Chapter V: Part 5

The next few weeks have left a rather confused impression in my mind, perhaps because Peter himself seemed to be confused. He never spoke of his book. Occasionally we went to the theatre or to a concert. I remember a concert of Negro music at Carnegie Hall, when there were twenty-four pianos and thirty banjos in the band and the Negroes sang G'wine up, Go Down, Moses, Rise and Shine, Run Mary, Run, and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, with less of the old plantation spirit than either Peter or I could have assumed, but when the band broke into ragtime, the banjos twanged, the pianos banged, the blacks swayed back and forth, the roof was raised, and glory was upon us. Once, coming out of Æolian Hall, after a concert given by Elena Gerhardt, we were confronted by a wagon-load of double basses in their trunks. Two of the monsters, with their fat bellies and their long necks, stood vis-à-vis on the sidewalk and seemed to be conversing, while their brothers on the wagon, a full nine, wore the most ridiculously dégagé air of dignity. We will not sit down, not here at any rate, they plainly said, but they did not complain. Peter laughed a good deal at them and remarked that the aristocrats in the French Revolution must have gone to the guillotine in much the same manner, only the absurd double basses in their trunks had no roses to smell. Never have I seen inanimate objects so animate save once, at a rehearsal in the darkened Belasco Theatre, when the curly gold backs of the ornate chairs, peeping over the rails of the boxes, assumed the exact appearance of Louis XIV wigs on stately gentlemen. We heard Toscanini conduct the Ninth Symphony at the Metropolitan Opera House and we went to see Mrs. Leslie Carter play Paula Tanqueray. Often, in those days, we dined at the Pavillon d'Orient, an Armenian restaurant on Lexington Avenue. Peter particularly enjoyed a pudding called Tavouk Gheoksu, made of shredded chicken-breasts, pounded rice flour, powdered sugar, and cinnamon, and Midia Dolma, which are mussels stuffed with raisins and rice and pignolia nuts. Studying the menu one night, it occurred to him that the names of the dishes would make excellent names for the characters of a play. The heroine, of course, he said, would be Lahana Sarma and the adventuress, Sgara Keofté; Enguinar is a splendid name for a hero, and the villain should be called Ajem Pilaf! There was a negro café in the basement of a building on Thirty-eighth street, which we frequently visited to see a most amazing mulatto girl, apparently boneless, fling herself about while a pitch-black boy with ivory teeth pummelled his drum, at intervals tossing his sticks high in the air and catching them dexterously, and the pianist pounded Will Tyers's Maori out of the piano. Occasionally we patronized more conventional cafés, one especially, where Peter was interested in a dancer, who painted her face with Armenian bole and said she was a descendant of a Hindu Rajah.

It was during this period that Peter nourished a desire to be tattooed and we sought out masters of the art on the Bowery and at Coney Island. For hours at a time he would examine the albums of designs or watch the artist at work decorating sailors and stevedores. One of these young men came nearly every day until his entire body, with the exception of his eye-balls, lips, and nails, had become a living Persian carpet, a subtle tracery of arabesques and fantastic beasts, birds and reptiles. The process of application was interesting. First, the pattern must be pricked out on glazed paper, smeared with lamp-black; this was laid on the surface to be tattooed and the outline left by the lamp-black was worked over with needles. The artist utilized a piece of wood into which were fixed with wires, nine or ten sharp points. The victims seemed to suffer a good deal of pain, but they suffered in silence. It was not, however, fear of pain that caused Peter to hesitate. I think he would have been frescoed from head to foot, could he have once decided upon a design. Day after day, he looked over the sketches, professional symbols, military, patriotic, and religious, symbols of love, metaphorical emblems and emblems fantastic and historical, frogs, tarantulas, serpents, hearts transfixed with arrows, crosses surmounted by spheres, and cannon. He was most tempted, I think, by the design of an Indian holding aloft the flag of the United States.

Late in March, he suggested a trip to Bermuda.

We must go somewhere, he explained, and why not Bermuda? It's not too far away.

I had been working hard and welcomed the idea of a vacation. To the question of a destination I was comparatively indifferent. It was, however, not too easy to arrange for even a brief leave of absence from the Times during the busy Winter months. By pleading incipient nervous prostration, however, I managed to accomplish my purpose.

On the day marked for our departure, I set out, bags in hands, for the office of the steamship company on lower Broadway, where Peter had commissioned me to stop for the tickets. There, a clerk behind the counter gave me a note. It was from Peter.

Dear Carl, it ran, I've cancelled our bookings. I can't go. Come in to see me today and we'll arrange another trip.

An hour later I found Peter in bed in his room on East Broadway. He was consuming a raw-beef sandwich but he laid it down to grasp my hand.

I'm sorry, he began, but I don't know how I ever happened to hit on the idea of Bermuda. When I awoke this morning, the thought appalled me; I couldn't get out of bed.

The counterpane was strewn with pamphlets relating to foreign travel. The telephone rang.

Excuse me, he said, as he clutched the receiver. Then, by way of explanation, It's the agent of the Cunard Line. I want to ask about the southern route.

He did. He asked about sailings for Italy, Africa, India, and even Liverpool and then he told the agent that he could not decide what to do but he would let him know later.

Carl, he exclaimed suddenly, let's go to Alaska!

I shook my head.

It may be that we shall meet there by chance some day, but I don't believe you can make up your mind to go there this week.

I'm afraid not, he assented ruefully. I suppose it's hard for you to understand.

I understand well enough, I replied, but under the circumstances you will have to travel alone or get some one else to go with you. While you are deciding, my leave of absence will expire.

A few days later he telephoned me.

I'm really going to Bermuda, was his message. I've had bookings on every boat sailing for Europe the past week and cancelled them all. My first idea was the right one. Bermuda is a change, it's near at hand, and I can get back quickly if I don't like it. Come to Bermuda with me, Carl!

When are you sailing? I asked. I'll come down to see you off.

On the day set, I went to the wharf, and to my great surprise, found Peter there, just as he had promised he would be, an hour before sailing time. If he kept an engagement at all, he always kept it on time. He had made preparations, buying new summer clothes, he explained, and a new innovation trunk. As he never knew how long he would stay in one place or where he would go from there, he always carried a great deal of apparently unnecessary baggage. This time he had five trunks with him and several bags, including two for the cats. As we stood on the wharf together, we saw these trunks being hoisted aboard. Then we walked up the gang-plank and went to seek out his cabin. He did not like it, of course, and he hunted up the purser and asked to be transferred to another part of the boat. The ship was crowded and no other cabin was vacant, but the purser, spurred to extra effort by the tip which Peter handed him, promised to try to get him one of the officers' rooms. A little later this transfer was effected and, before I left the boat, Peter was installed in his new quarters. As I bade him farewell, I thought he looked a little wistful. I watched the boat pull out into the river.

Five hours later, as I was working in the tower of the New York Times, I was called to the telephone.

I said, Hello, and almost dropped the receiver, for I had heard Peter's voice from the other end of the wire.

I'm back on East Broadway, he groaned. Do come down.

When I arrived, I found him propped up in bed, drinking tea, which he shared with me.

I just couldn't go! It wouldn't have been right to go feeling the way I did about it. Something dreadful would have happened.

But I saw the boat cast off her moorings.

Peter grinned.

We were steaming down the river. I was very tired and, having the desire to rest in bed, I began to undress. Suddenly it came over me that I had made a great mistake. I put my clothes on again rapidly, dashed to the deck, and hunted up the purser. You know, he had already befriended me. I told him that I had just opened my mail and my telegrams and had run across one informing me of the violent illness of my father--you know how much that would really worry me!--and that I _must_ go back. He informed me that this was impossible, but another bill--a very large one this time--made him more sympathetic and my disembarkation was arranged with the aid of a tug-boat. I even got my trunks off, but I had to cry a good deal to do that. I'm very sorry for you, Mr. Whiffle, the purser said. He will never forget me, I'm sure.

The telephone rang. Peter lifted the receiver from the hook and I heard him say, Please reserve me a deck cabin on the Kronprinz Wilhelm sailing tomorrow. He turned, as he put the receiver back: I'm not crazy about the North German Lloyd but I've already sailed this week on the French Line, the Holland-American, the Cunard, and the White Star. I had to change.

By telephone the next day, I learned that Peter had _not_ sailed on the Kronprinz Wilhelm.

Do you know, he said, I've hit on a solution. I could not decide where to go--every place has its faults--but it has occurred to me that I am not compelled to go anywhere; I can stay on right here!

There is still a pendant to this part of my tale. In May, Peter informed me that he had rented a house on Long Island, a small cottage near Great Neck, with a big fire-place and furniture that would do. He took me out with him the first night. He had engaged a man and his wife, Negroes, to care for the place and cook. We enjoyed a very good dinner and he seemed to have settled down for the summer but in the morning, at breakfast, I, and the Negroes, learned that he was dissatisfied.

I don't like the place much, he explained, at least, I don't think I do. At least, I'm not going to stay here.

He paid the servants two weeks wages and dismissed them. Then he telephoned an expressman to call for his trunks, none of which had been opened. Carrying the bags, two of which contained cats, we caught the 9 o'clock train back to town.

Before this last fluctuation, some time in April, I think it was, Peter's father really did die. Peter did not go to Toledo for the funeral but, after it was over, Mrs. Whiffle came to New York and I met her one day at tea. There was no change in Peter; certainly not a band of black on his arm.

He did seem to have one fixed idea that spring, an idea that centred on marriage.

I'm not particularly in love with any one, he admitted, and so it is rather difficult to choose, but I want children and my children must have a mother. There is Mahalah Wiggins ... and there is the Rajah's grand-daughter. Well, I don't know that they will marry me, but I must decide what I am going to do before I give them a chance to decide what they are going to do!

A week or so later: I've been considering this question of marriage. It's a serious step. I can't rush into a thing like that. Mahalah doesn't like cats. You know, I couldn't give up my cats. I can't marry a woman who doesn't like cats. Luckily I haven't asked her.

A few days later: I will marry Mahalah, I think. She understands me; she doesn't seem to mind the crazy things I do. She is beginning to like the cats. She is healthy and she might produce fine children.

Another interval and then: She has accepted me. Isn't it wonderful for her to love me at my age for my money alone!

The preparations for the wedding were portentous, although it was to be celebrated as quietly as possible. There were clothes to buy and an apartment to be furnished. He left the decision of the day and place to Mahalah--fortunately that was her affair--but there was endless discussion about the honeymoon. He considered in turn nearly every spot on the globe, including Patagonia and Abyssinia. As the day in May set for the ceremony approached, Maine was mentioned rather more frequently than any other locality, but I had no real conviction that they would ultimately go there. I was to be the sole attendant at the wedding. That much seemed to be settled.

The great day dawned and brought with it a windy rain. I knew that Peter detested windy days; one of his superstitions associated them with disaster. He did not telephone me in the morning and his silence seemed ominous. Nevertheless, I put on a morning coat and a silk hat and presented myself at his rooms an hour before the minute set for the ceremony, which was to be celebrated in a little church in the neighbourhood. On another day, I would not have been surprised to find a note from Peter instead of himself but when, on reaching the top landing, I discovered the door open, and an old charwoman, packing up books and bowls inside, handed me a note with the superfluous information that Mr. Whiffle had gone away, my knees shook to such an extent that I wondered if I had suddenly become afflicted with tabes.

I managed to ask, Where?

I dunno, sir. He took his trunks.

I opened the letter.

* * * * *

Dear Carl, it ran, I just couldn't do it. It wouldn't be right to do it, if I feel that way, would it? And I do, indeed, I do! I told you I was not in love and it's hard to make up your mind if you don't feel strongly enough, and I never feel strongly enough about anything until afterwards. You know that. Now, that's soon enough about Bermuda or a house in the country, but it's too late in marriage. So I've just called it off. I've written her a note which doesn't exactly explain anything but some day she'll be glad, I hope, and so all _you_ have to do is to make her feel that it's all right. Somehow, I believe she will understand. Anyway, I don't think she will be surprised. I'm going to Africa and, if I ever have an address again, I'll send it to you.

Peter.

_Chapter IX_

In September, 1913, I found myself on the Paris-Milan Express on my way to Venice to meet Edith Dale. I have travelled across Switzerland many times and I hope to do so again (the view from the car-windows is magnificent), but I shall never visit that country. God keep me from lingering in the mountains or by the shores of the sea. Such immensities of nature strangle talent and even dwarf genius. No great creative work has ever been composed by the sea or in the shadow of a mountain. In the presence of the perpetual mysteries of nature, man feels his smallness. There are those who may say that the sky-scrapers of the city evoke a similar feeling, but man's relation to these is not the same; he knows that man built these monster structures and that man will tear them down again. Mountains and the sea are eternal. Does this explain why so much that passes for art in America comes from Indiana and Illinois, the flat, unimposing, monotonous Middle West?

All journeys, I suppose, have their memorable incidents and episodes, however unimportant. My sole memory of this particular hegira is trifling. While I was dining, the train gave a lurch or a swerve, hurling me with my plate in my lap to the farthest corner of the car. The soup which the plate contained was in my lap, too, and elsewhere. Fortunately, the soup was not too hot. The accident recalled how once in a French drawing-room I had spilled a cup of calid coffee on my leg, scorching it painfully. The hostess was concerned about her carpet. I do hope, she was saying, that you haven't spilled your coffee on my carpet. I had not, but my leg was burned so badly and I felt so outraged by her lack of sympathy, that I took occasion later to make good the omission. Another night, another year, and certainly another place, a celebrated lady, next to whom I was sitting at supper, whisperingly adjured me to upset my coffee into her lap. She was wearing a new and elaborate frock and, astonished by her unreasonable request, I was dilatory in obeying. She whispered again, this time more sharply, Do as I tell you! At last I obeyed her, but the attempt at carelessness must have seemed very clumsy. I am a poor actor. Apologize, was her next command. Meekly, I followed instructions. Now she spoke aloud. It doesn't matter at all, she said. It's only an old rag. The other gentlemen present condoled with her, but she smilingly put them off, Don't make the boy feel bad. It wasn't his fault. Next day, while I lunched with her, a great many boxes arrived from Bendel's and Hickson's. Every man who had attended the supper had bought her a new dress, as she had been sure they would!

Towards nightfall, we approached the Italian border and after we had passed into Italy, the compartment, which had been crowded all day, was empty but for me and another man. As he was a Roumanian, who spoke neither French nor English, we did not converse. About 8 o'clock, we lay down on our respective seats and tried to sleep. It was nearly midnight when we arrived at Milan and I was glad to descend from the train, after the long journey, to take a few hours repose at a hotel near the station. Early in the morning, which was bright and sunny, I departed for Venice.

In the evening of that day, I was sitting at a table in the garden of Bonvecchiati's with Edith, who had motored down from Florence. Since the night I had taken Peter to her house in Washington Square, I had seen her only for fleeting moments, but she bridged the months immediately. Peter had been correct in his assumption that she would remember him. In fact, one of the first questions she asked was:

Where is that boy you brought to my house the other night?

It was "the other night" to Edith; months and even years meant nothing to her.

Peter Whiffle?

Yes, a nice boy. I liked him. Where is he? Let's take him back to Florence with us.

I don't know where he is.

Then I told her the story of how Peter did not get married.

I knew he was amusing. Let's get in touch with his vibrations and find him.

Edith, indeed, had invented her own kind of wireless long before Marconi came along with his. Distances, as a matter of fact, circumscribed her even less than time.

Just then, she saw Constant Lounsberry, or some one else, at a table in the corner of the garden where we were dining and she strolled over to talk with her. Sipping my coffee and smoking my cigarette, I recognized a familiar voice and turned to see Peter, with his mother, about to claim an adjacent table from which the occupants were rising. He looked two years younger than he had four months before and his rather pretty mother helped to confirm the illusion. Of course, I joined them at once and soon we were discussing the Italian futurists, the comparative merits of spaghetti and risotto, Lydia Borelli, the moving pictures, and the Marchesa Casati, who had given a magnificent festa the evening previous, when, clad in a leopard's pelt, she had stood on the steps of her palace, and greeted her guests as they approached by gondola on the Canale Grande. Peter, I noted, was wearing his amethyst intaglio of Leda and the Swan on the little finger of his left hand. After a time, during which, for a brief few moments, the conversation drifted towards Toledo and the small affairs of Mrs. Whiffle, he told me his story.

I came near dying in Africa, Carl, surrounded by niggers and fleas! It was horrible. Hot as a New York roof-garden and nearly as uncomfortable. There I lay, rotting with a nameless fever, no one with me but an incompetent Dutch doctor, who was more ignorant of the nature of my complaint than I was myself, and a half-naked aboriginal, who wanted to call in the witch-doctor and who, when burked in this direction, attempted a few amateur charms, which at least had the merit of awakening my interest. There I lay in a rude thatched hut with a roof of caked cow-dung; I couldn't eat, drink, or speak. I thought it was the end. Funny, but the only sound that reached my ears, after a few days, was the chattering of monkeys, and later they told me there were no monkeys about at all.

Over my head on the wall, hung a dirty thonged whip. Whether its purpose was to beat women or oxen, I don't know, but, you will remember, perhaps, that sometimes, when I awaken from sleep in the middle of the night, I have a strange habit of holding one arm straight up in the air, at right angles with my body. Well, while I was ill, there it was, most of the time, straight up! One night, when my strength was fast ebbing away, I reached higher and grasped the whip. Then I grew drowsy; everything seemed to turn blood-red, even the palm-leaves that waved across the opening made by the doorway of the hut, and it was very hot, unspeakably roasting. Now, through this same doorway, walked a woman in a rusty black robe and, although I knew it must be Death, the figure confused itself in my mind with Kathleen-ni-Houlihan and (will you believe it?) Sara Allgood! Fancy the appearance of Death in the middle of Africa suggesting to me the character of an Irish play and the actress I had seen in it! There followed a slight pause, during which Death stood perfectly still. Then two more figures entered the tiny hut. One was the Devil, Ahriman, Abaddon, what you will; I recognized him at once, he was so likable and, besides, he was lame. The other, I gathered after a little conversation, was an emissary from heaven. Eblis seated himself on one side of my cot, resting his crutches against the wall, and Gabriel's ambassador stood on the other side. Now these two droll fellows began to describe the climates and amusements of heaven and hell to me, each speaking in his turn, and continually interrupting themselves to beg me to decide speedily where I wanted to go. They stated frankly that they had not any too much time, as they had several other visits to make before dinner in various parts of the world. The Angel polished his feathers with a small hat-brush and the Devil seemed to be taking good care of his nails, in default of the opportunity to visit a manicure. Death stood immovable, inexorable. Imagine, even in her presence, I had to make up my mind where I wanted to go. It was a terrible experience, I can tell you! It was as if she were saying, Hurry now, hurry now! Nine minutes more. Only, of course, she did not utter a single word. The Angel and the Devil were too silly. Had they been silent, it would have been so much easier for me to decide. My mind would just be wavering in a certain direction, when one of the supernatural visitors would put me completely out with a warning about his rival's domain and a word of enthusiasm for his own. Never have I suffered such agony. I could not decide whether to go to Paradise or Pandemonium. My perplexity grew as they argued. Meantime, it was obvious that I was keeping Death from other bedsides. I could see that she was becoming nervous and irritable, shifting first on one foot, then on the other. It was evidently very irksome to her that she had taken a vow of silence. In life, it is so easy; there is always something else to do. But, in death, Carl, there is a single alternative; at least, it seemed so to me for an unconscionable space of time. Suddenly, however, two ideas occurred to me: I remembered that I had read somewhere that demon and deity were originally derived from the same root: in that case, one place would be as bad or as good as the other; and I remembered my solution of the Bermuda problem: I could stay where I was. _I was not compelled to go anywhere._ Stretching up my hands, I pulled hard on the whip, which must have broken loose from the nail, because when I came out of my coma, the thongs were gripped tightly in my hand, lying on the blanket.

Peter concluded his story and, suddenly, with that delightful inconsequence, which contributed so definite a charm to his manner, he pointed to a woman in the crowd.

She resembles an ostrich and she is dressed like a peacock, he said.

Peter, I wish you wouldn't jest about death and holy things, interjected Mrs. Whiffle, on whose literal mind the tale had evidently clawed as an eagle claws the brain of a cat.

But, mother, Peter tried to mollify her, I am not jesting. I am telling you something that happened.

Something that you _thought_ had happened, Mrs. Whiffle corrected, but we should only think good thoughts. We should keep the dark ones out of our minds, especially when they interfere and conflict with the powerful words of Almighty God, our Creator.

I'm sorry, mother, I won't tell it again, he said, simply. Then, after a nibble or two at a lobster, he turned to me, Mother is going to America tomorrow. I shall be alone. Have you been to the Austrian Tyrol? There's Russia, of course, and Spain, and those islands where Synge used to go. Where are they? And Bucharest. Carlo, will you go with me tomorrow to Buenos Ayres or Helsingfors?

You are not to be told where you are going, I replied, but you are going with me.

Experience has taught me that people with principles are invariably unreasonable. Peter had no principles and therefore he was reasonable. So the next day, he really did drive back with us to Florence, through the pleasant olive groves and vineyards. A jeroboam of chianti enlivened the journey, and Edith adored the story of Peter's encounter with Death, the Devil, and the Angel.

The Villa Allegra is set on the hills of Arcetri, high above the long cypress-bordered avenue called the Stradone del Poggio Imperiale. The villa is so artfully concealed amongst the cunningly-grouped, gnarled olive trees, eucalypti, myrtles, plane-trees, laurels, pepper-trees, and rows of cypresses, that, until you are in the very courtyard, you are unaware of its propinquity, although, by some curious paradox, the view from the loggia commands the surrounding country. The lovely curve of the façade has been attributed to the hand of Raphael, and Brunelleschi is said to have designed the cortile, for the physician of the Medici once inhabited this country house, but the completely successful loggia and the great salone were added by Chester Dale.

Peter had never been in Florence before; no more had I; so the romantic charm of this lovely old house in the mountains served to occupy us for several days. We inspected the sunken Roman bath and were thrilled by the rope-ladder, which, when lowered through a trap-door, connected a chamber on the second storey with a room on the first. We were satisfied to sit in the evening under the red brocaded walls, illuminated by wax tapers set in girandoles of green and rose faience, to stroll in the gardens, to gaze off towards the distant hills from the loggia. Edith entertained us with long accounts of the visits of the spectre, the dame blanche who haunted the house. It was, if the servants who swore they had seen her were to be believed, the spirit of an elderly maiden lady who had died there. In life, it seems, she had been of a jealous disposition and had tried to make the villa uncomfortable for other guests. She was not successful in this effort until she died, and not altogether successful even then, for there were those who refused to be terrified by the persistent presence of this spinster eidolon, which manifested itself in various ways. Others, however, resembled Madame de Staël, who did not believe in ghosts but was afraid of them.

In the mornings, Peter and I breakfasted together in the garden, whither was borne us by the cynical butler a tray with individual coffee percolators, a plate of fresh rolls, and a bowl of honey. The peacocks strutted the terrace and the breeze blew the branches of the fragrant gardenias across our noses. In the distance, the bells of Florence softly tolled. In the afternoon, the distant hills became purple and, in the evening, the atmosphere was tinged with green. The peasants sang in the road below and the nightingales sang in the olive copse. Roman lamps flickered on the tables and Strega, the golden witch-liquid, stood in our tiny crumpled Venetian tumblers, their distorted little bellies flecked with specks of gold. There were occasional callers but no other resident guests than ourselves at the villa and Edith, as was her custom, left us a good deal alone. On the day of our arrival, indeed, she disappeared after luncheon and only returned two days later, when she explained that she had gone to visit a friend at Pisa. We usually met her at dinner when she came out to the garden-table, floating in white crêpe de chine, with a turban of turquoise blue or some vivid brilliant green, but during the day she was seldom visible. She ate her breakfast alone on the balcony above our bedroom, then read for an hour or two. What she did after, one never knew, save as she told of it.

Meanwhile, Peter and I wandered about, inspecting the shops on the Ponte Vecchio, tramping through the old palaces and galleries. Several times Peter paused; he hesitated for the longest time, I think, before the David of Donatello, that exquisite soft bronze of the Biblical lad, nude but for his wreathed helmet, standing in his adolescent slender beauty with one foot on the head of the decapitated giant. He carries a sword and over his face flutters a quizzical expression. Indeed, what Walter Pater said of the face of Monna Lisa might equally well apply to the face of David. So remarked Peter, explaining that the quality of both the David and Leonardo's darling was the same, both possessed a compelling charm, and it was the charm of David which had slain the ugly giant, just as charm always kills ugliness. And he swore that this was the most beautiful object that the hand of man had yet created, an art expression which reached its emotional and intellectual zenith, and then he spoke of the advantage that sculpture enjoyed over painting.

One tires of a painting. It is always the same. There is never anything new in it. But with a statue, every different light gives it a novel value, _and it can be turned around_. When you tire of one aspect, you try another. That is why statues belong in houses and pictures belong in museums. You can visit the museum when you wish to look at a picture, but it is impossible to live with a picture, because it is always the same. You can kill any picture, even a picture by Velázquez, by hanging it on your own wall, for in a few days it becomes a commonplace to you, a habit, and at last one day you do not look at it any more, you scarcely are aware that it is there at all, and you are surprised when your friends speak of it, speak of it admiringly. Yes, you say, unconvinced, it is beautiful. But you do not believe it. On the other hand, a statue is new every day. Every passing cloud in the sky, every shifting of the location of a lamp, gives a new value to a statue, and when you tire of seeing it in the house, you can transfer it to the garden where it begins another avatar.

Leaving David behind us, we walked down the long, marble, fourteenth century stairway of the Palazzo del Podestà, into the magnificent court embellished with the armorial bearings of the old chief magistrates, out to the Via del Procónsolo, on through the winding streets to the Palazzo Riccardi, where Peter again paused before the frescoes of Benozzo Gozzoli. The Gifts of the Magi is the general title but Gozzoli, according to a pleasant custom of his epoch, has painted the Medici on a hunting expedition, the great Lorenzo on a white charger, with a spotted leopard at its heels, falcons on the wrists of his brilliant attendants, a long train of lovely boys, in purple and mulberry and blue and green and gold, the colours as fresh, perhaps, as the day they were painted. The most beautiful room in the world, Peter exclaimed, this little oratory about the size of a cubicle at Oxford, painted by candle-light, for until recently, there was no window in the room, and I believed him. I am not sure but, belike, I believe him still. Then Peter loved the walk in that gallery which connects the Pitti Palace with the Uffizi, a long narrow gallery which runs over the shops of the Ponte Vecchio (was ever another bridge so richly endowed with artistic and commercial interest?), where hang the old portraits of the families who have reigned in Florence, and some others. Quaint old canvases, they are, by artists long forgotten and of people no longer remembered, but more interesting to Peter and me than the famous Botticellis and Bellinis and Giorgiones which crowded the walls of the galleries. As we stood before them, Peter imagined tales of adventure and romance to suit the subjects, pinning his narratives to the expression of a face, the style of a sleeve, the embroidery of a doublet, or to some accompanying puppet or pet, some ill-featured hunch-back dwarf.

Thus the days passed and Peter became dreamy and wistful and the charm of his spirit, I believe, was never before so poignant, for his chameleon soul had taken on the hue of the renaissance and its accompanying spirituality, the spirituality of the artist, the happy working artist contriving works of genius. He could have perfectly donned the costume of the cinquecento, for the revolutionary Peter of New York, the gay, faun-like Peter of Paris, had disappeared, and a Peter of reveries and dreams had usurped their place.

Never have I been so happy, he said to me on one of these days, as I am now. This is true beauty, the beauty of spirit, art which has nothing to do with life, which, indeed, makes you forget the existence of life. Of course, however, this is of no help to the contemporary artist. Confronted, on every hand, with perfection, he must lay down his chisel or his brush or his pen. Great art can never flourish here again. That is why Browning's poetry about Florence is so bad; why Ouida, perhaps a lesser artist, succeeded where Browning failed. This is the ideal spot in which to idle, to dream, even to think, but no work is possible here and that, perhaps, is why I love Florence so much. I feel that I could remain here always and, if I did I should do nothing, nothing, that is, but drink my coffee and eat my rolls and honey in the morning, gaze across to the hills and dream, stroll over the wondrous Ponte Santa Trinità, which connects us so gracefully with the Via Tornabuoni, wonder how Ghirlandaio achieved the naïve charm of the frescoes in the choir of Santa Maria Novella, nothing else but these things. And, of course, I should always avoid the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele.

But he had scarcely uttered the name before he determined that he must drink some beer and so we strolled across the Piazza, on which he had just placed a malison, into the Giubbe Rosse, full of Americans writing letters, and Swedes and Germans, reading their native papers. We sat down at a table just outside the door and asked one of the red-coats, whose scarlet jackets give this place its cant name, to bring us two steins of Münchener. Then came an anachronism, one of those anachronisms so unusual in Florence which, more than any other city, is all of a piece. A stage-coach, such a coach as one sees in old England, drawn by four horses, drove gaily through the square. The interior seemed empty but on the top sat several English girls in sprigged muslins, a few pale youths, and a hatless man with very long hair, who was clad in olive-green velvet.

Who is it? I asked a man at a neighbouring table.

And the reply came, That is Gordon Craig and his school.

A few days later, Peter encountered Papini, that strange and very ugly youth, who mingled his dreams and his politics, mixing mysticism and propaganda until one became uncertain whether he was seer or socialist, and Marinetti. He read Mafarka le Futuriste and Marinetti talked to him about war and vaudeville, noise and overthrow, excitement and destruction. Bomb the palaces and build factories where they stood! So Marinetti enjoined his followers. Whatever is today is art; whatever was yesterday is nothing, worse than nothing, refuse, manure. Peter was especially amused by Marinetti's war cry, Méprisez la femme! his banishment of the nude and adultery from art, which was to become entirely male. So, indeed, was life, for Marinetti exhorted his male disciples to bear their own children! All these ideas, Peter repeated to me in a dreamy, veiled voice, noting at the same time that one of Marinetti's arms was longer than the other. It did not seem quite the proper environment to carry on in this respect, but the words of the Italian futurist had indubitably made an impression. I could see that it was quite likely that Peter would become a Marinettist when he went back to New York.

At dinner, one night, it became apparent that Peter once more was considering his life work. One of the guests, a contessa with a florid face and an ample bosom, began to fulminate:

Art is magic. Art is a formula. Once master a formula and you can succeed in expressing yourself. Barrie has a formula. Shaw has a formula. Even George Cohan has a formula. Black magic, negromancy, that's what it is: the eye of a newt, the beak of a raven, herbs gathered at certain hours, the heart of a black cat, boiled in a pot together, call up the bright devils to do your bidding.

Art is a protest, corrected Mina Loy. Each artist is protesting against something: Hardy, against life itself; Shaw, against shams; Flaubert, against slipshod workmanship; George Moore, against prudery; Cunninghame Graham, against civilization; Arthur Machen, against reality; Theodore Dreiser, against style....

Never did I feel less sure of the meaning of art than I do here, surrounded by it, began Peter, although I have never been more conscious of it, more susceptible to real beauty, more lulled by its magic. Yet I do not understand its meaning. It does not help me to work out my own problems. The trails cross. For instance, here is Edith leading her own life; here are we all leading our own lives, as remote as possible from Donatello and Gozzoli. Here is Gordon Craig, dressed like Bunthorne, driving a stage-coach and sending out arcane but thundering manifestos against a theatre in which his mother and Eleanora Duse are such conspicuous examples; here is Papini working and dreaming; here is Marinetti shooting off fire-crackers; here are the Braggiottis, teaching young Americans the elements of music in that modern music-room with bas-relief portraits of the great composers, Beethoven, Bach, Verdi, Mozart, Wagner, Rossini ... and Sebastian B. Schlesinger, moulded in the frieze. Here is Loeser, always building new houses and never completing them; here is Arthur Acton, with a chauffeur who sings tenor arias in the drawing-room after dinner; here is Leo Stein, collecting Renoirs and Cézannes for his villa at Settignano. What does it all mean, unless it means that everything should be scrambled together? I think a great book might be written if everything the hero thought and felt and observed could be put into it. You know how, in the old novel, only what is obviously essential to the plot or the development of character is selected. But a man, crossing a street to commit a murder, does not continuously think of the murder. The cry of Buns! hot cross buns! the smell of onions or dead fish, the sight of a pretty woman, impress his senses and remind him of still other things. These ideas, impressions, objects, should all be set down. Nothing should be omitted, nothing! One might write a whole book of two hundred thousand words about the events of an hour. And what a book! What a book!

This was before the day of Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. The contessa snorted. Mina Loy, at the other end of the table, looked interested in Peter for the first time, I thought. The white Persian cat, one of Edith's cats, with his superb porcelain-blue eyes, sauntered into the room, his tail raised proudly. Edith spoke:

The great artists put themselves into their work; the cat never does. Men like Stieglitz and de Meyer put themselves into their cameras, that is why their photographs are wonderful, but the cat never puts himself into a camera. The great conquerors put themselves into their actions; the cat never does. Lovers put themselves into the selves of their loved ones, seeking identity; the cat never does. Mystics try to lose themselves in union with their gods; the cat never does. Musicians put themselves into their instruments; the cat never does. Indian men, working in the ground, put themselves in the earth, in order to get themselves back in the forms of wheat or maize to nourish their bodies; the cat never does. Navajo women, when they weave blankets, go so completely into the blanket while they are working on it, that they always leave a path in the weaving that comes out at the last corner for their souls to get out of the blanket; otherwise they would be imprisoned in it. The cat never does things like this!

So every one really centres his self somewhere outside of himself; every one gets out of his body. The cat _never_ does. Every one has a false centre. Only the cat--the feline--has a true centredness inside himself. Dogs and other animals centre themselves in people and are therefore open to influence. The cat stays at home inside his body and can never be influenced.

Every one has always worked magic through these false centres--doing things to himself--seeking outlets, seeking expression, seeking power, all of which are only temporarily satisfactory like a movement of the bowels, which is all it amounts to on the psychic plane. The cat _is_ magic, _is_ himself, _is_ power. The cat knows how to live, staying as he does inside his own body, for that is the only place where he _can_ live! That is the only place where he can experience being _here_ and _now_.

Of course, all the false-centred people have a kind of magic power, for any centredness is power, but it doesn't last and it doesn't satisfy them. Art has been the greatest deceiver of all--the better the art, the greater the deception. It isn't necessary to objectify or express experience. What IS necessary IS to _be_. The cat knows this. May be, that is why the cat has been an object of worship; may be, the ancients felt intuitively that the cat had the truth in him.

Do you see where these reflections lead? The whole world is wildly pursuing a mirage; only the cat is at home, so to speak.

Actors understand this. They only get a sense of reality when they throw themselves into a part ... a false centre.

The cat understands pure being, which is _all_ we need to know and which it takes us a lifetime to learn. It is both subject and object. It is its own outlet and its own material. It _is_. All the rest of us are divided bits of self, some here, some there. The cat has a complete subjective unity. Being its own centre, it radiates electricity in all directions. It is magnetic and impervious. I have known people to keep a cat so that they could stroke the electricity out of it. Why didn't they know how to be electric as the cat IS? The cat is the fine specimen of the I am. Who of us is so fully the I am that I am?

Look around the world! Everybody putting him_self_ _out_ in some form or another! Why? It doesn't do any good. At the end you exhaust the possibilities of the outside world--geographically and spiritually. You can use up the external. You can come to the end of objectifying and objectives, and then what? In the end, only what we started with--the Self in the body, the Self at home, where it was all the time while bits of it were wandering outside.

Peter applauded with sundry bravos and benisons and divers amens, but was moved to ask, Does the cat know this? Has the cat got a _conscious being_? Does he appreciate his advantage?

But no one answered these questions, least of all the haughty white Persian.

Apparently unreasonably (this biography was as far from my mind as anything well could be), following a habit which I never could explain to myself until I became a professional writer and the reason became clear, before going to bed, I made notes on this and several subsequent evenings and it is upon these notes that I am drawing now, to refresh my memory. A few nights later, when Edith and Peter and I were sitting alone on the loggia, Peter talked to us about the critics.

The trouble with the critics, he was saying, is that they are not contradictory enough. They stick to a theory for better or worse, as unwise men stick to an unwise marriage. Once they have exploited a postulate about art or about an artist, they make all his work conform to this postulate, if they admire it. On the other hand, if the work of an artist displeases them, they use the postulate as a hammer. I think it is Oscar Wilde who has written, Only mediocre minds are consistent. There is something very profound in this aphorism.

Consider Frank Harris's Shakespeare theory, for example. It is good enough as an idea, as a casual inspiration it is almost a masterpiece. It would make a fine essay; if it had been used as a passing reference in a book, it probably would have been quoted for years. Harris, however, has spun it out into two thick volumes and made it fit into crevices and crannies where it cannot very well feel at home. Certainly, it is true that any artist creates his characters out of his own virtues and weaknesses; all of a novelists' characters, to a certain extent, reflect phases of himself. The mistake Harris has made lies in identifying Shakespeare only with his weak, unsuccessful, sentimental, disappointed, unhappy characters, such as Hamlet, Macbeth, Orsino, Antonio, and Romeo. Shakespeare probably was just as much Sir Toby Belch and Falstaff. Curiously, this theory of identification fits the critic himself, the intellectual creator, more snugly than it does the romancer, the emotional creator. Remy de Gourmont has pointed this out. He says, Criticism is perhaps the most suggestive of literary forms; it is a perpetual confession; believing to analyze the works of others, the critic unveils and exposes himself to the public. So from these books we may learn more about Frank Harris than we do about Shakespeare.[2] This, of course, has its value.

But that is why Shakespeare is greater than his critics, that is greater than the critics who cling to one theory. Shakespeare speaks only through his characters and he can say, or make some one say,

Frailty, thy name is woman,

but on the next page another character may deny this sentiment, for this is not Shakespeare's opinion, it is that of an incensed lover. So Richard III remarks:

Conscience is but a word the cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

But Hamlet replies:

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

Both are true, both good philosophy, and so from the playwright, the great poet, the novelist, you get a rounded view of life which a critic usually denies you.

Occasionally a critic does contradict himself and really becomes human and delightful and we take him to our hearts, but the next day all the doctors and professors and pundits are excoriating him, assuring us that he is not consistent, that he is a loose writer, etc. Good critics, I should like to believe, are always loose writers; they perpetually contradict themselves; their work is invariably palinodal. How, otherwise, can they strive for vision, and how can they inspire vision in the reader without striving for vision themselves? Good critics should grope and, if they must define, they should constantly contradict their own definitions. In this way, in time, a certain understanding might be reached. For instance, how delightful of Anatole France to describe criticism as a soul's adventures among masterpieces, and then to devote his critical pen to minor poets and unimportant eighteenth century figures.

But, asked Edith, does not the reader in his own mind contradict the consistent critic? Does not this answer your purpose?