in good company 22

in good company 22

Then, in some vague way, one’s thoughts wandered back to the time

when God walked in the Garden in the cool of the evening, and His

Voice was heard by mortals. For then the exigencies of Time and Space

were abrogated. The little room, wherein the poet sat and read, while

we listened, was so strangely transformed for us, that we saw the

vision of Dante and Milton unfold themselves before our eyes. The

poet could so speak a word as to make it seem like the Spirit of God

breathing upon the face of the waters, and calling new worlds into

being. He could so speak that single word as to make it almost a

world in itself.

 

When in Swinburne’s second chorus in _Atalanta in Calydon_ Phillips

came to the lines

 

He weaves, and is clothed with derision,

Sows, and he shall not reap,

His life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep,

 

with the last word “sleep,” as it came from Stephen Phillips’s lips,

the very world itself seemed to close tired eyes, to wander away into

unconsciousness, and finally to fall on sleep.

 

James Russell Lowell once said that if Shakespeare be read in the

very presence of the sea itself, his voice shall but seem the nobler,

for the sublime criticism of ocean; and the words recall Stephen

Phillips to me as I write, for in his voice, when he was deeply

stirred by poetry, there was something measured, unhasting, majestic,

like the vastness of great waters, moving in flood of full tide under

the moon.

 

I have tried to give the reader some idea of his rendering of

poetry, and I have failed, for, as I have already said, it cannot be

described. Some godlike spirit, outside himself, seemed, in these

supreme and consecrated hours, suddenly to possess him, and, when the

hour and the consecration were past, as suddenly to leave him. But,

while that hour lasted, there was only one word for Stephen Phillips,

poet, and that word was Genius.

 

 

 

 

EDWARD WHYMPER

 

AS I KNEW HIM

 

 

I

 

Though I head this article “Edward Whymper as I Knew Him,” I prefer

first to write of Edward Whymper as he was before I knew him--or

rather before he knew me. In the town where he and I were then living

he had been dubbed “Bradlaugh turned Baedeker” by one resident who

insisted on Whymper’s likeness to the late Charles Bradlaugh, and

was aware that the Great Mountaineer had written various “Guides.”

Another name by which he was known was “The Sphinx,” possibly because

of his silence, his aloofness, and the mystery with which he was

supposed to surround himself. To the good folk of the town he was

indeed always something of an enigma. In the street he stalked

straightforwardly along, looking only in front of him, set of mouth,

stony of eye and severe of brow, if anyone either spoke to, or stared

at him. On the journey up to London, when most people read their

morning paper, he was rarely seen with a newspaper in his hand, but

stared, pipe in mouth, out of the window, except when going through

proofs or working at papers which he produced from a black leather

bag, without which he was never seen in the train. On the journey

down, when work for the day was done, his would-be sociable fellow

passengers found Whymper taciturn and reticent, responding, or rather

not responding, to any conversational advance, if possible, in a

monosyllable.

 

The town in question was Southend, where he lived in Cliff Town

Parade, and I, ten minutes’ walk away at Westcliff. Though he

contended that there was no place within fifty miles of London with

such fine air, and though he never wearied (like Robert Buchanan,

who, as well as his brother poet, Sir Edwin Arnold, was at one

time a resident of Southend) of extolling the atmospheric effects

of sunshine and shadow upon the saltings, and though (again like

Buchanan, who had said as much to me) he vowed that nowhere else

in England were there to be seen more glorious pageants of sunrise

and sunset--to the people of Southend, especially to his fellow

travellers on the railway, he had taken an implacable dislike. When

in London I was first introduced to him, he and I fell out upon

the subject. Hearing that I lived at Southend, he asked me whether

I did not agree with him that nowhere else would one meet such

objectionable folk as those who journeyed backward and forward to

town.

 

I replied that though Southend had no claim to be the home of rank

and fashion (overrun as it was and is, during the summer months,

by swarming hordes of East End trippers), I had found my fellow

travellers and the residents generally--of the middle classes as they

admittedly were--cordial, sociable, and kindly, and that for my part,

so far from feeling as he did, I liked them and had many friends

among them.

 

This for some reason exasperated Whymper, who launched out in fierce

abuse of his unoffending fellow townsmen.

 

“My good sir,” he stormed, “I ask you where else in England, where

else in God’s world if you like, will you come across such a

collection and crew of defaulting solicitors, bagmen, undischarged

bankrupts, shady stockbrokers and stock jobbers, potmen, pawnbrokers

and publicans as on that particular railway which you and I use?”

 

I did not agree with him, and told him so plainly if courteously,

whereupon, seeing that I was more amused than annoyed by his

storming, he suddenly turned good-tempered, diverted the conversation

into other channels, and when we parted was quite friendly.

 

His attitude on this occasion, as I afterwards discovered, was

characteristically Whymperian. He could respect a man who stood up

to him and was undismayed by his storming; he had “no use,” as the

Americans say, for one who was ready cheaply and insincerely to

profess himself entirely in agreement. He would at any time rather

be bearded than humoured, and the fact that on our first meeting I

refused to be browbeaten was, I now believe, one of the reasons why

he and I thereafter became good friends.

 

One picture of Edward Whymper, as I saw him many times, is vivid in

my memory. The morning train to town is on the point of starting,

the guard has waved his flag, blown his whistle, and is urging

late comers to “hurry up.” Along the platform, indifferent to the

guard’s frantic arm-waving, never lengthening his step by so much

as one inch, never quickening his pace by as much as by one second,

but strolling as leisurely as if the train were not to start for an

hour, and looking at each carriage for the face he is seeking, walks

a closely-knit, sturdily-built man of middle height. His dress is

unusual, as he is well aware, accounting for it once by reminding me

of a great nobleman who, equally eccentric in the matter of dress,

remarked, “Where I live, every one knows who and what I am, so it

doesn’t matter what I wear. In London no one knows who and what I am,

so I am equally free to please myself.”

 

More often than not Whymper, when going to town, wore a black

greatcoat over a woollen sweater, and had a brown seal fur cap with

lapels pulled down over the ears and fastened under the chin, for,

like many who have spent much time in Canada, he felt colder in the

damp and foggy climate of England, even when the temperature is

moderate, than he did in the drier, clearer atmosphere of the Great

Dominion, and when the thermometer stands at 40 degrees below zero.

 

But unusual as are a fur cap and sweater, when worn as I have

seen Whymper wear them even when journeying to London, at the

height of the season, they struck one as less incongruous than the

ill-brushed, out-of-date silk hat in which, with black leather or

cloth leggings, he occasionally weirdly arrayed himself. He sees

my face at the window, stops, and, as leisurely as he had walked,

enters the carriage and seats himself opposite to me, his back to

the engine. To me he merely nods, or if on that occasion inclined

to be loquacious, goes so far as to say “Good morning,” but never

another word. The other occupants of the compartment he either

entirely ignores or favours with a baleful glare. Then he puts his

bag upon his knee, produces a packet of biscuits, and, looking out

of the window all the time, munches them with jaws that move as

rhythmically and methodically as if run by clockwork. His breakfast

of dry biscuits finished, he dives into his bag for a flask, solemnly

unscrews the stopper, as solemnly lifts the flask to his mouth, takes

a drink, smacks his lips, replaces the stopper in the flask and then

the flask in the bag, snaps the lock and puts the bag at his side.

This done, he fishes in his pocket for pipe, tobacco and matches,

charges and lights his pipe, takes with evident enjoyment two or

three long draws at it, sniffing possibly with relish and with open

nostrils at the smoke which rises from the bowl, settles himself

comfortably in his corner, and then, and not till then, turns to me

with a cheery “Well, and how are you this morning?” I reply with

equal cheeriness, and probably the whole way up to town we talk--only

we two--incessantly.

 

But had I, _before_ he had munched his biscuits, swigged at his

flask, replaced the latter in his bag, lit his pipe and settled

himself in the corner, addressed him in any way, I should have had

the shortest of answers, and the chances are that for the rest of the

journey he would have remained silent. That was Edward Whymper’s way,

and a man who liked more to have his own way I never met. My liking

was for himself, not for his ways; but since it was his whim to be

let alone, to speak to no one and to be spoken to by no one until

he had breakfasted and lit his pipe, I was quite willing so to let

him go his own way, knowing that soon the oracle would speak of its

own accord, and would say many things which were well worth anyone’s

attention and hearing.

 

 

II

 

“In the _Memoir of Tennyson_ by his son, there will be a letter--only

one--to myself,” said Whymper to me in 1897. “Except for the fact

that it was one of the last, if indeed not the very last letter

Tennyson penned, it doesn’t strike me as being important enough for

inclusion. But it has a curious history. I had sent Tennyson a copy

of one of my books, _Travels among the Great Andes of the Equator_.