Chapter III: Haggis and Bagpipes (5)

Surely no modern thinker has taken a deeper gust of life or pondered more charitably over the difficult problems of the race than Sir William Osler, a true follower and kinsprit of the wise physician of Norwich. “The Old Humanities and the New Science,” his last public address (given in Oxford, May 16, 1919), was the capsheaf of that long series of writings and speakings in which Dr. Osler unlocked his generous, humane heart and gave inspiring counsel to his fellows.

It was an occasion that even the most severe brevity must describe as of happy import. Osler, a physician and a man of science, had been honoured by the presidency of the Classical Association, Great Britain’s most distinguished gathering of the men who have made the culture of the antique world their touchstone in life. And Dr. Osler, himself a keen classical student, did not permit himself merely gracious and suave messages. Pleading for a new bridal of science and the classics, in that delightful and urbane chaff which he knew so well to administer, he pointed out the barrenness of the tradition that has made the famous “More Humane Letters” of Oxford entirely neglect the workings and winnings of the science that has transformed the world. Dr. Osler, in his great career, perhaps never spoke with more convincing persuasion than when he pointed out that even in their own province of the classical tongues the modern humanists have passed over the scientific work of the ancients, as for instance in Aristotle and Lucretius.

Among men who err and are baffled, but still blunder eagerly and hopefully in the magnificent richness of the natural world, there arise ever and again such figures as Osler’s, a pride and a consolation to their comrades. Men, alas! are slow in finding the treasures that lie close about them. Dr. Osler’s essays are too little known among general readers. His all-embracing humanity, his mind packed with wisdom and beauty, his humour and his sagacious and persistent method in the conduct of a crowded life, make him a figure exceptionally helpful to contemplate. This last of his essays needs to be read not only by all educators, but by all who have any rational ideals of life, and who need, every now and then, to surmount the troubled stream of quotidian affairs and focus their visions more clearly.

No sensible man doubts that, if haste and confusion and greed do not overcome us, the world should stand to-day on the sill of a new Renaissance, a new empire of the mind, in which the old foolish antagonism of science and the so-called “humanities” will be only a vain and dusty rumour. What are “liberal” studies, one may ask? Why, surely, studies that _liberate_--that set the spirit free from the oppression of sordid and small motives, that stir and urge it toward generous achievement and the assistance of misfortune. When did letters arrogate to themselves the heavenly adjective _belles?_ Are there not the _belles sciences_ also? And is the biplane now soaring over the olive-shining Hudson any less lovely than the most precious sonnet ever anchored and flattened in persisting ink?

This essay of Dr. Osler’s shows one the pulse and heartbeat of modern science, the tender spirit of idealism that urges so much of the technical investigation of our time. In Dr. Osler, as in hundreds of other scientists less known and perhaps less gifted in public utterance, there is the union of the two Hippocratic ideals which the great Canadian physician laid before himself as his guides in life--the union of _philanthropia_ and _philotechnia_--a love of humanity joined to a love of his craft.

To infect the average man with the spirit of the humanities, Dr. Osler said, is the highest aim of education. And this brilliant address of his is a crowning instance of the way in which, in his mind, the practical service of science was beautified by the liberal and imperishable spirit of classical thought.

* * * * *

THE MOST EXCITING BOOK

We have just been reading what we honestly believe is the most fascinating book in the world. It is, we must confess, very much in the vein of this modern realism, because it is written in a terse, staccato, and even abrupt style, although always well balanced. The general effect, we admit, is depressing, though that may be only our own personal reaction, because the plot is one with which we are intimately familiar. Every now and then the action rises to a climax when we think it is going to end happily after all; but then something always occurs to sadden us. Occasionally it gives us moments of gruesome suspense, followed by flashes of temporary optimism. The general technique is distinctly that of the grieving Russian prose writers, for the total effect is gloomy and grim. The critics have had nothing to say about this book, but for us it has cumulating interest.

* * * * *

We find we forgot to mention the title of the above volume, which is issued in very handy format, bound in limp brown leather. We mean, of course, our bank book.

* * * * *

A SUGGESTION

We have been looking over the catalogue of Coventry Patmore’s library, issued by Everard Meynell at “The Serendipity Shop,” London. The following note interested us; some of our vigorous readers, now that the wooing season is toward, may find in it a gentle technical hint:

Patmore told Dr. Garnett that during his courtship, wishing to
be sure that a congeniality of taste existed between himself
and Emily Andrews, he lent her Emerson’s Essays, asking her to
mark the passages that most struck her, and on getting the book
back was delighted to find that the marks were those which he
would have made for himself.

According to Mr. Meynell’s catalogue, the copy of Emerson referred to is inscribed, in Patmore’s hand: “Emily Andrews, June 24, 1847.” Emerson’s efficacy in the rôle of Cupid may be judged from the fact that the two were married September 11, 1847.

One wonders if Patmore applied the same test before his two subsequent marriages (1864, 1881).

* * * * *

ADVICE TO YOUNG WRITERS

A gentleman asks us to give some advice to young men intending to enter journalism. Well, we would say, get a job as a sporting writer. That is where the real fun lies. Being a sporting writer is hot stuff; it keeps you out in the open air, you are respected and even admired by the least easily impressionable classes, such as policemen, car conductors, and office boys; you have immense fun inventing new ways of saying things (which is the groundwork of good literature), get a great many free meals, have your expenses paid, meet people who have high-powered cars and put them at your disposal, and your lightest word is deemed important enough to be put on a telegraph wire and flashed to the office for an EXTRA. If you write about such minor matters as war and peace, poetry, books, or the beauty of this, that, and the other, you will be hidden demurely away on an inside page and there is no particular hurry about it.

The other day at the Polo Grounds we noticed a hard-boiled fan leaving the stand after the game. As he passed out onto the field he suddenly saw the gang of reporters finishing up their stories and the instruments clattering beside them. “Gee,” he cried, “look at all the writers!” And with a real awe he turned to his companion and said: “Their stuff goes all over the world.”

We contend that Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, James Branch Cabell, Joe Hergesheimer, Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, and Lord Dunsany, sitting side by side on a bench writing short stories for a wager, would not have elicited such a gust of reverent admiration from our friend.

We are not joking. You can have more fun, and get better paid for it, as a sporting reporter than in any other newspaper job. And there is in it a bigger opportunity for men of real originality.

* * * * *

A GREAT REPORTER

We have been reading--for the first time, we blush to admit--the _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, in the magnificent ten-volume edition of Boswell published by Gabriel Wells. It is the ideal book for reading on the train, and causes us to reassert that Jamie was one of the world’s greatest reporters. If we were running a newspaper we would give a copy of this book to every man on the news staff. Professor Tinker in his introduction calls it “perhaps the sprightliest book of travels in the language.” Indeed, this is Boswell _in excelsis_, and it warms us to note the magnificent zest and gusto and triumphant happiness that peep between all his paragraphs. Happy, happy man, he had his adored Doctor to himself; he had him, at last, actually in Scotland; they were on holiday together! “Master of the Hebridean Revels,” Tinker charmingly calls him. What an immortal touch is this, of the somewhat baffled Mrs. Boswell, who must have thought the expedition a perverse absurdity. This is on the day Johnson and Boswell left Edinburgh--

She did not seem quite easy when we left her; but away we went!

Perfect, perfect--even down to the exclamation point.

We have not got very far in the Tour--only some fifty pages--but we are drowned deep in the engulfing humour and fecund humanity of the book. What an appetite for life, what a glorious naïf curiosity! What a columnist Boswell would have made! He quotes Johnson to this effect--

I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to
write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of
preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those
arts by which a big book is made.

Boswell, with superb dramatic instinct, unconsciously adopted the most triumphant subtlety of manœuvre. He put himself in the posture of a boob in order to draw out the characteristic good things of the great men he admired. He fished passionately for human oddity, and used any bait at all that was to hand--even himself. To see the two together on Boswell’s artfully contrived stage--Scotland, which he knew would elicit the Doctor’s most genuine humours, prejudices, shrewd manly observations--and in the bright light of a junketing adventure--ah, here is a bellyful of art. What a pair: the subtle simpleton, the simple-minded sage!

* * * * *

AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

Of course, it’s the oldest spoof in the world; and also it isn’t quite fair; but we felt that (for private reasons) we owed it to ourself to chaff a certain publisher friend. So we diligently typed out the first dozen or so of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and, making use of a borrowed name and address kindly lent us by a colleague, submitted them to the publisher.

We accompanied them by a pseudonymous letter which we truly think was something of a work of art, it was so amiably true to the sort of thing that publishers are accustomed to receive. We explained that these were the first of a series of 154 sonnets, and added that though many of our friends thought them good, we feared their affectionate partiality. We were submitting only a few, we said, in the hope of frank criticism from a great publishing house. If we were lucky enough to have them accepted the rest would be forthcoming; and the volume (we hoped) would be bound in red leather with very wide margins and a blank page at the front for autographing. And a good deal more innocent and hopeful meditation.

We had to wait some time for the reply--and had even begun to fear that the publisher had spotted our jape. But no--here is the answer that came:

We are sorry that after a careful consideration of your
“Sonnets” we cannot make a proposal for publication. We fear
that we are lacking in a real enough enthusiasm to push the
book as it must be pushed to bring about any success.

We regret, too, that we cannot comply with your request to
criticise the work, but it is against our policy to offer
criticism on material which we cannot accept for publication.
We handle so many manuscripts that we could not do the work
justice, and then, too, we are diffident about offering
suggestions when you may find a publisher who will like your
work just as it stands. In general, however, we may say that,
so far as we can judge, we thought that the work was not up to
standard.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity of considering your
manuscript. It is being returned to you by mail.

We now lay this before a candid world and ask our friend how much blackmail we can get out of him to refrain from publishing his identity?

Yet we admit it wasn’t quite fair. A knowledge of Shakespeare’s Sonnets is no necessary equipment for successful publishing. And some of them, if you are taken unawares, do sound a bit preposterous.

* * * * *

CARAWAY SEEDS

It seemed to us that we saw a deep significance in the fact, told by Lytton Strachey in his _Queen Victoria_, that the Queen’s pious governess, Lehzen, was a fanatic about caraway seeds. Mr. Strachey says:

Her passion for caraway seeds, for instance, was
uncontrollable. Little bags of them came over to her from
Hanover, and she sprinkled them on her bread and butter, her
cabbage, and even her roast beef.

Surely throughout the whole Victorian era the attentive observer can discern the faint but pungent musk of the mild, bland, uncandid caraway. We ourself, in our early youth, crossed the trail of that seed more than once, in small cakes and patties, and instinctively revolted from it. If there is any emblem symbolic of the Victorian age, perhaps it is the caraway seed, a thing that Greenwich Village, we dare say, has never encountered even in its most enterprising tea-room. The kingdom of Victoria, we suggest, was like a grain of caraway seed; but it became a tree so vast that the fowls of the air lodged in the branches thereof.

* * * * *

BLUNT’S DIARIES

We have a fear that the two volumes of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s Diaries--published here last year by Alfred Knopf--are not as widely known as they should be. This is natural, for the two big volumes are expensive, but they are a mine of most interesting material. They are a liberal education in the truth _quot homines tot sententiæ_--in other words, that there are infinite matters of difference among honourable men.

Blunt was a gallant dissenter and whole-hearted skeptic about civilization. Of course these aristocratic rebels, who have never had to pass through the gruelling discipline of middle-class life; who have always been free to travel, to ramble about to witty week-end parties at country houses, ride blooded horses, sit up all night drinking port wine and talking brilliantly with Cabinet Ministers, have (or so it seems to us) a fairly easy time compared to the humdrum plod who wambles through a stiff continuous stint of hard work and still keeps a bit of rebellion in his heart. And of course, since Blunt condemned almost everything in European politics throughout his lifetime, one begins to suspect that he was almost too pernickety. Of the unnumbered British statesmen whom he roasted, not all can have been either fools or knaves. The law of average forbids. But a protestant of that sort is a magnificently healthy and useful person to have about. He had a habit of assuming that Egypt, India, Ireland, Turkey, Germany, were always right, and England necessarily wrong. When a country has a number of citizens like that and regards them affectionately, it is a sign that it is beginning to grow up. One of Blunt’s remarks to Margot Asquith is worth remembering: “There is nothing so demoralizing for a country as to put people in prison for their opinions.”

But the casual reader ought to have a go at Blunt’s Diaries because they are a rich deposit of pithy human anecdote. We see him, at the age of sixty-six or thereabouts, attending a performance of Hippolytus, translated by Murray. “At the end of it we were all moved to tears, and I got up and did what I never did before in a theatre, shouted for the author, whether for Euripides or Gilbert Murray I hardly knew.” With Coquelin père he goes to have lunch with Margot Asquith. Her little daughter, twelve years old (now, of course, Princess Bibesco, whose short stories are well worth your reading), dressed in a Velasquez costume, was called on to recite poems. “Coquelin good-naturedly suggested that ‘perhaps Mademoiselle would be shy,’ but Margot would not hear of it. ‘There is no shyness,’ she said, ‘in this family.’” Any lover of the human comedy will find intense joy in Blunt’s comments on Edward VII, for instance. When his antipathies were aroused, Blunt lived up to his name. Roosevelt’s speech in Cairo in 1910 praising British rule in Egypt was a red rag to the elderly skeptic, who considered that Britain had no business anywhere on earth outside her own island. His comment in his journal was: “He is a buffoon of the lowest American type, and roused the fury of young Egypt to the boiling point ... he is now at Paris airing his fooleries, and is to go to Berlin, a kind of mad dog roaming the world.” It is quaint that the humanitarians and intense lovers of their kind are always the most brutal in attack upon those with whom they disagree.

There are also innumerable snapshots of men of letters in mufti. Rossetti, for instance, throwing a cup of tea at Meredith’s face. Most of Meredith, Blunt found unreadable. His picture of Francis Thompson’s last days is unforgettable. For our own part we find particular amusement in the little sideviews of Hilaire Belloc--a neighbour in Sussex in the later years. It is disconcerting to learn that Belloc’s horse “Monster,” of whom the hilarious Hilaire speaks so highly in a number of essays, is “a very ancient mare which he rides in blinkers. He is no great horseman.” Belloc coming to picnic with a bottle of wine in his pocket; Belloc out-talking Alfred Austin, Arthur Balfour, and indeed everyone else; Belloc wondering if he would be given a peerage; Belloc groaning because he has sworn off liquor during Lent, and Belloc delightfully and extremely wrong in the days just preceding the war--insisting that Germany was unprepared and afraid of France--these are the sort of things that cannot by any stretch of exaggeration be called malicious tattle; they are the genial byplay of civilization that keeps us reminded that those we love and admire may be not less absurd than ourselves.

There is much real beauty in the book, too. Blunt was a poet of very considerable charm, and a little story told by a former schoolmate of his seems rather characteristic. When a child he used to keep caterpillars in paper boxes; but he always pricked holes in the lids in the form of the constellations--so that the imprisoned caterpillars might think they were still out of doors and could see the stars.

It’s a queer thing. Those caterpillars, somehow or other, make us think of newspaper men.

* * * * *

GENIUS

Occasionally we have fired off a culverin or two in honour of Stella Benson, that remarkably agile and humorous creature, who is, with May Sinclair and “Elizabeth,” one of our favourite female novelists. So we are particularly pleased to have F. H. P. recall to us a passage about the Dog David, in _Living Alone_:

David Blessing Brown, a dog of independent yet loving habit,
had spent about four-fifths of his life in the Brown family.
He was three years old and though ineligible for military
service made a point of wearing khaki about his face and in a
symmetrical heart-shaped spot near his tail. To Sarah Brown he
was the Question and the Answer, his presence was a constant
playtime for her mind; so well was he loved that he seemed to
her to move in a little mist and glamour of love....

I believe that Sarah Brown had loved the Dog David so much that
she had given him a soul. Certainly other dogs did not care for
him. David said that they had found out that his second name
was Blessing and that they laughed at him for it. His face was
seamed with the scars of their laughing. But I know that the
enmity had a more fundamental reason than that. I know that
when men speak with the tongues of angels they are shunned and
hated by men, and so I think that when dogs approach humanity
too nearly they are banished from the love of their own kind.

If you do not recognize, even in that little random passage, the curious quality of Stella Benson’s talent, then we fear (brave friends) we can never agree about literature. In her writing we always seem to see that special and bewildering richness that we prize most of all; something that does not lie in any particular nicety or adornment of words, but in an underrunning flavour and queer subtlety of meaning. Is there any subject in the world more trite, more shopworn, and defaced by acres of blab than Dogs and their relations to mankind? There is not. And yet see how Stella Benson, without one pompous or pretentious word, and with a humour both mocking and tender, has not only said something new, but something which, as soon as it is said, becomes old, because it is permanent. That is what, in lieu of a better word, we are inclined to call genius, and we have never read a page of Miss Benson’s work which did not show it.

* * * * *

EMBARRASSMENTS

Among our numerous embarrassments we don’t know any more painful than being compelled, the other day, to expose our theory of rolltop housekeeping to an insurance man. Old Henry Sonneborn, Jr., of Philadelphia (who is, let us explain, the only insurance man with whom we ever do business) came over to arrange some alterations in our complicated scheme of “protection.” But he caught us unawares, and when he wanted to see some of our receipts we had to go hunting through our desk while he was sitting right there watching us.

We explained our theory. Now, Henry, we said, there are only three places where that missing receipt can possibly be. It may be in one of the pigeonholes that run due east of the foc’s’le of the desk. If it isn’t there, it will be in the right-hand front corner of the principal drawer, where we put things while waiting for a chance to file them. If it isn’t there, it will be in the tin tobacco box that we keep hidden under the unanswered letters. We feared that Henry would think us very unbusinesslike, but he was polite and kind, as always.

We went through the drawer first. Henry was a bit disconcerted to find it so dusty; and so were we. We found a clay pipe that we hadn’t seen for a long time; we found some foreign stamps that we have been saving to send to a small boy in Philadelphia. We tried with these to distract Henry’s attention from the object of search. We asked him if his little boy was a stamp collector. But Henry kept bringing us back to the receipt, which was necessary for some reason. He said he needed that receipt to complete some scheme he had for reducing our overhead; the best authorities on finance, he said, are agreed that no man has any _right_ to attempt to save money before he is 40; no, he should put it into insurance. We tried to keep Henry talking while we were scuffling about through the back of the desk. We thought that perhaps the receipt would turn up unexpectedly; we didn’t want him to notice that we were looking in parts of the desk where we had explained it could not possibly be.

Damnation, Henry, we said; it isn’t our fault that this desk is in such a mess; we have the most orderly instincts, but our clients keep dumping stuff on us so fast that we can’t ever catch up with it.

It was a queer coincidence, we thought, that when we went out to lunch that day we noticed at 56 Wall Street a tablet in honour of Morris Robinson, who “established on this spot the business of modern life insurance.” He was a Canadian, the tablet says. We’re glad he wasn’t an American.

In the meantime we are going to have another look through those pigeonholes.

* * * * *

AN IDEA

We do not often spend time thinking up ways of surprising humanity with kindness; yet when we stand in line at the bank while a queue of merry merchants ahead of us are drawing out huge payroll sums which take about five minutes each to be counted and recounted, a blithe thought comes our way. It is this: On some Saturday morning, when banking traffic is particularly heavy, we will gather half a dozen friends of ours who have nothing to do. We will go round to the bank and stand in line, all seven of us. As we draw nearer and nearer to the window we will watch the anguished faces of those behind, despairingly counting the number of people that still stand between them and the cherished teller. Then just as the first of our seven gets up to the window we will all slip deftly away and enjoy ourselves by watching the joyous elation of the man who thought himself eighth in line and now finds himself next to the grill. All down the impatient throng passes a tremor of surprised pleasure. Then we will move on to the next bank and do the same thing.

* * * * *

ALGEBRA FOR URCHINS

We wish we weren’t so rusty in our mathematics. One of our favourite projects has always been to write an algebra book for the use of the Urchin when he gets a little older. This algebra would be in the form of a story in which the problems would be introduced naturally into the movement of the tale, and each one would be (if we could persuade him to do it) illustrated by Fontaine Fox.

The problems, moreover, would deal with facts and topics familiar to the Urchin. One problem, for instance, would run something as follows:

Riding in Dame Quickly along the North Hempstead turnpike, the Urchin notices that a man is walking on the sidewalk but at just such a pace that a telephone pole prevents him from being recognized. Attempting to see who the pedestrian is, and foiled by the fact that the simultaneous motions of Dame Quickly and the man on the sidewalk keep the pole constantly in the line of sight, the Urchin becomes interested in the problem. He notes that the speedometer indicates 22 miles an hour. He persuades his father to stop the car and measure the width of the road and the sidewalk. Dame Quickly stops opposite the pole and the measurements are taken. It is 24 feet from the Dame to the pole. The line along which the man was walking, down the middle of the sidewalk, was three feet from the pole. How fast was the man walking?[B]

[B] The answer, if you care to work it out, seems to be 2¾
miles per hour.

* * * * *

A MODEST SCAFFOLD FOR PHILOSOPHERS

We have been meditating on the dissimilar conduct of cats and dogs, since we added a kitten (named _Pepys_) to our household roster.

The dog, plainly, is a boob, for he tries so hard to please and ingratiate the Masters of the Event, his deities. Whereas the cat, while calmly recognizing the paramountcy of the gods, goes ahead in every way within his power to circumvent and outwit their control. The dog, poor honest simpleton, shows his genuine and unselfish affection for his deities; the cat never makes up to them unless he wants something from them, or feels that a little friendly caressing would be agreeable. The cat is 100 per cent. pro-feline. The dog, we reckon, is at least 30 per cent. pro-human. You open the back door. If the cat wants to go abroad, he will streak through without an instant’s hesitation; but the dog will wait, politely, until he is sure whether you wish him to go out. Question, then, for philosophic ruminators--Do not the domestic gods secretly respect the cat a little more because they know he is inwardly hostile and contemptuous and a perfect ego? A whole rationale of heaven and hell may be quizzed out of this matter.

* * * * *

ICI ON PARLE

We have been considerably humiliated lately by the fact that although we once studied French with some persistence, and enjoy nothing more than reading such demi-gods as the chrysostom Bourget (a celestial ironist far too little known in this country)--humiliated, we repeat, that our spoken French is so appalling. Lately, as the surprising result of an advt. in the _Herald_, Titania landed an elderly female French cook who speaks no word of English. And if you speak French no better than we do, figure to yourself the complexities of trying to explain to Celeste the workings of a kerosene water-heater (we have no gas in the rustic Salamis Estates) while Titania (whose French is better than ours) stands by squeaking with cruel mirth. Comme ça:

Voyez vous, Celeste, l’huile--comment dit-on en français le
liquide?--le petrole? Ah, oui--eh bien, le petrole entre par
là, dans le petit cylindre, vous prenez moi, hein?--et donc on
place le cylindre comme ça--mais pas comme ça, comprenez?--et
donc le petrole marche (quand le--comment appelle-t-on le
_wick_? le petit toile ici--le mèche? ah oui!--quand le
mèche est en ordre laborieux--telle quelle ce n’est pas
maintenant)--_ye gods, Titania, give me a hand with this
explanation_--le petrole marche en haut--mais voyez vous, ceci
n’est pas un mèche honnete-à-dieu; c’est d’asbeste; on place le
soi-disant mèche--(le _burner_ on dit en anglais) comme ainsi
ici bas, et donc on allume une allumette et vous directez le
feu par ici, par là, et après le feu s’eteint vous reallumez
avec patience. Du patience, toujours, avec ces poêles à
l’huile,--et prenez garde, ne replacez pas ces cylindres à
flamme auparavant que le feu a monté, et exhibite quelque
vitalité, vous voyez?

Eh bien; en une heure peut-etre vous rattrapez de l’eau
chaud, si le feu n’evanouie pas et le _backdoor_--la porte
de derrière--n’est pas ouverte et le vent ne siffle pas trop
forte....

CELESTE: Ah oui, Monsieur, c’est bien simple!

* * * * *

ASTONISHMENT

One of the most astounding scenes in the local panorama of human oddity is a news-stand at one of the big terminals when the homeward-bound commuters are buying their evening papers. Those who believe there is no hustle in New York might contemplate that spectacle--the continual patter of hurried people scampering up to the counter to seize a paper, throw down their money, and bound away. Indeed, if you stand for a while near the news-stand and watch, you will gradually become aware that there is something pathologic about the matter; that the great mass of newspaper readers crave and swallow their daily potion much as they would a familiar drug or anodyne. The absolute definiteness of the traffic is another curious feature: the news dealer can tell you, almost to a figure, how many of each paper he will sell each evening. As the commuters hurry up to the counter, you will never see them hesitate, ponder, and ask themselves, “Well, which paper shall I read to-night?” No; they grab the usual sheet, and off they go.

* * * * *

SPIDERS

We wrote[C] something about the spider’s “struts and cantilevers,” and were gently chaffed by some friendly correspondents. Well, the spider is not only a marvellous engineer, he also seems a persistent patriot. There is one on our front lawn who still celebrates the Spanish-American war. Every morning, among the sun-sparkled shrubbery, we find he has erected a dewey arch.

[C] You can refer, if you insist, to a book called _Plum
Pudding_.

One of the most exciting things we know is a series of dainty models at the Natural History Museum in New York, showing the various stages in a spider’s web. Did you know, for instance, that often a preliminary spiral is blocked in, to hold the web together during construction? This is afterward carefully removed to make room for the sticky spiral which does the fly-catching. So at any rate we remember the Museum’s models. If you find being stricken with astonishments a pleasing humiliation, the Museum is the place to visit. We always think to ourself, how old Sir Kenelm Digby would have enjoyed it.

Then, of course, you mustn’t omit to read Fabre’s glorious _Life of the Spider_. The microscopic Archimedes can much more than mere tenuous trusses and gossamer girders. M. Fabre tells us that the triumph of the spider’s unconscious art (for the creature works divinely, without reason or calculation) is the logarithmic spiral. So if by chance you have ever fallen into that meanest absurdity of the unthinking and asserted that “Mathematics is uninteresting,” consider Fabre’s words:--

Geometry, that is to say, the science of harmony in space,
presides over everything. We find it in the arrangement of the
scales of a fir-cone, as in the arrangement of an Epeira’s
lime-snare; we find it in the spiral of a Snail-shell, in the
chaplet of a Spider’s thread, as in the orbit of a planet;
it is everywhere, as perfect in the world of atoms as in the
world of immensities. And this universal geometry tells us of a
Universal Geometrician, whose divine compass has measured all
things.

The mathematician, let us add for our own part, is the greatest of poets, the greatest of priests.

But a study of M. Fabre’s magnificent books will not necessarily add consolations to the Pollyanna brand of religious thought. You will find, in his discussion of the appalling married life of insects, gruesome considerations which will furnish merriment to the cynic and painful grief to the old-fashioned. M. Maeterlinck says, in his eloquent preface to _The Life of the Spider_:

Nothing equals the marriage of the Green Grasshopper, of which
I cannot speak here, for it is doubtful whether even the Latin
language possesses the words needed to describe it as it should
be described.

The fiercest realist yet produced by the younger generations of Chicago and Greenwich Village is a mere trifler compared to the immortal Fabre.

* * * * *

PERNICIOUSNESS OF MR. LEAR

We are rather startled to find, on beginning to read Edward Lear’s immortal _Nonsense Books_ to our Archurchin, that liquor plays a considerable rôle in his waggishness. This phase of Lear’s works we had quite forgotten, although it may have played a subtle part in undermining our character when young. But what are we to do, we ask, when, in reading aloud we come upon such distressing testaments as this:

B was a Bottle blue,
which was not very small;
Papa he filled it full of beer,
And then he drank it all.

Or this:

There was an Old Man with an Owl,
Who continued to bother and howl;
He sat on a rail, and imbibed bitter ale,
Which refreshed that Old Man and his Owl.

Or this:

There was an old person of Sheen,
Whose expression was calm and serene;
He sate in the water, and drank bottled porter,
That placid old person of Sheen.

Now, of course, in reading these passages we can improvise variations: we can say that Papa’s blue bottle was filled with tea; we can substitute “ginger ale” for “bitter ale”; we can make the old person of Sheen sit in the porter and drink bottled water; but before very long our audience will begin to read the book for himself, and when he finds that we have implanted a false version in his mind there will be a swift succession of logical inquiries. The Old Soak’s problem is far easier: _his_ sons are grown up and become “revenooers”; their minds were long since formed on this topic. But what is the comparatively Young Soak to do in the matter of explaining literature to his offspring?

Only in one place, as far as we can see, does Mr. Lear refer to drink with any tinge of moral or reprobatory feeling. Thus:

Twas a tumbler full
Of Punch all hot and good;
Papa he drank it up, when in
The middle of a wood.

We shall have to lean heavily upon that cautionary stanza in reading to the Urchin. We will not try to bias him, of course; but by grave and solemn repetition surely the idea will pierce his meninges--that no matter how excellent the libation, it must be performed in secret and far from scrutiny.

THE SEDAN

Not long ago, in the garage at Salamis run by our friend Fred Seaman, we were admiring and examining a very beautiful sedan. Not that we had any idea of ever abandoning our cherished Dame Quickly, who means more to us than any other vehicle ever will or can. But, just in a contemplative spirit, and as a frustrated lover of luxury, we were admiring this sedan, and saying to ourself that if we were a person of wealth and standing that would be just about the kind of car we would like to own. And we gazed entranced at its opulent upholstery, its cut-glass carnation-vase, its little 8-day clock, cigar-holder, and all the other gauds and trinkets. Just in idle curiosity we inquired the price. Then we went over the hill to our home.

A day or so later a cheerful Polish friend of ours, who is so kind as to call for the washing weekly, and who used to do odd jobs round our estate, and with whom we boarded our admirable cat _Pepys_ while we were in town, called at our house. Titania had always represented this person to us as being in the last agony of financial dissolution and a worthy object of charity.

“I want to show you my new boat,” said he.

We thought at first that he meant an actual boat, down in the harbour, and were interested. But he pointed out to the front of the house. There was the very sedan we had admired. He insisted on our going down to listen to the engine. “Paid all cash for it,” he said proudly.

When we see a large, glimmering limousine pass us on the road, hereafter, we shall always wonder whether it is some thrifty washerman and his family.

BAD VERSE

Really thoroughly bad verse (as Mr. Hilaire Belloc pointed out in an essay) has a magic and an attraction all its own. It has (he said) “something of the poignant and removed from common experience which you get also in poetry. Great pits strike one with horror, as do the mountains with their sublimity.”

A philosophic friend of ours, whose dolorous task it is to examine manuscripts for a large publishing house, sent us the other day a collection of verses that had been submitted to his firm. We have had considerable diversion in examining them; though compositions of this sort lead one also to melancholy. It is sad to think that the accident of rhyme, which has been the occasion of so much verbal loveliness, has also been responsible for so many atrocities.

We shall not say who wrote the verses in question, except that he lives in a Southern State, but we will quote a few stanzas from a poem called “Love’s Progress.” After several pages describing the sorrows of a pair of lovers, we arrive at this:

They broke to break their breaking breach,
Which both have caused, because of each
Failing to procure, or reach,
The longing goal they did beseech.

They sought to seek their seeking truth,
Which all do crave, and never boot;
They kept their cadence to a flute,
Which only wisdom seeks to mute.

They slid to slide their sliding sleigh
Toward goals, but met a fray;
And, striking, struck the striking broil;
And found themselves to winds a spoil.

They swung to swing their swinging life
To higher spheres and lusty fife;
But flung against the sturdy cliff,
And sunk beneath the brutal grief.

They shed their shedding tears in vain,
Fruitless as the dismal rain;
And pined their pine, and pined it more;
And reaped their crop they sowed to store.

Defying fies have they defied;
Lying lies have they belied;
Brisky thought did both deride;
Happy hope had both denied!

You see how low rhyme can bring a man.

Of the following, our friend the publisher’s reader observes: “Alas, poor Henley--’twas an excellent fellow: I knew him well!”

I Am

I am the tutor of my mind;
I am the pastor of my soul;
All that pass, I leave behind,
And focus straight upon my goal.

Until we read that we felt sorry for the author; but indeed it takes him out of the sphere of charity.

TWO REVIEWS

I

(New York _Evening Post_, July, 1922)

It is curious that the agencies for letting people know about the things that really matter are so feeble and ineffective. There was published in England, last February, a book called _Disenchantment_, by C. E. Montague. It seems to us perhaps the first book we have seen that tells truth about the war, tells it beautifully, with a power and humour and tenderness that are palpable on every page. Five months have elapsed, and yet we have heard no word as to its being published over here. Worse still, we learn that more than one New York publisher, after reading the book, reluctantly declined it. Sometimes one fears that publishers are not unerring judges of what we all desire to read.

What does a man need to do to deserve well of his generation? Suppose he had written a book that with quiet dignity and restraint summed up the “ardours and endurances” of earth’s greatest crisis; a book that showed sane and sweet knowledge of our poor, frail, tough, bedevilled human nature; a book so delicately and firmly written that the manner of it was no less potent than the matter; a book that dealt with furious subjects calmly; that reviewed passion and misery with reason and candour; a book that was bitter where bitterness was needed, but with the bitterness of antiseptic. C. E. Montague has written such a book. And even though it may be bad manners to speak about it publicly before it has been published here, we venture do so in the hope of speeding its coming. To confess a personal incident, when we were half way through it we encountered one of our friends who is a sagacious devourer of books. “What’s worth reading?” he said. “Sit down at your desk and let me dictate a letter to you,” we replied. With admirable docility this fine creature obeyed. We happened to know that he has an account at Brentano’s, so we dictated thus: “Brentano’s, New York. Gentlemen: Please order for me from Chatto & Windus, London, three copies of _Disenchantment_, by C. E. Montague, and charge to my account.” We watched carefully while our friend signed his name, addressed and stamped the envelope, and dropped it down the chute.

By the time we had read him half a page of the book he had already decided to whom he would give his two extra copies. He will never regret the transaction, we swear.

We are anxious to put a brake on ourself in speaking of this book: if we tried to tell you how deeply moving and true we found it, you might be alarmed. We admit that we came to it favourably prejudiced, for Mr. Montague’s name has been honourable to us ever since we read his novel _The Morning’s War_, published in 1913. We had heard, also, of his gallant record in the war: that in spite of his age (born in 1867), and an occupation (he is one of the editors of the Manchester _Guardian_) that many found a full excuse for non-combatancy, he enlisted as a private in 1914, rose through the ranks to a captain’s commission, and was three times mentioned in dispatches. We also knew (from _Who’s Who_) that his recreation was mountaineering, and that he had been awarded a medal “for saving life from drowning.” But we found in this book so much more than we had imagined possible that we are at a loss to describe it. It is the kind of book that, like its author, “saves life from drowning.” It may save some foundering reason from the dark tide of cynicism and disorder that is the natural result of the war years. Even if we only persuaded every newspaper man in America to read this book, we would have done a good stroke of achievement. It is a book peculiarly necessary for journalists to meditate.

It is very plain that the world to-day has a bad case of acid mouth, and Mr. Montague’s book (to use a very humble metaphor) is a kind of litmus paper that shows the extent of our palate’s embitterment. His reminiscent synopsis of the war’s moods and its increasing disillusions and perplexities is the first account that seems to us to fit in with those troubled, enigmatic, and fragmentary confessions that one hears from those who saw the trouble from the under side; who are not always very articulate, but spasmodically ejaculate that “The war didn’t get into the papers.” The book deals with the greatest topic of our age in a spirit of commensurate greatness. Of course we think we can guess why some American publishers have been timid about it. In this country we have not been anywhere nearly so close to the war as Britain was. The war was still bullish with us when it suddenly ended. As a nation, we had not been in it long enough to feel that infernal douche of skepticism. England has been far, far more bitterly disillusioned. The war left us economically troubled, but spiritually much the same. The old bunkums, one suspects, still pass current here as they do not any longer in England. And perhaps this book, conceived in suffering and weariness, can be relished only by those who have been more deeply immersed in horror than most of us. Even in England, we hear, its sale has not been very large.

For, after all, humanity has an uncanny instinct to avoid truth as long as it can. As we read this book of Mr. Montague’s we had a sudden vision of it selling as well as H. G. Wells does--passing from hand to hand, quoted, sermonized, becoming the fashionable topic of the season. It even made our beloved Santayana seem dim and pale, in a way; for it is so close and actual to our present moods and troubles. But then, with a sigh, we abandoned that vision. Why, if this book were really seized upon, gloried in as it deserves to be, if its eloquent humour and generous brave spirit were really acclaimed.... No, we can’t quite see it! The book is too beautiful, too true.

II

(New York _Herald_, October, 1922)

They don’t come very often, the books that speak so generously and beautifully to the inner certainties of the mind. And when they do, it is desirable not to do them dishonour by words too clumsy or sweeping.

But that Mr. Montague’s _Disenchantment_ has come to us in just the way that it has is a curiously mixed satisfaction and disappointment to the present reviewer. Satisfaction, in that for the past several years I have been saying to every publisher who was going abroad: “Why the devil do you go only to London and nowhere else? Are you aware that there are very exciting centres of literary activity in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham--all sorts of places outside London. Some day” (I kept saying to publishers) “one of the great books will bob up a long way from London. You might remember, for instance, Stevenson and Barrie. Now when you are in England why don’t you go to call on Mr. Montague at the Manchester _Guardian_? He’d know what was going on. Very likely he could tell you of someone who was writing a fine book--someone London wouldn’t know about.”

I take no particular credit for saying this: it was obviousness itself to any one who had noticed Mr. Montague’s earlier books. But the publishers, with their stereotyped habit of calling on a few literary agents in London, and thinking they have then done their possible, paid no attention. One of the odd things about publishers is that they have so little adventurous spirit about spooring for the really fine stuff.

Well, the book, quietly written and published, turned out to be by Mr. Montague himself. Half a year went by, but we in America heard nothing about it. There are always wide and well-polished alleys for the transmission of information amusing or trivial. Comparatively unimportant news spins along the parquet floor, and a crash resounds like that of tenpins tumbling. But humanity, probably with a wise instinct, averts its ear from matters that require meditation. The American publishers, seriatim, had their look at the sheets of _Disenchantment_. All apparently agreed that it was magnificent, but with their cheery assumption of knowledge as to what we want to read opined that it was too British or too full of intricate allusion or too much about the war, of which we were asserted to be weary. Or that the British publisher was asking an unwarrantable price for it; that only a few readers here would appreciate it; that it would be impossible to come clear on the expense.

These are all sound, sagacious reasonings. The one thing our publisher friends did not realize was that it is by publishing, every now and then, a book of this sort that they save their souls. It is an honour to put such a book on one’s list, even if it should prove presently unprofitable.

_Disenchantment_ is an enchanting book. It is an _Anatomy of Melancholy_ in the exact sense. It is a spiritual history of the war: a penetrating, intellectual, richly allusive, wise, sober, and compassionate study of that slow process of disintegrating certainty that marked every mind capable of independent action. People who have never read it probably imagine that the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is a dismal and grievous work. It is, however, one of the most richly amusing of all books; and it is only fair to say (accepting the danger of being misconceived) that Mr. Montague’s delicious humour makes _Disenchantment_ one of the most witty of contemporary writings. For war, after all, is a human institution and subject to the complexity of all planetary matters. It has, in Mr. Robert Nichols’s great phrase, its ardours and endurances; also its selfishnesses, stupidities, and laughters. It is not to be supposed that men who are pompous and silly and hilarious and craven in business, book reviewing, education and theology will be otherwise when they go to war.

So Mr. Montague, in anatomizing the melancholy that has fallen upon the world, employs, with perfect skill and perfect restraint, every shaft in the quiver of a literary artist. The old devil of herd-poison lingers among us yet: there will be some simple spirits who will think this book bitter, some who will think it blasphemous; some who will maintain that it plays into the hand of Apollyon (whose residence, they will probably insist, is somewhere along Unter den Linden). But there will also be some, and not few I think, who will see in this book the breadth and burning spirit of one who has long gone beyond the conception of war as a merely national matter; who looks upon it as a movement of tragedy among men where the innocent suffer no less outrage than the guilty. And yet even those who may find Mr. Montague’s disrobing of official frailty almost too disturbing will take pleasure in the beauty of his text. Let no one prate to you of the luxuriant splendour of some of our accredited stylists. The deity of prose moves in Mr. Montague’s pages. His savoury marrow of allusion--Shakespeare, for instance, has become part of his actual thinking tissue--will be undigested by some unpracticed readers. He will be, we might say, shrimp to the sundry; but no harm will ensue: the casual reader will merely pay Manchester compliment for what belongs first to Stratford. And Mr. Montague deserves all the compliment that is possible in an uncourtly world.