|
I have come to reckon my friends by the measure of confidence
with which
I can ask them for a light. If the request leaps easily to the
lips
I know that their friendship is of the sterling stuff. There is
that
excellent fellow Higginson, for example. He works in a room near
mine,
and I have had more lights from him in these days than from any
other
man on earth. I never hesitate to ask Higginson for a match. I do
it
quite boldly, fearlessly, shamelessly. And he does it to me--but not
so
often, not nearly so often. And his instinct is so delicate.
If--having
borrowed a little too recklessly from him of late--I go into his
room
and begin talking of the situation in Holland, or the new taxes, or
the
Peace Conference, or things like that--is he deceived? Not at all.
He
knows that what I want is not conversation, but a match. And if he
has
one left it is mine. I have even seen him pretend to relight his
pipe
because he knew I wanted to light mine. That is the sort of man
Higginson is.
I cannot speak too highly of Higginson.
But the years of famine are over.
Soon we shall be able to go into the
tobacconist's shop and call for a box of
matches with the old air of
authority and, having got them, strike them
prodigally as in the days
before the great darkness. Even the return of the
newspaper placards is
welcome for the assurance it brings that we can think
once more about
Lords and the Oval.
And there are more intimate
reminders that the spring is returning,
Your young kinsman from Canada or
Australia looks in to tell you he is
sailing home tomorrow, and your friends
turn up to see you in tweeds
instead of khaki. In the dining-room at the club
you come across waiters
who are strange and yet not strange, bronzed fellows
who have been on
historic battlefields and now ask you whether you will have
"thick or
clear," with the pleasant air of renewing an old acquaintance.
Your
galley proof is brought down to you by a giant in shirt sleeves whom
you
look at with a shadowy feeling of remembrance. And then you discover
he
is that pale, thin youth who used to bring the proofs to you years
ago,
and who in the interval has been fighting in many lands near and
far,
in France and Macedonia, Egypt and Palestine, and now comes back
wearing
the burnished livery of desert suns. Down on the golf links you meet
a
stoutish fellow who turns out to be the old professional released
from
Germany after long months of imprisonment, who tells you he was
one
"of the lucky ones; nothing to complain of, sir; I worked on a farm
and
lived with the farmer's family, and had the same as they had. No,
sir,
nothing to complain of. I was one of the lucky ones."
Perhaps the
pleasure of these renewals of the old associations of men
and things is
shadowed by the memory of those who were not lucky, those
who will never come
back to the familiar ways and never hear the sound
of Big Ben again. We must
not forget them and what we owe them as we
enter the new life that they have
won for us. But to-day, under the
stimulus of the princess's sugar basin, I
am inclined to dwell on the
credit side of things and rejoice in the
burgeoning of spring. We
have left the deathly solitudes of the glaciers
behind, and though the
moraine is rough and toilsome the valleys lie cool
beneath us, and we
can hear the pleasant tinkle of the cow-bells calling us
back to the old
pastures.
[Illustration: 0127]
[Illustration:
0128]
ON BEING REMEMBERED
|As I lay on the hill-top
this morning at the edge of the beech woods
watching the harvesters in the
fields, and the sunlight and shadows
chasing each other across the valley, it
seemed that the centuries were
looking down with me. For the hill-top is
scored with memories, as an
old school book is scored with the names of
generations of scholars.
Near by are the earthworks of the ancient Britons,
and on the face of
the hill is a great white horse carved in the chalk
centuries ago. Those
white marks, that look like sheep feeding on the green
hill-side, are
reminders of the great war. How long ago it seems since the
recruits
from the valley used to come up here to learn the art of
trench-digging,
leaving these memorials behind them before they marched away
to whatever
fate awaited them! All over the hill-top are the ashes of old
fires lit
by merry parties on happy holidays. One scorched and blackened
area,
more spacious than the rest, marks the spot where the beacon fire
was
lit to celebrate the signing of Peace. And on the boles of the
beech
trees are initials carved deep in the bark--some linked like those
of
lovers, some freshly cut, some old and covered with lichen.
What is
this instinct that makes us carve our names on tree trunks, and
school desks
with such elaborate care? It is no modern vulgarity. It is
as ancient as
human records. In the excavations at Pergamos the school
desks of two
thousand years ago have been found scored with the names of
the schoolboys of
those far-off days. No doubt the act itself delighted
them. There was never a
boy who did not find pleasure in cutting wood
or scrawling on a wall, no
matter what was cut or what was scrawled.
And the joy does not wholly pass
with youth. Stonewall Jackson found
pleasure in whittling a stick at any
time, and I never see a nice
white ceiling above me as I lie in bed, without
sharing Mr Chesterton's
hankering for a charcoal with which to cover it with
prancing fancies.
But at the back of it all, the explanation of those
initials
on the boles of the beeches is a desire for some sort
of
immortality--terrestrial if not celestial. Even the least of us
would
like to be remembered, and so we carve our names on tree trunks
and
tombstones to remind later generations that we too once passed this
way.
If it is a weakness, it is a weakness that we share with the
great.
One of the chief pleasures of greatness is the assurance that fame
will
trumpet its name down the centuries. Cæsar wrote his Commentaries
to
take care that posterity did not forget him, and Horace's "Exegi
monumentum
ære perennius" is one of many confident assertions that he
knew he would be
among the immortals. "I have raised a monument," he
says, "more enduring than
brass and loftier than the pyramids of kings;
a monument which shall not be
destroyed by the consuming rain nor by
the rage of the north wind, nor by the
countless years and the flight
of ages." The same magnificent confidence
appears in Shakespeare's proud
declaration--=
```Not marble, nor the
gilded monuments
```Of princes, shall outlive this powerful
rhyme,=
and Wordsworth could predict that he would never die because he
had
written a song of a sparrow--=
```And in this bush one sparrow
built her nest
```Of which I sang one song that will not
die.=
Keats, it is true, lamented that his name was "writ in water,"
but
behind the lament we see the lurking hope that it was destined
for
immortality.
Burns, in a letter to his wife, expresses the same
comfortable
confidence. "I'll be more respected," he said, "a hundred years
after
I am dead than I am at present;" and even John Knox had his eye
on
an earthly as well as a heavenly immortality. So, too, had
Erasmus.
"Theologians there will always be in abundance," he said; "the like
of
me comes but once in centuries."
Lesser men than these have gone to
their graves with the conviction that
their names would never pass from the
earth. Landor had a most imperious
conceit on the subject. "What I write," he
said, "is not written on
slate and no finger, not of Time itself who dips it
in the cloud of
years can efface it." And again, "I shall dine late, but the
dining-room
will be well-lighted, the guests few and select." A proud fellow,
if
ever there was one. Even that very small but very clever person,
Le
Brun-Pindare, cherished his dream of immortality. "I do not die,"
he
said grandly; "_I quit the time_." And beside this we may put
Victor
Hugo's rather truculent, "It is time my name ceased to fill the
world."
But no one stated so frankly, not only that he expected
immortality, but
that he laboured for immortality, as Cicero did. "Do you
suppose," he
said, "to boast a little of myself after the manner of old men,
that I
should have undergone such great toils by day and night, at home, and
in
service, had I thought to limit my glory to the same bounds as my
life?
Would it not have been far better to pass an easy and quiet life
without
toil or struggle? But I know not how my soul, stretching upwards,
has
ever looked forward to posterity as if, when it had departed from
life,
then at last it would begin to live." The context, it is
true,
suggests that a celestial immortality were in his thought as well as
a
terrestrial; but earthly glory was never far from his mind.
Nor was
it ever forgotten by Boswell. His confession on the subject
is one of the
most exquisite pieces of self-revelation to be found in
books. I must give
myself the luxury of transcribing its inimitable
terms. In the preface to his
"Account of Corsica" he says:--
_For my part I should be proud to be
known as an author; I have an
ardent ambition for literary fame; for of all
possessions I should
imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who
has been able
to furnish a book which has been approved by the world has
established
himself as a respectable character in distant society, without
any
danger of having the character lessened by the observation of
his
weaknesses. (_Oh, you rogue!_) To preserve a uniform dignity among
those
who see us every day is hardly possible; and to aim at it must put
us
under the fetters of a perpetual restraint. The author of an
approved
book may allow his natural disposition an easy play ("_You were
drunk
last night, you dog_"), and yet indulge the pride of superior
genius
when he considers that by those who know him only as an author
he
never ceases to be respected. Such an author in his hours of gloom
and
discontent may have the consolation to think that his writings are
at
that very time giving pleasure to numbers, and such an author may
cherish the
hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great
object of the
noblest minds in all ages._
We may smile at Boswell's vanity, but most of
us share his ambition.
Most of us would enjoy the prospect of being
remembered, in spite of
Gray's depressing reminder about the futility of
flattering the "dull
cold ear of death." In my more expansive moments, when
things look rosy
and immortality seems cheap, I find myself entertaining on
behalf of
"Alpha of the Plough" an agreeable fancy something like this. In
the
year two thousand--or it may be three thousand--yes, let us do the
thing
handsomely and not stint the centuries--in the year three thousand
and
ever so many, at the close of the great war between the Chinese and
the
Patagonians, that war which is to end war and to make the world safe
for
democracy--at the close of this war a young Patagonian officer who
has
been swished that morning from the British Isles across the
Atlantic
to the Patagonian capital--swished, I need hardly remark, being
the
expression used to describe the method of flight which consists
in
being discharged in a rocket out of the earth's atmosphere and made
to
complete a parabola on any part of the earth's surface that may
be
desired--bursts in on his family with a trophy which has been
recovered
by him in the course of some daring investigations of the
famous
subterranean passages of the ancient British capital--those
passages
which have so long perplexed, bewildered, intrigued, and occupied
the
Patagonian savants, some of whom hold that they were a system of
sewers,
and some that they were the roadways of a people who had become
so
afflicted with photophobia that they had to build their cities
underground.
The trophy is a book by one "Alpha of the Plough." It
creates an enormous
sensation. It is put under a glass case in the
Patagonian Hall of the
Immortals. It is translated into every Patagonian
dialect. It is read in
schools. It is referred to in pulpits. It is
discussed in learned societies.
Its author, dimly descried across the
ages, becomes the patron saint of a
cult.
[Illustration: 0134]
An annual dinner is held to his memory,
at which some immense Patagonian
celebrity delivers a panegyric in his
honour. At the close the whole
assembly rises, forms a procession and, led by
the Patagonian Patriarch,
marches solemnly to the statue of Alpha--a
gentleman with a flowing
beard and a dome-like brow--that overlooks the
market-place, and places
wreaths of his favourite flower at the base, amid
the ringing of bells
and a salvo of artillery.
There is, of course,
another and much more probable fate awaiting you,
my dear Alpha. It is to
make a last appearance on some penny barrow in
the New Cut and pass thence
into oblivion. That is the fate reserved
for most, even of those authors
whose names sound so loud in the world
to-day. And yet it is probably true,
as Boswell said, that the man who
writes has the best chance of remembrance.
Apart from Pitt and Fox,
who among the statesmen of a century ago are
recalled even by name? But
Wordsworth and Coleridge, Byron and Hazlitt,
Shelley and Keats and Lamb,
even second-raters like Leigh Hunt and Godwin,
have secure niches in the
temple of memory. And for one person who recalls
the' brilliant military
feats of Montrose there are a thousand who remember
him by half a stanza
of the poem in which he poured out his
creed--=
```He either fears his fate too much,
````Or his deserts
are small.
```That dares not put it to the touch
````To win or
lose it all.=
Mæcenas was a great man in his day, but it was not his
friendship
with Octavius Cæsar that gave him immortality, but the fact that
he
befriended a young fellow named Horace, who wrote verses and linked
the
name of his benefactor with his own for ever. And the case of Pytheas
of
Ægina is full of suggestion to those who have money to spare and
would
like to be remembered. Pytheas being a victor in the Isthmian games
went
to Pindar and asked him how much he would charge to write an ode in
his
praise. Pindar demanded one talent, about ￡200 of our money. "Why,
for
so much money," said Pytheas, "I can erect a statue of bronze in
the
temple."
"Very likely." On second thoughts he returned and paid
for the poem. And
now, as Emerson remarks in recalling the story, not only
all the
statues of bronze in the temples of Ægina are destroyed, but the
temples
themselves and the very walls of the city are utterly gone whilst
the
ode of Pindar in praise of Pytheas remains entire. There are few
surer
paths to immortality than making friends with the poets, as the case
of
the Earl of Southampton proves. He will live as long as the sonnets
of
Shakespeare live simply in virtue of the mystery that envelops
their
dedication. But one must choose one's poet carefully. I do not
advise
you to go and give Mr -------- ￡200 and a commission to send your
name
echoing down the corridors of time.
Pindars and Shakespeares are
few, and Mr -------- (you will fill in the
blank according to your own
aversion) is not one of them. It would be
safer to spend the money in getting
your name attached to a rose, or an
overcoat, or a pair of boots, for these
things, too, can confer a modest
immortality. They have done so for many. A
certain Marechal Neil is
wafted down to posterity in the perfume of a rose,
which is as enviable
a form of immortality as one could conceive. A certain
Mr Mackintosh is
talked about by everybody whenever there is a shower of
rain, and even
Blucher is remembered more by his boots than by his battles.
It would
not be very extravagant to imagine a time when Gladstone will be
thought
of only as some remote tradesman who invented a bag, just as
Archimedes
is remembered only as a person who made an ingenious
screw.
But, after all, the desire for immortality is not one that will
keep the
healthy mind awake at night. It is reserved for very few of us,
perhaps
one in a million, and they not always the worthiest. The lichen
of
forgetfulness steals over the memory of the just and the unjust
alike,
and we shall sleep as peacefully and heedlessly if we are forgotten
as
if the world babbles about us for ever.
[Illustration:
0137]
[Illustration: 0138]
ON DINING
|There are
people who can hoard a secret as misers hoard gold. They can
hoard it not for
the sake of the secret, but for the love of secrecy,
for the satisfaction of
feeling that they have got something locked up
that they could spend if they
chose without being any the poorer and
that other people would enjoy knowing.
Their pleasure is in not spending
what they can afford to spend. It is a
pleasure akin to the economy of
the Scotsman, which, according to a
distinguished member of that race,
finds its perfect expression in taking the
tube when you can afford a
cab. But the gift of secrecy is rare. Most of us
enjoy secrets for the
sake of telling them. We spend our secrets as Lamb's
spendthrift spent
his money--while they are fresh. The joy of creating an
emotion in other
people is too much for us. We like to surprise them, or
shock them, or
please them as the case may be, and we give away the secret
with which
we have been entrusted with a liberal hand and a solemn request
"to say
nothing about it." We relish the luxury of telling the secret, and
leave
the painful duty of keeping it to the other fellow. We let the horse
out
and then solemnly demand that the stable door shall be shut so that
it
shan't escape, I have done it myself--often. I have no doubt that
I shall do
it again. But not to-day. I have a secret to reveal, but I
shall not reveal
it. I shall not reveal it for entirely selfish reasons,
which will appear
later. You may conceive me going about choking with
mystery. The fact is that
I have made a discovery. Long years have
I spent in the search for the
perfect restaurant, where one can
dine wisely and well, where the food is
good, the service plain, the
atmosphere restful, and the prices moderate--in
short, the happy
mean between the giddy heights of the Ritz or the Carlton,
and the
uncompromising cheapness of Lockhart's. In those extremes I find
no
satisfaction.
It is not merely the dearness of the Ritz that I
reject. I dislike its
ostentatious and elaborate luxury. It is not that I am
indifferent to
a good table. Mrs Poyser was thankful to say that there
weren't many
families that enjoyed their "vittles" more than her's did, and I
can
claim the same modest talent for myself. I am not ashamed to say
that
I count good eating as one of the chief joys of this transitory life.
I
could join very heartily in Peacock's chorus:=
````"How can a man,
in his life of a span,
````Do anything better than dine."=
Give me
a satisfactory' dinner, and the perplexities of things unravel
themselves
magically, the clouds break, and a benign calm overspreads
the landscape. I
would not go so far as the eminent professor, who
insisted that eating was
the greatest of all the pleasures in life.
That, I think, is exalting the
stomach unduly. And I can conceive few
things more revolting than the Roman
practice of prolonging a meal by
taking emetics. But, on the other hand,
there is no need to apologise
for enjoying a good dinner. Quite virtuous
people have enjoyed good
dinners. I see no necessary antagonism between a
healthy stomach and
a holy mind. There was a saintly man once in this city--a
famous man,
too--who was afflicted with so hearty an appetite that, before
going out
to dinner, he had a square meal to take the edge off his hunger,
and to
enable him to start even with the other guests. And it is on
record
that when the ascetic converts of the Oxford movement went to lunch
with
Cardinal Wiseman in Lent they were shocked at the number of fish
courses
that hearty trencherman and eminent Christian went through in a
season
of fasting, "I fear," said one of them, "that there is a lobster
salad
side to the Cardinal." I confess, without shame, to a lobster salad
side
too. A hot day and a lobster salad--what happier conjunction can we
look
for in a plaguey world?
But, in making this confession, I am
neither _gourmand_ nor _gourmet_.
Extravagant dinners bore me, and offend
what I may call my economic
conscience; I have little sense of the higher
poetry of the kitchen, and
the great language of the _menu_ does not stir my
pulse. I do not ask
for lyrics at the table. I want good, honest prose. I
think that Hazlitt
would have found me no unfit comrade on a journey. He had
no passion for
talk when afoot, but he admitted that there was one subject
which it was
pleasant to discuss on a journey, and that was what one should
have
for supper at the inn. It is a fertile topic that grows in grace
as
the shadows lengthen and the limbs wax weary. And Hazlitt had the
right
spirit. His mind dwelt upon plain dishes--eggs and a rasher, a
rabbit
smothered in onions, or an excellent veal cutlet. He even
spoke
approvingly of Sancho's choice of a cow-heel. I do not go all the
way
with him in his preferences. I should argue with him fiercely
against
his rabbit and onions. I should put the case for steak and onions
with
conviction, and I hope with convincing eloquence. But the root of
the
matter was in him. He loved plain food plainly served, and I am proud
to
follow his banner. And it is because I have found my heart's desire
at
the Mermaid, that I go about burdened with an agreeable secret. I
feel
when I enter its portals a certain sober harmony and repose of
things.
I stroke the noble cat that waits me, seated on the banister,
and
rises, purring with dignity, under my caress. I say "Good evening"
to
the landlord who greets me with a fine eighteenth-century bow, at
once
cordial and restrained, and waves me to a seat with a grave motion
of
his hand. No frowsy waiter in greasy swallow-tail descends on me; but
a
neat-handed Phyllis, not too old nor yet too young, in sober black
dress
and white cuffs, attends my wants, with just that mixture of
civility
and aloofness that establishes the perfect
relationship--obliging,
but not familiar, quietly responsive to a sign, but
not talkative. The
napery makes you feel clean to look at it, and the cutlery
shines like a
mirror, and cuts like a Seville blade. And then, with a nicely
balanced
dish of hors d'ouvres, or, in due season, a half-a-dozen oysters,
the
modest four-course table d'hote begins, and when at the end you
light
your cigarette over your cup of coffee, you feel that you have not
only
dined, but that you have been in an atmosphere of plain
refinement,
touched with the subtle note of a personality.
And the
bill? Sir, you would be surprised at its modesty. But I shall
not tell you.
Nor shall I tell you where you will find the Mermaid. It
may be in Soho or
off the Strand, or in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's
Inn, or it may not be in
any of these places. I shall not tell you
because I sometimes fancy it is
only a dream, and that if I tell it
I shall shatter the illusion, and that
one night I shall go into the
Mermaid and find its old English note of kindly
welcome and decorous
moderation gone, and that in its place there will be a
noisy, bustling,
popular restaurant with a band, from which I shall flee.
When it is
"discovered" it will be lost, as the Rev. Mr Spalding would say.
And so
I shall keep its secret. I only purr it to the cat who arches her
back
and purrs understanding in response. It is the bond of
freemasonry
between us.
[Illustration: 0142]
[Illustration:
0143]
IDLE THOUGHTS AT SEA
|I was leaning over the
rails of the upper deck idly watching the
Chinese whom, to the number of over
3000, we had picked up at Havre
and were to disgorge at Halifax, when the
bugle sounded for lunch. A
mistake, I thought, looking at my watch. It said
12.15, and the luncheon
hour was one. Then I remembered. I had not corrected
my watch that
morning by the ship's clock. In our pursuit of yesterday across
the
Atlantic we had put on another three-quarters of an hour. Already
on
this journey we had outdistanced to-day by two and a half hours. By
the
time we reached Halifax we should have gained perhaps six hours. In
thought I
followed the Chinamen thundering across Canada to Vancouver,
and thence
onward across the Pacific on the last stage of their voyage.
And I realised
that by the time they reached home they would have caught
yesterday
up.
But would it be yesterday after all? Would it not be to-morrow? And
at
this point I began to get anxious about To-day. I had spent fifty
odd
years in comfortable reliance upon To-day. It had seemed the most
secure
thing in life. It was always changing, it was true; but it was
always
the same. It was always To-day. I felt that I could no more get out
of
it than I could get out of my skin. And here we were leaving it
behind
as insensibly and naturally as the trees bud in spring. In front of
us,
beyond that hard rim of the horizon, yesterday was in flight, but
we
were overtaking it bit by bit. We had only to keep plugging away by
sea
and land, and we should soon see its flying skirts in the twilight
across the
plains. But having caught it up we should discover that it
was neither
yesterday nor to-day, but to-morrow. Or rather it would be a
confusion of all
three.
In short, this great institution of To-day that had seemed so
fixed and
absolute a property of ours was a mere phantom--a parochial
illusion
of this giddy little orb that whizzed round so industriously on its
own
axis, and as it whizzed cut up the universal day into dress lengths
of
light and dark. And these dress lengths, which were so elusive
that
they were never quite the same in any two places at once, were named
and
numbered and tied up into bundles of months and years, and packed
away
on the shelves of history as the whirring orb unrolled another
length
of light and dark to be duly docketed and packed away with the rest.
And
meanwhile, outside this little local affair of alternate strips of
light
and dark--what? Just one universal blaze of sunshine, going on for
ever
and ever, without dawn or sunset, twilight or dark--not many days,
but
just one day and that always midday.
At this stage I became
anxious not only about Today, but about Time
itself. That, too, was becoming
a fiction of this unquiet little speck
of dust on which I and those merry
Chinese below were whizzing round. A
few hours hence, when our strip of
daylight merged into a strip of
dark, I should see neighbouring specks of
dust sparkling in the indigo
sky--specks whose strip of daylight was many
times the length of
ours, and whose year would outlast scores of ours.
Indeed, did not the
astronomers tell us that Neptune's year is equal to 155
of our years?
Think of it--our Psalmist's span of life would not stretch half
round
a single solar year of Neptune. You might be born on New Year's Day
and
live to a green old age according to our reckoning, and still never
see
the glory of midsummer, much less the tints of autumn. What could
our
ideas of Time have in common with those of the dwellers on
Neptune--if,
that is, there be any dwellers on Neptune.
And beyond
Neptune, far out in the infinite fields of space, were hosts
of other specks
of dust which did not measure their time by this
regal orb above me at all,
but cut their strips of light and dark, and
numbered their days and their
years, their centuries and their aeons
by the illumination of alien lamps
that ruled the illimitable realms of
other systems as the sun ruled ours.
Time, in short, had ceased to
have any fixed meaning before we left the Solar
system, but out in the
unthinkable void beyond it had no meaning at all.
There was not Time:
there was only duration. Time had followed To-day into
the realm of
fable.
As I reached this depressing conclusion--not a
novel or original one,
but always a rather cheerless one--a sort of orphaned
feeling stole over
me. I seemed like a poor bereaved atom of consciousness,
cast adrift
from Time and the comfortable earth, and wandering about
forlornly in
eternity and infinity. But the Chinese enabled me to keep fairly
jolly
in the contemplation of this cosmic loneliness. They were having
a
gay time on the deck below after being kept down under hatches
during
yesterday's storm. One of them was shaving the round grinning faces
of
his comrades at an incredible speed. Another, with a basket of
oranges
before him, was crying something that sounded like "Al-lay!
Al-lay!"
counting the money in his hand meanwhile again and again, not
because he
doubted whether it was all there, but because he liked the feel
and
the look of it. A sprightly young rascal, dressed as they all were in
a
grotesque mixture of garments, French and English and German, picked
up
on the battlefields of France, where they had been working for three
years,
stole up behind the orange-seller (throwing a joyful wink at me
as he did so)
snatched an orange and bolted. There followed a roaring
scrimmage on deck, in
the midst of which the orange-seller's coppers
were sent flying along the
boards, occasioning enormous hilarity and
scuffling, and from which the
author of the mischief emerged riotously
happy and, lighting a cigarette,
flung himself down with an air of
radiant good humour, in which he enveloped
me with a glance of his bold
and merry eye.
The little comedy
entertained me while my mind still played with the
illusions of Time. I
recalled occasions when I had seemed to pass,
not intellectually as I had
now, but emotionally out of Time. The
experiences were always associated with
great physical weariness and
the sense of the endlessness of the journey.
There was that day in the
Dauphine coming down from the mountains to
Bourg-d'Oison. And that other
experience in the Lake District. How well I
recalled it! I stood with a
companion in the doorway of the hotel at
Patterdale looking at the rain.
We had come to the end of our days in the
mountains, and now we were
going back to Keswick, climbing Helvellyn on the
way. But Helvellyn was
robed in clouds, and the rain was of that determined
kind that admits of
no hope. And so, after a long wait, we decided that
Helvellyn "would
not go," as the climber would say, and, putting on our
mackintoshes and
shouldering our rucksacks, we set out for Keswick by the
lower slopes of
the mountains--by the track that skirts Great Dodd and
descends by the
moorlands into the Vale of St John.
All day the rain
came down with pauseless malice, and the clouds hung
low over the mountains.
We ploughed on past Ullswater, heard Airey Force
booming through the
universal patter of the rain and, out on the moor,
tramped along with that
line sense of exhilaration that comes from the
struggle with forbidding
circumstance. Baddeley declares this walk to
be without interest, but on that
sombre day we found the spacious
loneliness of the moors curiously
stimulating and challenging. In the
late afternoon we descended the steep
fell side by the quarries into the
Vale of St John and set out for the final
tramp of five miles along the
road. What with battling with the wind and
rain, and the weight of the
dripping mackintosh and the sodden rucksack, I
had by this time walked
myself into that passive mental state which is like a
waking dream,
in which your voice sounds hollow and remote in your ears, and
your
thoughts seem to play irresponsibly on the surface of your
slumbering
consciousness.
Now, if you know that road in the Vale of St
John, you will remember
that it is what Mr Chesterton calls "a rolling road,
a reeling road."
It is like a road made by a man in drink. First it seems as
though it
is going down the Vale of Thirlmere, then it turns back and sets
out for
Penrith, then it remembers Thirlmere again and starts afresh for
that
goal, only to give it up and make another dash for Penrith. And
so
on, and all the time it is not wanting to go either to Thirlmere or
to
Penrith, but is sidling crabwise to Keswick. In short, it is a road
which is
like the whip-flourish that Dickens used to put at the end of
his signature,
thus:
[Illustration: 0148]
Now, as we turned the first loop and
faced round to Penrith, I saw
through the rain a noble view of Saddleback.
The broad summit of that
fine mountain was lost in the clouds. Only the
mighty buttresses
that sustain the southern face were visible. They looked
like the
outstretched fingers of some titanic hand coming down through the
clouds
and clutching the earth as though they would drag it to the skies.
The
image fell in with the spirit of that grey, wild day, and I pointed
the
similitude out to my companion as we paced along the muddy
road.
Presently the road turned in one of its plunges towards Thirlmere,
and
we went on walking in silence until we swung round at the next loop.
As
we did so I saw the fingers of a mighty hand descending from the
clouds
and clutching the earth. Where had I seen that vision before?
Somewhere,
far off, far hence, I had come suddenly upon just such a scene,
the same
mist of rain, the same great mountain bulk lost in the clouds, the
same
gigantic fingers gripping the earth. When? Where? It might have
been
years ago. It might have been the projection of years to come. It
might
have been in another state of existence.... Ah no, of course, it
was
this evening, a quarter of an hour ago, on this very road. But
the
impression remained of something outside the confines of time. I
had
passed into a static state in which the arbitrary symbols had
vanished,
and Time was only like a faint shadow cast upon the timeless deeps.
I
had walked through the shadow into the deeps.
But my excursion into
Eternity, I remembered, did not prevent me, when
I reached the hotel at
Keswick, consulting the railway guide very
earnestly in order to discover the
time of the trains for London next
day. And the recollection of that prosaic
end to my spiritual wanderings
brought my thoughts back to the Chinamen. One
of them, sitting just
below me, was happily engaged in devouring a large loaf
of French bread,
one of those long rolls that I had seen being despatched to
them on deck
from the shore at Havre, skilfully balanced on a basket that was
passed
along a rope connecting the ship and the landing-stage. The gusto
of
the man as he devoured the bread, and the crisp, appetising look of
the
brown crust reminded me of something.... Yes, of course. The bugle
had
gone for lunch long ago. They would be half through the meal' by
this
time. I turned hastily away and went below, and as I went I put my
watch
back three-quarters of an hour. After all, one might as well accept
the
fiction of the hours and be in the fashion. It would save
trouble.
[Illustration: 0150]
[Illustration:
0151]
TWO DRINKS OF MILK
|The cabin lay a hundred
yards from the hot, dusty road, midway between
Sneam and Derrynane, looking
across the noble fiord of Kenmare River and
out to the open
Atlantic.
A bare-footed girl with hair black as midnight was driving two
cows down
the rocks.
We put our bicycles in the shade and ascended the
rough rocky path to
the cabin door. The bare-footed girl had marked our
coming and received
us.
Milk? Yes. Would we come in?
We
entered. The transition from the glare of the sun to the cool shade
of the
cabin was delicious. A middle-aged woman, probably the mother
of the girl,
brushed the seats of two chairs for us with her apron, and
having done that
drove the chickens which were grubbing on the earthen
floor out into the
open. The ashes of a turf fire lay on the floor and
on a bench by the ingle
sat the third member of the family.
She was a venerable woman, probably
the grandmother of the girl; but her
eye was bright, her faculties unblunted,
and her smile as instant and
untroubled as a child's. She paused in her
knitting to make room for me
on the bench by her side, and while the girl
went out for the milk she
played the hostess.
If you have travelled in
Kerry you don't need to be told of the charm
of the Kerry peasantry. They
have the fascination of their own wonderful
country, with its wild rocky
coast encircling the emerald glories of
Killamey. They are at once tragic and
childlike. In their eyes is the
look of an ancient sorrow; but their speech
is fresh and joyous as a
spring morning. They have none of our Saxon reserve
and aloofness, and
to know them is to forgive that saying of the greatest of
the sons of
Kerry, O'Connell, who remarked that an Englishman had all the
qualities
of a poker except its occasional warmth. The Kerry peasant is
always
warm with the sunshine of comradeship. He is a child of nature,
gifted
with wonderful facility of speech and with a simple joy in
giving
pleasure to others. It is impossible to be lonely in Kerry, for
every
peasant you meet is a gentleman anxious to do you a service,
delighted
if you will stop to talk, privileged if you will only allow him to
be
your guide. It is like being back in the childhood of the world,
among
elemental things and an ancient, unhasting people.
The old lady
in the cabin by the Derrynane road seemed to me a duchess
in disguise. That
is, she had just that gracious repose of manner that
a duchess ought to have.
She knew no bigger world than the village of
Sneam, five miles away. Her life
had been passed in this little cabin
and among these barren rocks. But the
sunshine was in her heart and she
had caught something of the majesty of the
great ocean that gleamed out
there through the cabin door. Across that sunlit
water generations of
exiles had gone to far lands. Some few had returned and
some had been
for ever silent. As I sat and listened I seemed to hear in
those gentle
accents all the tale of a stricken people and of a deserted
land. There
was no word of complaint--only a cheerful acceptance of the
decrees
of Fate. There is the secret of the fascination of the
Kerry
temperament--the happy sunlight playing across the sorrow of
things.
The girl returned with a huge, rough earthen bowl of milk, filled
almost
to the brim, and a couple of mugs.
We drank and then rose to
leave, asking as we did so what there was to
pay.
"Sure, there's
nothing to pay," said the old lady with just a touch of
pride in her sweet
voice. "There's not a cabin in Kerry where you'll not
be welcome to a drink
of milk."
The words sang in the mind all the rest of that summer day, as
we bathed
in the cool waters that, lapped the foot of the cliffs near
Derrynane,
and as we toiled up the stiff gradient of Coomma Kistie Pass. And
they
added a benediction to the grave night when, seated in front of
Teague
M'Carty's hotel--Teague, the famous fisherman and more famous
flymaker,
whose rooms are filled with silver cups, the trophies of great
exploits
among the salmon and trout, and whose hat and coat are stuck thick
with
many-coloured flies--we saw the moon rise over the bay at Waterville
and
heard the wash of the waves upon the shore.
When cycling from
Aberfeldy to Killin you will be well advised to take
the northern shore of
Loch Tay, where the road is more level and much
better made than that on the
southern side. (I speak of the days before
the coming of the motor which has
probably changed all this.)
In our ignorance of the fact we had taken the
southern road. It was a
day of brilliant sunshine and inimitable thirst.
Midway along the
lake we dismounted and sought the hospitality of a
cottage--neat and
well-built, a front garden gay with flowers, and all about
it the sense
of plenty and cleanliness. A knock at the door was followed by
the bark
of a dog. Then came the measured tramp of heavy boots along the
flagged
interior. The door opened, and a stalwart man in shooting jacket
and
leggings, with a gun under his arm and a dog at his heels, stood
before
us. He looked at us with cold firmness to hear our business. We
felt
that we had made a mistake. We had disturbed someone who had
graver
affairs than thirsty travelers to attend to.
Milk? Yes. He
turned on his heel and stalked with great strides back
to the kitchen. We
stood silent at the door. Somehow, the day seemed
suddenly less
friendly.
In a few minutes the wife appeared with a tray bearing a jug
and two
glasses--a capable, neatly-dressed woman, silent and severe of
feature.
While we poured out the milk and drank it, she stood on the
doorstep,
looking away across the lake to where the noble form of
Schiehallion
dominates the beautiful Rannoch country. We felt that time was
money and
talk foolishness, and drank our milk with a sort of guilty
haste.
"What have we to pay, please?"
"Sixpence."
And the
debt discharged, the lady turned and closed the door.
It was a nice,
well-kept house, clean and comfortable; but it lacked
something that made the
poor cabin on the Derrynane road a fragrant
memory.
[Illustration:
0155]
[Illustration: 0156]
ON FACTS AND THE
TRUTH
|It was my fortune the other evening to be at dinner with a
large
company of doctors. While we were assembling I fell into
conversation
with an eminent physician, and, our talk turning upon food, he
remarked
that we English seasoned our dishes far too freely. We scattered
salt
and pepper and vinegar over our food so recklessly that we destroyed
the
delicacy of our taste, and did ourselves all sorts of mischief. He
was
especially unfriendly to the use of salt. He would not admit even
that
it improved the savour of things. It destroyed our sense of their
natural
flavour, and substituted a coarser appeal to the palate. From
the hygienic
point of view, the habit was all wrong. All the salts
necessary to us are
contained in the foods we eat, and the use of salt
independently is entirely
harmful.
"Take the egg, for example," he said. "It contains in it all
the
elements necessary for the growth of a chicken--salt among the
rest.
That is sufficient proof that it is a complete, self-contained
article
of food. Yet when we come to eat it we drench it with salt,
vulgarise
its delicate flavour, and change its natural dietetic character."
And he
concluded, as we went down to dinner, by commending the superior
example
of the Japanese in this matter. "They," he said laughingly, "only
take
salt when they want to die."
At the dinner table I found myself
beside another member of the Faculty,
and by way of breaking the
conversational ice I asked (as I liberally
applied salt to my soup) whether
he agreed with those of his profession
who held that salt was unnecessary and
even harmful. He replied with
great energy in the negative. He would not
admit that the foods we
eat contain the salt required by the human body. "Not
even the egg?"
I asked. "No, not even the egg. We cook the egg as we cook
most of our
foods, and even if the foods contain the requisite salt in their
raw
state they tend to lose their character cooked." He admitted that
that
was an argument for eating things _au naturel_ more than is the
practice. But
he was firm in his conviction that the separate use of
salt is essential.
"And as for flavour, think of a walnut, eaten raw,
with or without salt. What
comparison is there?"
"But," said I (artfully exploiting my newly
acquired information about
the Japanese), "are there not races who do not use
salt?" "My dear sir,"
said he, "the most conclusive evidence about the
hygienic quality of
salt is supplied by the case of the Indians. Salt is
notoriously one of
the prime essentials of life to them. When the supply,
from one cause
or another, is seriously diminished, the fact is reflected
with absolute
exactness in the mortality returns. If they don't get a
sufficiency of
salt to eat with their food they die."
After this
exciting beginning I should have liked to spend the evening
in examining all
the doctors separately on the subject of salt. No doubt
I should have found
all shades of differing opinion among them. On the
face of it, there is no
possibility of reconciling the two views I have
quoted, especially the
illustrations from the Japanese and the Indians.
Yet I daresay they could be
reconciled easily enough if we knew all the
facts. For example, while the
Indians live almost exclusively upon rice,
the Japanese are probably the
greatest fish consuming community in the
world, and anyone who has dined with
them knows how largely they eat
their fish in the raw state. This difference
of habit, I imagine, would
go far to explain what seems superficially
inexplicable and incredible.
But I refer to the incident here only to
show what a very elusive thing
the truth is. One would suppose that if there
were one subject about
which there would be no room for controversy or
disagreement it would be
a commonplace thing like the use of salt.
Yet
here were two distinguished doctors, taken at random--men
whose whole life
had been devoted to the study of the body and its
requirements--whose views
on the subject were in violent antagonism.
They approached their subject from
contrary angles and with contrary
sets of facts, and the truth they were in
search of took a wholly
different form for each.
It is with facts as
with figures. You can make them prove anything by
judicious
manipulation.
A strenuous person was declaiming in the train the other
day about our
air service. He was very confident that we were "simply out of
it--that
was all, simply out of it." And he was full of facts on the
subject.
I don't like people who brim over with facts--who lead
facts about,
as Holmes says, like a bull-dog to leap at our throat. There are
few
people so unreliable as the man whose head bulges with facts.
His
conclusions are generally wrong. He has so many facts that he
cannot
sort them out and add up the total. He belongs to what the Abbe
Sieyes
called "loose, unstitched minds."
Perhaps I am prejudiced, for
I confess that I am not conspicuous for
facts. I sympathise with poor Mrs
Shandy. She could never remember
whether the earth went round the sun or the
sun round the earth. Her
husband had told her again and again, but she always
forgot. I am not so
bad as that, but I find that facts are elusive things. I
put a fact
away in the chambers of my mind, and when I go for it I discover,
not
infrequently, that it has got some moss or fungus on it, or
something
chipped off, and I can never trust it until I have verified
my
references.
But to return to the gentleman in the train. The point
about him was
that, so far as I could judge, his facts were all sound. He
could tell
you how many English machines had failed to return on each day of
the
week, and how many German machines had been destroyed or forced
to
descend. And judging from his figures he was quite right. "We were
out
of it--simply out of it." Yet the truth is that while his facts
were
right, his deduction was wrong. It was wrong because he had
taken
account of some facts, but had left other equally important facts out
of
consideration. For example, through all this time the German airmen
had
been on the defensive and ours had been on the attack. The
Englishmen
had taken great risks for a great object. They had gone miles
over
the enemy's lines--as much as fifty miles over--and had come back
with
priceless information. They had paid for the high risks, of course, but
the whole truth is that, so far from being beaten, they were at this time the
most victorious element of our Army. |
|
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