in good company 21

in good company 21

Then she rose, and drew herself up statuesquely--as it were to

“attention”--and to her full height, a striking figure. Grant Allen

once said to me that he suspected she had a strain of Red Indian

blood in her veins. If that be so--I do not know--it showed itself in

a certain proud imperturbability of bearing, and by the fact that

she stood, if not exactly stock-still, at least almost motionless

and gestureless. It showed itself, too, in the high cheek-bones; in

the swarthiness of her complexion, and the snaky smooth coils of

black hair that, parted low and loosely over the brow, toned down,

and softened into womanliness, the almost masculine massiveness

of the strong purposeful features. Throwing back her head, like a

full-throated thrush, and with her hands clasped simply in front of

her, she began to sing, low and flute-like at first, but as she went

on letting her glorious voice swell out in an organ-burst of song.

 

The effect was singular. The London season was at its height, and

the house was full of visitors, chiefly, I believe, Americans. When

Madame Sterling began to sing, we could distinctly hear the buzz of

conversation coming up from the floor below. Overhead, one could hear

the restless movement of feet, and sounds like those which come from

a kitchen--the chink of china and the clashing together of knives,

forks, and spoons, as if in preparation for a meal--were also audible.

 

But as the first few notes of the rich, full, noble, and far-carrying

contralto rang out, the chatter of voices below, the shuffle of feet,

or of furniture overhead, even the necessary commonplace, vulgar

sounds that came from the basement and the kitchen, were suddenly

checked, shamed, and silenced; and, as the singer’s voice deepened

into full diapason, one almost fancied that not only the men and

women gathered together in different rooms under that one roof,

but the very house itself, even the dead and inanimate pieces of

furniture, were strained and stilled in listening silence.

 

I am reminded of this old-time and almost forgotten incident

by an “Impression of Stephen Phillips,” contributed under the

initials “H.W.B.” to the _Outlook_ of December 18, 1915, by Mr.

Horace Bleackley, the distinguished novelist. Just as that noisy

boarding-house was at first surprised, and then, as it were,

frozen into a strange, almost uncanny silence by Madame Sterling’s

marvellous notes, so, by the majesty of spoken words, Stephen

Phillips compelled an unwilling company to a like hushed and awed

reverence.

 

“It was an evening party in an undergraduate’s rooms at Christ

Church, Oxford, about twenty-seven years ago,” writes Mr. Bleackley.

“It was a decorous gathering--not a ‘wine’--but there had been music

and mirth, and none of us were at all inclined towards serious

things. Suddenly the host announced that a member of the Benson

Company--several of whom were our guests on this occasion--would

give a recitation. A grave and thoughtful young man rose before us,

with the features of a Greek god, whom most of us recognised at a

glance (for we all had been at the theatre that week) as the Ghost in

_Hamlet_. Somewhat resentfully we relapsed into silence, few showing

any signs of enthusiasm, for scarcely any of us had the slightest

doubt that we were going to be bored.

 

“For twenty minutes the actor held us spellbound. His voice was

musical and his elocution that of a consummate artist. But this

we had realised before. It was not the charm of his diction that

enthralled us, but the melody of his verse--fresh and pure from

the heavenly spring. And when he had finished there were awestruck

whispers--which I seem to hear still--even from the Philistines: ‘It

is his own poem!’ Few of that company can have been surprised when,

about a decade later, all the world had hailed Stephen Phillips as

one of the greatest of living poets.”

 

Mr. Bleackley’s “Impression” was gathered long before Phillips had

reached the plenitude and the maturity of his power, for the poet

was then a very young man, leaving Cambridge as he did without

taking a degree, and joining his cousin’s Sir F. R. Benson’s touring

theatrical company. Those who heard Phillips at his prime and at

his best, will agree with me that his rendering of poetry cannot be

described by such words as “reading,” “recitation,” or “recital.”

The plain unexaggerated fact is that by mere words his rendering of

poetry cannot be described.

 

I am not writing of his acting, nor of his public reading, for,

excellent and memorable as were both, I doubt whether those who have

heard and seen Phillips only upon the stage, or the platform, have

any idea what he was like at his best--and at his best he never

was in public. It was in his own or in a friend’s home, and in the

company only of intimates, of whose sympathy and understanding he

was assured, that Phillips was his natural self, and therefore, his

natural self (alas, that he was not always that natural self!) being

inherently noble, at his highest and best. I have heard spiritualists

assert that the presence of one single person of unsympathetic

temperament has made it impossible to attain the necessary trance

condition on the part of the medium, and so has brought a séance to

nought.

 

Whether that be so or not I cannot say, for I have no knowledge

of spiritualism, but I recall occasions when Stephen Phillips had

been strangely disappointing, and, in explaining his failure to me

afterwards, he said:

 

“I couldn’t help it. That man or that woman’s very presence spoilt

everything and put me off. I seemed to feel his or her cold and

fish-like eyes fastened upon me as I read. I was all the time as

aware of that person’s boredom as sailors are aware, by the change in

the coldness of the atmosphere, of approaching bergs. Worse, I was

like a skater, fallen into a hole under the ice; who can find no way

out, but is held down and drowned under a roof of solid and unbroken

ice. One man, one woman, like that in my audience, or even in a room,

keeps me self-conscious all the time, and so makes poetry impossible;

for poetry, high poetry, is the sublimation, the exaltation, of the

senses into soul. It is the forgetting of self, the losing, merging

and fusing of one’s very individuality into pure thought, and into

visions and revelations of the Truth and the Loveliness that are of

God.”

 

 

II

 

It has been my fortune to know not a few poets. It has been my fate

to play listener while they, or most of them, read aloud their

verses. To them, presumably, some sort of satisfaction was to be

derived from the self-imposed task; otherwise I should not have been

thus afflicted. To me the case was one of holding on, directly under

the enemy’s artillery and without returning his fire, the casualties

in my own moral garrison being heavy. I was in fact for the most part

as severely punished as was Stephen Phillips on one occasion of which

he told me.

 

The wife of a friend of his was chatting in her drawing-room one

afternoon with two or three callers, among whom was Phillips. To them

entered the host her husband, who, drawing the author of _Marpessa_

aside, whispered to him, “Come along, Phillips, let’s enjoy

ourselves!”

 

“I was rather tiring of the drawing-room talk,” said Phillips, in

relating the incident, “and my host’s alluring words were like Hope.

They told a flattering tale. ‘Rumour has it,’ I said to myself, ‘that

there are in his cellars some bottles of port upon which it is good

to look when the colour is tawny in the glass. Nectar for the gods,

was the way one connoisseur described it. Does this mean that my host

is going to crack a bottle in my honour? Does this mean he is going

to fit me out with one of those choice cigars which he has also the

reputation of possessing?’ ‘Come along, Phillips, and let’s enjoy

ourselves!’ were his words.

 

“And what do you think happened? He lured me away to a dark and

chilly library, and read Francis Thompson’s poems to me for three

mortal hours. If that is his idea of enjoying himself it isn’t mine!”

 

Nor mine, I hasten to add, unless the reader were Stephen Phillips

himself, to listen to whom was the most exquisite artistic pleasure

imaginable. I agree with Mr. Bleackley that it was not Phillips’s

voice, nor his diction, nor his art that enthralled the hearers, but

I question whether Mr. Bleackley is right in attributing the effect

produced to the fact that the poet was speaking his own poem. For

that effect was the same whether the poem were by Phillips himself

or by Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, or Swinburne. In ordinary

conversation Phillips’s voice was not notably beautiful. It was

clear, musical, resonant, and finely modulated--that was all. Had

one done no more than talk with him, I am not sure that his voice

would thus far have impressed itself upon the memory. But in speaking

poetry, his voice was as different from the voice to which one was

accustomed in conversation as is a lit taper from the same taper

when unkindled. Poetry kindled the taper of his soul to flame, as

only poetry could. His genius was more supremely evident at such

times--that is to say, when he was _living_ poetry, when he was, as

it were, caught up and filled by some Pentecostal spirit of poetry

outside himself--than when he was, in travail and labour, if under

the pure impulse of inspiration, creating poetry. Then from the man

to whom we were listening the fetters of the senses (alas, that those

fetters should sometimes hold so closely and so heavily as to drag us

downwards to earth!) seemed to fall away, and his soul to soar back

to the heaven whence he had fallen.

 

He would begin to read or to recite with slow unemotional

deliberateness--the enunciation perfect, and the voice exquisitely

modulated--but at first there was just a suspicion of a chant, an

incantation, as if by a spell to call up the Spirit of Poetry before

us. It was beautiful, it was the perfection of elocutionary art, but

for the time being it seemed cold and afar from us and our lives,

like the frozen marble beauty of Greek statuary. Soon his voice would

deepen, and the room become strangely still. It was the listeners

now who reminded one of statuary, for each sat unmoving, scarcely

breathing, every sense, every thought, centred on the reader who, his

great eyes ablaze, yet all unseeing, sat as if in a trance. This was

no longer Stephen Phillips, our friend and intimate with whom we had

walked and talked.

 

All of us know what it is suddenly and unexpectedly to hear that we

shall see on earth, no more, a friend, who but yesterday was with

us, and of us, alive and well, his familiar and happy self. “No!

No! He is not dead! It cannot be! It must not be!” we cry out when

first told--as if death were something unnatural and abnormal; as if