Chapter IV: Introduction (2)

His comrades, who are content to deal with such matters as they arise, will not be paid at a higher rate: but they will be paid more often. They will not infrequently be paid from several sources; they will have many opportunities for judging those financial questions which are invariably mixed up with the great battle against the Ultramontane, the Cossack and the Turk. In Cairo, Frankfort, Pretoria, Mayfair, Shanghai, their latter days confirm Dr. Caliban’s profound conclusion: “Whosoever works for Humanity works, whether he know it or not, for himself as well.”[7]

I earnestly beseech the reader of this text-book, especially if he be young, to allow no false shame to modify his zeal in judging the vileness of the Continent. We know whatever can be known; all criticism or qualification is hypocrisy; all silence is cowardice. There is work to be done. Let the writer take up his pen and _write_.

I had some little hesitation what model to put before the student. This book does not profess to be more than an introduction to the elements of our science; I therefore omitted what had first seemed to me of some value, the letters written on a special commission to Pondicherry during the plague and famine in that unhappy and ill-governed remnant of a falling empire. The articles on the tortures in the Phillipines were never printed, and might mislead. I have preferred to show Priestcraft and Liberty in their eternal struggle as they appeared to me in the character of Special Commissioner for _Out and About_ during the troubles of 1901. It is clear, and I think unbiassed; it opens indeed in that light fashion which is a concession to contemporary journalism: but the half-frivolous exterior conceals a permanent missionary purpose. Its carefully collected array of facts give, I suggest, a vivid picture of one particular battlefield; that whereon there rage to-day the opposed forces which will destroy or save the French people. The beginner could not have a better introduction to his struggle against the infamies of Clericalism. Let him ask himself (as Mr. Gardy, M.P., asked in a letter to _Out and About_) the indignant question, “Could such things happen here in England?”

THE SHRINE OF ST. LOUP.

My excellent good Dreyfusards, anti-Dreyfusards, Baptists, Anabaptists, pre-Monstratentians, antiquaries, sterling fellows, foreign correspondents, home-readers, historians, Nestorians, philosophers, Deductionists, Inductionists, Prætorians (I forgot those), Cæsarists, Lazarists, Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics and militant atheists, as also all you Churchmen, Nonconformists, Particularists, very strong secularists, and even you, my well-beloved little brethren called The Peculiar People, give ear attentively and listen to what is to follow, and you shall learn more of a matter that has wofully disturbed you than ever you would get from the _Daily Mail_ or from Mynheer van Damm, or even from Dr. Biggies’ _Walks and Talks in France_.

In an upper valley of the Dauphiné there is a village called Lagarde. From this village, at about half-past four o’clock of a pleasant June morning, there walked out with his herd one Jean Rigors, a herdsman and half-wit. He had not proceeded very far towards the pastures above the village, and the sun was barely showing above the peak profanely called The Three Bishops, when he had the fortune to meet the Blessed St. Loup, or Lupus, formerly a hermit in that valley, who had died some fourteen hundred years ago, but whose name, astonishing as it may seem to the author of _The Justification of Fame_, is still remembered among the populace. The Blessed Lupus admonished the peasant, recalling the neglect into which public worship had fallen, reluctantly promised a sign whereby it might be re-created among the faithful, and pointed out a nasty stream of muddy water, one out of fifty that trickled from the moss of the Alps. He then struck M. Rigors a slight, or, as some accounts have it, a heavy, blow with his staff, and disappeared in glory.

Jean Rigors, who could not read or write, being a man over thirty, and having therefore forgotten the excellent free lessons provided by the Republic in primary schools, was not a little astonished at the apparition. Having a care to tether a certain calf whom he knew to be light-headed, he left the rest of the herd to its own unerring instincts, and ran back to the village to inform the parish priest of the very remarkable occurrence of which he had been the witness or victim. He found upon his return that the morning Mass, from which he had been absent off and on for some seven years, was already at the Gospel, and attended to it with quite singular devotion, until in the space of some seventeen minutes he was able to meet the priest in the sacristy and inform him of what had happened.

The priest, who had heard of such miraculous appearances in other villages, but (being a humble man, unfitted for worldly success and idiotic in business matters) had never dared to hope that one would be vouchsafed to his own cure, proceeded at once to the source of the muddy streamlet, and (unhistorical as the detail may seem to the author of _Our Old Europe, Whence and Whither_?) neglected to reward the hind, who, indeed, did not expect pecuniary remuneration, for these two excellent reasons:--First, that he knew the priest to be by far the poorest man in the parish; secondly, that he thought a revelation from the other world incommensurate with money payments even to the extent of a five-franc piece. The next Sunday (that is, three days afterwards) the priest, who had previously informed his brethren throughout the Canton, preached a sermon upon the decay of religion and the growing agnosticism of the modern world--a theme which, as they had heard it publicly since the Christian religion had been established by Constantine in those parts and privately for one hundred and twenty-five years before, his congregation received with some legitimate languor. When, however, he came to what was the very gist of his remarks, the benighted foreigners pricked up their ears (a physical atavism impossible to our own more enlightened community), and Le Sieur Rigors, who could still remember the greater part of the services of the Church, was filled with a mixture of nervousness and pride, while the good priest informed his hearers, in language that would have been eloquent had he not been trained in the little seminary, that the great St. Lupus himself had appeared to a devout member of his parish and had pointed out to him a miraculous spring, for the proper enshrinement of which he requested--nay, he demanded--the contributions of the faithful.

At that one sitting the excellent hierarch received no less a sum than 1053 francs and 67 centimes; the odd two-centimes (a coin that has disappeared from the greater part of France) being contributed by a road-mender, who was well paid by the State, but who was in the custom of receiving charity from tourists; the said tourists being under the erroneous impression that he was a beggar. He also, by the way, would entertain the more Anglo-Saxon of these with the folk-lore of the district, in which his fertile imagination was never at fault.

It will seem astonishing to the author of _Village Communities in Western Europe_ to hear of so large a sum as £40 being subscribed by the congregation of this remote village, and it would seem still more astonishing to him could he see the very large chapel erected over the spring of St. Loup. I do not say that he would understand the phenomenon, but I do say that he would become a more perturbed and therefore a wiser man did he know the following four facts:--(1) That the freehold value of the village and its communal land, amounting to the sum of a poor £20,000, was not in the possession of a landlord, but in that of these wretched peasants. (2) That the one rich man of the neighbourhood, a retired glove-maker, being also a fanatic, presented his subscriptions in such a manner that they were never heard of. He had, moreover, an abhorrence for the regulation of charity. (3) That the master mason in the neighbouring town had in his youth been guilty of several mortal sins, and was so weak as to imagine that a special tender would in such a case make a kind of reparation; and (4) that the labourers employed were too ignorant to cheat and too illiterate to combine.

The new shrine waxed and prospered exceedingly, and on the Thursday following its dedication an epileptic, having made use of the water, was restored to a normal, and even commonplace, state of mind. On the Friday a girl, who said that she had been haunted by devils (though until then no one had heard of the matter), declared, upon drinking a cup from the spring of St. Loup, that she was now haunted by angels--a very much pleasanter condition of affairs. The Sunday following, the village usurer, who called himself Bertollin, but who was known to be a wicked foreigner from beyond the Alps, of the true name of Bertolino, ran into the inn like one demented, and threw down the total of his ill-gotten gains for the benefit of the shrine. They amounted, indeed, to but a hundred francs, but then his clientèle were close and skin-flint, as peasant proprietors and free men generally are the world over; and it was well known that the cobbler, who had himself borrowed a small sum for a month, and quadrupled it in setting up lodgings for artists, had been unable to recover from the usurer the mending of his boots.

By this time the Bishop had got wind of the new shrine, and wrote to the Curé of Lagarde a very strong letter, in which, after reciting the terms of the Concordat, Clause 714 of the Constitution and the decree of May 29th, 1854, he pointed out that by all these and other fundamental or organic laws of the Republic, he was master in his own diocese. He rebuked the curé for the superstitious practice which had crept into his cure, ordered the chapel to be used for none but ordinary purposes, and issued a pastoral letter upon the evils of local superstitions. This pastoral letter was read with unction and holy mirth in the neighbouring monastery of Bernion (founded in defiance of the law by the widow of a President of the Republic), but with sorrow and without comment in the little church of Lagarde.

The Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Public Worship, each in his separate way, proceeded to stamp out this survival of the barbaric period of Europe. The first by telling the Prefect to tell the sub-Prefect to tell the Mayor that any attempt to levy taxes in favour of the shrine would be administratively punished: the second by writing a sharp official note to the Bishop for not having acted on the very day that St. Loup appeared to the benighted herdsman. The sub-Prefect came from the horrible town of La Rochegayere and lunched with the Mayor, who was the donor of the new stained-glass window in the church, and they talked about the advantages of forcing the Government to construct a road through the valley to accommodate the now numerous pilgrims; a subject which the sub-Prefect, who was about to be promoted, approached with official nonchalance, but the Mayor (who owned the principal inn) with pertinacity and fervour. They then went out, the Mayor in his tricolour scarf to lock up the gate in front of the holy well, the sub-Prefect to escort his young wife to the presbytery, where she left a gift of 500 francs: the sub-Prefect thought it improper for a lady to walk alone.

Upon the closure of the shrine a local paper (joint property of the Bishop and a railway contractor) attacked the atheism of the Government. A local duchess, who was ignorant of the very terminology of religion, sent a donation of five thousand francs to the curé; with this the excellent man built a fine approach to the new chapel, “which,” as he sorrowfully and justly observed, “the faithful may approach, though an atheistic Government forbids the use of the shrine.” That same week, by an astonishing accident, the Ministry was overturned; the Minister of the Interior was compelled to retire into private life, and lived dependent upon his uncle (a Canon of Rheims). The Minister of Public Worship (who had become increasingly unpopular through the growth of anti-Semitic feeling) took up his father’s money-lending business at Antwerp.

Next week the lock and seals were discovered to have been in some inexplicable way removed from the gate of the well and (by Article 893 of the Administrative Code) before they could be replaced an action was necessary at the assize-town of Grenoble. This action (by the Order of 1875 on Law Terms) could not take place for six months; and in that interval an astonishing number of things happened at Lagarde.

An old Sapper General, who had devised the special obturator for light quick-firing guns, and who was attached to the most backward superstitions, came in full uniform to the Chapel and gave the shrine 10,000 francs: a mysteriously large endowment, as this sum was nearly half his income, and he had suffered imprisonment in youth for his Republican opinions. He said it was for the good of his soul, but the editor of the _Horreur_ knew better, and denounced him. He was promptly retired upon a pension about a third greater than that to which he was legally entitled, and received by special secret messenger from the Minister of War an earnest request to furnish a memorandum on the fortifications of the Isère and to consider himself inspector, upon mobilisation, of that important line of defence.

Two monks, who had walked all the way from Spain, settled in a house near the well. A pilgrim, who had also evidently come from a prodigious distance on foot, but gave false information as to his movements, was arrested by the police and subsequently released. The arrest was telegraphed to the _Times_ and much commented upon, but the suicide of a prominent London solicitor and other important news prevented any mention of his release.

A writer of great eminence, who had been a leading sceptic all his life, stayed at Lagarde for a month and became a raving devotee. His publishers (MM. Hermann Khan) punished him by refusing to receive his book upon the subject; but by some occult influence, probably that of the Jesuits, he was paid several hundreds for it by the firm of Zadoc et Cie; ten years afterwards he died of a congested liver, a catastrophe which some ascribed to a Jewish plot, and others treated as a proof that his intellect had long been failing.

A common peasant fellow, that had been paralysed for ten years, bathed in the water and walked away in a sprightly fashion afterwards. This was very likely due to his ignorance, for a doctor who narrowly watched the whole business has proved that he did not know the simplest rudiments of arithmetic or history, and how should such a fellow understand so difficult a disease as paralysis of the Taric nerve--especially if it were (as the doctor thought quite evident) complicated by a stricture of the Upper Dalmoid?

Two deaf women were, as is very commonly the case with enthusiasts of this kind, restored to their hearing; for how long we do not know, as their subsequent history was not traced for more than five years.

A dumb boy talked, but in a very broken fashion, and as he had a brother a priest and another brother in the army, trickery was suspected.

An English merchant, who had some trouble with his eyes, bathed in the water at the instance of a sister who desired to convert him. He could soon see so well that he was able to write to the _Freethinker_ an account of his healing, called “The Medicinal Springs of Lagarde,” but, as he has subsequently gone totally blind, the momentary repute against ophthalmia which the water might have obtained was nipped in the bud.

What was most extraordinary of all, a very respectable director of a railway came to the village quietly, under an assumed name, and, after drinking the water, made a public confession of the most incredible kind and has since become a monk. His son, to whom he made over his whole fortune, had previously instituted a demand at law to be made guardian of his estates; but, on hearing of his father’s determination to embrace religion, he was too tolerant to pursue the matter further.

To cut a long story short, as Homer said when he abruptly closed the _Odyssey_, some 740 cases of miraculous cures occurred between the mysterious opening of the gates and the date for the trial at Grenoble. In that period a second and much larger series of buildings had begun to arise; the total property involved in the case amounted to 750,000 francs, and (by clause 61 of the Regulation on Civil Tribunals) the local court of assize was no longer competent. Before, however, the case could be removed to Paris, the assent of the Grenoble bench had to be formally obtained, and this, by the singularly Republican rule of “_Non-avant_” (instituted by Louis XI.), took just two years. By that time the new buildings were finished, eight priests were attached to the Church, a monastery of seventy-two monks, five hotels, a golf links, and a club were in existence. The total taxes paid by Lagarde to the Treasury amounted to half-a-million francs a year.

The Government had become willing (under the “Compromise of ’49,” which concerns Departments _v._ the State in the matter of internal communications) to build a fine, great road up to Lagarde. There was also a railway, a Custom House, and a project of sub-prefecture. Moreover, in some underhand way or other, several hundred people a month were cured of various ailments, from the purely subjective (such as buzzing in the ears) to those verging upon the truly objective (such as fracture of the knee-pan or the loss of an eye).

The Government is that of a practical and commonsense people. It will guide or protect, but it cannot pretend to coerce. Lagarde therefore flourishes, the Bishop is venerated, the monastery grumbles in silence, and there is some talk of an Hungarian journalist, born in Constantinople, whose father did time for cheating in the Russian Army, writing one of his fascinating anti-religious romances in nine hundred pages upon the subject. You will learn far more from such a book than you can possibly learn from the narrow limits of the above.

THE SHORT STORY.

THE SHORT STORY.

The short story is the simplest of all forms of literary composition. It is at the same time by far the most lucrative. It has become (to use one of Dr. Caliban’s most striking phrases) “part of the atmosphere of our lives.” In a modified form, it permeates our private correspondence, our late Baron Reuter’s telegraphic messages, the replies of our cabinet ministers, the rulings of our judges; and it has become inseparable from affirmations upon oath before Magistrates, Registrars, Coroners, Courts of Common Jurisdiction, Official Receivers, and all others qualified under 17 Vic. 21, Caps. 2 and 14; sub-section III.

To return to the short story. Its very reason for being (_raison d’être_) is simplicity. It suits our strenuous, active race; nor would I waste the student’s time by recalling the fact that, in the stagnant civilization of China, a novel or play deals with the whole of the hero’s life, in its minutest details, through seventy years. The contrast conveys an awful lesson!

Let us confine ourselves, however, to the purpose of these lines, and consider the short story; for it is the business of every true man to do what lies straight before him as honestly and directly as he can.

The Short Story, on account of its simplicity, coupled with the high rates of pay attached to it, attracts at the outset the great mass of writers. Several are successful, and in their eager rapture (I have but to mention John and Mary Hitherspoon) produce such numerous examples of this form of art, that the student may ask what more I have to teach him? In presenting a model for his guidance, and reproducing the great skeleton lines upon which the Short Story is built up, I would remind my reader that it is my function to instruct and his to learn; and I would warn him that even in so elementary a branch of letters as is this, “pride will have a fall.”

It is not necessary to dwell further upon this unpleasant aspect of my duty.

Let us first consider where the writer of the Short Story stands before the Law. What is her Legal Position as to (_a_) the length, (_b_) the plot of a short story which she may have contracted to deliver on a certain date to a particular publisher, editor, agent, or creditor? The following two decisions apply:--

[Sidenote: =Mabworthy v. Crawley.=]

_Mabworthy v. Crawley._--Mrs. Mabworthy brought an action against
Crawley & Co. to recover payment due for a short story ordered of
her by defendant. Defendant pleaded lack of specific performance,
as story dealt with gradual change of spiritual outlook, during
forty years, of maiden lady inhabiting Ealing. It was held by Mr.
Justice Pake that the subject so treated was not of “ordinary
length.” Judgment for the defendant. Mrs. Mabworthy, prompted
by her sex, fortune, and solicitor to appeal, the matter was
brought before the Court of Appeal, which decided that the word
“ordinary” was equivalent to the word “reasonable.” Judgment for
the defendant, with costs. Mrs. Mabworthy, at the instigation of
the Devil, sold a reversion and carried the matter to the House
of Lords, where it was laid down that “a Short Story should be of
such length as would be found tolerable by any man of ordinary
firmness and courage.” Judgment for the defendant.

The next case is the case of--

[Sidenote: =Gibson v. Acle.=]

_Gibson v. Acle._--In this case, Mr. Phillip Gibson, the
well-known publisher, brought an action for the recovery of a
sum of £3. 10_s._, advanced to Miss Acle, of “The Wolfcote,”
Croydon, in consideration of her contracting to supply a short
story, with regard to the manuscript of which he maintained,
upon receiving it, that (1) it was not a story, and (2) it was
not technically “short,” as it filled but eighteen lines in the
very large type known as grand pica. Three very important points
were decided in this case; for the Judge (Mr. Justice Veale,
brother of Lord Burpham) maintained, with sturdy common sense,
that if a publisher bought a manuscript, no matter what, so long
as it did not offend common morals or the public security of the
realm, he was bound to “print, comfort, cherish, defend, enforce,
push, maintain, advertize, circulate, and make public the same”;
and he was supported in the Court of Crown Cases Reserved in his
decision that:

_First_: the word “short” was plainly the more applicable the
less lengthy were the matter delivered: and

_Secondly_: the word “story” would hold as a definition for any
concoction of words whatsoever, of which it could be proved that
it was built up of separate sentences, such sentences each to
consist of at least one predicate and one verb, real or imaginary.

Both these decisions are quite recent, and may be regarded as the present state of the law on the matter.

Once the legal position of the author is grasped, it is necessary to acquire the five simple rules which govern the Short Story.

1st. It should, as a practical matter apart from the law, contain some incident.

2nd. That incident should take place on the sea, or in brackish, or at least tidal, waters.

3rd. The hero should be English-speaking, white or black.

4th. His adventures should be horrible; but no kind of moral should be drawn from them, unless it be desired to exalt the patriotism of the reader.

5th. Every short story should be divided by a “Cæsura”: that is, it should break off sharp in the middle, and you have then the choice of three distinct courses:

(_a_). To stop altogether--as is often done by people who die, and whose remains are published.

(_b_). To go on with a totally different subject. This method is not to be commended to the beginner. It is common to rich or popular writers; and even they have commonly the decency to put in asterisks.

(_c_). To go on with your story where it left off, as I have done in the model which follows.

That model was constructed especially with the view to guide the beginner. Its hero is a fellow subject, white--indeed, an Englishman. The scene is laid in water, not perhaps salt, but at least brackish. The adventure preys upon the mind. The moral is doubtful: the Cæsura marked and obvious. Moreover, it begins in the middle, which (as I omitted to state above) is the very hall-mark of the Vivid Manner.

THE ACCIDENT TO MR. THORPE.

When Mr. Thorpe, drysalter, of St. Mary Axe, E.C., fell into the water, it was the opinion of those who knew him best that he would be drowned. I say “those who knew him best” because, in the crowd that immediately gathered upon the embankment, there were present not a few of his friends. They had been walking home together on this fine evening along the river side, and now that Mr. Thorpe was in such peril, not one could be got to do more than lean upon the parapet shouting for the police, though they should have known how useless was that body of men in any other than its native element. Alas! how frail a thing is human friendship, and how terribly does misfortune bring it to the test.

How had Mr. Thorpe fallen into the water? I am not surprised at your asking that question. It argues a very observant, critical, and accurate mind; a love of truth; a habit of weighing evidence; and altogether a robust, sturdy, practical, Anglo-Saxon kind of an attitude, that does you credit. You will not take things on hearsay, and there is no monkish credulity about you. I congratulate you. You say (and rightly) that Honest Merchants do not fall into the Thames for nothing, the thing is unusual; you want (very properly) to know how it happened, or, as you call it, “occurred.” I cannot tell you. I was not there at the time. All I know is, that he did fall in, and that, as matter of plain fact (and you are there to judge fact, remember, not law), Mr. Thorpe was at 6.15 in the evening of June 7th, 1892, floundering about in the water a little above Cleopatra’s Needle; and there are a cloud of witnesses.

It now behoves me to detail with great accuracy the circumstances surrounding his immersion, the degree of danger that he ran, and how he was saved. In the first place, Mr. Thorpe fell in at the last of the ebb, so that there was no tide to sweep him out to sea; in the second place, the depth of water at that spot was exactly five feet two inches, so that he could--had he but known it--have walked ashore (for he was, of course, over six feet in height); in the third place, the river has here a good gravelly bed, as you ought to know, for the clay doesn’t begin till you get beyond Battersea Bridge--and, by the way, this gravel accounts for the otherwise inexplicable phenomenon of the little boys that will dive for pennies at low tide opposite the shot tower; in the fourth place, the water, as one might have imagined at that season of the year, was warm and comfortable; in the fifth place, there lay but a few yards from him a Police Pier, crowded with lines, lifebuoys, boats, cork-jackets, and whatnot, and decorated, as to its Main Room, with a large placard entitled “First help to the drowning,” the same being illustrated with cuts, showing a man of commonplace features fallen into the hands of his religious opponents and undergoing the torture. Therefore it is easy to see that he could have either saved himself or have been saved by others without difficulty. Indeed, for Mr. Thorpe to have drowned, it would have been necessary for him to have exercised the most determined self-control, and to have thought out the most elaborate of suicidal plans; and, as a fact, he was within forty-three seconds of his falling in pulled out again by a boat-hook, which was passed through the back of his frock coat: and that is a lesson in favour of keeping one’s coat buttoned up like a gentleman, and not letting it flap open like an artist or an anarchist, or a fellow that writes for the papers. But I digress. The point is, that Mr. Thorpe was immediately saved, and there (you might think) was an end of the matter. Indeed, the thing seems to come to a conclusion of its own, and to be a kind of epic, for it has a beginning where Mr. Thorpe falls into the water (and, note you, the beginning of all epics is, or should be, out of the text); it has a middle or “action,” where Mr. Thorpe is floundering about like a sea monster, and an end, where he is pulled out again. They are of larger scope than this little story, and written in a pompous manner, yet the _Iliad_, the _Æneid_, Abbo’s _Siege of Paris_, the _Chanson de Roland_, _Orlando Furioso_, _Thalaba the Destroyer_, and Mr. Davidson’s shorter lyrics have no better claim to be epics in their essentials than has this relation of _The Accident to Mr. Thorpe_. So, then (you say), that is the end; thank you for the story; we are much obliged. If ever you have another simple little story to tell, pray publish it at large, and do not keep it for the exquisite delight of your private circle. We thank you again a thousand times. Good morrow.

Softly, softly. I beg that there may be no undue haste or sharp conclusions; there is something more to come. Sit you down and listen patiently. Was there ever an epic that was not continued? Did not the Rhapsodists of Cos piece together the _Odyssey_ after their successful _Iliad_? Did not Dionysius Paracelsus write a tail to the _Æneid_? Was not the _Chanson de Roland_ followed by the _Four Sons of Aymon_? Could Southey have been content with Thalaba had he not proceeded to write the adventures in America of William ap Williams, or some other Welshman whose name I forget? Eh? Well, in precisely the same manner, I propose to add a second and completing narrative to this of Mr. Thorpe’s accident; so let us have no grumbling.

And to understand what kind of thing followed his fall into the water, I must explain to you that nothing had ever happened to Mr. Thorpe before; he had never sailed a boat, never ridden a horse, never had a fight, never written a book, never climbed a mountain--indeed, I might have set out in a long litany, covering several pages, the startling, adventurous, and dare-devil things that Mr. Thorpe had never done; and were I to space out my work so, I should be well in the fashion, for does not the immortal Kipling (who is paid by the line) repeat his own lines half-a-dozen times over, and use in profusion the lines of well-known ballads? He does; and so have I therefore the right to space and stretch my work in whatever fashion will spin out the space most fully; and if I do not do so, it is because I am as eager as you can possibly be to get to the end of this chronicle.

Well then, nothing had ever happened to Mr. Thorpe before, and what was the result? Why that this aqueous adventure of his began to grow and possess him as you and I are possessed by our more important feats, by our different distant journeys, our bold speculations, our meeting with grand acquaintances, our outwitting of the law; and I am sorry to say that Mr. Thorpe in a very short time began to lie prodigiously. The symptoms of this perversion first appeared a few days after the accident, at a lunch which he attended (with the other directors of the Marine Glue Company) in the City. The company was in process of negotiating a very difficult piece of business, that required all the attention of the directors, and, as is usual under such circumstances, they fell to telling amusing tales to one another. One of them had just finished his story of how a nephew of his narrowly escaped lynching at Leadville, Colorado, when Mr. Thorpe, who had been making ponderous jokes all the morning, was suddenly observed to grow thoughtful, and (after first ascertaining with some care that there was no one present who had seen him fall in) he astonished the company by saying: “I cannot hear of such escapes from death without awe. It was but the other day that I was saved as by a miracle from drowning.” Then he added, after a little pause, “My whole life seemed to pass before me in a moment.”

Now this was not true. Mr. Thorpe’s mind at the moment he referred to had been wholly engrossed by the peculiar sensation that follows the drinking of a gallon of water suddenly when one is not in the least thirsty; but he had already told the tale so often, that he was fully persuaded of it, and, by this time, believed that his excellent and uneventful life had been presented to him as it is to the drowning people in books.

His fall was rapid. He grew in some vague way to associate his adventure with the perils of the sea. Whenever he crossed the Channel he would draw some fellow passenger into a conversation, and, having cunningly led it on to the subject of shipwreck, would describe the awful agony of battling with the waves, and the outburst of relief on being saved. At first he did not actually say that he had himself struggled in the vast and shoreless seas of the world, but bit by bit the last shreds of accuracy left him, and he took to painting with minute detail in his conversations the various scenes of his danger and salvation. Sometimes it was in the “steep water off the Banks;” sometimes in “the glassy steaming seas and on the feverish coast of the Bight;” sometimes it was “a point or two norr’ard of the Owers light”--but it was always terrible, graphic, and a lie.

This habit, as it became his unique preoccupation, cost him not a little. He lost his old friends who had seen his slight adventure, and he wasted much time in spinning these yarns, and much money in buying books of derring-do and wild ’scapes at sea. He loved those who believed his stories to be true, and shocked the rare minds that seemed to catch in them a suspicion of exaggeration. He could not long frequent the same society, and he strained his mind a little out of shape by the perpetual necessity of creative effort. None the less, I think that, on the whole, he gained. It made him an artist: he saw great visions of heaving waters at night; he really had, in fancy, faced death in a terrible form, and this gave him a singular courage in his last moments. He said to the doctor, with a slight calm smile, “Tell me the worst; I have been through things far more terrifying than this;” and when he was offered consolation by his weeping friends, he told them that “no petty phrases of ritual devotion were needed to soothe a man who had been face to face with Nature in her wildest moods.” So he died, comforted by his illusion, and for some days after the funeral his sister would hold him up to his only and favourite nephew as an example of a high and strenuous life lived with courage, and ended in heroic quiet. Then they all went to hear the will read.

But the will was the greatest surprise of all. For it opened with these words:--

“Having some experience of the perils they suffer that go down to
the sea in ships, and of the blessedness of unexpected relief and
rescue, I, John Curtall Thorpe, humbly and gratefully reminiscent
of my own wonderful and miraculous snatching from the jaws of
death ...”

And it went on to leave the whole property (including the little place in Surrey), in all (after Sir William Vernon Harcourt’s death duties had been paid) some £69,337. 6_s._ 3_d._ to the Lifeboat Fund, which badly needed it. Nor was there any modifying codicil but one, whereby the sum of £1000, free of duty, was left to Sylvester Sarassin, a poetic and long-haired young man, who had for years attended to his tales with reverent attention, and who had, indeed, drawn up, or “Englished” (as he called it), the remarkable will of the testator.

Many other things that followed this, the law-suit, the quarrel of the nephew with Sarassin, and so forth, I would relate had I the space or you the patience. But it grows late; the oil in the bulb is exhausted. The stars, which (in the beautiful words of Theocritus) “tremble and always follow the quiet wheels of the night,” warn me that it is morning. Farewell.

THE SHORT LYRIC.

THE SHORT LYRIC.

Many Guides to Literature give no rules for the manufacture of short lyrics, and nearly all of them omit to furnish the student with an example of this kind of composition.

The cause of this unfortunate neglect (as I deem it) is not far to seek. Indeed in one Text Book (Mrs. Railston’s _Book for Beginners_. Patteson. 12_s._ 6_d._) it is set down in so many words. “The Short Lyric,” says Mrs. Railston in her preface, “is practically innocent of pecuniary value. Its construction should be regarded as a pastime rather than as serious exercise; and even for the purposes of recreation, its fabrication is more suited to the leisure of a monied old age than to the struggle of eager youth, or the full energies of a strenuous manhood” (p. xxxiv.).

The judgment here pronounced is surely erroneous. The short Lyric is indeed not very saleable (though there are exceptions even to that rule--the first Lord Tennyson is said to have received £200 for _The Throstle_); it is (I say) not very saleable, but it is of great indirect value to the writer, especially in early youth. A reputation can be based upon a book of short lyrics which will in time procure for its author Reviewing work upon several newspapers, and sometimes, towards his fortieth year, the editorship of a magazine; later in life it will often lead to a pension, to the command of an army corps, or even to the governorship of a colony.

I feel, therefore, no hesitation in describing at some length the full process of its production, or in presenting to the student a careful plan of the difficulties which will meet him at the outset.

To form a proper appreciation of these last, it is necessary to grasp the fundamental fact that they all proceed from the inability of busy editors and readers to judge the quality of verse; hence the rebuffs and delays that so often overcast the glorious morning of the Poetic Soul.

At the risk of some tedium--for the full story is of considerable length--I will show what is their nature and effect, in the shape of a relation of what happened to Mr. Peter Gurney some years ago, before he became famous.

Mr. Peter Gurney (I may say it without boasting) is one of my most intimate friends. He is, perhaps, the most brilliant of that brilliant group of young poets which includes Mr. John Stewart, Mr. Henry Hawk, &c., and which is known as the “Cobbley school,” from the fact that their historic meeting-ground was the house of Mr. Thomas Cobbley, himself no mean poet, but especially a creative, seminal critic, and uncle of Mr. Gurney. But to my example and lesson:--

Mr. Gurney was living in those days in Bloomsbury, and was occupied in reading for the bar.

He was by nature slothful and unready, as is indeed the sad habit of literary genius; he rose late, slept long, eat heartily, drank deeply, read newspapers, began things he never finished, and wrote the ending of things whose beginnings he never accomplished; in a word, he was in every respect the man of letters. He looked back continually at the stuff he had written quite a short time before, and it always made him hesitate in his opinion of what he was actually engaged in. It was but six months before the events herein set down that he had written--

“The keep of the unconquerable mind”--

only to discover that it was clap-trap and stolen from Wordsworth at that. How, then, could he dare send off the sonnet--

“If all intent of unsubstantial art”--

and perhaps get it printed in the _Nineteenth Century_ or the _North American Review_, when (for all he knew) it might really be very poor verse indeed?

These two things, then, his sloth and his hesitation in criticism, prevented Peter from sending out as much as he should have done. But one fine day of last summer, a kind of music passed into him from universal nature, and he sat down and wrote these remarkable lines:--

“He is not dead; the leaders do not die,
But rather, lapt in immemorial ease
Of merit consummate, they passing, stand;
And rapt from rude reality, remain;
And in the flux and eddy of time, are still.
Therefore I call it consecrated sand
Wherein they left their prints, nor overgrieve:
An heir of English earth let English earth receive.”

He had heard that _Culture_ of Boston, Mass., U.S.A., paid more for verse than any other review, so he sent it off to that address, accompanied by a very earnest little letter, calling the gem “Immortality,” and waiting for the answer.

The editor of _Culture_ is a businesslike man, who reads his English mail on the quay at New York, and takes stamped envelopes and rejection forms down with him to the steamers.

He looked up Peter’s name in the _Red Book_, _Who’s Who_, _Burke_, the _Court Guide_, and whatnot, and finding it absent from all these, he took it for granted that there was no necessity for any special courtesies; Peter therefore, fifteen days after sending off his poem, received an envelope whose stamp illustrated the conquest of the Philippines by an Armed Liberty, while in the top left-hand corner were printed these simple words: “If not delivered within three days, please return to Box 257, Boston, Mass., U.S.A.”

He was very pleased to get this letter. It was the first reply he had ever got from an editor, and he took it up unopened to the Holborn, to read it during lunch. But there was very little to read. The original verse had folded round it a nice half-sheet of cream-laid notepaper, with a gold _fleur de lis_ in the corner, and underneath the motto, “Devoir Fera”; then, in the middle of the sheet, three or four lines of fine copperplate engraving, printed also in gold, and running as follows:--

“The editor of _Culture_ regrets that he is unable to accept the
enclosed contribution; it must not be imagined that any adverse
criticism or suggestion is thereby passed upon the work; pressure
of space, the previous acceptation of similar matter, and other
causes having necessarily to be considered.”

Peter was so much encouraged by this, that he sent his verses at once to Mr. McGregor, changing, however, the word “rude” in the fourth line to “rough,” and adding a comma after “rapt,” points insignificant in themselves perhaps, but indicative of a critic’s ear, and certain (as he thought) to catch the approval of the distinguished scholar. In twenty-four hours he got his reply in the shape of an affectionate letter, enclosing his MSS.:--

“My dear Peter,

“No; I should be doing an injustice to my readers if I were
to print your verse in the _Doctrinaire_; but you must not
be discouraged by this action on my part. You are still very
young, and no one who has followed (as you may be sure I have)
your brilliant career at the University can doubt your ultimate
success in whatever profession you undertake. But the path of
letters is a stony one, and the level of general utility in such
work is only reached by the most arduous efforts. I saw your
Aunt Phœbe the other day, and she was warm in your praises. She
told me you were thinking of becoming an architect; I sincerely
hope you will, for I believe you have every aptitude for that
profession. Plod on steadily and I will go warrant for your
writing verse with the best of them. It is _inevitable_, my dear
Peter, that one’s early verse should be imitative and weak; but
you have the ‘inner voice,’ do but follow the gleam and never
allow your first enthusiasms to grow dim.

“Always your Father’s Old Friend,
“ARCHIBALD WELLINGTON MCGREGOR.”

Peter was a little pained by this; but he answered it very politely, inviting himself to lunch on the following Thursday, and then, turning to his verses, he gave the title “Dead,” and sent them to the _Patriot_, from whom he got no reply for a month.

He then wrote to the editor of the _Patriot_ on a postcard, and said that, in view of the present deplorable reaction in politics, he feared the verses, if they were held over much longer, would lose their point. Would the _Patriot_ be so kind, then, as to let him know what they proposed to do with the Poem?

He got a reply the same evening:--

“Telephone 239. “36A, Clare Market,
“Telegraph, ‘Vindex.’ “W.C.

“Dr. Sir,

“Your estd. favor to hand. No stamp being enclosed with verses,
we have retained same, but will forward on receipt of two stamps,
including cost of this.

“Faithfully yrs.,
“ALPHONSE RIPHRAIM.
“Please note change of address.”

By this Peter Gurney was so angered, that he walked straight over to his club, rang up No. 239, and told the editor of the _Patriot_, personally, by word of mouth, and with emphasis, that he was a Pro-Boer; then he rang off before that astonished foreigner had time to reply.

But men of Mr. Peter Gurney’s stamp are not cast down by these reverses. He remembered one rather low and insignificant sheet called the _Empire_, in which a vast number of unknown names had been appearing at the bottom of ballads, sonnets, and so forth, dealing mainly with the foreign policy of Great Britain, to which country (as being their native land) the writers were apparently warmly attached.

Peter Gurney flattered himself that he understood why the _Empire_ made a speciality of beginners. It was a new paper with little capital, and thought (wisely enough) that if it printed many such juvenilia it would, among the lot, strike some vein of good verse. He had heard of such ventures in journalism, and remembered being told that certain sonnets of Mr. Lewis Morris, and even the earlier poems of Tennyson, were thus buried away in old magazines. He copied out his verses once more, gave them the new title “Aspiro,” and sent them to the _Empire_. He got a very polite letter in reply:--

“Dear Mr. ---- I have read your verses with much pleasure, and
see by them that the praise I have heard on all sides of your
unpublished work was not unmerited. Unfortunately, the _Empire_
cannot afford to pay anything for its verse; and so large has
been the demand upon our space, that we have been compelled to
make it a rule that all contributions of this nature should pay
a slight premium to obtain a space in our columns. But for this
it would be impossible to distinguish between competitors without
the risk of heartburnings and petty jealousies. We enclose our
scale of charges, which are (as you see) purely nominal, and
remain, awaiting your order to print,

“Yours truly,
“WILLIAM POWER.”

I need hardly tell you that Peter, on receiving this letter, put two farthings into an envelope addressed to William Power, and was careful not to register or stamp it.

As for his Poem, he changed the title to “They Live!” and sent it to the editor of _Criticism_. Next day he was not a little astonished to get his verses back, folded up in the following waggish letter:--

“The Laurels,
“20, Poplar Grove,
“S.W.

“Monday, the 21st of April.

“Sir,

“I am directed by the editor
To say that lack of space and press of matter
Forbid his using your delightful verses,
Which, therefore, he returns. Believe me still
Very sincerely yours, Nathaniel Pickersgill.”

Now not a little disconsolate, young Mr. Gurney went out into the street, and thought of _Shavings_ as a last chance. _Shavings_ gave a guinea to the best poem on a given subject, and printed some of the others sent in. This week he remembered the subject was a eulogy of General Whitelock. He did not hesitate, therefore, to recast his poem, and to call it a “Threnody” on that commander, neglecting, by a poetic fiction, the fact that he was alive, and even looking well after his eight months of hard work against the Warra-Muggas. He went into the great buildings where _Shavings_ is edited, and saw a young man opening with immense rapidity a hand-barrowful of letters, while a second sorted them with the speed of lightning, and a third tied them into neat bundles of five hundred each, and placed them in pigeon-holes under their respective initial letters.

“Pray, sir,” said Peter to the first of these three men, “what are you doing?” “I am,” replied the functionary, “just finishing my week’s work” (for it was a Saturday morning), “and in the course of these four hours alone I am proud to say that I have opened no less than seven thousand three hundred and two poems on our great Leader, some of which, indeed, have been drawn from the principal English poets, but the greater part of which are, I am glad to say, original.”

Embittered by such an experience, my friend Gurney returned to his home, and wrote that same afternoon the Satire on Modern Literature, in which he introduces his own verses as an example and warning, and on which, as all the world knows, his present fame reposes.

To-day everyone who reads these lines is envious of Mr. Peter Gurney’s fame. He is the leader of the whole Cobbley school, the master of his own cousin, Mr. Peter Davey, and without question the model upon which Mr. Henry Hawk, Mr. Daniel Witton, and Mr. John Stuart have framed their poetic manner. He suffered and was strong. He condescended to prose, and kept his verse in reserve. The result no poet can ignore.

I should but mislead the student were I to pretend that Mr. Peter Gurney achieved his present reputation--a reputation perhaps somewhat exaggerated, but based upon real merit and industry--by any spontaneous effort. Hard, regular, unflinching labour in this, as in every other profession, is the condition of success. But the beginner may say (and with justice), “It is not enough to tell me to work; how should I set about it? What rules should I follow?” Let me pursue my invariable custom, and set down in the simplest and most methodical form the elements of the Short Lyric.

The student will, at some time or another, have suffered strong emotions. He will have desired to give them metrical form. He will have done so--and commonly he will have gone no further. I have before as I write a verse, the opening of one of the most unsuccessful poems ever written. It runs:--

“I am not as my fathers were,
I cannot pass from sleep to sleep,
Or live content to drink the deep
Contentment of the common air.”

This is very bad. It is bad because it proceeded from a deep emotion only, and shot out untrammelled. It has no connection with verse as an art, and yet that art lies open for any young man who will be patient and humble, and who will _learn_.

His first business is to decide at once between the only two styles possible in manufactured verse, the Obscure and the Prattling. I say “the _only_ two styles” because I don’t think you can tackle the Grandiose, and I am quite certain you couldn’t manage the Satiric. I know a young man in Red Lion Square who can do the Grandiose very well, and I am going to boom him when I think the time has come; but the Student-in-Ordinary cannot do it, so he may put it out of his head.