Chapter III: Part 3

In all this world, so thinketh me,
Is none so pleasant to my ee,
That I am glad so oft to see
As my sweet sweeting!
When I behold my sweeting sweet,
Her face, her hands, her minion feet,
They seem to me there is none so mete,
As my sweet sweeting!
Oh! my little sweeting,
My sweeting I will love wherever I may go!

Above all others praise must I,
And love my sweeting till I die,
Until I die, till I die!
For none I find so womanly
As my sweet sweeting!
Oh! my little sweeting;
My sweeting I will love wherever I may go!
]

THE FIRE OF LIFE

“Clearest evidence shows how our Earth was once a fluid haze
of light, and how for countless æons afterwards her globe was
instinct with fiery heat.”

RICHARD PROCTOR.

ON the brooding breast of the empty Dark,
ere ever the world was made,
When the Gods were asleep in a realm of rest,
half-buried ’twixt Light and Shade;
A Spirit arose on the vasty air.--a glorious
Spirit of fire,--
A wingèd Marvel, whose eyes were bright
with the flame of a new desire;
Crown’d with a thousand stars he stood
in a halo of burning beams,
And lifting his passionate voice he roused the Gods
from their idle dreams.

Up they started, those massive Shapes,
and with swift creative hands,
They parted the darkness, let loose the light,
and fashioned the seas and lands;
Great forests sprang from the teeming soil,
with grasses and glory-flowers,
And minutes were made of jewel-points
that glittered into Hours;
Out whirled the planets like silver ships
in the sapphire depths of Heaven
And the Sun and Moon were born like babes from
the marriage of Morn and Even.

Down through the skies fled the Spirit of Flame,
and piercing the new earth-clods,
Drew vapours thence which slowly up-grew into
forms that were like the Gods;
Vacant and empty of soul and sense, impotent
creatures were they,
Till thrilled by the burning touch of Love,
they lived in the light of Day--
Lived, each one, for the breathing space of
threescore years and ten,
And swore they were more than the Gods themselves,
--these Shadows called women and men!

Then weary grew the Spirit of Fire, and rising on
radiant wings,
He fled away from the whirling dance of his brief
created things--
Earth’s black and sterile globe swung round on
an edge of circling cold,
And the Sun was drowned in a spherical sea of
moveless frozen gold--
The Gods departed and drowsed again by Life’s
full-flowing river,
But the world they had made with a Breath of Flame had
passed from their thoughts for ever!

THE DEVIL’S MOTOR

A FANTASY

IN the dead midnight, at that supreme moment when the Hours that are past slip away from the grasp of the Hours yet to be, there came rushing between Earth and Heaven the sound of giant wheels,--the glare of great lights,--the stench and the muffled roar of a huge Car, tearing at full speed along the pale line dividing the Darkness from the Dawn. And he who stood within the Car, steering it straight onward, was clothed in black and crowned with fire; large bat-like wings flared out on either side of him in woven webs of smoke and flame, and his face was white as bleached bone. Like glowing embers his eyes burned in their cavernous sockets, shedding terrific glances through the star-strewn space,--and on his thin lips there was a frozen shadow of a smile more cruel than hate,--more deadly than despair.

“On!” he cried--“Still on! On with an endless rush and roar! Over the plains of the world that is gone,--over the heights of the world to come--on, still on! Without pause, without pity, without love, without regret! Follow me, all ye Forces which are destined to work the ruin of Mankind,--follow! On, on, over all beauty, all tenderness, all truth I ride,--I, the Avenger, the Destroyer, the Torturer of Souls, the Arch-Enemy of God! The Kingdom of Hell grows wide and deep,--praise be to the Man who makes it! I count up my growing possessions in the ever-breeding spawn of human lust and avarice,--I breathe and live and rejoice in the fat poison-vapours of human Selfishness! The men of these latter days are my food and sustenance,--the women my choice morsels, my dainty delicates! Brute beasts and blind, they snatch at every lie I offer them;--rejecting Eternal Life, they choose Eternal Death,--verily they shall have their reward! Like a blight my Spirit shall encompass them,--and whosoever would scour the air and scorch the earth must run on the straight road of his desire with Me!”

The great Car flashed along with grinding, thunderous wheels, and as it flew, vast Phantom-forms followed it, like rolling clouds jagged with the lightning,--the fairness of the world grew black; and sulphureous fumes quenched all sweetness from the air. The forests dropped like broken reeds,--the mountains crumbled into pits and quarries, the seas and rivers, the lakes and waterfalls dried up into black and muddy waters; and all the land was bereft of beauty. In the place of wholesome green fields and leafy woods, there rose up gigantic cities, built in on every side, and bristling with thousands upon thousands of chimneys belching forth sickening smoke into the overhanging gloom which hid the skies, and the cities were full of a deafening noise and crashing confusion as of ten million million hammers beating incessantly--beating away all peace, all solitude, all health, all rest. On,--on, and into these countless prisons of stone and mortar the Demon of the Car swept vast and ever-hurrying crowds of human beings, with the furious force of a mighty whirlwind sweeping dead leaves into the sea.

“No room to breathe--no time to think--no good to serve!” he cried--“Now shall you forget that God exists! Now shall you all have your own wild way, for Your way is My way! Now shall you resolve yourselves back to an embryo of worms and apes, and none shall rescue you, no, not one! For the Seven Angels of the Judgment Day are sounding their trumpets of terror, and who shall silence the voices, or stay the thunderings and lightnings, or the great earthquake? Hail and fire!--and the trees, and the green grass burnt up and destroyed,--the sun and the moon, the day and the night smitten into one blackness! We will have no more virtues!--no more hopes of Heaven! Honour shall be as a rag on a fool’s back, and Gold shall be the pulse of Life! Gold, gold, gold! Fight for it, steal it, pile it up, hoard it, count it, hug it, eat it, sleep with it, die with it! Lo, I give it to you in millions, packed down and pressed together in full and overflowing measure--I scatter it on you even as a destroying rain!--build with it, buy with it, gamble with it, sell your souls and bodies for it,--there are devils enough in hell to drive all your bargains! Sneer at truth, defeat justice, snatch virtue’s mask to cover vice, drug conscience, feed and fatten yourselves with the lusts of animalism till the cancer of sin makes of you a putrefaction and an open sore in the sight of the sun! Come, learn from me such wisdom as shall compass your own destruction! Unto you shall be unlocked the under-mysteries of Nature, and the secrets of the upper air,--you shall bend the lightning to your service, and the lightning shall slay!--you shall hollow out the ground, and delve a swift road through it for yourselves in fancied proud security and the earth shall crumble in upon you as a grave, and the cities you have built shall crush you in their falling,--you shall seek to bind the winds and sail the skies, and Death shall wait for you in the clouds, and exult in your downfall. Come, tie your pigmy chariots to the sun, and so be drawn into its flaming vortex of perdition! All Creation shall rejoice to be cleansed from the pollution of your presence, for God hath sworn to give unto Me all who reject Him, and the Hour of the Gift has come!”

Still faster and more furiously flew the Car,--red meteors flashed in its course--and the Phantom shapes which followed its flight crowded together in an ever-thickening, ever, darkening multitude, while bright stars were shaken down from heaven like snowflakes whirling in a winter blast. And mingling with the grinding roar of its wheels came other sounds,--sounds of fierce laughter and loud cursing,--yells and shrieks and groans of torture,--the screams of the suffering, the sobs of the dying,--and as the Fiend drove on with swiftly quickening speed, men and women and little children were trampled down one upon another and killed in their thousands, and the Car was splashed thick with human blood. And He who was clothed in black and crowned with fire, shouted exultingly as He dashed along over massacred heaps of dead rations and the broken remnants of thrones.

“Progress and Speed!” he yelled--“Rush on, world, with me!--rush on! There is but one end--hasten we to reach it! No halt by the way to gather the flowers of thought,--the fruits of feeling;--no pause for a lifting of the eyes to the wide firmament, where millions of spheres, more beautiful than this which men make wretched, sail on their courses like fair ships bound for God’s golden harbours! No time to listen to the singing of the birds of hope, the ripple of the sweet waters of refreshment, the murmur of cool grasses waving in the fields of peace;--no time, no stop,--no lull for quiet breathing,--on!--forever on! Up and ride with me all ye who would reach the goal! Come, ye fools of avarice! Come, ye blown and bursting windbags of world’s conceit and vain pretension! Come, ye greedy maws of gluttony--ye human pottles of drink--ye wolves of vice! Come, ye shameless women of lusts and lies and vanities! Come, false hearts and treacherous tongues and painted faces!--come, dear demons all, and ride with me! Come, ye pretenders to holiness--ye thieves of virtue, who give “charity” to the poor with the right hand, and cheat your neighbour with the left!--come, ye gamblers with a Nation’s honour, stake your last throw! Come, all ye morphia-fed vampires and slaves to poison!--grasp at my wheels and cling! On--on--over the fragments of mighty Empires,--over the hearts of kings and queens,--over the lives of the brave, the good, and the wise!--let us trample them all down and crush them into dust and ashes! What shall we do with wisdom, we who have done with God? What with purity?--what with courage? Naught are these but reproach and bitterness--mere obstacles in the broad way which leadeth to destruction;--ride them down! On--on! to the destined end!--on with rush and hurry and panting eagerness to reach the only goal--the last of winning-posts--the close of Certainties,--the GRAVE!”

Like a flashing blur of fiery wheels the Car now spun along in the blackness of the night, and the drifting Phantoms round about it were as great grey sails swelling with the angry blast, and sweeping it onward through the dark.

“Pray no more--hope no more--love no more!” cried the Fiend. “Be as the shifting sands, or as the trembling quicksilver--inconstant, capricious--ever in motion, never at rest! Change--change and revolt! All ye who weary of old things, behold I give you new! Bodies shall be pampered and souls killed for your pleasure--vices shall be called foulest ‘sensations,’--each merely to be tried, excused, and condemned in turn,--and virtues shall have no more place at all in the scale of feeling! The music of life shall clash into wild discord--the love of home shall be a lost glory,--tenderness for the young and reverence for the old shall be the faded sentiments of the past, only fit for a mummer’s jest! Change--Change and Sensation! Roll out your columns of vaporous notoriety, ye printing-presses of the world!--spread wide the fame of the Anarchist and the Courtesan,--mock and revile the spirits of the wise and true,--noise abroad the name of the Murderer, and treat the Poet with derision--give flattery to the rich, and scorn to the humble,--teach nothing but the art of lying,--add venom to the tongue of scandal,--dig up the graves of the great, and kill the reputations of the brave and pure! Help nothing on that is noble--nothing that is honest,--nothing that is of God, or for God,--print every lie, grudge every truth, and let your trumpet-note be that of blatant Atheism and Devilry to the end! Set trade against trade,--community against community,--nation against nation--till with your windy bombast and senseless twaddle you fill your witches’ cauldron of mischief and contention to the full! Up and ride with me, ye Plotters against Peace!--ye whose hands are against every man!--there is no time to be lost--up and away with a rush and a roar!--for the Great Star has fallen from heaven to earth, and to Him is given the key of the bottomless pit! The pit is open--the gate stands wide--up, and speed on with Me!”

Like lightning now the great Car tore through space--its flaring lamps flashing, its wheels grinding with the sullen noise of a bursting volcano,--and amidst cries and shrieks indescribable, it leaped, as it were, from peak to peak of toppling clouds that towered above and around it like mighty mountains. And presently it seemed as if a thin, pale line of purple fire glimmered afar off, and by this light was seen a monstrous ridge of dense blackness jutting sharply over some vast incalculable depth of horror. On--still on--the Car rushed; and He of the sable robes and flaming crown urged apace its reckless speed with wild shouts of wilder laughter.

“All the world in such haste to die!” he cried. “All the world gone mad with the craze of movement! Up in the air, down on the earth--all turned to whirling, flying, tossing atoms of dust in a storm, and lo, the End! Be patient now, for ye shall never wander again--be silent now, for prayer and cursing, laughter and tears are done--let the hoarded gold drop from your grasp--it can purchase nothing yonder! Was it worth while, think you,--this rush headlong, to be cast into silence? Was it worth while to leave the sunshine for this dark?--beauty for this decay?--sweet sounds of love and tenderness for this still glow of the eternal flame which is not quenched--this gnawing of the eternal worm whose appetite is never satisfied? Lo, ye have burnt up a world to light Hell with its flame!--but the world shall blossom again like a flower springing from the dust, and ye whose soulless lives have been a curse and an outrage on its fairness, shall pace its pleasant paths no more! Rejoice, O earth!--rejoice, O sea!--to be freed of the burden of mankind! Rejoice, O birds, that the hand of the spoiler shall no longer wound or slay!--rejoice, O trees, that the axe of the destroyer shall no more cast ye down!--rejoice, O all ye living creatures of the field and forest, that Treachery no longer stalks the world in man’s disguise! Take back thy planet, O great God, cleansed of a pigmy race! Create a new Humanity!--for this is past!”

On--on,--along the black ridge jutting darkly over silent Immensity, with a whirl of fire and roar of thunder the Car flew,--and then--as if for one brief breathing part of a second it paused! Like a vast Shadow between earth and heaven the Demon stood--his bony hand on the steering-wheel--and every point in his flaming crown scintillating with the sparkle of a million stars. Round about him soared and stooped countless terrific Phantom-shapes--some like wrecked ships--some like torn flags of honour--some like mounted warriors--some like throned kings--some like fair women veiled in a mist of tears,--and beneath his bat-like pinions, outstretched to north and south, there glimmered a pale crowd of white faces, upturned wild eyes and imploring hands--all crushed together in a writhing mass of agony! But no sound came from those dumb mouths agape with terror,--all were silent as Death itself, and only the thunderous roar of the Car echoed through space, as, after that infinitely brief pause, it dashed furiously onward and down!--down,--down sheer over the edge of that mystic precipice into the fathomless abyss of the Unseen and Unknown!

A thousand lightnings leaped after it--a thousand crashing echoes vibrated through the Universe with its fall,--one frightful human cry shuddered up to Heaven--and then--silence! Gradually, gently, and by faint degrees, a purpling fire crimsoned the wavering rise of dawn--a cool wind parted the air into sweet breadths of fragrance--and in the centre of the awful stillness a scarlet sun rose slowly in a clear sky, fixing the red seal of God on the closed history of a World!

GOD AND SATAN

GOD said--“I will create
A world in the air!”
Satan heard and answered--
“I too will be there!”

God said--“I will make of Man
A creature supreme!”--
Satan answered--“I will destroy
Thy splendid Dream!”

God said--“I will ordain
That Thou shalt no longer be!”
Satan answered--“Thou canst not, Lord,
For I am a part of Thee!”

“IMAGINARY” LOVE

“My love
Is as the very centre of the earth
Drawing all things to it.”

_Troilus and Cressida._

THERE is perhaps no emotion more elevating or more deceptive than that sudden uplifting of the heart and yearning of the senses which may be called “imaginary” Love. It resembles the stirring of the sap in the roots of flowers, thrilling the very ground with hints and promises of spring,--it is the unspeakable out-coming of human emotion and sympathy too great to be contained within itself,--the tremulous desire,--half vague and wholly innocent,--of the human soul for its mate. The lower grades of passion have not as yet ruffled the quivering white wings of this divinely sweet emotion, and the being who is happy enough to experience it in all its intensity, is, for the time, the most enviable on earth. Youth or maiden, whichever it be, the world is a fairyland for this chosen dreamer. Nothing appears base or mean,--God’s smile is reflected in every ray of sunshine, and Nature offers no prospect that is not pleasing. It is the season of glamour and grammarye,--a look over the distant hills is sufficient to engage the mind of the dreaming girl with brilliant fancies of gallant knights riding from far-off countries, with their lady’s colours pinned to their breasts “to do or die” for the sake of love and glory,--and the young boy, half in love with a pretty face he has seen on his way home from school or college, begins to think with all the poets, of eyes blue as skies, of loves and doves, and hearts and darts, in happy unconsciousness that his thoughts are not in the least original. Yet with all its ethereal beauty and gossamer-sense of pleasure, this “imaginary” love is often the most pathetic experience we have or ever shall have in life. It is answerable for numberless griefs,--for bitter disillusions,--occasionally, too, for broken hearts. It glitters before us, a brilliant chimera, during our very young days,--and on our entrance into society it vanishes, leaving us to pursue it through many phases of existence, and always in vain. The poet is perhaps the happiest of all who join in this persistent chase after the impossible,--for he frequently continues to imagine “imaginary” love with ecstasy and fervour to the very end of his days. Next in order comes the musician, who in the composition of a melancholy nocturne or tender ballad, or in the still greater work of a romantic opera, imagines “imaginary” love in strains of perfect sound, which waken in the hearts of his hearers all the old feverish longings, all the dear youthful dreams, all the delicious romances which accompanied the lovely white-winged Sentiment in days past and dead for ever. Strange to say, it often happens that the musician, while thus appeasing his own insatiable thirst for “imaginary” love, is frequently aware that he is arousing it in others; and, could he probe to the very fibres of his thinking soul, he would confess to a certain keen satisfaction in the fact of his being able to revivify the old restless yearning of a pain which is sweeter to the lonely soul than pleasure.

Now this expression of the “lonely soul” is used advisedly, because, in sad truth, every human soul is lonely. Lonely at birth,--still more lonely at death. During its progress through life it gathers around it what it can in the way of crumbs of love, grains of affection, taking them tenderly and with tears of gratefulness. But it is always conscious of solitude,--an awful yet Divine solitude, over which the Infinite broods, watchful yet silent. Why it is brought into conscious being, to live within a material frame and there perform certain duties and labours, and from thence depart again, it cannot tell. All is a mystery,--a strange Necessity, in which it cannot truly recognize its part or place. Yet it is,--and one of the strongest proofs of its separate identity from the body is this “imaginary” love for which it yearns, and which it never obtains. “Imaginary” love is not earthly,--neither is it heavenly,--it is something between both, a vague and inchoate feeling, which, though incapable of being reduced to any sort of reason or logic, is the foundation of perhaps all the greatest art, music, and poetry in the world. If we had to do merely with men as they are and women as they are, Art would perish utterly from the face of the earth. It is because we make for ourselves “ideal” men, “ideal” women, and endow these fair creations with the sentiment of “imaginary” love, that we still are able to communicate with the gods. Not yet have we lowered ourselves to the level of the beasts,--nor shall we do so, though things sometimes seem tending that way. Realism and Atheism have darkened the world, as they darken it now, long before the present time, and as defacements on the grandeur of the Universe they have not been permitted to remain. Nor will they be permitted now,--the reaction will, and must inevitably set in. The repulsive materialism of Zola, and others of his school,--the loose theories of the “smart” set, and the moral degradation of those who have no greater God than self,--these things are the merest ephemera, destined to leave no more mark on human history than the trail of a slug on one leaf of an oak. The ideal must always be triumphant,--the soul can only hope to make way by climbing towards it. Thus it is with “imaginary” or ideal Love,--it must hold fast to its ideal, or be content to perish on the plane of sensual passion, which exhausts itself rapidly, and once dead is dead forever and aye.

With all its folly, sweetness, piteousness, and pathos, “imaginary” love is the keynote of Art,--its fool-musings take shape in exquisite verse, in tales of romance and adventure, in pictures that bring the nations together to stand and marvel, in music that makes the strong man weep. It is the most supersensual of all delicate sensations,--as fine as a hair, as easily destroyed as the gnat’s wing;--a rough touch will wound it,--a coarse word will kill it,--the sneer of the Realist shuts it in a coffin of lead and sinks it fathoms deep in the waters of despair. Strange and cruel as the fact may seem, Marriage appears to put an end to it altogether.

“Think you if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife
he would have written sonnets to her all his life?”

inquires Lord Byron. He certainly would not. The “imaginary” love of Petrarch was the source of his poetic inspiration; if he had ever dragged it down to the level of the commonplace Actual, he would have killed his Muse. In a similar way the love of Dante for Beatrice was of the “imaginary” quality. Those who read the “Vita Nuova” will scarcely fail to see how the great poet hugs his love-fancies and feeds himself with delicious extravagances in the way of idealized and sublimated soul-passion. He dissects every fine hair of a stray emotion, and writes a sonnet on every passing heart-beat. Dante’s wife never became so transfigured in her husband’s love. Why? Alas, who can say! No reason can be given save that perchance “familiarity breeds contempt,” and that the unattainable seems always more beautiful than the attained. The delight of possession would appear to be as brief as the flowering of a rose. Lovers are in haste to wed,--but when the knot is once irrevocably tied, in nine cases out of ten they wish it could be untied again. They no longer imagine “imaginary” love. The glamour is gone. Illusions are all over. The woman is no longer the removed, the fair, the chaste, the unreachable,--the man ceases to be the proud, the strong,--the hero endowed with the attributes of the gods. “Imaginary” love then resolves itself into one of two things,--a firm, every-day close and tender _friendship_, or else a sick disappointment often ending in utter disgust. But the divine emotion of “imaginary” love has fled,--the Soul is no longer enamoured of its Ideal--and the delicate psychic passion which inspires the poet, the painter, the musician, turns at once to fresh objects of admiration and pursuit. For it is never exhausted,--unlike any purely earthly sense, it knows no satiety. Deceived in one direction, it flies in another. Dissatisfied with worldly things, it extends its longing heavenwards,--there at least it shall find what it seeks,--not now, but hereafter! Age does not blunt this fine emotion, for, as may often be remarked with some beautiful souls in the decline of bodily life, the resigning of earthly enjoyments gives them no pain,--and the sweet placidity of expectation, rather than the dull apathy of regret, is their chief characteristic. “Imaginary” love still beckons them on;--what has not been found Here will be found There!

Happy, and always to be envied, are those who treasure this aerial sentiment of the spiritual brain! It is the dearest possession of every true artist. In every thought, in every creative work or plan, “imaginary” love goes before, pointing out wonders unseen by less enlightened eyes,--hiding things unsightly, disclosing things lovely, and making the world fair to the mind in all seasons, whether of storm or calm. Intensifying every enjoyment, adding a double thrill to the notes of a sweet song, lending an extra glow to the sunshine, an added radiance to the witchery of the moonlight, a more varied and exquisite colouring to the trees and flowers, a charm to every book, a delight to every new scene, “imaginary” love, a very sprite of enchantment, helps us to believe persistently in good, when those who love not at all, neither in reality nor in idealization, are drowning in the black waters of suicidal despair.

So it is well for us--those who can--to imagine “imaginary” love. We shall never grasp the Dream in this world--nevertheless let us fly after it as though it were a Reality! Its path is one of sweetness more than pain,--its ways are devious, yet even in sadness still entrancing. Better than rank, better than wealth is this talisman, which with a touch brings us into close communication with the Higher worlds. Let us “imagine” our friends are true; let us “imagine” we are loved for our own sakes alone,--let us “imagine,” as we welcome our acquaintances into our homes, that their smiles and greetings are sincere--let us imagine “imaginary” love as the poets do,--a passion tender, strong, and changeless--and pursue it always, even if the objects, which for a moment its passing wings have brushed, crumble into dust beneath that touch of fire! So shall our lives retain the charm of constant Youth and Hope,--so shall the world seem always beautiful to us,--so shall the Unimaginable glory of the future Real-in-Love shine nearer every day in our faithful, fond pursuit of its flying Shadow!

A FORGIVENESS

“_That curse shall be Forgiveness_!”

BYRON’S _Childe Harold_

FORGIVE? Yes,--but I cannot forget,
For the deathless Soul is strong,
And God himself can never efface
Its memory of a Wrong;
And though you are dead and laid in your grave
And the evil you wrought is done,
Though your lips are cold in the covering mould,
Yet your dastard Lie lives on!

Forgive? Yes,--but I cannot forget
The merciless, murderous thrust
Of your treacherous hand with its backward blow
When you killed my whole life’s trust;
Craving my pity, you broke my heart
And slandered my name and fame,--
By the Christian creed, I forgive you, coward!
Let the pardon be your shame!

Forgive? Yes,--as the Christ forgave
When the Judas kiss was given,
And Hell suck’d down the traitor’s soul
While his curse was pronounc’d in Heaven!
Nothing so low, and nothing so base
As a stab in the back of a friend,
And those who saw you handle the knife
Scarce wonder’d at your end!

Forgive? Yes,--my forgiveness shall burn
On your grave in “coals of fire,”--
It shall kindle into a flame and leap
To the height of my life’s desire,
It shall reach straight up to the gates of God,
And there like a Sword shall stay,
And, lest you come sneaking out of Hell
It shall bar your heavenward way!

It shall warn you off with the lightning flash
Of an honest faith betray’d--
It shall shut you out from the garden of God,
And hold you back afraid,--
Like a torch of terror adown your dark
Its endless flare shall shine,
And spread like a widening gulf of fire
Between your spirit and mine.

Forgive? Yes--but I shall not forget!
I shall keep your name in my prayers,
That God may remember as well as I
The infamous taint it bears!
I forgive--I forgive! But I shall not forget;--
And as long as the great worlds roll,
My forgiveness shall be as the seal of doom
Fired down upon your soul!

“CARE-TAKERS”

A WARNING TO HOUSE-OWNERS

THE word “care-taker” conveys, or would seem to convey, an impression that is both Christian and consolatory. To “take care” of things or persons is eminently proper and virtuous,--to accept care, another way of “taking” it,--namely, to willingly undergo a certain amount of trouble and vexation in order to spare others, is really almost sublime. But in these degenerate days of ours it does not always do to give literal significations to words in common use. They often, with strange and unaccountable capriciousness, mean the exact reverse of what they seem. “Care-taker” is a notable example of this fact,--for in the modern acceptance of the term it really signifies an individual who, so far as material and mundane needs go, is totally free from care, and who, moreover, has no intention of “taking care” of anything or anybody. “Care-taker” means a person, sometimes masculine, but more often feminine, who lives rent-free and pays no taxes,--who has a small stock of generally useful second-hand furniture which is moved at his or her command from house to house wherever best convenience calls, and who is paid for eating, drinking, sleeping, and doing nothing in “desirable mansions” whose owners are out of town, or who, for some dark reason connected with the funds, are wishful “To Let Immediately.” Care-takers are not at all like the rest of humanity; they are a race apart, with peculiar manners and customs of their own. Many of them have a fondness for the “cup that cheers;” many more exhibit a decided partiality for the glass which “inebriates.” Some of them would even appear to use whisky as a general and agreeable perfume, to judge from the odours which are diffused from their hair and clothes, when they open front doors to belated inquirers after absent friends, or any seekers after unfurnished houses. Whosoever is in the latter category of sufferers and martyrs deserves and shall have our sincerest sympathy. We know what he is going through! We know what the “agents” will do to him! He will be told that there is a “Charming Residence” on the “delightful elevation” of Campden Hill, for instance, and he will find out that it is nothing but a small and paltry “semi-detached” in the depressing depths of the Holland Villas Road, with the bath-tap broken and the water coming through. He will wander hopefully into Mayfair, decoyed by the prospect of living “off Park Lane” in a “bijou” establishment--

Stop! I really must break off here to deliver a solemn warning against this word “bijou.” Beware of it!--all good patient folk who go house-hunting, beware of it! Fly from that fatal expression as you would from the plague! “Bijou” has a delightful meaning in ordinary French parlance; it signifies a “jewel” and, when used as a term of endearment, a “darling.” Charming!--oh, yes!--quite soothing to the mind is this pretty word in _French_. But in plain, downright, house-agenty English it means “den,”--“hole,”--or “rather dark cellarage.” It has nothing to do with jewels or darlings. It implies a want of room and a bad smell. It does indeed. It is like the frequently advertised “Artistic Residence,”--which means dark corners and small windows,--namely, very little air and no light. Once understand these things, and you will not be twice deceived. And this brings me round to the subject I started with--“care-takers,” because it was at a “bijou” place I came into collision with the first example of that species. The “bijou” in question was near the Park; a small house squeezed in between two monster ones. The street-door looked like a narrow slit in the wall, and the windows were black with soot that had accumulated surely for several years,--months could hardly have done it. I rang the cracked bell, and waited some ten minutes,--finally a shuffling step was heard inside (care-takers always walk with a shuffle like a certain _genus_ of baboon), and a female appeared, hastily pulling her dress over a somewhat _décolletée_ bosom. Her hair was wildly negligent,--her eye bloodshot and severe,--one tooth projected over her underlip,--the rest of the dental arrangement was missing. She surveyed me with a malign and discouraging aspect, apparently scorning to open the conversation. So I began:

“This house is to let, I believe? Can I see it?”

“Where’s yer order?” demanded the lady.

I produced it.

She sniffed at the paper suspiciously, and then preceded me into a sort of square pantry called by courtesy a “hall,” and flung wide open two doors, one of the dining-room, the other of the drawing-room, out of which apartments rushed a fine aroma like that which arises from the canals of Venice on a very hot day.

“Are these all the reception rooms?” I inquired.

“Hall?” she echoed, staring at me--“hall? Yes, hall!”

I said, “Thanks! I will not trouble you further.”

But she made no movement, either to let me pass or to show me out.

“I’ve bin ’ere,” she stated,--“these two years, and my darter’s baby was born in the kitching.”

“Indeed!” I murmured, politely endeavouring to edge my way to the door. But she stuck her stout arms akimbo and proceeded:

“They wants a premium for this place, and I sez to them, sez I, ‘You’ll never get it.’ I sez that. No more they won’t. There’s a view of the Park from the back.”

This last observation was thrown in, as it were, casually.

“I am aware of that,” I said--“But I am not particular about the Park. Good-morning!”

“Well, that’s what I sez,” she went on morosely--“I sez ‘there’s those that doesn’t care for the Park and there’s those that does. But a premium you’ll not get.’ Why, when my darter’s baby was born in that kitching, we was afraid he would be eat up by the rats, there’s such a many of them. _And_ beetles. There’s a many of them too. Lord bless yer, half them premiums goes into the hagents’ pockets! The old lady as was here last drunk herself to death--and there won’t be a penny spent on repairs!”

By this time I had found out how to open the street-door for myself,--and I made my exit thankfully, the Venetian-canal odour being somewhat overpowering. _En passant_ I may mention that for this house, dirty, undecorated, and in the worst possible repair, a rent was asked of £250 per annum, and Four Thousand Pounds premium!

My next experience in the way of “care-takers” was of an excitable lady who was too far gone in her cups to be aware of her duties. She was placed in charge of a rather handsome house,--handsome as far as its exterior went. Of the interior I am unable to speak, as the convival “care-taker” had not the vaguest idea of admitting me. She opened the door about the width of half a yard, and peered at me with her rolling, restless eyes, her blotched and inflamed face producing quite a heating effect on the immediate atmosphere.

“It’s a good ’ouse,”--she observed, lurching to and fro like a landsman at sea in a heavy storm--“A good ’ouse! Yes, _I_ say it--a good ’ouse,--and we wants to let it--hic--hic!--to good tenants! Yaah--yaah!”

This wild ejaculation was addressed to a poor thin cat who came feebly trying to make its way in at the door.

“Git out, you beast! Nasty, dirty brute! Gives me more trouble than the whitewashers, it do! It’s a good house!” and here she nearly fell forward--“for good tenants,--I’ve lived here myself for a twelvemonth!”

With that she banged the door full in my face, and I straightway fled, wondering whether the owner of the “good ’ouse” had any notion as to the way in which his property was “taken care” of. I suppose not,--for day after day I see it still “To Let,” and I fancy it will not easily find a tenant so long as its present “care-taker” finds her lodgment comfortable.

One morning I came upon an odd “care-taker” in a pretty house near Kensington Gardens. It was a “he” this time,--a placid, cunning, bent little old man with the air of the respectable retired butler about him. He was of a curious disposition,--garrulous, yet reticent;--he would begin to talk about the former owner of the house, and then would pull himself up short as though afraid of betraying confidence. The rooms were very handsomely decorated,--but it seemed that the owner had given it up abruptly after only three years’ tenancy.

“It looked beautiful,” said the grey-haired cicerone with a smothered sigh--“when it was all furnished. There was the Venus of Mydeses (Medicis) in the boudoir, and there was statues and busts all about, and oak-framed pictures in the dining-room,--yes! it was really quite _bee_-autiful when he had it all done up--”

Here he broke off and dusted the banisters.

“Why did he leave it after spending so much money upon it?” I asked.

The respectable old gentleman looked at me shrewdly.

“Ah!” he responded with a curious expression in his filmy eyes--“Why indeed!”

This was baffling, and he seemed to think it so, for by way of relenting, he confided to me the information (a well-worn ruse) that there had already been several people after the house, and that I had better see about it at once if I wished to secure it. I took the information very unconcernedly.

“Oh, I am not at all keen about it,” I said--“I have seen a house in Gladys Gardens I like rather better.”

He started as if I had given him a shock.

“Gladys Gardens!” he exclaimed--“Lord love you! Why, Gladys Gardens is going down every year! It’s gone down since my time--I used to live there--I was there when the murder was committed!”

This was rather an unpleasant light to throw on Gladys Gardens, and its desirability seemed at once on the wane.

“What murder?” I asked.

“Oh, well, it was some time ago,” he said, now appearing benevolently anxious not to cause me unnecessary alarm--“But it was a shocking murder!--and Gladys Gardens has gone down ever since. You’d much better live here than there!”

With which parting recommendation he bowed me out urbanely, having done his utmost best, at all risks, for his employer’s advantage.

Of the number of babies born in “desirable mansions” and “Noble Residences” it would be hopeless to attempt any calculation. The comfortable quarters enjoyed by “care-takers,” coupled with good pay, make them, as a rule, unwilling to move when once installed, and reluctant to praise the qualities of the house they inhabit, lest they should be forced to vacate for an actual paying tenant. So that if they are very cosy, and have made a family home and birthplace of some warm and roomy basement in De Vere Gardens or Kensington Gate or other fashionable neighbourhoods, and you want to take the house that serves them so well as lodging, you may be sure you will hear something doubtful about the drainage, the water, or the waste-pipes, or the “closeness” or the “darkness,”--something to scare you off, in fact, and enable them to stay where they are in peace, and leave you out in the cold. This plan of action is so obviously natural, that it is very strange lessees of houses do not perceive it. Many houses in London have been occupied by “care-takers” for three or four years, never seeming to have any chance of letting--and considering what a loss of money this means to the actual owners, surely the question of “care-taking” deserves some consideration. Of course, the fabulous rents asked for mere boxes and barns of accommodation in good centres is one great reason for the non-letting of houses, as also the prevailing preference for “flats,”--but the “care-takers” have their share in the obstruction, and so have the house-agents. So, also, has the system of demanding “premiums”--a system which is positively nefarious. Recently a friend of mine was asked two thousand guineas premium for a house whose rental was £180 per annum. He was a big, broad-shouldered American, and took matters coolly.

“What do you want a premium for?” he demanded.

“For the improvements--the position,--the last owner spent a great deal on the place.”

“He did, did he? Well, where’s he gone to now?”

“He has bought a place in the country.”

“Oh! Well, you just ask him if he was thinking about me when he fixed up those ‘improvements’? If he was, I’ll give him a hundred dollars! But if he was planning out all those things for himself and his own comfort, and now wants _me_ to pay for what _he_ got the newest and best of, he’s just as mean a cuss as ever hung between this world and the next!”

This was a sort of logic not accepted by house-agents,--and the consequence of his refusal to pay the premium demanded lost him the “desirable residence” he had been inclined to take. But it is still unlet, and seems likely to remain so. It may here be remarked that house-agents themselves generally _suggest_ the asking of premiums. And why? Because they get their own percentage out of it. In the business of house-letting, as in other trades and professions, things would go on much better without the “middle-man.” If owners of houses could and would come into direct communication with intending tenants, they would find matters much more satisfactory in every respect, but no doubt it will take some time, and a good deal of bitter experience as well, to persuade them of the fact. And meantime, excellent houses remain empty for years, given over to dirt and neglect and “care-takers” who do not pay for the roof that shelters them, and who take no sort of interest in their employer’s loss or gain.

One of the strangest “care-takers” I ever came across was a small old boy with a wizened pale face,--and spectacles. Out of sheer curiosity I asked him how old he was--he said fourteen, and I was bound to believe him. But he looked more like seventy, and badly worn at that. He had the most precocious knowledge of domestic arrangements,--he knew all about gas-stoves and “kitcheners,”--and, what was rather remarkable, he had an æsthetic taste in colours. He showed me over a newly-decorated house, not far off Cadogan Square, and observed that it would probably have to be re-done for “any person of taste who was still young enough to care!”

“The colouring in the drawing-room,” said the small old boy, with an inimitable air of fastidious repugnance, “is quite trying to the nerves.”

I looked in, and found it really was so--garish and gaudy to an extreme--and I asked him playfully how he managed to stand it.

“I am accustomed to it,” said the small old boy wearily, taking off his spectacles, wiping them, and putting them on again--“that is, in a way, you know. One never does get out-and-out hardened to it. This--” and he threw open a door--“is the dining-room. It should have had an oak dado!”

“Of course!” I said, delighted with the small old boy’s feeling for art. He seemed cheered by my encouragement and proceeded:

“An oak dado and overmantel to match. The tint of the ceiling would then have to be modified. As it is at present no person of taste would stand it--not as a permanency.”

“How long have you been here?” I inquired.

“I shall have occupied this position some three months to-morrow,” said the small old boy with a certain stateliness of manner--“But I think of resigning it shortly to my mother. I’m rather tired of it myself, though it has served me well for reading purposes.”

“For reading purposes!” I looked at him wonderingly,--he was so meagre and wan and worn and ancient of aspect.

“You see,” he went on placidly--“you want quiet when you are studying for anything. And it’s very quiet here. As they say in _Hamlet_, ‘not a mouse stirring.’”

“Ah! you read Shakespeare then?”

“I learn the various parts in the principal plays,” he replied with dignity--“I am going to be an actor.”

“Indeed!” I did my best not to laugh,--the small old boy was so earnest and solemn.

“I have calculated,” he said, “that in from eight to ten years Henry Irving will be, as they say, on his last legs. I shall be twenty-four, and shall have played any small parts I can get in the provinces till then. I shall save all the money I can, and live as the Greek philosophers lived, on simple food,--and when I am about thirty-two I shall take the Lyceum or Her Majesty’s. That is my plan.”

“A very ambitious one!” I observed--“Plans are not always realized, you know!”

The small old boy smiled a superior smile.

“Not unless one is _determined_ to realize them,” he said with singular emphasis--“Then things arrange themselves somehow. I am quite certain of my game!”

And he escorted me to the door.

“You think you’ll take this house?” he asked.

“N-n-no! I fancy not.”

“You are right!” said the small old boy approvingly--“It’s only a patched-up concern--just made to look new for the present. In six months all the gloss will be off, and it will appear as just what it is--a badly-built barrack. Good-morning!”

“Good-morning!”

The door closed. I waited a minute, then peered curiously in through the window, and dimly perceived the small old boy seated in solitary state on a kitchen chair in the bleak empty dining-room, patiently studying a book that rested on his knee. I moved away reluctantly at last and with a veritable sensation of awe, feeling that, whatever annoyances I had been subjected to in the way of “care-takers,” I had been repaid at last by my interview with this particular example of the species! For if ambition, perseverance, study, self-reliance and determination count for anything in this world--(and they do go a long way in the furtherance of one’s desires) then I had seen a future “star” of the histrionic firmament. We all know how fond actors are of telling us in after-dinner speeches how they arrived in London ready to take the world by storm with only sixpence in their pockets,--in fact this dramatic sixpence has become quite proverbial, and many a deep-mouthed ranter has alluded to the possession of that humble coin as the grand foundation of all his after career.

“Ladies and gentlemen,”--he will remark in his mellow-throated way--“When I first started in life with only sixpence in my pocket--” and so on. This is the generally accepted and acceptable opening of a truly “telling” mummer’s speech, after a watch or a piece of plate has been presented to him by his admirers.

Now, if I should live another ten years, and at the end of that time, a celebrated actor dear to the fashionable public should make his after-dinner observations thus: “Ladies and gentlemen,--When I first started in life as a ‘care-taker’--” I shall know it is the small old boy, and that I, by happy chance, was privileged to behold in that menial, though rent-and-tax-free position, the successor to the fame of Henry Irving!

JOE’S ORCHID

IT took a little time to grow,
Joe!
The sprouting of its leaves was slow,
We know;
But now its shining buds unfold,
Bright as the glittering Transvaal gold;--
’Tis worthy of a special “show,”
Joe!

’Twas pestered by an insect foe,
Joe!
The horrid creature wouldn’t go
Below;--
The native, gnawing, noxious Boer
Clung to its very root and core,
And tried your little temper so!
Joe!

But now admiring thanks we owe
Joe!
To you who forced the flower to blow,
Although
The trail of human blood and pain
Has left upon its leaves a stain;--
But that you cannot help, we know,
Joe!

Gorgeous the golden blossoms glow,
Joe!
Can England such a plant forego?
Why, no!
Your skill in Orchid cultivation
Has given us a conquered nation;--
But,--make you Premier? Oh, go slow,
Joe!

SAVAGE LONDON

THERE are more than one hundred and eighty religious Sects in England;--and all of them have Representatives in London. There are innumerable Charity Organization Societies,--Missions without end,--Relief Funds with Centre Offices and Branch Offices in London. There is much preaching, much lecturing, much writing;--yet, when all is said, done, and written, the grim result is the same,--namely that the squalor, filth, vice, ignorance, recklessness, wretchedness, and brutality of the great Majority of the Poor in our wealthy English metropolis is a crying scandal, and “a rank offence that smells to heaven.” The religious sects meet often and discuss much,--beginning their discussions generally with a bombastical flow of oratory, and ending in a violent wrangle over some knotty point of doctrine, while the miserable creatures who cry to them for relief, cry in vain to ears that are deafened by selfishness and plugged up with conceit. A great deal too much of the money subscribed to charitable Societies goes to pay secretaries and underlings, and many and many a starving wretch has been turned ruthlessly away unaided from the doors of a stately building, flagrantly announcing itself as a “Refuge for the Destitute.” Yet nowhere are there such large sums subscribed to Foreign Missions as in London;--the Kaffir, the Zulu, the “Heathen Chinee,”--all these may appeal to London and be sure of a favourable answer. Dukes and Earls who love to see their names blazoned on lists of charitable donations would appear, from what is said about them in print, to take a deep interest in the whole world, except that particular portion of the globe from which they derive their own magnificent revenues,--and thousands of pounds are spent annually in reforming and civilizing the savage tribes of the desert and forest. Yet in the face of all this philanthropy, the horrible, almost incredible miseries of the London poor daily increase, and we know for a fact that, while money is constantly subscribed for the conversion of the foreign heathen to holy Christianity, an enormous population of native heathen, far more degraded than the most uncultured desert barbarians, swarm at the very doors of the wealthy would-be benefactors of humanity, and demand redress for their bitter and long-standing wrongs. It is a sorrow and scandal to us that it should be so; but so it is.