Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

We skirted the edge of a thick wood. A finger-post pointed to the Castalian spring, and a notice-board indicated _Trespassers will be prosecuted_. _The lease to be disposed of. Apply to G. K. Chesterton_.

Soon we came to an open space in which was situated a large, rather dilapidated marble tank. I noticed that the water did not reach further than the bathers' stomachs. Theodormon anticipated my surprise. 'Yes, we have had to depress the level of the water during the last few years out of compliment to some of the bathers, and there have been a good many bathing fatalities of a very depressing description.'

'You don't mean to say,' I replied, 'Richard le Gallienne?'

'Hush! hush! he was rescued.'

'Stephen Phillips?' I asked, anxiously.

'Well, he couldn't swim, of course, but he floated; you see he had the Sidney Colvin lifebelt on, and that is always a great assistance.'

'Not,' I almost shrieked, 'my favourite poet, the author of "Lord 'a Muzzy don't you fret. Missed we De Wet. Missed we De Wet"?'

Theodormon became very grave. 'We do not know any of their names,' he said. 'I will show you, presently, the Morgue. Perhaps you will be able to identify some of your friends. The Coroner has refused to open an inquest until Mr. John Lane can attend to give his evidence.'

I saw the Poet Laureate trying very hard to swim on his back. Another poet was sitting down on the marble floor so that the water might at least come up to his neck. Gazing disconsolately into the pellucid shallows I saw the revered and much-loved figures of Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Austin Dobson, and Mr. Edmund Gosse. 'Going for a dip?' said Theodormon. 'Thanks, we don't care about paddling,' Mr. Lang retorted.

'I hope it is not _always_ so shallow,' I said to my guide.

'Oh, no; we have a new water-supply, but as the spring is in the nature of a public place, we won't turn on the fresh water until people have learnt to appreciate what is good. That handsome little marble structure which you see at the end of the garden is really the _new_ Castalian Spring. At all events, that is where all the miracles take place. The old bath is terribly out of repair, in spite of plumbing.'

We then inspected a very neat little apartment mosaiced in gold. Round the walls were attractive drinking-fountains, and on each was written the name of the new water--I mean the new poet. Some of them I recognised: Laurence Binyon, A. E. Housman, Sturge Moore, Santayana, Arthur Symons, Herbert Trench, Henry Simpson, Laurence Housman, F. W. Tancred, Arthur Lyon Raile, William Watson, Hugh Austin.

'You see we have the very latest,' said Theodormon, 'provided it is always the best. I am sorry to say that some of the taps don't give a constant supply, but that is because the machinery wants oiling. Try some Binyon,' said my guide, filling a gold cup on which was wrought by some cunning craftsman the death of Adam and the martyrdom of the Blessed Christina. I found it excellent and refreshing, and observed that it was cheering to come across the excellence of sincerity and strength at a comparatively new source . . .

Mr. Swinburne was seated in an arbour of roses, clothed in a gold dalmatic, a birthday gift from his British Peers. Their names were embroidered in pearls on the border. I asked permission to read my address:--

There beats no heart by Cam or Isis
(Where tides of poets ebb and flow),
But guards Dolores as a crisis
Of long ago.

A crisis bringing fire and wonder,
A gift of some dim Eastern Mage,
A firework still smouldering under
The feet of middle age.

For you could love and hate and tell us
Of almost everything,
You made our older poets jealous,
For you alone could sing.

In truth it was your splendid praises
Which made us wake
To glories hidden in the phrases
Of William Blake.

No boy who sows his metric salads
His tamer oats,
But always steals from Swinburne's ballads
The stronger notes.

'Do you play golf?' said Mr. Swinburne, handing me two little spheres such as are used in the royal game. And I heard no more; for I received a blow--whether delivered by Mr. Swinburne or the ungrateful Theodormon I do not know, but I found myself falling down the gulf of oblivion, and suddenly, with a dull thud, I landed on the remains of Howlglass. The softness of his head had really preserved me from what might have been a severe shock, because the distance from Parnassus to Fleet Street, as you know, is considerable, and the escalade might have been more serious. I reached my rooms in Half Moon Street, however, having seen only one star, with just a faint nostalgia for the realms into which for one brief day I was privileged to peep.

(1906.)

A MISLAID POET.

In the closing years of my favourite last century, when poetry was more discussed than it is now (at all events as a marketable commodity), few verse-writers were overlooked. Bosola's observation about 'the neglected poets of your time' could not be quoted with any propriety. Mr. John Lane would make long and laborious journeys on the District Railway, armed _bag-a-pied_, in order to discover the new and unpublished. Now he has shot over all the remaining preserves; laurels and bays, so necessary for the breed 'of men and women over-wrought,' have withered in the London soot. There was one bright creature, however, who escaped his rifle; she was brought down by another sportsman, and thus missed some of the fame which might have attached to her had she been trussed and hung in the Bodley Head. Poaching in the library at Thelema, I came across her by accident. Her song is not without significance.

In 1878 Georgiana Farrer mentioned on page 190 of her _Miscellaneous Poems_, 'I am old by sin entangled;' but this was probably a pious exaggeration. Only some one young and intellectually very vigorous could have penned her startling numbers. I suggest that she retained more of her youth than, from religious motives, she thought it proper to admit. In the 'eighties, when incense was burned in drawing-rooms, and people were talking about 'The Blessed Damozel,' she could write of Paradise:--

A home where Jesus Christ is King,
A home where e'en Archangels sing,
Where common wealth is shared by all,
And God Himself lights up the Hall.

She was philosemite, and from the reference to Lord Beaconsfield we can easily date the following:--

You who doubt the truth of Scripture,
Pray tell me, then, who are the Jews?
Scattered in all lands and nations,
Pray why their evidence refuse?

It seems to me you must be blind;
Are they not daily gaining ground?
We find them now in every land,
And well-nigh ruling all around.

Their music is most sweet to hear;
Jews were Rossini and Mozart,
Mendelssohn, too, and Meyerbeer;
Grisi in song could charm the heart.

The funds their princes hold in hand;
Their merchants trade both near and far;
Ill-used and robbed they long have been,
Yet wealthy now they surely are.

In Germany who has great sway?
Prince Bismarck, most will answer me;
Our own Prime Minister retains
A name that shows his pedigree.

Who after this will dare to say
They nought in these strange people see;
Do they not prove the Scripture true,
And throw a light on history?

The twenty-five years that have elapsed since the poem was written must have convinced those innocent persons who 'saw nought' in our Israelitish compatriots. I never heard before that Prince Bismarck or Mozart was of Jewish extraction!

Mrs. Farrer was, of course, an evangelical, somewhat old-fashioned for so late a date; and fairly early in her volume she warns us of what we may expect. She is anxious to damp any undue optimism as to the lightness of her muse. When worldly, foolish people like Whistler and Pater were talking 'art for art's sake,' she could strike a decisive didactic blow:--

My voice like thunder may appear,
Yet oft-times I have shed a tear
Behind the peal, like rain in storm,
To moisten those I would reform.

Then pardon if my stormy mood,
Instead of blighting, does some good.
Sooner a thunder-clap, think me,
Than sunstroke sent in wrath on thee.

With a splendid Calvinism, too rare at that time, she would not argue beyond a _certain_ limit; there was an edge, she realised, to every platform; an ounce of assertion is worth pounds of proof. Religious discussion after a time becomes barren:--

Then hundredfolds to sinners
Must be repaid in Hell.
If you think such men winners,
We disagree. Farewell.

But to the person who _is_ right (and Mrs. Farrer was never in a moment's doubt, though her prosody is influenced sometimes by the sceptical Matthew Arnold) there is no mean reward:--

I sparkle resplendent,
A star in His crown,
And glitter for ever,
A gem of renown.

From internal evidence we can gauge her social position, while her views of caste appear in these radical days a trifle _demode_. Her metaphors of sin are all derived from the life of paupers:--

Paupers through their sinful folly
Are workers of iniquity,
Living on Jehovah's bounty,
Wasting in abject poverty.

A pauper's funeral their end,
No angels waft their souls on high;
Rich they were thought on earth, perhaps,
Yet far from wealth accursed they lie.

Who are the rich? God's Word declares,
The men whose treasure is above--
Those humble working _gentlefolk_
Whose life flows on in deeds of love.

Despised in life I may remain,
Misunderstood by rich and poor;
An entrance yet I hope to gain
To wealthy plains on endless shore.

No paupers in that heavenly land,
The sons of God are rich indeed;
His daughters all His treasures share;
It will their highest hopes exceed.

Those paupers who are 'saved' are rewarded by material comforts such as graced the earthly home of Georgiana herself, one of the 'humble working _gentlefolk_.' She enjoys her own fireside with an almost Pecksniffian relish, and she profoundly observes, as she sits beside her hearth:--

Like forest trees men rise and grow:
Good timber some will prove,
Others decayed as fuel piled,
Prepared are for that stove

That burns for ever, Tophet called,
Heated by jealous heat,
Adapted to destroy all chaff,
And leaves unscorched the wheat.

Excellent Georgiana! She could not stand very much chaff of any kind, I suspect.

The alarming progress of ritualism in the 'eighties disturbed her considerably, though it inspired some of her more weighty verses. They should be favourites with Dr. Clifford and Canon Hensley Henson:--

Some men in our days cover over
A body deformed with their sin:
A cross worked in various colours,
Forgetting that God looks within.

Alas! in our churches at present
Simplicity seems quite despised;
To represent things far above us
Are heathenish customs revived.

This evil is spreading among us,
And where will it end, can you tell?
Join not with the misled around us,
Take warning, my readers . . .

The veneration of the Blessed Virgin goaded her into composition of stanzas unparalleled in the whole literature of Protestantism:--

My readers, can you nowhere see
A parallel to Israel's sin?
The House of God, at home, abroad:
_Idols are there_--that house within.

Who incense burns? are strange cakes made?
What woman's chapel, decked with gold,
Stands full of unchecked worshippers
Like those idolaters of old?

The Blessed Virgin--blest she is
That does not make her Heaven's Queen!
Yet some are taught to worship her;
What else does all this teaching mean?

What she denied to the Mother of God she accorded (rather daringly, I opine) to one Harriet, whose death and future are recorded in the following lines:--

Declining like the setting sun
After a course divinely run,
I saw a maiden passing fair
Reposing on an easy chair.

A Bridegroom of celestial mien
Came forth and claimed her for His Queen;
One with His Father on His throne
She lives entirely His own.

Harrietolatry, I thought, was confined to the members of the defunct Shelley Society. But every reader will feel the poignant truth of Mrs. Farrer's view of the Church of England--truer to-day than it could have been in the 'eighties:--

The Church of England--grand old ship--
Toss'd is on a troubled sea!
Her sails are rent, her decks are foul'd,
Mutiny on board must be.

The winds of discord howl around,
Wild disputers throw up foam,
From high to low she's beat about;
Frighten'd some who love her roam.

I do not know if the last word is intended for a pun, but I scarcely think it is likely.

I would like to reconstruct Mrs. Farrer's home, with its stiff Victorian chairs, its threaded antimacassars, its pictorial paper-weights, its wax flowers under glass shades, and the charming household porcelain from the Derby and Worcester furnaces. There must have been a sabbatic air of comfort about the dining-room which was soothing. I can see the engravings after Landseer: 'The Stag at Bay,' 'Dignity and Impudence'; or those after Martin: 'The Plains of Heaven,' and 'The Great Day of His Wrath'; and 'Blucher meeting Wellington,' after Maclise. I can see on each side of the mirror examples of the art of Daguerre, which have already begun to produce in us the same sentiment that we get from the early Tuscans; and on the mantelpiece a photograph of Harriet in a plush frame, the one touch of modernity in a room which was otherwise severely 1845. Then, on a bookshelf which hung above the old tea-caddy and cut- glass sugar-bowl, Georgiana's library--'Line upon Line,' 'Precept upon Precept,' 'Jane the Cottager,' 'Pinnock's Scripture History,' and a few costly works bound in the style of the Albert Memorial. The drawing-room, just a trifle damp, must have contained Mr. Hunt's 'Light of the World,' which Mrs. Farrer never quite learned to love, though it was a present from a missionary, and rendered fire and artificial light unnecessary during the winter months. Would that Mrs. Farrer's home-life had come under the magic lens of Mr. Edmund Gosse, for it would now be classic, like the household of Sir Thomas More.

Whatever its attractions, Mrs. Farrer was at times induced to go abroad, visiting, I imagine, only the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. She stayed, however, in Paris, which she apostrophises with Sibyllic candour:--

O city of pleasure, what did I see
When passing through or staying in thee.
Bright shone the sun above, blue was the sky,
Everywhere music heard, none seemed to sigh.
Beautiful carriages in Champs Elysee
Filled with fair maidens on cushions easy.
Such was the outer side; what was within?
Most I was often told revelled in sin.
Sad its fate since I left, sadder 'twill be
If they go on in sin as seen by me.
Let us hope, ere too late, warned by the past,
They may seek pleasures more likely to last,
Or, like to Babylon, it must decline,
And o'er its ruins its lovers repine.

But London hardly fares much better, in spite of Mrs. Farrer's own residence, at Campden Hill, if I may hazard the locality:--

To the tomb they must go,
Rich and poor all in woe,
Strange motley throng.
Wealth in its splendour weeps,
Poverty silence keeps;
None last here long. . . .
So much for thee, London.

Except in a spiritual sense, her existence was not an eventful one. It was, I think, the loss of some neighbour's child which suggested:--

Nellarina, forced exotic,
Born to bloom in region fair,
Thou wert to me a narcotic,
Hope I did thy lot to share.

Any near personal sorrow she does not seem to have experienced, I am glad to say, else she might have regarded it as a grievance the consequences of which one dares not contemplate; you feel that _Some One_ would have heard of it in no measured terms. Certainty and content are, indeed, the dominating notes of her poetry rather than mere commonplace hope:--

I am bound for the land of Beulah,
There all the guests sing Hallelujah.
No longer time here let us squander,
But on the good things promised ponder.

It would be futile to discuss the exact position on Parnassus of a lady whose throne was secured on a more celestial mountain, even more difficult of access. But I think we may claim for her an honourable place in that new Oxford school of poetry of which Professor Mackail officially knows little, and of which Dr. Warren (the President of Magdalen) is the distinguished living protagonist. With all her acrid Evangelicalism she was a good soul, for she was fond of animals and children, and kind to them both in her own way; so I am sure some of her dreams have been realised, even if there has reached her nostrils just a whiff of those tolerating purgatorial fires which, spelt differently, she believed to be _permanently_ prepared for the vast majority of her contemporaries.

_To_ MRS. CAREW.

GOING UP TOP.

During the closing years of the last century certain critics contracted a rather depressing habit of numbering men of letters, especially poets, as though they were overcoats in a cloak-room, or boys competing in an examination set by themselves. 'It requires very little discernment,' wrote the late Churton Collins, A.D. 1891, 'to foresee that among the English poets of the present century the first place will _ultimately_ be assigned to Wordsworth, the second to Byron, and the third to Shelley.' Matthew Arnold, I fear, was the first to make these unsafe Zadkielian prognostications. He, if I remember correctly, gave Byron the first place and Wordsworth the second; but Swinburne, with his usual discernment, observed that English taste in that eventuality would be in the same state as it was at the end of the seventeenth century, which firmly believed that Fletcher and Jonson were the best of its poets.

But when is Ultimately? Obviously not the present moment. Byron does not hold the rank awarded him by the distinguished critic in 1891. The cruel test of the auctioneer's hammer has recently shown that Keats and Shelley are regarded as far more important by those unprejudiced judges, the book-dealers. Wordsworth, of course, is still one of the poets' poets, and the _Spectator_, that Mrs. Micawber of literature, will, of course, never desert him; but I doubt very much whether he has yet reached the harbour of Ultimately. His repellent personality has blinded a good many of us to his exquisite qualities; on the Greek Kalends of criticism, however, may I be there to see. I shall certainly vote for him if I am one of the examiners--or one of the cloak-room attendants.

It was against such kind of criticism that Whistler hurled his impatient epigram about pigeon-holes. And if it is absurd in regard to painting, how much more absurd is it in regard to the more various and less friable substances of literature. By the old ten-o'clock rule (I do not refer to Whistler's lecture), once observed in Board schools, no scripture could be taught after that hour. Once a teacher asked his class who was the wisest man. 'Solomon,' said a little boy. 'Right; go up top,' said the teacher. But there was a small pedant who, while never paying much attention to the lessons, and being usually at the bottom of the form in consequence, knew the regulations by heart. He interrupted with a shrill voice (for the clock had passed the hour), 'No, sir, please, sir; past ten o'clock, sir . . . Solon.' Thus it is, I fear, with critics of every generation, though they try very hard to make the time pass as slowly as possible.

But if invidious distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome, I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we have been his contemporaries. The caution of obituary notices seems to me cowardly, and the reviews of books are cowardly too. We have become Laodiceans. We are even fearful of exposing imposture in current literature lest we get into hot water with a publisher.

During a New Year week I was invited by Lord and Lady Lyonesse to a very diverting house-party. This peer, it will be remembered, is the well- known radical philanthropist who owed his title to a lifelong interest in the submerged tenth. Their house, Ivanhoe, is an exquisite gothic structure not unjustly regarded as the masterpiece of the late Sir Gilbert Scott: it overlooks the Ouse. Including our hosts we numbered forty persons, and the personnel, including valets, chauffeurs, and ladies'-maids brought by the guests, numbered sixty. In all, we were a hundred souls, assuming immortality for the chauffeurs and the five Scotch gardeners. On January 2nd somebody produced after dinner a copy of the _Petit Parisien_ relating the plebiscite for the greatest Frenchman of the nineteenth century; another guest capped him with the _Evening News_ list. The famous _Pall Mall Gazette_ Academy of Forty was recalled with indifferent accuracy. Conversation was flagging; our hostess looked relieved; very soon we were all playing a variation of that most charming game, _suck-pencil_.

At first we decided to ignore the nineteenth century. The ten greatest living Englishmen were to be named by our votes. Bridge and billiard players were dragged to the polling-station in the green drawing-room. Lord Lyonesse and myself were the tellers. I shivered with excitement. One of the Ultimatelies of Churton Collins seemed to have arrived: it was Gotterdammerung--the Twilight of the Idols. And here is the result of the ballot, which I think every one will admit possesses extraordinary interest:

Hall Caine.

Marie Corelli.

Rudyard Kipling.

Lord Northcliffe.

Sir Thomas Lipton.

Hichens.

Chamberlain.

Barrie.

George Alexander.

Beerbohm Tree.

I ought to add, of course, that the guests were unusually intellectual. There were our host and hostess, their three sons--one is a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, another is at Balliol, and a third is a stockbroker; there were five M.P.'s with their wives (two Liberal Imperialists, two Liberal Unionists, and one real Radical), a Scotch peer with his wife and an Irish peer without one; a publisher and his wife; three Academicians; four journalists; an Irish poet, a horse-dealer, a picture-dealer, another stockbroker, an artist, two lady novelists, a baronet and his wife, three musicians; and Myself. I think the only point on which the sincerity of the voting might be doubted, is the ominous absence of any soldier's name on the list. Lord Lyonesse, however, is a firm upholder of the Hague Conference: like myself, he is a pro-Boer, but he will not allow any reference to military affairs, and I suspect that it was out of deference to his wishes that the guests all abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals. Lord Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian De Wet; but on discovery of documents he was ruled out, in spite of my pleading for him on imperialistic grounds. I thought it rather insular, too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to me because they are American subjects. My own final list, as pasted in the Album at Ivanhoe, along with others, was as follows:

H. G. Wells.

C. H. Shannon.

Bernard Shaw.

Thomas Hardy.

Lord Northcliffe.

Edmund Gosse.

Andrew Lang.

Oliver Lodge.

Dom Gasquet.

Reginald Turner.

Mine, of course, is the choice of a recluse: a scholar without scholarship, one who lives remote from politics, newspapers, society, and the merry-go-round of modern life. Its two chief interests lie in showing, first how far off I was from getting the prize (a vellum copy of poems, by our hostess), and secondly, that one name only, that of Lord Northcliffe, should have touched both the popular and the private imagination! I regret to say that none of the guests knew the names of Dom Gasquet or Sir Oliver Lodge. Every one, except the artist, thought C. H. Shannon was J. J. Shannon, and some of the voters were hardly convinced that Mr. Lang was still an ornament to contemporary literature. The prize was awarded to a lady whose list most nearly corresponded to the result of the general plebiscite. I need not say she was the wife of the publisher. After some suitable expressions from Lord Lyonesse, it was suggested that we should poll the servants' hall. Pencils and paper were provided and the butler was sent for. An hour was given for the election, and at half-past eleven the ballot papers were brought in on a massive silver tray discreetly covered with a red silk pocket-handkerchief, and here is the result:

Frank Richardson.

Marie Corelli.

John Roberts.

C. B. Fry.

Eustace Miles.

Robert Hichens.

T. P. O'Connor.

Lord Lyonesse.

Dr. Williams (Pink Pills for Pale People).

Hall Caine.

The prize (and this is another odd coincidence) was won by the butler himself, to whom, very generously, the publisher's wife resigned the vellum copy of our hostess's poems. From a literary point of view, it is interesting to note that Mr. Frank Richardson is the only master of _belles lettres_ who is appreciated in the servants' hall! The other names we associate, rightly or wrongly, with something other than literature.

The following evening I suggested choosing the greatest English names in the nineteenth century (twentieth-century life being strictly excluded). Every one by this time had caught the _suck-pencil_ fever. By general consent the suffrage was extended to the domestics: the electorate being thus one hundred. And what, you will ask, came of it all? I suggest that readers should guess. Any one interested should fill up, cut out, and send this coupon to my own publisher on April the first.

_I think the Ten Greatest Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century were_:

1 . . . . . . . . . .

2 . . . . . . . . . .

3 . . . . . . . . . .

4 . . . . . . . . . .

5 . . . . . . . . . .

6 . . . . . . . . . .

7 . . . . . . . . . .

8 . . . . . . . . . .

9 . . . . . . . . . .

10 . . . . . . . . . .

A prize, consisting of a copy of _Books of To-Day and Books of To-Morrow_, will be awarded for the best shot.

MR. BENSON'S 'PATER.'

In no other country has mediocrity such a chance as in England. The second-rate writer, the second-rate painter meets with an almost universal and immediate recognition. When good mediocrities die, if they do not go straight to heaven (from a country where the existence of Purgatory is denied by Act of Parliament), at least they run a very fair chance of burial in Westminster Abbey. 'De mortuis nil nisi _bonus_,' in the shape of royalties, is the real test by which we estimate the authors who have just passed away. A few of our great writers--Ruskin and Tennyson, for example--have enjoyed the applause accorded to senility by a people usually timid of brilliancy and strength, when it is contemporary. The ruins of mental faculties touch our imagination, owing, perhaps, to that tenderness for antiquity which has preserved for us the remains of Tintern Abbey. Seldom, however, does a great writer live to find himself, in the prime of his literary existence, a component part of English literature. Yet there are happy exceptions, and not the least of these was Walter Pater.

His inclusion in the _English Men of Letters_ series, so soon after his death, somewhat dazzled the reviewers. Mr. Benson was complimented on a daring which, if grudgingly endorsed, is treated as just the sort of innovation you would expect from the brother of the author of _Dodo_. 'To a small soul the age which has borne it can appear only an age of small souls,' says Swinburne, and the presence of Pater, which rose so strangely beside our waters, seemed to many of his contemporaries only the last sob of a literature which they sincerely believed came to an end with Lord Macaulay.

It was a fortunate chance by which Mr. A. C. Benson, one of our more discerning critics, himself master of no mean style, should have been chosen as commentator of Pater. Among the plutarchracy of the present day a not very pretty habit prevails of holding a sort of inquest on deceased writers--a reaction against misplaced eulogy--tearing them and their works to pieces, and leaving nothing for reviewers or posterity to dissipate. From the author of the _Upton Letters_ we expect sympathy and critical acumen. It is needless to say we are never disappointed. His book is not merely about a literary man: it is a work of literature itself. So it is charming to disagree with Mr. Benson sometimes, and a triumph to find him tripping. You experience the pleasure of the University Extension lecturer pointing out the mistakes in Shakespeare's geography, the joy of the schoolboy when the master has made a false quantity. In marking the modern discoveries which have shattered, not the value of Pater's criticisms, but the authenticity of pictures round which he wove his aureoles of prose, Mr. Benson says: 'In the essay on Botticelli he is on firmer ground.' But among the first masterpieces winged by the sportsmen of the new criticism was the Hamilton Palace 'Assumption of the Virgin' (now proved to be by Botticini), to which Pater makes one of his elusive and delightful allusions. While the '_School of Giorgione_,' which Mr. Benson thinks a little _passe_ in the light of modern research is now in the movement. The latest bulletins of Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly satisfactory. Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook. A curious and perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice. Referring to the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma fui--his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads _fuit_. But perhaps the _t_ was added by the Italian Government out of Reference to the English residents in Florence, and the word read _fui_ in 1871. _Troja fuit_ might be written all over Florence.

Then some of the architecture at Vezelay 'typical of Cluniac sculpture' is pure Viollet-le-Duc, I am assured by a competent authority. A more serious error of Pater's, for it is adjectival, not a fact, occurs in _Apollo in Picardy_--'_rebellious_ masses of black hair.' This is the only instance in the _parfait prosateur_, as Bourget called him, of a cliche worthy of the 'Spectator.' Then it is possible to differ from Mr. Benson in his criticism of the _Imaginary Portraits_ (the four fair ovals in one volume), surely Pater's most exquisite achievement after the _Renaissance_. _Gaston_ is the failure Pater thought it was, and _Emerald Uthwart_ is frankly very silly, though Mr. Benson has a curious tenderness for it. One sentence he abandons as absolute folly. The grave psychological error in the story occurs where the surgeon expresses compunction at making the autopsy on Uthwart because of his perfect anatomy. Surely this would have been a source of technical pleasure and interest to a surgeon, much as a butterfly-collector is pleased when he has murdered an unusually fine species of lepidoptera. Speaking myself as a vivisector of some experience, I can confidently affirm that a well- bred golden collie is far more interesting to operate upon than a mongrel sheep-dog. Nor can I comprehend Mr. Benson's blame of _Denys l'Auxerrois_ as too extravagant and even unwholesome, when the last quality, so obvious in _Uthwart_, he seems to condone.

Again, _Marius the Epicurean_ is a failure by Pater's own high standard: you would have imagined it seemed so to Mr. Benson.

Dulness is by no means its least fault. In scheme it is not unlike _John Inglesant_; but how lifeless are the characters compared with those of Shorthouse. Both books deal with philosophic ideas and sensations; the incidents are merely illustrative and there is hardly a pretence of sequence. In the historical panorama which moves behind _Inglesant_, there are at least 'tactile' values, and seventeenth-century England is conjured up in a wonderful way; how accurately I do not know. In _Marius_ the background is merely a backcloth for mental _poses plastiques_. You wonder, not how still the performers are, but why they move at all. Marcus Aurelius, the delightful Lucian, even Flavian, and the rest, are busts from the Capitoline and Naples museums. Their bodies are make-believe, or straw from the loft at 'White Nights.' Cornelius, Mr. Benson sorrowfully admits, is a Christian prig, but Marius is only a pagan chip from the same block. John Inglesant is a prig too, but there is blood in his veins, and you get, at all events, a Vandyck, not a plaster cast. The magnificent passages of prose which vest this image make it resemble the _ex voto_ Madonnas of continental churches--a shrine in literature but not a lighthouse.

I sometimes wonder what Pater would have become had he been a Cambridge man, and if the more strenuous University might have _forced_ him into greater sympathy with modernity; or if he had been born in America, as he nearly was, and Harvard acted as the benign stepmother of his days. Such speculations are not beyond all conjecture, as Sir Thomas Browne said. I think he would have been exactly the same.

On the occasion of Pater's lecture on Prosper Merimee, his friends gathered round the platform to congratulate him; he expressed a hope that the audience was able to hear what he said. 'We overheard you,' said Oscar Wilde. 'Ah, you have a phrase for everything,' replied the lecturer, the only contemporary who ever influenced himself, Wilde declared. How admirable both of the criticisms! Pater is an aside in literature, and that is why he was sometimes overlooked, and may be so again in ages to come. Though he is the greatest master of style the century produced, he can never be regarded as part of the structure of English prose. He is, rather, one of the ornaments, which often last, long after a structure has perished. His place will be shifted, as fashions change. Like some exquisite piece of eighteenth-century furniture perchance he may be forgotten in the attics of literature awhile, only to be rediscovered. And as Fuseli said of Blake, 'he is damned good to steal from.' If he uses words as though they were pigments, and sentences like vestments at the Mass, it is not merely the ritualistic cadence of his harmonies which makes his works imperishable, but the ideas which they symbolise and evoke. Pater thinks beautifully always, about things which some people do not think altogether beautiful, perhaps; and sometimes he thinks aloud. We overhear him, and feel almost the shame of the eavesdropper.

Mr. Benson has approached Walter Pater, the man, with almost sacerdotal deference. He suggests ingeniously where you can find the self-revelation in _Gaston_ and _The Child in the House_. This is far more illuminating than the recollections of personal friends whose reminiscences are modelled on those of Captain Sumph. Mr. Humphry Ward remembers Pater only once being angry--it was in the Common Room--it was with X, an elderly man! The subject of the difference was 'modern lectures.' 'Relations between them were afterwards strained.' Mr. Arthur Symons remembers that he intended to bring out a new volume of _Imaginary Portraits_. Fancy that! Really, when friends begin to tell stories of that kind, I begin to suspect they are trying to conceal something. Perhaps we have no right to know everything or anything about the amazing personalities of literature; but Henleys and Purcells lurk and leak out even at Oxford; and that is not the way to silence them. Just when the aureole is ready to be fitted on, some horrid graduate (Litterae _in_humaniores) inks the statue. Anticipating something of the kind, Mr. Benson is careful to insist on the divergence between Rossetti and Pater, and on page eighty-six says something which is ludicrously untrue. If self-revelation can be traced in _Gaston_, it can be found elsewhere. There are sentences in _Hippolytus Veiled_, the _Age of the Athletic_ _Prizemen_, and _Apollo in Picardy_, which not only explode Mr. Benson's suggestions, but illustrate the objections he urges against _Denys l'Auxerrois_. They are passages where Pater thinks aloud. If Rossetti wore his heart on the sleeve, Pater's was just above the cuff, like a bangle; though it slips down occasionally in spite of the alb which drapes the hieratic writer not always discreetly.

(1906.)

SIMEON SOLOMON.

A good many years ago, before the Rhodes scholars invaded Oxford, there lingered in that home of lost causes and unpopular names, the afterglow of the aesthetic sunset. It was not a very brilliant period. Professor Mackail and Mr. Bowyer Nichols had left Balliol. Nothing was expected of either the late Sir Clinton Dawkins or Canon Beeching; and the authorities of Merton could form no idea where Mr. Beerbohm would complete his education. Names are more suggestive than dates and give less pain. Then, as now, there were 'cultured' undergraduates, and those who were very cultured indeed, read Shelley and burned incense, would always have a few photographs after Simeon Solomon on their walls--little notes of illicit sentiment to vary the monotony of Burne-Jones and Botticelli. When uncles and aunts came up for Gaudys and Commem., while 'Temperantia' and the 'Primavera' were left in their places, 'Love dying from the breath of Lust,' 'Antinous,' and other drawings by Solomon with titles from the Latin Vulgate, were taken down for the occasion. Views of the sister University, Cambridge took their places, being more appropriate to Uncle Parker's and Aunt Jane's tastes. More advanced undergraduates, who 'knew what things were,' possessed even originals. Now the unfortunate artist is dead his career can be mentioned without prejudice.

Simeon Solomon was born in 1841. He was the third son of Michael Solomon, a manufacturer of Leghorn hats, and the first Jew ever admitted to the Freedom of London. The elder brother, Abraham, became a successful painter of popular subjects ('Waiting for the Verdict' and 'First and Third Class'), and died on the day of his election to the Academy! Rebecca a sister who was also a painter, copied with success some of Millais's pictures. At the age of sixteen Simeon exhibited at the Academy, though beyond a short training at Leigh's Art School in Newman Street he was almost self-taught. He was an early and intimate friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, with whose art he had much in common, though it is only for convenience that he is included in the school. Like Whistler, he was profoundly affected by the genius of Rossetti. Racial and other causes removed him from any real affinity to the archaistic moralatarianism of Mr. Holman Hunt. For obvious reasons the Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are silent about him, but Burne-Jones was said to have maintained, in after years, 'that he was the greatest artist of us all.' Throughout the sixties Solomon was one of those black-and-white draughtsmen whose contributions to the magazines have made the period famous in English art. He found ready purchasers for his pictures and drawings, not only among the well-to-do Hebrew community, such as Dr. Ernest Hart, his brother's brother-in-law, but with well-known Christian collectors like Mr. Leathart. He was on intimate terms with Walter Pater, of whom he executed one of the only two known portraits; and in the _Greek Studies_ will be found a graceful reference to the 'young Hebrew painter' whose 'Bacchus' at the Academy obviously contributed to the 'gem-like' flame of which we have heard so much.

In a short-lived magazine, the _Dark Blue_, of July 1871, may be found a characteristic review by Swinburne of Solomon's strange rhapsody, _A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_, his only literary work, now a great rarity. This is the longest, and with one exception the most interesting, tribute to Solomon ever published. 'Since the first years of his early and brilliant celebrity as a young artist of high imagination, power, and promise,' Swinburne says, 'he has been at work long enough to enable us to define at least certain salient and dominant points of his genius . . . I have heard him likened to Heine as a kindred Hellenist of the Hebrews; Grecian form and beauty divide the allegiance of his spirit with Hebrew shadow and majesty.' It would be difficult to add anything further, in praise of the unfortunate artist, to the poet's eloquent eulogy of his friend's talents. An interesting piece of autobiography is afforded in the same article, where Swinburne tells us that his own poem of 'Erotion,' in the first series of _Poems and Ballads_, was written for a drawing by Simeon Solomon; and in another number of the same magazine there appeared 'The End of the Month,' to accompany a new design of Solomon's, the poem appearing later in the second series of _Poems and Ballads_. Very few English artists--not even Millais--began life with fairer prospects. Thackeray wrote in one of the 'Roundabout Papers' for 1860: 'For example, one of the pictures I admired most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my knowledge, set eyes. The picture is (346) "Moses," by S. Solomon. I thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly represented to my mind the dark children of the Egyptian bondage. . . . My newspaper says: "Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object," and so good-bye, Mr. S. S.' This beautiful picture, painted when the artist was only nineteen, is now in the collection of Mr. W. G. Rawlinson, and was seen quite recently at the Franco-British Exhibition, where those familiar with his work considered it one of Solomon's masterpieces. Very few students of Thackeray realised, however, that the painter thus singled out for praise formed the subject of a sordid inquest reported in the _Times_ of August 18th, 1905.

That Solomon's pictures were at first better known to the public than those of his now more famous associates is shown by Robert Buchanan confessing that he had scarcely seen any of their works except those of Solomon, which he proceeded to attack in the famous _The Fleshly School of Poetry_. As a sort of justification of the criticism, in the early seventies, the extraordinary artist had become a pariah. He was imprisoned for a short while, and on his release was placed in a private asylum by his friends. Scandal having subsided, since he showed no further signs of eccentricity, he was, by arrangement, sent out to post a letter in order that he might have a chance of quietly escaping and returning to the practice of his art. He returned to the asylum in half an hour!--a proceeding which was almost an evidence of insanity. He was subsequently officially dismissed, and from this time went steadily downhill, adding to his other vices that of intemperance. Every effort was made by friends and relatives to reclaim him. Studios were taken for him, commissions were given him, clothes were bought for him. He spent his week-ends in the lock-up. Several picture-dealers tried giving him an allowance, but he turned up intoxicated to demand advances, and the police had to be called in. He was found selling matches in the Mile End Road and tried his hand at pavement decoration without much success. The companion of Walter Pater and Swinburne became the associate of thieves and blackmailers. A story is told that one afternoon he called for assistance at the house of a well-known artist, a former friend, from whom he received a generous dole. Observing that the remote neighbourhood of the place lent itself favourably to burgling operations, Solomon visited his benefactor the same evening in company with a housebreaker. They were studying the dining-room silver when they were disturbed; both were in liquor, and the noise they made roused the sleepers above. The unwilling host good-naturedly dismissed them!

Though a very delightful book might be made of his life by some one who would not shirk the difficulties of the subject, it is unnecessary here to dwell further on a career which belongs to the history of morbid psychology rather than of painting. After drifting from the stream of social existence into a Bohemian backwater, he found himself in the main sewer. This he thoroughly enjoyed in his own particular way, and rejected fiercely all attempts at rescue or reform. To his other old friends, such as Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, there must have been something very tragic in the contemplation of his wasted talents, for few young painters were more successful. Any one curious enough to study his pictures will regret that he was lost to art by allowing an ill-regulated life to prey upon his genius. He had not sufficient strength to keep the two things separate, as Shakespeare, Verlaine, and Leonardo succeeded in doing. At the same time, it is a consolation to think that he enjoyed himself in his own sordid way. When I had the pleasure of seeing him last, so lately as 1893, he was extremely cheerful and not aggressively alcoholic. Unlike most spoilt wastrels with the artistic temperament, he seemed to have no grievances, and had no bitter stories or complaints about former friends, no scandalous tales about contemporaries who had remained reputable; no indignant feeling towards those who assisted him. This was an amiable, inartistic trait in his character, though it may be a trifle negative; and for a positive virtue, as I say, he enjoyed his drink, his overpowering dirt, and his vicious life. He was full of delightful and racy stories about poets and painters, policemen and prisons, of which he had wide experience. He might have written a far more diverting book of memoirs than the average Pre-Raphaelite volume to which we look forward every year, though it is usually silent about poor Simeon Solomon. Physically he was a small, red man, with keen, laughing eyes.

By 1887 he entirely ceased to produce work of any value. He poured out a quantity of pastels at a guinea apiece. They are repulsive and ill-drawn, with the added horror of being the shadows of once splendid achievements. Long after his name could be ever mentioned except in whispers, Mr. Hollyer issued a series of photographs of some of the fine early sanguine, Indian ink, and pencil drawings. The originals are unique of their kind. It is very easy to detect the unwholesome element which has inspired many of them, even the titles being indicative: 'Sappho,' 'Antinous,' 'Amor Sacramentum.' One of the finest, 'Love dying from the breath of Lust,' of which also he painted a picture, became quite popular in reproduction owing to the moral which was screwed out of it. Another, of 'Dante meeting Beatrice at a Child's Party,' is particularly fascinating. To the present generation his work is perhaps too 'literary,' and his technique is by no means faultless; but the slightest drawing is informed by an idea, nearly always a beautiful one, however exotic. The faceless head and the headless body of shivering models dear to modern art students were absent from Solomon's designs. His pigments, both in water-colour and oils, are always harmonious, pure in tone, and rich without being garish. We need not try to frighten ourselves by searching too curiously for hidden meanings. His whole art is, of course, unwholesome and morbid, to employ two very favourite adjectives. His work has always appealed to musicians and men of letters rather than collectors--to those who ask that a drawing or a picture should suggest an idea rather than the art of the artist. Subject with him triumphs over drawing. He is sometimes hopelessly crude; but during the sixties, when, as some one said, 'every one was a great artist,' he showed considerable promise of draughtsmanship. His pictures are less fantastic than the drawings, and aim at probability, even when they are allegorical, or, as is too often the case, _odd_ in sentiment. He is apparently never concerned with what are called 'problems,' the articulation of forms, or any fidelity to nature beyond the human frame. Unlike many of the Pre-Raphaelites, he showed a feeling for the medium of oil. His friends and contemporaries, with the exception of Millais, and Rossetti occasionally, were always more at ease with water-colour or gouache, and you feel that most of their pictures ought to have been painted in _tempera_, the technique of which was not then understood. Since Millais was of French extraction, Rossetti of Italian, and Solomon of Hebrew, I fear this does not get us very much further away from the old French criticism that the English had forgotten or never learnt how to paint in oil. It must be remembered that Whistler, who in the sixties achieved some of his masterpieces, was an American.

It is strange that Solomon did not allow a sordid existence to alter the trend of his subjects, for these are always derived from poetry and the Bible, or from Catholic, Jewish, or Greek Orthodox ritual--a strange contrast to the respectable, impeccable painter, M. Degas, the doyen of European art, nationalist and anti-Semite, who finds beauty only in brasseries, in the vulgar circus, and in the ghastly wings of the opera. How far removed from his surroundings are the inspirations of the artist! I believe J. F. Millet would have painted peasants if he had been born and spent his days in the centre of New York. With the life-long friend of M. Degas--Gustave Moreau--Solomon had much in common, but the colour of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous. I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective art, especially at the present day. There is hardly room for an inverted Watts. At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a little overpowering, may care to explore an interesting byway of art. For poor Solomon there was no place in life. Casting reality aside, he stepped back into the riotous pages of Petronius. Perhaps on the Paris boulevards, with Verlaine and Bibi la Puree, he might have enjoyed a distinct artistic individuality. Expeditions conducted by Mr. Arthur Symons might have been organized in order to view him at some popular cafe. Mr. George Moore might have written about him. But in respectable London he was quite impossible. In the temple of Art, which is less Calvinistic than artists would have us suppose, he will always have his niche. To the future English Vasari he will be a real gold-mine.

(1905.)

AUBREY BEARDSLEY.

Middle-aged, middle-class people, with a predilection for mediaeval art, still believe that subject is an important factor in a picture or drawing. I am one of the number. The subject need not be literary or historical. After you have discussed in the latest studio jargon its carpentry, valued the tones and toned the values, motive or theme must affect your appreciation of a picture, your desire, or the contrary, to possess it. That the artist is able to endow the unattractive, and woo you to surrender, I admit. Unless, however, you are a pro-Boer in art matters, and hold that Rembrandt and the Boer school (the greatest technicians who ever lived) are finer artists than Titian, you will find yourself preferring Gainsborough to Degas, and the unskilful Whistler to the more accomplished Edouard Manet. Long ago French critics invented an aesthetic formula to conceal that poverty of imagination which sometimes stares from their perfectly executed pictures, and this was eagerly accepted by certain Englishmen, both painters and writers. Yet, when an artist frankly deals with forbidden subjects, the canons regular of English art begin to thunder; the critics forget their French accent; the old Robert Adam, which is in all of us, asserts himself; we fly for the fig-leaves.

I am led to these reflections by the memory of Aubrey Beardsley, and the reception which his work received, not from the British public, but from the inner circle of advanced intellectuals. Too much occupied with the obstetrics of art, his superfluity of naughtiness has tarnished his niche in the temple of fame. 'A wish to _epater le bourgeois_,' says Mr. Arthur Symons, 'is a natural one.' I do not think so; at least, in an artist. Now much of Beardsley's work shows the _eblouissement_ of the burgess on arriving at Montmartre for the first time--a weakness he shared with some of his contemporaries. This must be conceded in praising a great artist for a line which he never drew, after you have taken the immortal Zero's advice and divested yourself of the scruples.