive a loftier inspiration. Whitest paper, newest pen, ear
sensitive, tremulous; heart pure and mind open, broad and clear as the
blue air for the most delicate gossamer thoughts to wing through; and
snow-white words, lily-white words, words of ivory and pearl, words of
silver and alabaster, words white as hawthorn and daisy, words white as
morning milk, words 'whiter than Venus' doves, and softer than the down
beneath their wings'--virginal, saintlike, nunnery words.
It may be because I love White Soul that I think her the fairest blossom
on the Tree of Life, yet a child said of her to its mother, the other day:
'Look at White Soul's face--it is as though it were lit up from inside!'
Children, if they don't always tell the truth, seldom tell lies; and I
always think that the praise of children is better worth having than the
Cross of the Legion of Honour. They are the only critics from whom praise
is not to be bought. As animals are said to see spirits, children have, I
think, an eye for souls. It is so easy to have an eye for beautiful
surfaces. Such eyes are common enough. An eye for beautiful souls is
rarer; and, unless you possess that eye for souls, you waste your time on
White Soul. She has, of course, her external attractions, dainty features,
refined contours; but these it would not be difficult to match in any
morning's walk. It is when she smiles that her face, it seems to me, is
one of the most wonderful in the world. Till she smiles, it is like the
score of some great composer's song before the musician releases it
warbling for joy along the trembling keys; it is like the statue of Memnon
before the dawn steals to kiss it across the desert. White Soul's face
when she smiles is made, you would say, of larks and dew, of nightingales
and stars.
She is an eldritch little creature, a little frightening to live
with--with her gold flaxen hair that seems to grow blonder as it nears her
head: burnt blonde, it would seem, with the white light of the spirit that
pours all day long from her brows. There is something, as we say, almost
supernatural about her--'a fairy's child.' The gypsies have a share in her
blood, she boasts in her naive way, and with her love for all that is free
and lawless and under-the-sky--but I always say the fairies have more. She
is constantly saying 'Hush!' and 'Whisht!' when no one else can hear a
sound, and she dreams the quaintest of dreams.
Once she woke sobbing in the night and told her husband, who knew her ways
and loved her tenfold for them, that she had dreamed herself in the old
churchyard, and that as the moon rose behind the tower the three old men
who live in the three yew-trees had come out and played cards upon a tomb
in the moonlight, and one of them had beckoned to her and offered to tell
her fortune. It fell out that she was to die in the spring, and as he held
up the fatal card, the old man had leered at her--and then a cock crew,
all three vanished, and she awoke.
Her dreams are nearly all about dying, and, though she is obviously
robust, there is that transparent ethereal look in her face which makes
old women say 'she is not long for this world,' that fateful beauty which
creates an atmosphere of doom about it. You cannot look at her without a
queer involuntary feeling that she was born to die in some tragic way. She
reminds one of those perilously fragile vases we feel must get broken,
those rarely delicate flowers we feel cannot have strong healthy roots.
She is one of those who seem born to see terrible things, monstrous
accidents, supernatural appearances. She has seen death and birth in
strange uncanny forms; and she has met with unearthly creatures in the
lonely corners of rooms. She is a 'seventh-month child,' and
'seventh-month children always see things,' she says, with a funny little
sententious shake of her head.
Yet, with all this, she is the sunniest, healthiest, most domestic little
soul that breathes; and no doubt the materialist would be right in saying
that all this 'spirituelle' nonsense is but a trick of her transparent
blonde complexion, a chance quality in the colour of her great luminous
eyes.
Like all women, she was most wonderful just before the birth of her first
child, a little changeling creature, wild-eyed as her fairy mother. How
she made believe with the little fairy vestments, the elfin-shirts, the
pixy-frocks--long before it was time for the tiny body to step inside
them! how she talked to the unborn soul that none but she as yet could
see! And all the time she 'knew' she was going to die, that she would
never see the little immortal that was about to put on our mortality:
'people' had told her so in her dreams at night,--doubtless 'the good
people,' the fairies. Those who loved her grew almost to believe her--she
looks so like a little Sibyl when she says such things,--yet her little
one came almost without a cry, and in a few days the fairy mother was once
more glinting about the house like a sunbeam.
Well! well! I cannot make you see her as I know her: that I fear is
certain. You might meet her, yet never know her from my description. If
you wait for the coarse articulation of words you might well 'miss' her;
for her qualities are not histrionic, they have no notion of making the
best of themselves. They remain, so to speak, in nuggets; they are minted
into no current coin of fleeting fashion and shallow accomplishment. But
if a face can mean more to you than the whole of Johnson's _Dictionary_,
and the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ to boot, if a strain of music can convey
to you the thrill of human life, with its heights and depths and romantic
issues and possibilities, as Gibbon and Grote can never do--come and
worship White Soul's face with me. Some women's faces are like
diamonds--they look their best in artificial lights; White Soul's face is
bright with the soft brightness of a flower--a flower tumbled with dew,
and best seen in the innocent lights of dawn. Dear face without words!
And if there are those who can look on that face without being touched by
its strange spiritual loveliness, without seeing in it one of those clear
springs that bubble up from the eternal beauty, there must indeed be many
who would miss the soul for which her face is but the ivory gate, who
would never know how white is all within, never see or hear that holy
dove.
But I have seen and heard, and I know that if God should covet White Soul
and steal her from me, her memory would ever remain with me as one of
those eternal realities of the spirit to which 'realities' of flesh and
blood, of wood and stone, are but presumptuous shadows.
I am not worthy of White Soul. Indeed, just to grow more worthy of her was
I put into the world.
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