Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

In the admirable and stimulating lecture given to the English Association by Professor Spurgeon on "Poetry in the Light of War," I came again upon that poem of Rupert Brooke's in which he enumerates certain material things that have given him most pleasure in life. "I have been so great a lover," he writes, and then he makes a list of his loves, thus following, perhaps all unconsciously, Lamb's _John Woodvil_ in that rhymed passage which, under the title "The Universal Lover," has been detached from the play. But Lamb, pretending to be Elizabethan, dealt with the larger splendours, whereas Rupert Brooke's modernity took count of the smaller. John Woodvil's list of his loves begins with the sunrise and the sunset; Rupert Brooke sets down such mundane and domestic trifles as white plates and cups, the hard crust of bread, and the roughness of blankets.

This, to strangers to the poem, may not sound very poetical, but they must read it before they judge. To me it is at once one of the most satisfying and most beautiful leaves in the Georgian anthology. Here is a passage:

Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;
Voices in laughter too; and body's pain
Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam
That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks, and shining pools on grass;
--All these have been my loves.

My reason in quoting these fine and tender lines is to point out how simple a thing poetry can be; how easily we, at any rate for a few moments--even the most material, the most world-brutalized of us,--can become poets too. For I hold that any man searching his memory for the things that from earliest days have given him most delight, and sincerely recording them, not necessarily with verbal garniture at all, is while he does so a poet. A good deal of Whitman is little else but such catalogues; and Whitman was a great poet. The effort (even without the reward of this not-always-desired label) is worth making, because (and this is where the poetry comes in) it forces one to visit the past and dwell again in the ways of pleasantness before the world was too much with us and life's hand had begun to press heavily: most of such loves as Rupert Brooke recalls having their roots in our childhood. Hence such poetry as we shall make cannot be wholly reading without tears.

I find that on my list of loves scents would take a very important place--the scent of gorse warmed by the sun coming almost first, gorse blossoms rubbed in the hand and then crushed against the face, geranium leaves, the leaves of the lemon verbena, the scent of pine trees, the scent of unlit cigars, the scent of cigarette smoke blown my way from a distance, the scent of coffee as it arrives from the grocer's (see what a poet I am!), the scent of the underside of those little cushions of moss which come away so easily in the woods, the scent of lilies of the valley, the scent of oatcake for cattle, the scent of lilac, and, for reasons, above all perhaps the scent of a rubbish fire in the garden.

Rupert Brooke mentions the feel of things. Among the loves of the sense of touch I should include smooth dried beans, purple and spotted, and horse-chestnuts, warm and polished by being kept in the pocket, and ptarmigan's feet, and tortoiseshell spoons for tea-caddies. And among sounds, first and foremost is the sound of a carriage and pair, but very high in position is that rare ecstasy, the distant drum and panpipes of the Punch and Judy. Do they play the panpipes still, I wonder. And how should I behave if I heard them round the corner? Should I run? I hope so. Scent, sound, touch, and sight. Sight? Here the range is too vast, and yet here, perhaps, the act of memory leads to the best poetry of all. For to enumerate one's favourite sights--always, as Rupert Brooke may be said to have done, although not perhaps consciously, in the mood of one who is soon to lose the visible world for ever--is to become, no matter how humble the list, a psalmist.

The mere recollecting and recording even such haphazard memories as these has had the effect of reconstructing also many too-long-forgotten scenes of pure happiness, and has urged me about this dear England of ours too, for I learned to love gorse on Harpenden Common, and pinewoods at Ampthill, and moss in Kent, and the scent of coffee in the kitchen of a home that can never be rebuilt, and--but poetry can be pain too.

A Pioneer

To be the first is always an achievement, even though the steps falter. To be the first is also a distinction that cannot be taken away, because whoever comes after must be a follower; and to follow is tame. It occasionally happens that the first, no matter how many imitate him, is also the best; but this cannot be said of Baboo Ramkinoo Dutt, retired medical officer on pension, a tiny pamphlet by whom has just fluttered my way.

Mr. Dutt's pioneer work was done in the realms of poesy, somewhen in the eighteen-sixties, and the fruits are gathered together in this _brochure_ under the title _Songs_, published at Chittagong, in India, which, in some bewildering way, reached a second edition in 1886. In the opening "distich" Mr. Dutt makes the claim to be the first Asiatic poet to write in English, and if that is true this insignificant work becomes the seed of which the full flower is the gifted Rabindra, son of Tagore, whose mellifluous but mystic utterances lie, I am told, on every boudoir table. Me they, for the most part, stump.

Baboo Ramkinoo Dutt, although a pioneer, made no claim himself to have originated the startling idea of writing songs "in English word" and English rhyme; he merely accepted the suggestion and acted upon it. The suggestion came, under divine guidance, from Mr. J. D. Ward, the Chittagong magistrate. Here are the lines, setting forth that epoch-making moment, in an address to the Deity:

I thank Thee for an idea that Thou has created in my heart
On which through the faculty I met now a very fresh art.

...

Being myself desired by the Chittagong magistrate, Mr. J. D. Ward,
Got encouraged and commence writing a few songs in English word.

To Mr. Ward, then, much honour; and, indeed, one of Ramkinoo Dutt's pleasantest qualities is his desire always to give honour where it is due. Mr. Ward was perhaps his especial darling among the white sahibs of Chittagong, but all are praised. Thus, in another invocation to Heaven, we read:

King, conqueror of nations, encourage two sorts of mortals,
One skilled in war, the other in counsel.

If so, why not Captain Macdonald should be the former?
If so, why not Mr. J. D. Ward would be the latter?

And here is part of a "distich on arrival of 38th N.I.":

We paid a visit upon Captain John A. Vanrenen,
He is a high-spirited hero and jolly gentleman,

So is the Lieutenant George Fergus Graham,
So is the Lieutenant Henry Tottenham.

The last poem of all is wholly devoted to eulogies of Chittagong worthies. For example, Mr. H. Greavesour, the judge,

Is a pious and righteous man,
Administering justice with mental pain.

Of Mr. D. R. Douglas:

There is Mr. D. R. Douglas, Joint Magistrate,
His judgment is pure, yes, on the highest rate.

And Mr. A. Marsh, Magistrate-Collector:

He is devout, holy man, naturally shy,
His mind seems runs through righteous way.

And the Executive Engineer, Mr. C. A. Mills:

The energitic gentleman is getting on well.

All these were living and probably in daily reception of the obeisances of the retired medical officer who esteemed them so highly; but Dr. Beatson was dead:

We lost, lately lost, Dr. W. B. Beatson.
We again shall never gain him in person....
He is a Dr. Philanthropist,
He is a Dr. Physiognomist,
He is a Dr. Anatomist,
He is His Lordship's personal Surgeon.

It will be seen already that Mr. Dutt had not yet mastered his instrument, but he did not lack thoughts: merely the power to express them. Throughout these thirty odd pages one sees him floundering in the morass of a new language, always with something that he wants to say but can only suggest. Here, for example, is a personal statement, line by line more or less inarticulate, but as a whole clear enough. With all the mental incompleteness, the verbal looseness, the fumblings and gropings of the traditional Baboo, it is a genuine piece of irony. Seldom can a convert to Christianity have been more frank.

I would not accept a second creation,
I thank the Omnipotent for his kind protection.
From my minority,
I profess the mendacity,
Passed days in poverty,
From my minority.
Perpetually my duty,
Sobbing under perplexity.
Nothing least prosperity,
But sad and emotion.

I gave up the heathenism,
And its favouritism,
Together with the Hinduism.

I gave up the heathenism.
Neither the fanaticism,
Nor the paganism,
Or my idiotism,
Could enrich me with provision.

Such was the poetical pioneer, Baboo Ramkinoo Dutt, who (supposing always that we may accept his statement as true) was the first Hindu to write English verse.

Full Circle

I have lately been the witness of two phenomena.

Not long ago two officers and gentlemen (whom I had never seen before and one of whom, alas! I shall never see again) descended from a blue sky on to a neighbouring stretch of sward; had tea with me in my garden; and, ascending into the blue again, were lost to view. Since it is seldom that the heavens drop such visitants upon us in the obscure region in which I live, it follows that while the aviators were absent from their machine the news had so spread that by the time they rejoined it and prepared to depart, a crowd had assembled not unworthy of being compared, in point of numbers, with that which two workmen in London can bring together whenever they begin to make a hole in the wood-block paving. I had not thought so many people lived in the neighbourhood. Every family, at any rate was represented, while the rector looked on with the tolerant smile that the clergy keep for the wonders of science, and just at the last moment up panted our policeman on his bicycle, and pulling out his notebook and pencil for the aviators' names (Heaven knows why), set upon the proceedings the seal of authority.

Whatever may be said against aeroplanes in full flight, and there is quite a long indictment--that they are, for instance, not at all like birds, and much more like dragon-flies, and are too noisy, and too rigid, and so forth,--no one in his senses can deny that as they rise from the ground--especially if you are behind them and they are receding swiftly in a straight line from you, and even more so if you are personally acquainted with the occupants--they have beautiful and exciting qualities. Not soon shall I forget the sight as my guests in their biplane glided exquisitely from the turf into the air and, after one circular sweep around our bewildered heads, swam away in the direction of the Hog's Back.

That was phenomenon No. 1. Phenomenon No. 2--also connected with the mechanics of quicker movement than Shanks's mare ever compassed--was one of those old high bicycles, a fifty-two inch, I should guess, dating from the late eighteen-seventies, which, although the year was 1916, was being ridden along the Brighton front.

I am, unhappily, old enough to have been the owner of a bone-shaker, upon which I can assure you I had far more amusing times than on any of its luxurious progeny, even though they were fitted with every device that all the engineers' brains in the world, together with the white hat and beard of Mr. Dunlop, have succeeded in inventing. Being able to remember the advent of the high bicycle and the rush to the windows and gates whenever word went forth that one was approaching (much as a few of the simpler among us still run when the buzz of the aeroplane is heard), I was, as I watched the interest aroused among Brighton's butterflies by this antique relic, in a position to reflect, not I trust sardonically, but at any rate without any feelings of triumph, upon the symmetrical completion of--I must not say one cycle of mechanical enterprise, but one era. For this high bicycle (which was perhaps built between thirty and forty years ago) wobbling along the King's Road drew every eye. Before that moment we had been looking at I know not what--the _Skylark_, maybe, now fitted with auxiliary motor power; or the too many soldiers in blue clothes, with only one arm or one leg, and sometimes with no legs at all, who take the sun near the Palace Pier and are not wholly destitute of female companionship. But when this outlandish vehicle came we all stopped to gaze and wonder, and we watched it out of sight.

"Look at that extraordinary bicycle!" said the young, to whom it was something of the latest.

"Well, I'm blessed," said the old, "if there isn't one of those high bicycles from before the Flood!"

And not only did it provide a diverting spectacle, but it gave us something to talk about at dinner, where we compared old feats perched on these strange monsters, in the days when the road from John o' Groats to Land's End was thick with competitors, and half the male world wore the same grey cloth, and the Vicar of Ripley strove every Sunday for the cyclist's soul.

Being myself didactically disposed, I went farther than reminiscence and bored my companions with some such reflections as those that follow. It is not given (I said) to many of us to have a second time on earth, but this bicycle is having it, and enjoying it. In the distant eighteen-seventies or eighties it was, as a daring innovation, a marvel and a show. Then came (I went on) all the experiments and developments under which cycling has become as natural almost as walking, during which it lay neglected in corners, like the specimen in the London Museum in the basement of Stafford House. And then an adventurous boy discovered it, and riding it to-day bravely beside that promenade of sun-beetles, assisted it (I concluded) to box the compass and transform the Obsolete into the Novelty.

Some day, if I live, there may visit me from the blue as I totter among the flower-beds an aeroplane of so scandalous a crudity and immaturity that all the countryside, long since weary of the sight and sound of flying machines, then so common that every cottager will have one, will again cluster about it while its occupants and I drink our tea.

For with mechanical enterprise there is no standing still. Man, so conspicuously unable to improve himself, is always making his inventions better.

A Friend of Man

In Two Parts