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Confessions of a Young Man, a novel by George Augustus Moore |
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Chapter 11 |
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_ CHAPTER XI THOUGHTS IN A STRAND LODGING Awful Emma has undressed and put the last child away--stowed the last child away in some mysterious and unapproachable corner that none knows of but she; the fat landlady has ceased to loiter about my door, has ceased to pester me with offers of brandy and water, tea and toast, the inducements that occur to her landlady's mind; the actress from the Savoy has ceased to walk up and down the street with the young man who accompanied her home from the theatre; she has ceased to linger on the doorstep talking to him, her key has grated in the lock, she has come upstairs, we have had our usual midnight conversation on the landing, she has told me her latest hopes of obtaining a part, and of the husband whom she was obliged to leave; we have bid each other good-night, she has gone up the creaky staircase. I have returned to my room, littered with MS. and queer publications; the night is hot and heavy, but now a wind is blowing from the river. I am listless and lonely.... I open a book, the first book that comes to hand ... it is _Le Journal des Goncourts_, p. 358, the end of a chapter:-- "_It is really curious that it should be the four men the most free from all taint of handicraft and all base commercialism, the four pens the most entirely devoted to art, that were arraigned before the public prosecutor: Baudelaire, Flaubert, and ourselves._" Yes it is indeed curious, and I will not spoil the piquancy of the moral by a comment. No comment would help those to see who have eyes to see, no comment would give sight to the hopelessly blind. Goncourt's statement is eloquent and suggestive enough; I leave it a naked simple truth; but I would put by its side another naked simple truth. This: If in England the public prosecutor does not seek to override literature, the means of tyranny are not wanting, whether they be the tittle-tattle of the nursery or the lady's drawing-room, or the shameless combinations entered into by librarians.... In England as in France those who loved literature the most purely, who were the least mercenary in their love, were marked out for persecution, and all three were driven into exile. Byron, Shelley, and George Moore; and Swinburne, he, too, who loved literature for its own sake, was forced, amid cries of indignation and horror, to withdraw his book from the reach of a public that was rooting then amid the garbage of the Yelverton divorce case. I think of these facts and think of Baudelaire's prose poem, that poem in which he tells how a dog will run away howling if you hold to him a bottle of choice scent, but if you offer him some putrid morsel picked out of some gutter hole, he will sniff round it joyfully, and will seek to lick your hand for gratitude. Baudelaire compared that dog to the public. Baudelaire was wrong: that dog was a ----. * * * * * When I read Balzac's stories of Vautrin and Lucien de Rubempre, I often think of Hadrian and the Antinous. I wonder if Balzac did dream of transposing the Roman Emperor and his favourite into modern life. It is the kind of thing that Balzac would think of. No critic has ever noticed this. * * * * * Sometimes, at night, when all is still, and I look out on that desolate river, I think I shall go mad with grief, with wild regret for my beautiful _appartement_ in _Rue de la Tour des Dames_. How different is the present to the past! I hate with my whole soul this London lodging, and all that concerns it--Emma, and eggs and bacon, the fat lascivious landlady and her lascivious daughter; I am sick of the sentimental actress who lives upstairs, I swear I will never go out to talk to her on the landing again. Then there is failure--I can do nothing, nothing; my novel I know is worthless; my life is a weak leaf, it will flutter out of sight presently. I am sick of everything; I wish I were back in Paris; I am sick of reading; I have nothing to read. Flaubert bores me. What nonsense has been talked about him! Impersonal! Nonsense, he is the most personal writer I know. That odious pessimism! How sick I am of it, it never ceases, it is lugged in _a tout dropos_, and the little lyrical phrase with which he winds up every paragraph, how boring it is. Happily, I have "A Rebours" to read, that prodigious book, that beautiful mosaic. Huysmans is quite right, ideas are well enough until you are twenty, afterwards only words are bearable ... a new idea, what can be more insipid--fit for members of parliament.... Shall I go to bed? No.... I wish I had a volume of Verlaine, or something of Mallarme's to read--Mallarme for preference. I remember Huysmans speaks of Mallarme in "A Rebours." In hours like these a page of Huysmans is as a dose of opium, a glass of some exquisite and powerful liqueur. "The decadence of a literature irreparably attacked in its organism, weakened by the age of ideas, overworn by the excess of syntax, sensible only of the curiosity which fevers sick people, but nevertheless hastening to explain everything in its decline, desirous of repairing all the omissions of its youth, to bequeath all the most subtle souvenirs of its suffering on its deathbed, is incarnate in Mallarme in most consummate and absolute fashion.... "The poem in prose is the form, above all others, they prefer; handled by an alchemist of genius, it should contain in a state of meat the entire strength of the novel, the long analysis and the superfluous description of which it suppresses ... the adjective placed in such an ingenious and definite way, that it could not be legally dispossessed of its place, would open up such perspectives, that the reader would dream for whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and multiple, affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine the future of the souls of the characters revealed by the light of the unique epithet. The novel thus understood, thus condensed into one or two pages, would be a communion of thought between a magical writer and an ideal reader, a spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior persons scattered through the universe, a delectation offered to the most refined, and accessible only to them." Huysmans goes to my soul like a gold ornament of Byzantine workmanship; there is in his style the yearning charm of arches, a sense of ritual, the passion of the mural, of the window. Ah! in this hour of weariness for one of Mallarme's prose poems! Stay, I remember I have some numbers of _La Vogue_. One of the numbers contains, I know, "Forgotten Pages;" I will translate word for word, preserving the very rhythm, one or two of these miniature marvels of diction:--
"Since Maria left me to go to another star--which? Orion, Altair, or thou, green Venus? I have always cherished solitude. What long days I have passed alone with my cat. By alone, I mean without a material being, and my cat is a mystical companion--a spirit. I can, therefore, say that I have passed whole days alone with my cat, and, alone with one of the last authors of the Latin decadence; for since that white creature is no more, strangely and singularly I have loved all that the word _fall_ expresses. In such wise that my favourite season of the year is the last weary days of summer, which immediately precede autumn, and the hour I choose to walk in is when the sun rests before disappearing, with rays of yellow copper on the grey walls and red copper on the tiles. In the same way the literature that my soul demands--a sad voluptuousness--is the dying poetry of the last moments of Rome, but before it has breathed at all the rejuvenating approach of the barbarians, or has begun to stammer the infantile Latin of the first Christian poetry. "I was reading, therefore, one of those dear poems (whose paint has more charm for me than the blush of youth), had plunged one hand into the fur of the pure animal, when a barrel organ sang languidly and melancholy beneath my window. It played in the great alley of poplars, whose leaves appear to me yellow, even in the spring-tide, since Maria passed there with the tall candles for the last time. The instrument is the saddest, yes, truly; the piano scintillates, the violin opens the torn soul to the light, but the barrel-organ, in the twilight of remembrance, made me dream despairingly. Now it murmurs an air joyously vulgar which awakens joy in the heart of the suburbs, an air old-fashioned and commonplace. Why do its flourishes go to my soul, and make me weep like a romantic ballad? I listen, imbibing it slowly, and I do not throw a penny out of the window for fear of moving from my place, and seeing that the instrument is not singing itself.
"(Singular shadows hang about the worn-out panes.) "And thy Venetian mirror, deep as a cold fountain in its banks of gilt work; what is reflected there? Ah! I am sure that more than one woman bathed there in her beauty's sin; and, perhaps, if I looked long enough, I should see a naked phantom. "Wicked one, thou often sayest wicked things. "(I see the spiders' webs above the lofty windows.) "Our wardrobe is very old; see how the fire reddens its sad panels! the weary curtains are as old, and the tapestry on the arm-chairs stripped of paint, and the old engravings, and all these old things. Does it not seem to thee that even these blue birds are discoloured by time? "(Dream not of the spiders' webs that tremble above the lofty windows.) "Thou lovest all that, and that is why I live by thee. When one of my poems appeared, didst thou not desire, my sister, whose looks are full of yesterdays, the words, the grace of faded things? New objects displease thee; thee also do they frighten with their loud boldness, and thou feelest as if thou shouldest use them--a difficult thing indeed to do, for thou hast no taste for action. "Come, close thy old German almanack that thou readest with attention, though it appeared more than a hundred years ago, and the Kings it announces are all dead, and, lying on this antique carpet, my head leaned upon thy charitable knees, on the pale robe, oh! calm child, I will speak with thee for hours; there are no fields, and the streets are empty, I will speak to thee of our furniture. "Thou art abstracted? "(The spiders' webs are shivering above the lofty windows.)"
* * * * * "_J'ai fait mes adieux a ma mere et je viens pour vous faire les miens_ and other absurdities by Ponson du Terrail amused us many a year in France, and in later days similar bad grammar by Georges Ohnet has not been lost upon us, but neither Ponson du Terrail nor Georges Ohnet sought literary suffrage, such a thing could not be in France, but in England, Rider Haggard, whose literary atrocities are more atrocious than his accounts of slaughter, receives the attention of leading journals and writes about the revival of Romance. As it is as difficult to write the worst as the best conceivable sentence, I take this one and place it for its greater glory in my less remarkable prose:-- "_As we gazed on the beauties thus revealed by Good, a spirit of emulation filled our breasts, and we set to work to get ourselves up as well as we could._" A return to romance! a return to the animal, say I. * * * * * One thing that cannot be denied to the realists: a constant and intense desire to write well, to write artistically. When I think of what they have done in the matter of the use of words, of the myriad verbal effects they have discovered, of the thousand forms of composition they have created, how they have remodelled and refashioned the language in their untiring striving for intensity of expression for the very osmazome of art, I am lost in ultimate wonder and admiration. What Hugo did for French verse, Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, and Huysmans have done for French prose. No more literary school than the realists has ever existed, and I do not except even the Elizabethans. And for this our failures are more interesting than the vulgar successes of our opponents; for when we fall into the sterile and distorted, it is through our noble and incurable hatred of the commonplace of all that is popular. The healthy school is played out in England; all that could be said has been said; the successors of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot have no ideal, and consequently no language; what can be more pudding than the language of Mr. Hardy, and he is typical of a dozen other writers, Mr. Besant, Mr. Murray, Mr. Crawford? The reason of this heaviness of thought and expression is that the avenues are closed, no new subject matter is introduced, the language of English fiction has therefore run stagnant. But if the realists should catch favour in England the English tongue may be saved from dissolution, for with the new subjects they would introduce, new forms of language would arise. * * * * * I wonder why murder is considered less immoral than fornication in literature? * * * * * I feel that it is almost impossible for the same ear to seize music so widely differing as Milton's blank verse and Hugo's alexandrines, and it seems to me especially strange that critics varying in degree from Matthew Arnold to the obscure paragraphist, never seem even remotely to suspect, when they passionately declare that English blank verse is a more perfect and complete poetic instrument than French alexandrines, that the imperfections which they aver are inherent in the latter exist only in their British ears, impervious to a thousand subtleties. Mr. Matthew Arnold does not hesitate to say that the regular rhyming of the lines is monotonous. To my ear every line is different; there is as much variation in Charles V.'s soliloquy as in Hamlet's; but be this as it may, it is not unworthy of the inmates of Hanwell for critics to inveigh against _la, rime pleine_, that which is instinctive in the language as accent in ours, that which is the very genius of the language. But the principle has been exaggerated, deformed, caricatured until some of the most modern verse is little more than a series of puns--in art as in life the charm lies in the unexpected, and it is annoying to know that the only thought of _every_ poet is to couple _les murs_ with _des fruits trop murs_, and that no break in the absolute richness of sound is to be hoped for. Gustave Kahn whose beautiful volume "Les Palais Nomades" I have read with the keenest delight, was the first to recognise that an unfailing use of _la rime pleine_ might become cloying and satiating, and that, by avoiding it sometimes and markedly and maliciously choosing in preference a simple assonance, new and subtle music might be produced. "Les Palais Nomades" is a really beautiful book, and it is free from all the faults that make an absolute and supreme enjoyment of great poetry an impossibility. For it is in the first place free from those pests and parasites of artistic work--ideas. Of all literary qualities the creation of ideas is the most fugitive. Think of the fate of an author who puts forward a new idea to-morrow in a book, in a play, in a poem. The new idea is seized upon, it becomes common property, it is dragged through newspaper articles, magazine articles, through books, it is repeated in clubs, drawing-rooms; it is bandied about the corners of streets; in a week it is wearisome, in a month it is an abomination. Who has not felt a sickening feeling come over him when he hears such phrases as "To be or not to be, that is the question"? Shakespeare was really great when he wrote "Music to hear, why hearest thou music sadly?" not when he wrote, "The apparel oft proclaims the man." Could he be freed from his ideas what a poet we should have! Therefore, let those who have taken firsts at Oxford devote their intolerable leisure to preparing an edition from which everything resembling an idea shall be firmly excluded. We might then shut up our Marlowes and our Beaumonts and resume our reading of the bard, and these witless beings would confer happiness on many, and crown themselves with truly immortal bays. See the fellows! their fingers catch at scanty wisps of hair, the lamps are burning, the long pens are poised, and idea after idea is hurled out of existence. Gustave Kahn took counsel of the past, and he has successfully avoided everything that even a hostile critic might be tempted to term an idea; for this I am grateful to him. Nor is his volume a collection of miscellaneous verses bound together. He has chosen a certain sequence of emotions; the circumstances out of which these emotions have sprung are given in a short prose note. "Les Palais Nomades" is therefore a novel in essence; description and analysis are eliminated, and only the moments when life grows lyrical with suffering are recorded; recorded in many varying metres conforming only to the play of the emotion, for, unlike many who, having once discovered a tune, apply it promiscuously to every subject they treat, Kahn adapts his melody to the emotion he is giving expression to, with the same propriety and grace as Nature distributes perfume to her flowers. For an example of magical transition of tone I turn to _Intermede_. * * * * * Viens sous des tendelets aux fleuves souriants * * * * * Quel que soit le spectacle et quelle que soit la rame Cependant tu m'aimais a jamais?
"Le jardin rima ses branches de lilas; "Des rires ailes peuplerent le jardin;
Each century has its special ideal, the ideal of the nineteenth is a young man. The seventeenth century is only woman--see the tapestries, the delightful goddesses who have discarded their hoops and heels to appear in still more delightful nakedness, the noble woods, the tall castles, with the hunters looking round; no servile archaeology chills the fancy, it is but a delightful whim; and this treatment of antiquity is the highest proof of the genius of the seventeenth century. See the Fragonards--the ladies in high-peaked bodices, their little ankles showing amid the snow of the petticoats. Up they go; you can almost hear their light false voices into the summer of the leaves, where Loves are garlanded even as of roses. Masks and arrows are everywhere, all the machinery of light and gracious days. In the Watteaus the note is more pensive; there is satin and sunset, plausive gestures and reluctance--false reluctance; the guitar is tinkling, and exquisite are the notes in the languid evening; and there is the Pierrot, that marvellous white animal, sensual and witty and glad, the soul of the century--ankles and epigrams everywhere, for love was not then sentimental, it was false and a little cruel; see the furniture and the polished floor, and the tapestries with whose delicate tints and decorations the high hair blends, the footstool and the heel and the calf of the leg that is withdrawn, showing in the shadows of the lace; look at the satin of the bodices, the fan outspread, the wigs so adorably false, the knee-breeches, the buckles on the shoes, how false; adorable little comedy, adorably mendacious; and how sweet it is to feast on these sweet lies, it is a divine delight to us, wearied with the hideous sincerity of newspapers. Then it was the man who knelt at the woman's feet, it was the man who pleaded and the woman who acceded; but in our century the place of the man is changed, it is he who holds the fan, it is he who is besought; and if one were to dream of continuing the tradition of Watteau and Fragonard in the nineteenth century, he would have to take note of and meditate deeply and profoundly on this, as he sought to formulate and synthesize the erotic spirit of our age. The position of a young man in the nineteenth century is the most enviable that has ever fallen to the lot of any human creature. He is the rare bird, and is feted, flattered, adored. The sweetest words are addressed to him, the most loving looks are poured upon him. The young man can do no wrong. Every house is open to him, and the best of everything is laid before him; girls dispute the right to serve him; they come to him with cake and wine, they sit circle-wise and listen to him, and when one is fortunate to get him alone she will hang round his neck, she will propose to him, and will take his refusal kindly and without resentment. They will not let him stoop to tie up his shoe lace, but will rush and simultaneously claim the right to attend on him. To represent in a novel a girl proposing marriage to a man would be deemed unnatural, but nothing is more common; there are few young men who have not received at least a dozen offers, nay, more; it is characteristic, it has become instinctive for girls to choose, and they prefer men not to make love to them; and every young man who knows his business avoids making advances, knowing well that it will only put the girl off. In a society so constituted, what a delightful opening there is for a young man. He would have to waltz perfectly, play tennis fairly, the latest novel would suffice for literary attainments; billiards, shooting, and hunting, would not come in amiss, for he must not be considered a useless being by men; not that women are much influenced by the opinion of men in their choice of favourites, but the reflex action of the heart, although not so marked as that of the stomach, exists and must be kept in view, besides a man who would succeed with women, must succeed with men; the real Lovelace is loved by all. Like gravitation, love draws all things. Our young man would have to be five feet eleven, or six feet, broad shoulders, light brown hair, deep eyes, soft and suggestive, broad shoulders, a thin neck, long delicate hands, a high instep. His nose should be straight, his face oval and small, he must be clean about the hips, and his movements must be naturally caressing. He comes into the ball-room, his shoulders well back, he stretches his hand to the hostess, he looks at her earnestly (it is characteristic of him to think of the hostess first, he is in her house, the house is well-furnished, and is suggestive of excellent meats and wines). He can read through the slim woman whose black hair, a-glitter with diamonds, contrasts with her white satin; an old man is talking to her, she dances with him, and she refused a young man a moment before. This is a bad sign; our Lovelace knows it; there is a stout woman of thirty-five, who is looking at him, red satin bodice, doubtful taste. He looks away; a little blonde woman fixes her eyes on him, she looks as innocent as a child; instinctively our Lovelace turns to his host. "Who is that little blonde woman over there, the right hand corner?" he asks. "Ah, that is Lady ----." "Will you introduce me?" "Certainly." Lovelace has made up his mind. Then there is a young oldish girl, richly dressed; "I hear her people have a nice house in a hunting country, I will dance with her, and take the mother into supper, and, if I can get a moment, will have a pleasant talk with the father in the evening." In manner Lovelace is facile and easy; he never says no, it is always yes, ask him what you will; but he only does what he has made up his mind it is his advantage to do. Apparently he is an embodiment of all that is unselfish, for he knows that after he has helped himself, it is advisable to help some one else, and thereby make a friend who, on a future occasion, will be useful to him. Put a violinist into a room filled with violins, and he will try every one. Lovelace will put each woman aside so quietly that she is often only half aware that she has been put aside. Her life is broken; she is content that it should be broken. The real genius for love lies not in getting into, but getting out of love. * * * * * I have noticed that there are times when every second woman likes you. Is love, then, a magnetism which we sometimes possess and exercise unconsciously, and sometimes do not possess? _ |
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