Chapter III: Haggis and Bagpipes (2)

The first of these letters was evidently in the nature of a Christmas present to the young gentleman, known to us only as Mr. M. It is dated December 24, 1824. Whether Mr. M. was an actual person and drew this letter from his stocking on Christmas morning we are not informed. Our own conjecture is that he was as mythical as his sister-in-lore Miss M., of Walter de la Mare’s _Memoirs of a Midget_. Somehow there is a humorous lack of reality in the way De Quincey introduces him. Mr. M. is in possession of “great opulence, unclouded reputation, and freedom from unhappy connexions.” Also he had “the priceless blessing of unfluctuating health.” And yet he exhibited “a general dejection.” This, a young lady of seventeen told De Quincey, “was well known to arise from an unfortunate attachment in early life.” But finally De Quincey exhumed the truth. Mr. M. had been defrauded of education. And Mr. M.’s first inquiry is whether at his present age of 32 it would be worth his while to go to college.

No, indeed, is De Quincey’s unhesitant reply. Mr. M. would be 12 or 14 years older than his fellow-students, which would make their association “mutually burthensome.” And as for the value of college lectures--

These whether public or private, are surely the very worst
modes of acquiring any sort of accurate knowledge, and are just
as much inferior to a good book on the same subject as that
book hastily read aloud, and then immediately withdrawn, would
be inferior to the same book left in your possession, and open
at any hour to be consulted, retraced, collated, and in the
fullest sense studied.

It appears that the dejected young man, despite--or perhaps on account of--his lack of education, nourished a secret desire to be a writer. He had been reading Coleridge’s _Biographia Literaria_, particularly the chapter called _An Affectionate Exhortation to Those Who in Early Life Feel Themselves Disposed to Become Authors_. According to De Quincey, Mr. M. asks his opinion on Coleridge’s views of this topic. Alas! now we are more convinced than ever that Mr. M. is only a phantom: unquestionably De Quincey, the canny super-journalist, wafted him from the opium flagon as an ingenious target for some anti-Coleridge banter. His chaff directed at Coleridge is gorgeous enough. It is double-decked chaff, too; for he not only affectionately twits his fellow opium-eater _in propria persona_, but introduces for discussion an anonymous “eminent living Englishman,” who is plainly also Coleridge. He compares C. with Leibnitz for his combination of fine mind with a physique of equine robustness. This passage somehow causes us to chuckle aloud--

They were centaurs--heroic intellects with brutal capacities of
body. What partiality in nature! In general, a man has reason
to think himself well off in the great lottery of this life if
he draws the prize of a healthy stomach without a mind; or the
prize of a fine intellect with a crazy stomach; but that any
man should draw both is truly astonishing.

The first letter concludes with a charmingly humorous discussion of the problem (valid now as then) how a man of letters may get any creative work done and at the same time keep his wife and children happy.

II

Old Bill Barron, up in the composing room, asks us when we are going to take our Vacation. We are taking it now, we reply, reading De Quincey. Certainly we can’t imagine why any one with as pleasing a job as ours should have any right to go off on holiday. There are so many people in this town who have to spend their time reading the new books: we are going to enjoy ourself by dipping into the old ones. With one exception. We have found, in the office of the _Literary Review_, and immediately made off with, _L’Extravagante Personnalité de Jacques Casanova_, by Joseph Le Gras (Paris: Bernard Grasset). We read the first sentence--

Emporté dans une berline confortable, dont les coffres sont
abondamment pourvus de viandes, de pâtés et de vins; une femme
sur les genoux, une autre parfois à ses côtés qui se frotte
amoureusement à lui; vêtu de riches vêtements, le jabot et les
manchettes enjolivés de fines dentelles, les goussets garnis
de montres précieuses, le ventre chatouillé de breloques,
les doigts étincelants de bagues, les poches tintant d’or et
le mollet caressé dans la soie; réclamant à grand bruit les
meilleurs chevaux aux relais, la plus belle chambre dans les
auberges, jetant sa bourse à l’hôtelier et repartant au milieu
des révérences et des courbettes; tel nous apparaît, en une
attitude un peu conventionelle, l’aventurier Casanova au temps
de sa splendeur.

That, of course, is one way of taking a Vacation. We remember, with a small behind-the-arras chuckle, one of Pearsall Smith’s _Trivia_ called “Lord Arden,” which deliciously hits off the buried Casanova in all of us. At any rate, we shall read this book about Extravagant Jack.

But we must get back to De Quincey, or you’ll think we are purposely avoiding the topic. We hardly know where to resume our prattle about this glorious creature. Perhaps the first thing to note is an advisable shift in viewpoint. Nowadays we are all introduced to De Quincey at school, so his name comes to us with a peculiar mixture of sublimity and painful awe--for we learn that he was a wicked opium eater. We do not realize that a number of his contemporaries regarded him as a low-down dog of a journalist. Southey, for instance, called him “one of the greatest scoundrels living,” and urged Hartley Coleridge to go to Edinburgh with a strong cudgel and give De Quincey a public drubbing as “a base betrayer of the hospitable social hearth.” What was the cause of this peevishness? Why, of course, the _Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets_, a book whose social indiscretion is exceeded only by its magnificently fecund humour; told, like all De Quincey’s waggishness, with a rich sonorous volubility and luxurious plenitude of verbal skill. There is a subtle wickedness of amusement in the apparent solemnity of De Quincey’s polysyllables. The indignation caused latterly by such books as Margot Asquith’s was nothing compared to the anger of the Lake Poets when they found their innocent privacies laid bare by the Opium Eater’s pen. The Lakers took themselves as seriously as groups of humanitarians always do. And they were quite right. Francis Thompson complains that Milton never forgot he was Milton--“but we must admit it was worth remembering.” Yet the domestic affairs of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were indeed irresistibly comic. We have not forgotten that Hartley Coleridge, whose childhood was so charmingly enshrined in a poem by Wordsworth--

Thou fairy voyager, that dost float
In such clear water that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air than on an earthly stream--

also floated in liquids more ruddy. He was removed from his fellowship at Oxford on the charge of drinking too much--which must have been a very great deal in the Oxford of those days.

_Reminiscences of the Lake Poets_ is the kind of book (Boswell’s _Tour to the Hebrides_ is another) that causes indignation to the victims, but intense delight to posterity. Posterity always has the best of us, anyhow. The anecdote of Coleridge’s father and the protruding shirt has always seemed to us one of the most disgracefully amusing minutiæ in literature--and yet even now, after a hundred years of sanctity, we are not sure whether we ought to reprint it. Well, you can buy _Reminiscences of the Lake Poets_ in the Everyman Series.

The next thing to be said about De Quincey is that he would have been a glorious editor for one of Mr. Hearst’s newspapers. He wrote a good deal better than Mr. Arthur Brisbane; but he had the same acute instinct as to what the public is really interested in. We believe it was James L. Ford who described the Hearstian doctrine of newspaper policy as “Plenty of crime and plenty of underclothes.” De Quincey was a glutton for crime. Did you know that he lost his job as editor of the _Westmoreland Gazette_ because for sixteen months he filled its columns mainly with news of local lawbreaking? His employers did not appreciate genius. His instinct was absolutely sound. In spite of the disclaimers of refined people, crime news, when written not merely vulgarly but with earnestness and art, is one of the most valuable features of any journal. If we were running a newspaper we would begin by scouring the press clubs for a young De Quincey.

He had, we say, the newspaper man’s instinct. Writing of the appalling Williams murders in 1811, he complains that though the outrage was committed shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, nothing reached the papers until Monday. “To have met the public demand for details on the Sunday, which might so easily have been done by cancelling a couple of dull columns and substituting a circumstantial narrative ... would have made a small fortune. By proper handbills dispersed through all quarters of the infinite metropolis, 250,000 extra copies might have been sold.”

This occurs in the postscript to _Murder as One of the Fine Arts_. In that immortal essay itself the macabre humour and the sledge-hammer impact of irony are probably a bit too grim and a bit (also) too learned and crushing for the gentler sort of reader. But the postscript, dated 1854, is the kind of horrific febrifuge that turns the heart to an Eskimo patty. We suggest that you try reading it aloud to a house party if you want to see blenching and shudders. The ultimate tribute to any writing of the narrative kind is to read it perpetually running ahead, in a horrid tension of eagerness, meanwhile holding one’s proper “place” with a finger until one can force the eye back to pursue a methodical course. We ourself read that postscript thus, late at night in a lonely country house; and, by a noble summation of horror, Gissing began to growl and bristle as we reached the climax. We should hate to admit with what paltry quaverings we went forth into the night, where the trees were smoke-colour in a pallid moonglow, to see what was amiss. It was only a wandering dog prowling about. But for a few moments we had felt certain that our harmless Salamis Estates were thickly ambushed with assassins. It then required a trip to the icebox, and a considerable infare upon a very ammoniac Roquefort cheese, to restore tranquillity.

III

But we were talking about De Quincey. Yesterday was by no means a day wasted, for we got our amiable friend Franklin Abbott into our clutches, made him take a note of _Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets_ (in the Everyman Series, we repeat) and insisted to him that for a man of genteel tastes this is one of the most entertaining works ever printed. And also by mere chance, which so often disposes the bright fragments of life into a ruddy and high-spirited pattern, we stopped in at a bookshop on Church Street just to say howdy to the eccentric Raymond Halsey. Happening to remark that it is now just a hundred years since the _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ was published, Raymond disappeared with a rabbit-like scuttling motion; was heard digging among shelves at the rear, and returned with the smile of one who thinks he foresees a sale. It was a first edition of the _Opium Eater_ with the magical imprint of Taylor & Hessey. Was there ever a more sacred name among publishers? We don’t need to remind you they were Keats’s publishers, too. “Only fifty dollars,” said Raymond, but it was lunch time and we had to leave.

In the dark rear chamber of a Cedar Street tavern, in that corner underneath the photographs of the “Cheshire Cheese,” something happened that seemed to us almost as pretty as anything published by the vanished Taylor & Hessey. Frank spied an old friend of his, a fellow Pittsburger, and the latter halted at our table on his way out. We complimented him upon the fine bronze patina of his countenance, to which he replied that he had been salmon fishing. “You know,” he said, “there are only three salmon-flies that I care a continental for,” and from his pocket he drew a small pink envelope. With a tender hand he slid its contents onto the board. “There they are,” he said. His voice seemed to change. “Dusty Miller, Durham Ranger, and Jock Scott.” The little feathery trinkets, glowing with dainty treacheries, lay there on the ale-bleached wood. Certainly it seemed to us there was poetry in that moment. “I go to Bingham, Maine,” he said, “and drive eighteen miles up the Kennebec.” (A small postern door opened gently upon another world.) “Old So-and-so is waiting at the station. He’s always there. I could leave to-night; he’d be sure to be there when the train got in.”

We had a perfectly vivid picture of old So-and-so waiting at the Bingham station. Yes, we could see him. Then the postern door closed, gently but definitely, with that strong pneumatic piston that is attached to all our doors.

We were saying, however, that De Quincey’s _Reminiscences of the Lake Poets_ caused great indignation among the Grasmere coterie. This was due not to any malice in De Quincey’s manner of writing, which was affectionate and admiring throughout. It was due to something far more painful than malice--the calm, detailed, candid, and minute dissection of their lives. There was truly something astoundingly clinical in this microscopy. For instance, to take the case of Wordsworth’s household, these are some of the comments De Quincey makes:

(1) That Mrs. Wordsworth--whose charm and simplicity he
adores--was cross-eyed.

(2) That Dorothy--Wordsworth’s sister--was a fervid and noble
character, but stammered and was ungraceful.

(3) That Wordsworth’s appearance grew less attractive with
advancing age.

(4) That his legs were very ill-shapen and “were pointedly
condemned by all female connoisseurs in legs.” And that his
shoulders were drooping and narrow.

(5) “The mouth, and the whole circumjacencies of the mouth,
composed the strongest feature in Wordsworth’s face.” In fact,
they reminded De Quincey of Milton.

(6) That he aged very rapidly--when thirty-nine he was taken to
be over sixty.

(7) That his brother John, a sea captain, had lost his ship
while drunk.

(8) That Wordsworth cannot have been amiable as a child.

(9) That the only time Wordsworth was drunk was as an
undergraduate at Cambridge on visiting the rooms once occupied
by Milton.

(10) That he had not the temperament ever to be an attractive
wooer, and that it was “perplexing” that he had ever married.

(11) That he had had astonishing good luck in financial matters.

(12) That the Wordsworth menage was excessively plain and
severe in simplicity.

(13) That Wordsworth and Southey did not really like each other.

(14) That Wordsworth treated books very barbarously, and used
to cut the pages with a butter-smeared knife.

(15) That Wordsworth’s library was meagre and insignificant
compared to Southey’s.

These are only a few of De Quincey’s remarks, digested to their naked gist; by which they lose all the amusing complexity of comment wherein they are folded. But the précis will suffice to show that, whether consciously or not, they were exactly calculated to wound, with very deep incision, the most delicate sensibilities of an austere, somewhat humourless and extremely self-regarding man.

IV

On the 13th of February, 1848, De Quincey received a letter asking him to contribute a writing of some sort for an “album,” to be sold at a Ladies’ Bazaar. This was to be held in March of that year, for the benefit of the Library of the Glasgow Athenæum, and the ladies begged him to reply by “return of post.” This incident in itself sounds contemporary enough to give us a fellow feeling with De Quincey.

He had nothing available to send to the bazaar, but there was one unfailing resource--his bathtub. Let him describe it:

In my study I have a bath, large enough to swim in, provided
the swimmer, not being an ambitious man, is content with going
ahead to the extent of three inches at the utmost. This bath,
having been superseded (as regards its original purpose) by a
better, has yielded a secondary service to me as a reservoir
for my MSS. Filled to the brim it is by papers of all sorts
and sizes. Every paper written _by_ me, _to_ me, _for_ me,
_of_ or _concerning_ me, and, finally, _against_ me, is to be
found, after an impossible search, in this capacious repertory.
Those papers, by the way, that come under the last (or hostile)
subdivision are chiefly composed by shoemakers and tailors--an
affectionate class of men, who stick by one to the last like
pitch-plasters.

De Quincey decided that the only thing to do was to draw something at random from the bathtub for the ladies’ album. Accordingly, he made a little ceremony of it. “Three young ladies, haters of everything unfair,” were called in as referees; and a young man to do the actual dipping. There were to be four dips into the tub, and, for some reason not quite clear to us, the young man was made to attire himself in a new potato-sack, with holes cut for his legs and only his right arm free. It would have been more to the purpose, we should have thought, to blindfold him; but he was instructed to dip at random, holding his face “at right angles to the bath.” He was to be allowed one minute to rummage at random among “the billowy ocean of papers,” and at the command _Haul Up!_ was to come forth with whatever his fingers approved. Before the ceremony began a glass of wine was brought. De Quincey proposed the health of the ladies of the Athenæum, and pledged his honour that whatever MS. should be dredged up would be sent off to the bazaar. And this, he protested, though somewhere buried in the bath there lay a paper which he valued as equal to the half of his possessions.

But he was compelled to depart from the strict rigour of his scheme. For let us see what the young man discovered in the bathtub. The first dip brought up a letter still unopened. It proved to be a dinner invitation for the 15th of February. De Quincey was congratulating himself on the success of his raffle, which had thus enabled him to answer this letter without irreparable breach of manners, when the young lady referees discovered that the letter was four years old.

Number 2 was a “dun.” The young man was, to De Quincey’s dismay, dredging in a portion of the tub rich in overdue bills. “It is true,” he says, “that I had myself long remarked that part of the channel to be dangerously infested with duns. In searching for literary or philosophic paper, it would often happen for an hour together that I brought up little else than variegated specimens of the dun.” And so Number 3 was also a dun.

Number 4 turned out “a lecture addressed to myself by an ultra-moral friend--a lecture on procrastination, and not badly written.” And this also De Quincey refused to allow to be sent to the Athenæum. So everything hinged on the fifth and extra dip, which was committed to one of the young ladies. She blushed rosily (De Quincey assures us) at the responsibility, and earnestly “ploitered” among the papers for full five minutes. “She contended that she knew, by intuition, the sort of paper on which duns were written: and, whatever else might come up, she was resolved it should not be a dun.” “Don’t be too sure,” said De Quincey; but when the paper was finally drawn out it was a blank sheet.

This, the referees maintained, was a judgment on De Quincey, and meant that he should use the empty page to begin a new and original contribution for the ladies of Glasgow. Which he did, and turned out a little essay, suggested by their recent sport, on _Sortilege and Astrology_. We have tried to read it, but so far without success.

We are interested to note that others besides ourself have been turning back to De Quincey. In a recent _Fortnightly Review_ there is an article by H. M. Paull, sound enough in its observations, but grievously lacking in style. Mr. Paull, moreover, seems to us to shoot too far when he says that “to modern readers De Quincey’s efforts to be sprightly only cause annoyance.” It is true that sometimes his astonishing verbosity and his passion for footnotes outrun a hasty temper; but for our part we find something notably odd and agreeable in his queer, preposterous humour. His habit of calling great men familiarly by their first names--Dr. Johnson is “Sam,” and even the learned and ancient Josephus becomes “Joe,” and Thomas à Kempis “Tom”--is deplored by Mr. Paull; but this habit, we fear, has been inherited by columnists, and we had better not defend it too vigorously. The bathtub anecdote, which we have pared down until it loses most of its gusto, is, in the original, not devoid of humour. (Volume XIII of the collected works.)

And De Quincey’s ramified and rambling way of narrative offers surprising delights in unexpected parentheses. For instance, in the _Opium Eater_ he happens to mention a murder that had been committed on Hounslow Heath. “The name of the murdered person was Steele, and he was the owner of a lavender plantation in that neighbourhood.” A lavender plantation! There is a fragrant circumstance for the mind of a poet to dwell on. Think of the chance immortality of the unlucky Steele--deathless now, because (poor devil) he was murdered and had a lavender plantation.

THE SPANISH SULTRY

Turning up masterpieces of unintentional humour is a pleasant diversion of most writers. Everyone has his own favourites--on this side Atlantic many students vouch for _The Balsam Groves of Grandfather Mountain_ (by Shepherd M. Dugger) as the most amusing book written in America; in Britain a few diligent explorers beat the drum for _Irene Iddesleigh_, a novel written by Mrs. Amanda McKittrick Ros (of Belfast). Neither of these books, unhappily, is easy to lay hand upon. But as a possible competitor, how do you like _The Spanish Sultry_, by Ambrose Dargason (Harrisburg, 1905)? We have no copy, but once we took down some extracts.

Mr. Dargason’s hero was a window-glass merchant “whose nature was as transparent and reflective as the goods he throve in.” This merchant’s name was Wilbert Vocks; after his retirement from merchandise he spent his time in travelling about looking for a suitable wife to inherit his fortune. Unhappily, his inherent caution always caused him to sheer off just when the reader was expecting the happy nuptials. The scene on the park bench in Harrisburg, one moony evening, is a favourite of ours:

In the anæmic brightness of the crescendo moon Frederica’s eyes
were gilded with the splendor of her sex’s softest charms. They
were frosted bulbs of allure, and Wilbert trenched delicately
upon her French-shod toes as a symbol of hardy waxing
tenderness.

“Oh, Mr. Vocks,” said she, the beautiful coamings of her orbs
brimming over with cheer, “how many equinoxes will hereafter
wax and wane, search through this garden, but for one in vain.”

“You are quoting the Rubaiyat,” said he, “but with indifferent
adhesion to the text.”

“Adhesion,” she replied, “was never one of my frailties,” and a
trifle peaked [sic] withdrew to the distant angle of the iron
settee.

Wilbert’s momentary harshness had already dissipated and he
regretted this intrusion of pedantic nicety upon the moonlit
promise of their double entente. “I bespeak a rapproachment,”
he gallantly murmured and, sliding deftly along the parallel
rods of metal subforming the trysting bench, found himself
chilled by coming en rapport with a section of the seat not
warmed by humane contact.

“But you must not reproach me,” she taunted shyly. “It is too
plain that you were not brought up in Harrisburg, where men
speak chivalrously to women and good breeding is a native
filament of the tender air.”

“Probably you are cold on that hitherto unfrequented segment
of iron slatting,” he said, shrivelling his inward tremolo by
an affection of stern brusque. “Why not slide over this way a
little, and chivalry commends my sheltering you from the sharp
fidgetings of frost which, however commendable to coal dealers,
betray the softer passions to gooseflesh and eventual snivel.”

Womanly, without further quibble, she responded, and the beauty
of that unsophisticated face was shielded soon from external
examination by the protective polygon of his arm and elbow. It
was a generous moment, and in harmony with all the higher laws
of human sentiment.

The delighted reader might be pardoned for thinking that in this idyllic scene the restless affections of Mr. Vocks had found satisfaction. But Frederica, after several evenings of intellectual interchange, proved too shallow for his deep-laden mind. As Mr. Dargason put it (his taste for oddly mixed nautical metaphors was rather extreme):

He grounded upon the shoals of her mentality and, after
striving vainly to warp off into deeper areas of thought and
sentiment, was forced to broach his cargo of affection upon
the outgoing tides. Only thus, by careening and jettisoning
his rich hatches of emotional freight, and scudding forth
under bare poles and jury rigging, was he able to win clear
to the open sea of freedom, escaping the lee shores of an
uncongenial union. The bright occulting lamps of her eyes shone
like desperate beacons, but he remembered that lighthouses
are intended not to allure the cautious mariner, but to warn
him away. He reefed his binnacle gravely, and with only an
aching heart throbbing in the empty hatches of his personality
determined henceforward to steer by the unquestionable stars of
intuition. Her soundings were too easily fathomed. In a word,
she was not deep enough.

To quiet his melancholy, Mr. Vocks returns into the busy world of trade. We have not space for very full quotation, but his discussion with his business associates is worth a brief extract:

As surely as my name is Wilbert Vocks (he said), I intend that
this business shall be conducted in accord with all principles
of integrity and without demurrage to trickery. I have been
allowed by fortune to make a frugal and circumstantial
inspection of the general laws and accidents of life, and it
is my conviction that by exploring the estuaries of remorse no
bill of lading was ever brought to consummation. My rudder is
uncompromisingly turned to the favoring gales of expedience,
and we will sail a vigorous course into the latitudes of
magnetism.

In this admirable resolution Mr. Vocks was strengthened by his partner (Mr. Henry Shingle), who is described as “a thrifty man the colour of a glass of light beer, bleached brown by an open-air youth in Monongahela County, but surmounted spiritually by the bright bubbles of aspiration and elasticity. His clothes were neat and his habits orderly; of his meditative components it is not necessary to surmise. He had not made a habit of thinking profoundly, for he knew that any thought he might have could easily be rebutted by more carefully trained men; therefore he spared himself the embarrassment of argument. His management of the Sales Department, however, was not to be criticized.”

We wish we had taken the trouble to copy out more of _The Spanish Sultry_ while we were about it. The Sultry herself was the lady to whom Mr. Vocks finally succumbed: she caused the fracture of the window-glass business. As the author put it: “Hers was not the clear transparence of Mr. Vocks’s glassy nature; she was stained with violent and ominous colours, and through the panes of her vehement character there burst downpours of scarlet and lavender trouble.”

WHAT KIND OF A DOG?

“What kind of a dog is he?” said the Sea Cliff veterinary over the phone.

We must confess we were stumped. All we could say was that he is--Oh, well just a kind of a dog. We didn’t like to say that he is a Synthetic Hound, and that his full name is Haphazard Gissing I. We didn’t like to admit, at any rate over the telephone, that one of his grandmothers may have been a dachshund and that certainly one of his brothers-in-law is an Airedale. But at any rate it was fixed that we should take our excellent Gissing over to the kennels to be boarded while we were in the city.

Gissing’s behaviour was odd. He seemed, in some inscrutable way, to suspect that something was going to happen. The night before his departure he disappeared, and was away all night--saying good-by to his cronies, we suppose. When we came home early in the afternoon to convoy him to Sea Cliff he was nowhere to be found. But about suppertime he turned up, looking more haggard and disreputable than ever. There was a fresh scar on his face, and he was very hungry. He ate his supper hurriedly, with no dignity at all. As soon as he heard the rattle of his chain his spirits went very low.

But the admirable creature was docile. Dogs are profoundly religious at heart: they put their trust in their deities. Unlike cats, who are determined atheists and fight to the last against fate, dogs accept calmly what they see is ordered by the gods. Gissing hopped into Dame Quickly without protest and sat in silence during the ride. His nose was unusually cold, but then that may have been only the winter evening. He had somewhat the bearing of one who is going to the dentist.

Dog fanciers are always baffled and set at naught when they see Gissing. But the Sea Cliff veterinarian made the most penetrating remark when we arrived. He is accustomed, indeed, to dogs of high degree--such dogs as are favoured by the North Shore of Long Island, and Gissing was rather a shock to him. After a long look, “What is his name?” he said. “Gissing,” we replied, with just a little of that embarrassment we always feel when such questions are asked; for it is generally shown in the manner of the inquirer that Gissing is an unusual name, particularly for a dog who looks as though he ought to be called Rover. So we said, perhaps a little defiantly, “Gissing.” But the Doctor misunderstood it. “Guessing!” he said dubiously, and looked again at the abashed quadruped. “That’s because he keeps you guessing what breed he is.”

It amuses us the more to have Gissing staying there, associating with the lordly dogs of Long Islanders who are spending the snow season in Florida, because we feel that it is rather like sending a child to a fashionable boarding school. It is probably useless as far as education is concerned, but it ought to be an interesting experience, and he may pick up a little polish. Gissing may make friends with some influential dogs who will be of help to him in future life; who knows? It is expensive, we admit; but since we paid nothing for him in the first place, and have used him liberally for copy, we feel that we owe Gissing this opportunity to improve himself. At any rate, he has promised to write us a letter from time to time, and we shall see how he gets on.

A LETTER FROM GISSING

SEA CLIFF, L. I., February 13.

Dear Friend, I thought that as to-morrow is Valentine’s Day I had better send you a line to report progress and to wish you my respectful greeting. This Dr. R with whom I am living is a fine man and he smells good to me I heard him say something about a Dog Show being on in New York now and I thought I ought to tell you what the old veterans in this veterinary hotel say, they say not to go to any such show because those things there are not Regular Dogs, not Red Blooded He Dogs not Dogs as you might say with the Bark On. Of course at first it was a bit hard for me here being as I am a self-made dog so to say and not accustomed to associate with pedigree folks and I rather wish you would send me a new collar, that old strap is about wore out and to tell you the truth there is a little Airedale flapper in the next cage that I would like to make an impression on, some of the boys have those collars that are studded with brass spikes and look mighty fine don’t forget my size is 16. As I was saying, at first things were a bit unpleasant, there is a big collie who looked me over the first morning I was here and said “Ye men, how do they get that way? Who let this mutt in here among cultivated animals?” Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that stuff, so I talked right back to him and asked him if he had ever been in print, but I didn’t get it across very big because he was so ignorant he didn’t seem to realize what it means to have been written up right along in the _Evening Post_. By the way, I get kennel-sick for the old paper, out here they all read the sensational sheets and I wish you would tell the Circulation Manager to put me down for a two-months’ subscription. All the other fellows here gave me the razz when I told them my name, Gissing, what kind of a name is that for a dog they said? I told them I was named after a Writer but none of the roughnecks ever heard of him. But I noticed right away that the little Airedale kid was interested, she seems to have some imagination her name is Mistress Zephine IV and I understand that the Airedales are a very fine family. I told her that it had been suggested by some that I had some Airedale in me too, and she laughed and looked a bit scandalized. Either you are an Airedale or you aren’t, she said; there’s no half and half measures. Live and learn, I told her. Anyway she and I go out for a walk together with one of the men every morning, and I have got her quite interested in books, she has promised to write me when she gets home and tell what kind of books her master reads. When you write, send me a cake of flea soap, I want to make myself solid with this dame. There is a whole lot I could write about, but this is just to say that You are my Valentine. These dogs here all have three-barrelled names so I will sign myself in full,

Your affectionate dog,
HAPHAZARD GISSING I.

P. S. Please write right away and tell me what is the name of your publisher, I want to give one of your books to Zephine, when I told her you were a Writer she wouldn’t believe it, I am talking you up big all the time here, but it is hard work to get away with it because appearances are against us; never mind, some day we will knock them cold; and what is the name of your car, one of these fellows here says he rides around in a Rolls Royce and I told him yours was a Dame Quickly and he says there isn’t any such boat, it’s an imported car I told him. Yes, he says, imported from Detroit; never mind, I’ve got them all guessing, they’re all keen to see what kind of a guy you are, I told them the story about the old trousers, I guess it was a mistake.

H. G. I.

JULY 8, 1822

It is to-day a hundred years since that sultry afternoon when Edward John Trelawny, aboard Byron’s schooner-yacht _Bolivar_, fretted anxiously in Leghorn Harbour and watched the threatening sky. The thunderstorm that broke about half-past six lasted only twenty minutes, but it was long enough to drown both Shelley and his friend Williams, very haphazard yachtsmen, who had set off a few hours earlier in their small craft. It was only some foolish red tape about quarantine that had prevented Trelawny from convoying them in the _Bolivar_; in which case, probably, that dauntless and all-competent adventurer could have saved them. He was already dubious of their navigating skill. So, if there is any comfort in the thought, one may conclude that Shelley--though of course doomed to some tragic end, for skylarks do not die in nests--was partly the victim of that invincible social and bureaucratic stupidity against which he had always nobly chafed.

Those of our clients who care to devote this week-end to some meditation on Shelley and what he still means to us can well begin with Professor Firkins’s excellent essay. Mr. Firkins, with his usual clarity, lays pen upon a number of considerations that have always occurred to Shelley’s readers, but are not often carefully thought out. For our own part, we also have a mind to reread Francis Thompson’s essay, which remains in our memory as a prismatic dazzle of metaphor. But there are two items which, if our high-spirited clients have not read, they should certainly take steps to meditate. Hogg’s description of Shelley at Oxford is as lovely a picture of youthful genius as one is likely to find: and Trelawny’s _Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_ gives the other panel of the portrait. It is surely not often that chance bequeaths us such sympathetic observers for both beginning and end of a great life. And then, of course, it is not impossible for our clients to recruit their imaginations by reading some of Shelley himself. If your hearts are what we like to think they are, you may

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number.

But, for information about Shelley, Trelawny is the darling of all hearts. There is something indescribably manly in his rough, cheery, potent narrative, with its amazing vigour and humour. “As a general rule,” says he, “it is wise to avoid writers whose works amuse or delight you, for when you see them they will delight you no more.” But Shelley, he adds, was a grand exception to this very wise rule. One could happily spread several pages with excerpts from his good-humoured, observant companionship with Shelley and Byron. But, to commemorate the date now here, we intend to copy out part of his description of the burning of Shelley’s body on the Italian coast. Fine and gruesome as it is, we cannot help believing it not well enough known among those younger clients whom we daily cudgel towards virtue. Trelawny says:

The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us so exactly
harmonized with Shelley’s genius that I could imagine his
spirit soaring over us. The sea was before us ... not a human
dwelling was in sight. As I thought of the delight Shelley felt
in such scenes of loneliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt
we were no better than a herd of wolves or a pack of wild dogs,
in tearing out his battered and naked body from the pure yellow
sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him back to the light
of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to check
the sacrilege.... Even Byron was silent and thoughtful. We
were startled and drawn together by a dull hollow sound that
followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had struck a skull,
and the body was soon uncovered. Lime had been strewn upon it;
this, or decomposition, had the effect of staining it of a
dark and ghastly indigo color. Byron asked me to preserve the
skull for him; but remembering that he had formerly used one
as a drinking-cup, I was determined Shelley’s should not be so
profaned. The limbs did not separate from the trunk, as in the
case of Williams’s body, so that the corpse was removed entire
into the furnace. I had taken the precaution of having more and
larger pieces of timber, in consequence of my experience of
the day before of the difficulty of consuming a corpse in the
open air with our apparatus. After the fire was well kindled we
repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine was
poured over Shelley’s dead body than he had consumed during his
life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten
and quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that
the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy. The corpse fell open and
the heart was laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where
it had been struck with the mattock, fell off; and, as the back
of the head rested on the red-hot bottom bars of the furnace,
the brains literally seethed, bubbled, and boiled as in a
cauldron, for a very long time.

Byron could not face this scene; he withdrew to the beach and
swam off to the _Bolivar_. Leigh Hunt remained in the carriage.
The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the iron,
and to reduce its contents to grey ashes. The only portions
that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the
jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the
heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery
furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do
the act I should have been put into quarantine.

After cooling the iron machine in the sea, I collected the
human ashes and placed them in a box, which I took on board the
_Bolivar_.

There are those still living who have shaken the hard, quick hand that snatched Shelley’s heart from the coals. Sir Sidney Colvin, for instance, who tells much about Trelawny in his _Memories and Notes of Persons and Places_. And ghastly as the above account may seem to those of tender sensibility, the parable it implies is too rich to be omitted. Lo! were they not words of Shelley’s that winged the greatest popular success in recent fiction?[A] And, though lulled long ago by the blue Mediterranean--

that burning, reckless heart survives to us little corrupted by time--survives as a symbol of poetic energy superior to the common routines of life. “Mighty meat for little guests, when the heart of Shelley was laid in the cemetery of Caius Cestius!”

[A] If Winter Comes.

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams--

MIDSUMMER IN SALAMIS

In midsummer the morning walk to the station is one long snuff of green and gold. On the winding stony lane through the Estates, before you reach the straight highway to the railroad, it is a continual sharp intake through the nostrils, an attempt to savour and identify the rich, moist smells of early day. That tangle of woodland we would like to call by the good old English word _spinney_, if only to haul in an equally ancient pun. It is in the spinney that you get the top of the morning. Dew is on the darkening blackberries. Little gauzy cobwebs are spread everywhere on grass and bushes, suggesting handkerchiefs dropped by revelling midnight dryads. The little handkerchiefs are all very soppy--do the dryads suffer from hay fever? As you emerge onto the straight station road, it is comforting if you see, not far away, some commuter whose time-sense is reliable trudging not too far ahead. When that long perspective is empty anxiety fills the breast. Across the level Long Island plain come occasional musical whistles from trains on the other line--the Westbury branch. But the practiced commuter knows his own whistle and alarms not at alien shrillings.

In midsummer the subaltern life around us is grown lusty. The spider is in his heyday and cannot be denied. Even indoors he shrewdly penetrates. Looking for a book along the shelves, our eye was caught by the hasty climb of one small spinner, who had been hanging on his airy cord apparently also scanning the titles. To the top of the case he retired, beyond reach. We wish him luck and hope no domestic besom may find him. The young lumpish robins that used to flutter heavily across the road, easily within grasp, fat paunches of feathers upon incapable wings--these are now strong of flight and cat-safe. The young rabbits with whom our woods are crowded no longer stand curiously in the roadway almost until our foot is on them. They too are maturing and have learned wise suspicion. The mole nightly increases his meandering subway, which looks like a zigzagging varicose vein on the surface of the lawn. And Gissing, untaught by menace or thrashing, every night buffets down more of the phlox plants so carefully set out by Titania, in his caperings with a roving Airedale from no one knows where. Only the pond noises seem to have lessened in vitality. The frogs are growing cynical, perhaps. In the sylvester midnight--thanks to Mr. C. E. Montague for that pretty phrase--they utter only an occasional disillusioned twangle, like the pluck of a loose bass string.

But there are signs that the Salamis Estates, so long a rustic Nirvana, are going to fall under the hand of civilization. Which will, one doubts not, have its advantages. It will be helpful to have gas to cook with; and sidewalks are enjoyable for baby carriages and velocipedes. But we shall never forget the happy Salamis Estates as they still are--the lonely roads through virgin woods; the little hidden lakes; the old abandoned orchard buried in overgrowth of vines and forest; solitude and sanctuary. It is our darling old horror of a Salamis railway station that has spared us the evils of “development.” The casual passenger looking out on that gruesome pagoda of claret-coloured brick and the huddle of wooden shacks around it, can only think of Salamis as a place damned and forgotten. When some of our neighbours grunt about that station we think inwardly of it with affection. It has spared us much. There are some people, of course, who really like to live in an artificed toy park like Nassau Boulevard or Garden City. We were raised on the books of Mayne Reid and Du Chaillu; we are for the jungle.

Yet we would not admit impediments to progress, if it does not rob our rustic Eden of all its wilderness charm. And anyhow progress is coming willynil. Actually, in the past six months, we have seen several houses built on the outskirts of our region. The new Methodist kirk, though apparently halted temporarily while our good dominy raises some more funds, is already shoulder-high. Another church, years ago foundered to the status of a saloon, now does brisking business as garage. The little empty lodge at the entrance to the Estates, where we vote on election days, will some day be a tea-room, we suspect. It is ideal for that purpose, with its big open fireplace. In fact, we have heard influential Salamites say that it could be had almost rent-free by some really refined lady as a pekoe-saloon. Those who move the destinies of the Estates think that a nice tea-room there would help the tone of the neighbourhood. We pass this information on to ambitious ladies, on condition we are allowed to have three lumps and an extra pat of butter.

It is all very interesting, because we are going to have a unique opportunity to see exactly how civilization works. We have watched new signboards go up at the front and back entrances to the Estates. Not long ago a hundred thousand people might have gone by and never known our little world was there. We study the new board of a Mortgage Company announcing Desirable Plots. Yes, we can see a plot. Civilization is plotting to take us under its wing. We are going to have a good look at this thing they call civilization and see how it goes about it. Five years from now will we be able to see cows being driven home from their daily pasture near our Green Escape? We are not blind to omens. Just as lightning glimmers even through eyelids closed in bed, so behind the leafy screen of our still scatheless sanctum we can see the bright eyes of Real Estate men blazing in the sky. Well ... there are compensations. Our title is clean and clear, and our second mortgage sticks to us closer than a shinplaster. Wait till they try to buy us out; we’ll get some of our own back.

So we meditate, partly as poet and partly as Man of Affairs, as we walk homeward up the hill. The singing peanut-wagon of George Vlachos, steaming its thin, pensive tune, comes clopping wearily down the road, the white horse shambling a bit after a long day on the highways. FRESH ROSTED PEANUTS, CANDY, ICE CREAM, says the legend. We note the pile of fresh shingles beside the little house going up near the station; we sniff the tang of mortar where our good friend Mr. Corliss will next year be preaching the word of God in his new steeple-house (as George Fox would have called it). We wonder where the Salamis Heights movie will be, when it comes? That, and an occasional street-lamp up in our tangled knolls, will make it easier to keep servants, very likely. And think of having gas to cook with instead of those oil stoves.... Yes, perhaps civilization will have merits.

THE STORY OF GINGER CUBES

I

[_A letter from the Proprietor of the Ginger Cubes to his Advertising Manager, who is ill in hospital._]

DEAR RUSSELL: When I heard that you had been taken to the hospital with a badly dislocated sense of proportion and exhaustion of the adjective secretions, I was worried. The doctor said that you were suffering from a severe attack of deprecation and under-statement, and I feared that would mean you would be quite unfit to help me in the forthcoming campaign for Ginger Cubes. But I hear now that a few weeks of silence and relaxation will bring you round. I have ordered the _Police Gazette_ and _The Nation_ to be sent you. Each in its own way is highly entertaining.

In our last conference, just before you were taken ill, you tried with your usual energy and bullheaded vitality to persuade me to say a word about the Ginger Cubes at the Paperhangers Convention. You made a great deal of the point that this would be a vast gathering, and that it would be excellent business for me to give them a “message.”

I ask you to meditate this thought: give me a small group of folks who are more or less interested in the same sort of thing that I am, and I will “talk my head off.” But speaking to large, miscellaneous audiences, many of whom are only incubating there to pass away the time until the theatres open, is my idea of loss of compression.

We have appropriated a fine promotion budget for the Ginger Cubes, but I am holding up any action until I can argue the situation with you. About newspaper advertising, for instance--I want your opinion as to the papers which are read (1) most carefully, (2) by the class of people to whom the Ginger Cubes are likely to appeal, (3) at the time of day when their minds (and palates) are receptive--i. e., morning or evening? For instance, do you think that people will be likely to be tempted by the Cubes in the morning, just after breakfast? I think not. I believe that the evening, in that faintness and debility that are supposed to attack office-workers on their way home (especially in the subway) is the psychological zero hour for the Ginger Cubes.

Miss Balboa, to whom I am dictating this, says that she never noticed any sign of weakness or lack of energy in the evening rush on the subway. I believe it is worth while to get the feminine reaction on this matter before we make any decisions. One thing I have always regretted about you as an Advertising Manager is that you are not married. Wives are often very helpful in these questions of merchandising strategy. But perhaps you can question some of the nurses at the hospital and get their reaction.

In regard to these mediums, the question of circulation does not cut any ice in my cynical and querulous mind. It is not a matter of circulation, but of penetration, that excites me.

The chemical laboratory reports that the Cubes will positively have a soothing and tonic effect upon the digestive organs, and that we are justified in saying so. Unfortunately they say that the Cubes cannot possibly be of any value in combating “pyorrhea,” so we cannot go riding on the other folks’ toothpaste copy. For your amusement, I have thought up this slogan:

+---------------------+
| WHY NOT INVEST IN |
| A NEW INTESTINE? |
| |
| TRY GINGER CUBES |
+---------------------+

Which is probably too startling. But anyhow, when we have decided, I wish our copy to be Cumulative, Concise, and Continuous. Then, ho for the Ginger Cubes!

Yours,
NICHOLAS RIBSTONE,
President The Ginger Cubes Corporation.

N.R./D.B.

II