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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD
 
 NEW AND OLD
 
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 NEW AND OLD 
 
 BY 
 
 EDITH SICHEL 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 A. C. BRADLEY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 1918
 
 Printed in Great Britain
 
 PR 
 
 54-52 
 
 S2I35 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Extracts from Letters 
 
 Thoughts 
 
 Poems .... 
 
 Gladys Leonora Pratt . 
 
 Women as Letter-Writers 
 
 A French Governess 
 
 Charlotte Yonge as a Chronicler 
 
 Emily Lawless . 
 
 19 
 
 61 
 
 75 
 
 82 
 
 97 
 
 . 116 
 
 141 
 
 151 
 
 Articles from ' The Pilot/ etc. : — 
 
 'loiza . . . . . .180 
 
 ' samuel*: christmas eve . . . .183 
 
 the confessions of an amateur philanthropist . 185 
 the art of conversation in england and france 191 
 joseph joachim: a rememrrance . . .1,97 
 
 Articles from ' The Times Literary Supplement ' 
 
 the letters of a saint 
 a medieval garner . 
 queens, knights, and pawns 
 vincent de paul 
 a heroine of corneille 
 
 203 
 207 
 214 
 
 219 
 226 
 
 iC
 
 Vlll 
 
 xNEW AND OLD 
 
 LOUIS XIV 
 
 DUCHESS SARAH 
 
 ROUSSEAU 
 
 THE UNSELFISH EGOIST 
 
 HANNAH MORE 
 
 THE AGE OF LOUIS XV 
 
 MADAME DU DEFFAND AND HORACE WALPOLE 
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE 
 
 A KEEPER OF ROYAL SECRETS 
 
 ALWAYS A BOURBON . 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 
 
 THE BRAHMAN OF CONCORD . 
 
 SAINTS AND MYSTICS . 
 
 THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW . 
 
 ZOLA, MANET, AND THE ART OF EFFECTS 
 
 THE FANTASTIC ELEMENT AND MR. BARRIE 
 
 233 
 
 239 
 246 
 255 
 263 
 269 
 275 
 285 
 293 
 302 
 309 
 318 
 328 
 333 
 342 
 350 
 356
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Edith Sichel was bom in December, 1862, and died in 
 the summer of 1914. Her parents were Jewish by descent, 
 and in religion Christians. London, her birthplace, con- 
 tinued throughout her life to be her home. She was known 
 to the reading public as a writer of books and of papers in 
 magazines ; and she also contributed unsigned articles to 
 the Pilot in 1901, and to the Literary Supplement of the 
 Times from that year onwards. To a large circle of acquaint- 
 ances and friends she was known as a hostess, guest, or 
 companion, whose society was made delightful by her 
 buoyancy and gaiety, her spontaneous and sometimes 
 exuberant flow of wit and humour, her quick and vivid 
 intellect, the width and keenness of her interests, her 
 pleasure in discussion, her entire freedom from vanity or 
 egotism, her kindness, and her enjoyment of other people's 
 enjoyment. By the members of her family and by her 
 intimate friends she was deeply loved and (strange as the 
 word would have sounded to her) revered. Finally, she 
 was known to a host of poor people, and especially of poor 
 girls, to whom she gave without stint her time, her means, 
 her mind and her heart. And in all these aspects of her life, 
 on which I will say something in turn, she showed, in an 
 eminent degree, one and the same nature, character, and 
 way of regarding life. 
 
 Though Edith Sichel's love of books could hardly have 
 been stronger than her love of Nature and of Art, the subjects 
 of most of her own writings came to her through books. And
 
 2 NEW AND OLD 
 
 the majority of these subjects, though she read widely in 
 various languages, were either English or French. She was 
 versed in German literature, enjoyed greatly her visits to 
 picture-galleries and museums in Germany, and supremely 
 the musical festivals she attended there ; and, as it happened, 
 in the last months of her life was delighting two young 
 friends by the lessons she gave them on Faust. During 
 some years of her earlier life she went from time to time, with 
 Mary Coleridge and other companions, to the house of the 
 old scholar-poet, William Cory, to read Greek authors with 
 him. 1 But in her writings she never dealt with, and rarely 
 referred to, the history or literature of Germany or of 
 Greece. Italy, again, certainly filled a large space in her 
 mind and affections. Her letters show that she was intensely 
 happy there, and how truly she felt and could render in 
 words the spirit of its towns, of the country surrounding 
 them, and of the artists or the saints to whom she was most 
 drawn ; and in writing her last book, a little volume on the 
 Renaissance, she especially welcomed the chance of speak- 
 ing something of her mind on Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and 
 Raphael. 2 Yet it remains true that, for the purposes of her 
 work, her main studies were French and English ; and 
 further, that, although in short articles she dealt with various 
 English authors (not often her special favourites), the sub- 
 jects of her principal books were almost exclusively French. 
 In the later eighties her favourite French authors seem 
 to have been George Sand and Sainte-Beuve ; and it was 
 partly to the latter, partly to her friend, Emily Ritchie, 
 that she owed her introduction to French memoirs. On 
 
 1 See Mary Coleridge's very interesting notes of Mr. Cory's remarks, 
 Gathered Leaves, pp. 287-336. The authors named are Xenophon, Plato, 
 and Sophocles. 
 
 2 I do not mean to imply that the last of these three was among the artists 
 who attracted her most. It is right to add that this book was composed in 
 enforced haste, and, though brilliant in parts, in other parts and in respect of 
 accuracy fails to reach her usual level.
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 the study of these she began, about 1890, to concentrate ; 
 and this study, extending its bounds, led to the com- 
 position of her best-known and most valuable works. The 
 first two volumes of the series, the Story of Two Salons 
 (1895), and the Household of the Lafayeltes (1897), dealt with 
 the era of the Revolution. From this she went back to the 
 sixteenth century, and produced in 1901 Women and Men 
 of the French Renaissance, in 1905 Catherine de Medici and 
 the French Reformation, in 1907 The Later Years of Catherine 
 de Medici, and finally, in 1911, Michel de Montaigne. Thus 
 the French Renaissance may be described as her principal 
 subject, and one on which she made herself an authority. 
 But during the years of her work on it she found time for 
 the Life of her friend Canon Ainger (1906), for the beautiful 
 memoir of Mary Coleridge which forms the Introduction 
 to Gathered Leaves (1910), and also for a large number of 
 articles on a great variety of topics, not confined to history 
 and literature. 
 
 Edith Sichel studied the subjects of her principal books 
 with conscientious labour, and these books were warmly 
 praised by judges competent (as I am not) to estimate their 
 value as contributions to French biography and history. 
 But she did not write primarily for experts ; nor again was 
 she specially interested in political movements and events. 
 What chiefly attracted her was the spirit of a time and 
 country, and even more the minds, characters, and sur- 
 roundings of individuals. Into these she entered with an 
 alert imagination and almost unfailing zest. She treated 
 them with a degree of impartiality surprising in a writer 
 of such decided sympathies and antipathies. And she so 
 depicted them that the reader's interest is caught at once, 
 continues to increase, and is left unexhausted. There were 
 several reasons for this result. Her own mind was so 
 vivacious that no amount of research could diminish its 
 animation or retard the alacrity of its movement. She was
 
 4 NEW AND OLD 
 
 an artist in selection and in the disposition of the selected 
 material. And she wrote fluently, commanding a rich vocabu- 
 lary, and a style which was individual and readily recognised, 
 but quite free from mannerism or traces of design. These 
 merits far outweigh some corresponding defects. She had 
 not in youth the severe training which makes for perfect 
 accuracy. Nor were her judgments always fully considered. 
 William Cory told her not to 'make such leaps' ; and, though 
 she took his warning to heart, her eager mind never ceased 
 to need it. 
 
 The characteristic qualities visible in the longer works 
 reappear in the review-articles taken from the Times 
 Literary Supplement. 1 Indeed, Edith Sichel was nowhere 
 more fully and uniformly successful as a writer than in these 
 articles. Her first object — it is one too frequently neglected 
 by reviewers — was to let the reader know what kind of 
 matter he might expect to find in the book, and, if necessary, 
 from what point of view it is treated there. As her interests 
 were catholic, and her gift of seizing quickly and present- 
 ing vividly the essential features of a subject was remark- 
 able, the effect on the reader generally is that he not only 
 gets this information, but enjoys reading the article and 
 often wishes to pursue the subject further, while he can 
 judge from the critical remarks, usually brief and decided, 
 whether he had better pursue it in the book under review. 2 
 This is the effect even when he can see from the article that 
 the reviewer herself had no expert knowledge of the matter 
 in hand (and of such articles a few are included in the present 
 volume) ; but naturally a stronger personal interest and 
 a more lasting value belong to those in which the writer 
 deals with her own subjects. This personal interest is 
 heightened in the case of the Thoughts and the Extracts from 
 Letters. In these two sections of the present volume there 
 
 1 The articles reprinted here form perhaps a fifth of the total contributed. 
 3 These have sometimes been omitted in the reprint.
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 appear, more prominently than elsewhere, and in a more 
 distinctly stated form, the chief ideas and beliefs which 
 governed both her view of life and her way of living it. The 
 Letters, which differ comparatively little in style from the 
 published writings, show how easily and naturally she wrote. 
 They recall her conversation at once, and indeed are so 
 characteristic that they give an almost perfect picture of 
 her. The Thoughts were written down merely for herself or 
 for a few friends, and, though there are good aphorisms among 
 them, they were not essays in aphoristic art. Indeed, the title 
 which she gave to the little manuscript book from which most 
 of them are taken, was not Thoughts but Fool-Flashes. 
 
 Almost, if not quite, the first thing that Edith Sichel 
 wrote for publication was Jenny, the story of a girl in 
 Wapping, which appeared in the Cornhill for December, 
 1887. In her earliest book, Worthington Junior (1893) — 
 a novel which, in spite of its merits, did not point to a 
 vocation for that form of literature — the most successful 
 incidents and characters belonged to Whitechapel. Some 
 twenty years later she composed, and intended to publish, 
 the remarkable story Gladys Leonora Pratt, printed in this 
 volume. In all these cases she wrote from an intimate 
 knowledge gained in the East End ; and, during the whole 
 period of her literary production, she was incessantly busy 
 in work of various kinds on behalf of the poor. The fact 
 is so characteristic of her that a brief record must be given 
 of these practical activities. 
 
 They began when, in her twenty-third year, she joined the 
 Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants. 1 
 She had to find in their own homes the girls whom she 
 
 1 She joined the Whitechapel Branch, and so came into contact with Canon 
 and Mrs. Barnett. The paper on Saints and Mystics, printed in this volume, 
 contains a reference to Canon Barnett, of whose inspiring influence she 
 spoke at a memorial meeting in the last year of her life.
 
 6 NEW AND OLD 
 
 befriended, and also the mistresses, usually in somewhat 
 humble life, who took them into service, and from whom 
 they often ran away. Thus she was led into what she 
 called ' the mad world ' of Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, or 
 Shadwell, ' the world of raging mistresses, frenzied Elizas, 
 and perturbing Carolines.' Her reports show into what 
 noisome quarters of this world she sometimes penetrated ; 
 what courage, persistence, and sound judgment accom- 
 panied her passionate desire to help ; and on what perfectly 
 friendly terms this desire may stand with an irrepressible 
 sense of humour. In spite of the weakness of her health 
 she pursued this work with the utmost fervour until, after 
 some years, the doctor's orders brought it to an end. 
 
 It ceased, however, only to be continued in a less exacting 
 shape. Through it she had formed her lifelong friendship 
 with Miss Emily Ritchie ; and when, in 1889, the two friends 
 began to share a cottage at Chiddingfold, there soon began 
 also the experiment of transplanting into the country girl- 
 children from an East End workhouse, with others who had 
 no responsible parent. For such children she started at Chid- 
 dingfold a Home, afterwards moved to Hambledon when the 
 friends built their own cottage there. In this Home they 
 were trained for domestic situations, which in due time were 
 found for them, and in which her tender hold on them was 
 maintained. A few years later she went on to set up, close 
 by, a second Home, with a laundry, for older girls iin poor 
 health. But this experiment proved less successful and, 
 after five years, was abandoned, while the children's Home 
 was still flourishing when she died. 
 
 Always preferring to work independently of committees, 
 and ready to give away half her income, she sought for no 
 outside help in these enterprises, which naturally involved 
 a great deal of labour in the way of business as well as much 
 anxious responsibility. Yet to this she added, soon after 
 her own Home was founded, the duties of treasurer to
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 an admirable Home for Boys in Islington, kept by a friend 
 whose striking gifts did not include any marked capacity 
 for business. For twenty-two years, until this Home was 
 closed, she not only acted as its treasurer, but exerted 
 herself indefatigably in maintaining and enlarging the sub- 
 scriptions on which it depended. 
 
 Another of her interests was education. From 1893 
 to 1905 she acted as a manager of Ashburnham and 
 Park Walk Schools in Chelsea ; and adding, as usual, to 
 her official duties, she made personal friends among the 
 teachers, herself took classes (at one time a weekly class in 
 history), gave parties to the children ; and whether she came 
 to her class or her party, the head-mistress tells us, she 
 ' scattered joy.' 
 
 By 1905 she had become deeply impressed by the import- 
 ance of starting young people, on leaving school, in some 
 employment ; and so she began to work with this object. 
 For five or six years she carried on the work single-handed, 
 finding for her proteges training-places, situations, and, in 
 case of need, the money required for apprenticeship ; with 
 the result that, when her private enterprise was merged in 
 that of the Chelsea Apprenticeship Committee, the names 
 of sixty or seventy boys and girls were counted in her 
 books. 
 
 Finally, towards the end of 1911, she made what may be 
 called a return, with a difference, to the kind of social work 
 with which in her girlhood she had begun. Her sister, 
 Mrs. Hopkins, had been for some time a visitor at Holloway 
 Gaol, and Edith was now invited by the chaplain to hold 
 a class there for female prisoners. Once a fortnight, when 
 she was in London, during these last years of her life, she 
 held this class of young women and girls. Her plan was 
 to read to them, or, more often, to tell them in her own 
 words, stories taken, it might be, from Tolstoi's Parables 
 or the Lives of the Saints, and presenting a picture of truth-
 
 8 NEW AND OLD 
 
 fulness or purity or kindness ; and then, without attempt- 
 ing to enforce a moral, she would ask the question : ' Now, 
 don't you think that nice of her ? ' or, ' Wouldn't you like 
 to do a kind thing like that ? ' or, ' Wouldn't you like some- 
 body to say that of you ? ' She had undertaken this task 
 with much diffidence, and nothing that she had ever done 
 tried her more. But it was not her way to count the cost 
 of love ; and this, the most painful of her labours, was 
 among the most successful. In it, too, as in the others, she 
 was not content to make a gift and pass on, but, so far as 
 time and strength allowed, continued to follow with her help 
 and guidance those whose trust or affection she had won. 
 
 Edith Sichei's practical activities were, naturally, un- 
 known to the great majority of those who read her books ; 
 but this is not the only reason why they are recounted 
 here. The fact that she carried them on side by side 
 with continuous literary work was very characteristic of 
 her ; while her ability to combine with apparent ease, and in 
 spite of the weakness of her health, two occupations so 
 different and usually found so conflicting, was a source 
 of wonder to her friends. How it was that she was able 
 to do this may incidentally appear if I now try to 
 recall some traits of her character and of her way of 
 looking at life. 
 
 Those philanthropic activities, it will have been noticed, 
 were almost all concerned with children or young people. 
 Her love for the young, her joy in them, and her hold on 
 them, were no less marked in her private life. To little 
 children she was a fairy godmother. She showered gifts 
 on her girl-relatives and girl-friends, and enjoyed nothing 
 better than devising treats and jaunts for their pleasure. 
 I have mentioned the weekly lessons on Faust that she was 
 giving in the last months of her life ; and she had been 
 holding such small classes in literature or history then for
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 ten or twelve years. Nor did she merely teach. To the 
 end she never lost the power of entering, with eager sym- 
 pathy and on terms of free discussion, into that mental 
 world of a new generation which, to its predecessors, is 
 commonly a region rather surmised than known. Such 
 conversations might leave her amused or perturbed as well 
 as enlightened, but she came to them as a comrade and 
 fellow-seeker, whose experience might be of use, but who 
 had herself plenty to learn. 
 
 Her older friends — her contemporaries or seniors — if they 
 read what has been said of her relations with the young, 
 will feel that, mutatis mutandis, it holds good of her relations 
 with themselves. They will echo the words of M. Andre 
 Beaunier, ' Elle avait la religion de l'amitie,' and may say 
 that to describe her would be to describe a perfect friend. 
 To do this is needless, but a word of caution may be added. 
 She had that passion for giving which makes giving-up a 
 pure pleasure, and the way to delight her was to ask of 
 her ; but to give to her was to delight her too, and there was 
 in her no trace of the disagreeable quality sometimes sug- 
 gested by the words ' self-effacing,' ' humble,' or ' saintly.' 
 In discussion, for example, though she was not controversial 
 and liked companionship in thinking, her attitude was — as 
 indeed it was everywhere — direct and sturdy. If she found 
 a statement obscure she said so ; if she doubted or demurred 
 to it you knew that at once ; if it touched any idea that 
 she valued, she refused to leave it in abeyance. She could 
 think and feel as impersonally as any man, but she had 
 plenty of personality. 
 
 To be habitually helpful, loving, and a good friend comes 
 to no one by instinct, but still a strong impulse to be so 
 lay in Edith Sichel's nature. One may, perhaps, signal 
 out three other marked traits of her native disposition. 
 Those who knew her well in her youth unite in speaking of 
 her fervour, and the ardour with which she threw herself
 
 10 NEW AND OLD 
 
 into all that appealed to her. One of them applies to her 
 Wordsworth's line, ' A creature of a fiery heart ' ; and, even 
 thirty years later, it was impossible to imagine her lethargic 
 or tepid. At the same time she was inclined by nature not 
 merely to serious but to brooding thought. ' She used 
 to remind me,' wrote an early friend, ' of Michael Angelo's 
 Penseroso, not only in the cast of her countenance, but in 
 the sidelong droop of the head, when " entering on thoughts 
 abstruse." ' She never lost this look in moments of abstrac- 
 tion, and the resemblance was no mere fancy. ' But,' the 
 writer goes on, ' the power of enjoyment was as vivid, the 
 sudden lighting of the face into humour or delight as 
 striking.' And this last trait, usually the most obvious at 
 a first meeting with her, was far from being merely super- 
 ficial. Her temperament, ardent and yet deeply serious, 
 was also buoyant, gay, one might almost add mercurial ; 
 her expression frequently one of brilliant animation ; fun 
 danced in her beautiful eyes ; her talk sparkled with wit 
 and humour, and she was never more typically herself than 
 at times when she let herself loose in hilarious nonsense 
 and extravagant gambols of the mind. In her youth, we are 
 told, her companions at such moments ' sat round her in 
 fits of laughter ' ; and so it was to the last. To reproduce 
 her talk at these moments is impossible, but some notion 
 of it may be gathered from the farcical description of 
 an Eisteddfod in one of her letters (Extract 5), or 
 even from the following passage in a Whitechapel report 
 (the names are changed, though the report is thirty 
 years old) : 
 
 ' Eliza Smith. — I went to her home and, for the first time, 
 have ceased to wonder that she is so dirty. Any one with 
 such pitch-black parents could not be otherwise. An inkier 
 couple does not tread Africa. I saw Mr. S. for the first 
 time. . . . The usual hunt for Eliza's address came off, 
 Mrs. S. darting about here and there, like an Ethiopian
 
 INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 weasel, and diving into pots and pans, corners and tea-cups, 
 from which she fished out countless envelopes smothered 
 in dust — none of them Eliza's. At last she gave a frantic 
 leap towards the ceiling and snatched piles of black papers 
 from behind all the pictures and frames — jumping up and 
 down with sudden jerks and quips — and giving short pants 
 for breath — looking, for all the world, like a large acrobatic 
 smut. One longed to brush her away. I believe that she, 
 Pere Smith, and Eliza are all made out of fog, and that it 
 was the fact of Eliza's being in a temper that caused all 
 those fogs last week. She is going to leave her place, as 
 the son of the house hit her across the shoulders ; and I 
 have written to her to come to us.' 
 
 The report from which this extract is taken is full of 
 sordid and painful facts, and is laden with sorrow and pity ; 
 but it was pure gain, both to the writer and to those whom 
 she longed to help, that her heart and her sense of humour 
 were active together, and did not impede each other ; and 
 to this happy union and the buoyancy of her temperament 
 she doubtless owed in part her success in habitually 
 combining philanthropic with literary work, and the 
 apparent ease with which she passed from one to the 
 other. 
 
 But there were much deeper causes of this success, and 
 they concerned her whole outlook upon life, her attitude 
 towards it, and her preferences in art and literature. She 
 was not inclined to any facile form of optimism, but still she 
 believed in human nature and did not fear it. In her view 
 it contains nothing inherently evil. The whole stuff of it 
 is capable of being moulded by sufficient effort into some- 
 thing fine, and is the opportunity of this transforming action. 
 Hence she faced, not without distress but without dismay, 
 the evils which she laboured to lessen ; and one might even 
 say that her sympathy was diminished by nothing that had 
 in it life and energy, and that, if she could have despaired
 
 12 NEW AND OLD 
 
 of any one, it would not have been the sinner but the 
 sluggard or the frivolous. I well remember her deep anxiety 
 and unremitting efforts on behalf of a poor girl imprisoned 
 for a violent crime due to jealousy ; but the crux of the 
 matter for her was not the crime, but her failure to make 
 the criminal see that the crime was bad ; and when at last 
 she succeeded in this she was sure that the upward way was 
 open. As her writings show, she was much attracted by 
 the saintly character ; but its ardour, its love, and its 
 happiness were the sources of the attraction, and any mere 
 asceticism repelled her. Among writers, too, the rich, 
 expansive, forward-looking natures appealed to her most. 
 In the Women and Men of the French Renaissance there is 
 an admirable chapter on Rabelais, an author whom, accord- 
 ing to Besant, no woman can read, but, for her, a prophet 
 with a vision of the liberated human spirit. It was this 
 that she missed in Montaigne, of whom she wrote with 
 sympathy and insight but with much less gusto, and 
 whom she calls (in a letter) a ' mountain-hating thinker,' 
 ' Montaigne who understood Monday so well and Sunday 
 so little.' 
 
 There was nothing one-sided or extreme in the tendency 
 I am describing, though it was occasionally expressed in 
 terms which might mislead. For instance, in the Thoughts 
 (68-72), the ' love ' in which she believed is sharply con- 
 trasted with ' morality,' the laws of which are said to mean 
 only ' extended fear.' What is here called ' morality ' is 
 obviously one particular kind of morality, and what is 
 contrasted with it is a higher and more adequate kind. Her 
 preference for the latter, for ' goodness ' or ' love,' is thor- 
 oughly characteristic, but her language might suggest that 
 she sympathised with the fashion of ' a-moralism,' or even 
 that ' love ' meant for her something sentimental or some- 
 thing reckless. No idea could have less foundation. The 
 description of life as an adventure appealed to her strongly,
 
 INTRODUCTION 18 
 
 but the adventure, for her, was like that of Rabbi Ren 
 Ezra, a ' high enterprise ' or ' spiritual romance.' l Though 
 she often enjoyed it with all her heart and believed it should 
 be happy, she never supposed that the possibilities of human 
 nature could be elicited without effort, abnegation, or pain. 
 If she had been asked to name the first gift she would choose 
 to give, were such things givcable, to the young people whom 
 she tried to help, she would probably have answered, ' Self- 
 control.' ' Love,' she wrote, ' is the most austere discipline 
 of life, as well as its sweetest balm.' She herself was as 
 strong as she was kind. She delighted to ' scatter joy ' ; 
 no bound was set to her sympathy either with sorrow or 
 with failings ; the words of a friend, ' you could say anything 
 to her,' are true ; but so are the words of another, ' she had 
 the uncompromising sternness of love.' Hence she recog- 
 nised the presence of love in shapes that may seem its 
 enemies, and called duty ' love hardened and extended 
 beyond the personal sphere.' She regarded Tolstoi with 
 the utmost veneration, and much of his gospel was a gospel 
 for her ; but the application of some of his ideas she 
 decisively rejected. Punishment, she said, is not the oppo- 
 site of forgiveness, it is ' the reversed torch of love, and 
 none the less a light in darkness because it is reversed ' ; 
 and, while private judgment on the sinner is wrong, judg- 
 ment of the sin is love of the sinner. 
 
 Thus her attitude to life may perhaps best be defined as 
 one of glad and grateful acceptance on condition of trans- 
 formation. Life, in her view, brings much that is pure and 
 unsought joy, more perhaps that needs this transforming 
 effort, little or nothing that cannot be made to contribute 
 to an inward and abiding happiness. It was in this spirit 
 that she aided others, and strove to deal with her own life. 
 For example, she was well acquainted with pain, but she 
 
 1 Her own phrases, about work in the East End, in the memorial speech on 
 Canon Barnett and the character of his influence.
 
 14 NEW AND OLD 
 
 neither yielded to it nor rebelled against it ; she used it. 
 ' I have been travelling,' she wrote once, ' in my own father- 
 land of Pain, which has its special prospects and experi- 
 ences, though the inns there are uncomfortable and 
 expensive.' x Again, the law of our life, as of nature, is 
 
 change : 
 
 Nothing can be as it lias been before ; 
 Better, so call it, only not the same : 
 
 and this hurts us; but every present, as it comes, has its unique 
 good to offer, and we should not only accept it but welcome it 
 with hospitality, and should give the same welcome to that 
 which succeeds it. 2 ' I am glad,' she wrote in a birthday letter 
 to Mary Coleridge, ' that you are getting older, as I know 
 it means greater happiness for you than youth could pos- 
 sibly mean . . . and that is the greatest compliment one 
 could pay to any human being.' It is so because this in- 
 crease of happiness implies in the human being who possesses 
 it that constant work of transformation. And this again — 
 it is another main point in her faith — means a continuous 
 growth, in which the past lives on, and which is as secure 
 as anything human can be against the accidents of the future. 
 ' The most blessed thing in it all,' she wrote in another 
 letter, ' seems to me that, in spite of outward circumstances 
 and personal ills and aches, something mysterious keeps on 
 growing inside one, which makes more and more for happi- 
 ness.' This real ' happiness,' which is sharply contrasted 
 with mere ' pleasure,' and which frivolity can never know, 
 cannot be lost : ' when happiness has once sat upon the 
 hearth, the fire is always alight ' {Thoughts, 17) ; ' the 
 comforting thing in life is that happiness comes from 
 within, not from without, and that it lives apart from 
 sorrow or any of the assaults of life and death ; and that, 
 the more we love, the more it comes to the strange rolling 
 
 1 See Poems, 4. 
 
 2 See the opening numbers in the series of Thoughts.
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 years. . . . Amidst all the deep floods of sorrow, it is a 
 blessed fact that to wholesome and unselfish minds life 
 itself is holy, and its real interests do not jar with death.' 
 And so, as she undoubtingly believed, whatever the change 
 called death may involve, it cannot mean the cessation of 
 this continuous growth and happiness. 
 
 The way of regarding life which I have been describing 
 and illustrating, was partly formed and constantly sus- 
 tained by meditation and reflection, and it amounted to a 
 belief or faith. And was not this, it may be asked, also 
 a religious belief or faith ? No one who knew Edith Sichel 
 at all intimately could hesitate in answering this question, 
 and a single sentence in one of her letters may give the 
 answer : ' The immanence of God and the life of Christ 
 are my treasures.' But this religious belief was not a theo- 
 logical creed. Neither the native cast of her mind nor the 
 course of her studies inclined her in any marked degree to 
 philosophical or theological theory ; and the value of her 
 faith does not lie in the systematic connection or complete- 
 ness of her ideas. Theories, moral, theological, or aesthetic, 
 are frequently of small account because their authors, 
 with an unusual gift for analysis or system, have only an 
 average personal experience of the matter they attempt to 
 theorise. Hers was the opposite case. Her religious faith, 
 her ways of looking at life and art and literature, her atti- 
 tude to the human beings whom she saw with her eyes or 
 imagined from the record left of them, sprang directly from 
 her experience, and were in turn tested by it. This experi- 
 ence, whether grave or gay, was exceptionally vivid and 
 whole-hearted ; while the variety of her own nature and 
 interests, the number of her friends and proteges, and her 
 wonderful power of imaginative and practical sympathy, 
 gave it also an unusual width. And, since it was both 
 truly and happily expressed in what she wrote, the follow- 
 ing pages will show her to strangers infinitely better than
 
 16 NEW AND OLD 
 
 any words of mine, and to others will recall at every turn 
 hours and days and years radiant with the light of her 
 wit and laughter, and glowing with the warmth of her 
 generous and loving heart. 
 
 A. C. Bradley.
 
 NEW AND OLD 
 
 B
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 1 
 
 £ often think, when I am wandering through the picturesque 
 mire of Wapping, that there would be far more essential 
 good in the work if the picturesqueness were taken away ; 
 if the poor were quite respectable though just as needy, 
 the streets clean, the hovels houses. Picturesqueness — 
 moral, mental, and outward — lends a glamour which detracts 
 from the disinterestedness of one's work. I always feel 
 wholesomely humiliated in the East-end by the fact of the 
 people I see being much better than me ; they rise so much 
 higher above their circumstances than I do over mine, and 
 ought to be visiting me ! 
 
 If one could only implant in them the idea of loving 
 fellowship among themselves, which, after all, is Christianity ; 
 if one could teach them through the human to reach the 
 Divine ! (1885.) 
 
 2 
 
 Talking of beams reminds me that I have lost my heart 
 ... to Shrewsbury. Twice during my migrations I have 
 had to wait for my train there, and have employed these 
 spare hours, like a good busy little girl, by getting on hand- 
 shaking terms with Shrewsbuiy. It suits me perfectly, and 
 presently, when Shadwell has been reduced to a Belgravian 
 
 1 [With a few exceptions the following extracts are arranged in chrono- 
 logical order, an arrangement which has a biographical value, though it pro- 
 duces some sharp contrasts in subject and tone. They have been chosen 
 mainly to illustrate characteristics of the writer, and in particular some 
 which do not fully appear in the reprinted papers, or are barely mentioned in 
 the Introduction ; for example, the delight in natural beauty and in works of 
 art, which was obvious even on a slight acquaintance with her. 
 
 19
 
 20 NEW AND OLD 
 
 stolidity and Whitechapel to a Mayfair monotony, I shall 
 migrate there. What a dear ramshackle old place it is, 
 with harum-scarum houses and ill-regulated shops and streets 
 running no man knows why, for some lead nowhere at all. 
 And the oddest houses, black and white and lattice-windowed, 
 jump out upon you where you expect them least. And the 
 streets are called ' Mardol ' and ' Dog pole ' and ' Butcher's 
 Row ' and ' Pride Hill.' The cakes were made in Eden, 
 and the market is full of real, live, farmers' daughters, 
 selling real golden butter and ruddy plums. . . . 
 
 Here I still pasture a la sheep and return to my muttons 
 daily. Do you find that one's feeling to Nature changes 
 with advancing years ? I used to believe in your l great 
 progenitor's 
 
 O Lady, we receive but what we give, 
 And iut our life alone does Nature live. 
 
 But now I don't any longer. The great Mother of us all has 
 a holy charm to soothe me which nobody else has. If we 
 come to her determined to make her into a Proteus who 
 changes form with every one of our passions, our thoughts, 
 our feelings, she will act like a wise mother, and teach us 
 our folly by complying with our request. But if we come 
 to her like wayward children as we are, and lie down in her 
 lap and let her do as she will with us, surely she will hush 
 us to rest almost like rest eternal, and to the peace which 
 passeth all understanding. (1885.) 
 
 3 
 
 [Report of Whitechapel Girls] 
 
 Harriet Webb 
 
 Oh, what a black and tangled web we weave 
 When first with Webb we practise to deceive, 
 And fondly dream we may reclaim her youth 
 And tame her — savage, smutty and uncouth, 
 
 1 [The letter was addressed to Mary Coleridge.]
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 21 
 
 With surly visage dyed by ebon soot, 
 
 And voice deep-buried in her left-band boot ; 
 
 Then flee from hope, nor yet to learn refuse 
 
 That Guardian-angels aren't the slightest use. 
 
 And this is all the cheer we dare rehearse, 
 
 That, though she can't improve, she can't be worse. 
 
 Poor thing ! her mistress is really an angel to keep her. 
 She told me wonderful legends of how Harriet rails at her 
 if she stops out, and opens the door on her return with * It 's 
 me 'as 'ad the pleasure, isn't it now ? ' and how she rushes 
 into the work-room and makes all the ' young ladies ' cry 
 by her winged words, and how she ' makes herself so familiar 
 with all the visitors that they run away from the house,' 
 especially one whom she described coyly as ' a superior 
 visitor — a gentleman from Northampton,' who appears to 
 have been so alarmed by Harriet's noises after his depar- 
 ture that he returned to look at her with alarm over the 
 window-blind. 
 
 I am really sorry for the mistress. She is a pathetic 
 instance of lonely woman in reduced circumstances, still 
 clinging to the pathetic rags of polysyllabic gentility, salts 
 her sentences with 'nevertheless,' shows a patrician contempt 
 for ' no,' and says ' nay ' instead. Her boarding-school 
 smile is a matter for tears. She is very brave, too, for a 
 sempstress's life is a hard one, and she is rudely treated by 
 her employers. That seems to me a tragedy, the struggle 
 for bread of people who have only been brought up on 
 callisthenics and painting on china, and surely they need 
 visiting more than the girls. (1886.) 
 
 The Sandown races were the first I had ever seen, and it 
 was like reading six pages of Tolstoi — or rather vice versa — 
 though not so exciting. Still it was very wonderful — the 
 rush and the light and the colour of it, the rainbow jockeys
 
 22 NEW AND OLD 
 
 on their glossy-coated steeds straight out of the Arabian 
 Nights, pawing, arching their royal necks, flying across the 
 smooth-shaven turf. And the breathless pause before the 
 winner outstrips his comrades ! And then the people — so 
 different from one's everyday experience — overstrung old 
 gentlemen with vicious waistcoats ; burly old ladies with 
 very golden hair ; queer young ladies with hats as high 
 as their manners ; octogenarian Adonises with sly, bald 
 faces, who looked as if they had been born and bred in 
 Bond Street at five o'clock of a June afternoon ; and 
 hundreds of walking chessboards with voices as loud as 
 their checks and hats on one side (why do horsey people 
 always wear their hats on one side ? I can get no one to 
 solve this mystery for me). What a good thing it is for 
 one to see a wholly different side of life from that which one 
 is accustomed to — even if it only teaches one that there are 
 things wholly out of one's own taste and experience, in 
 which people take an absorbing interest. . . . All the same, 
 and priggishness apart, the way races take place (not the 
 races themselves, nor the bare fact of seeing them) is quite 
 out of keeping with Christianity. Straight upon the hideous 
 din of the betting, and the visible fact that thousands are 
 spent on the mere keeping of horses, came poor starving- 
 Mrs. Payne's plaintive, ' Yes, Miss, I know the rich 'ave 
 their troubles — they trouble about the poor ' ; and one 
 knew that the turning of the Temple into a den of thieves 
 was by no means a story of the past alone. (1886.) 
 
 5 
 
 To-day was the last and the least good day of the Eisteddfod. 
 It has been very fine — a glorious performance of the Elijah, 
 and a Bach Chorus which was sublime. The Gladstone 
 day was unparalleled ; they took £1100 that one day instead 
 of the usual £300. As he was going into the Pavilion a 
 poor old woman threw a parcel at him, which he caught
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 23 
 
 anxiously, not seeing the donor and imagining it was some 
 missive of importance. On opening it he found that it was 
 a red handkerchief for him to tie round his head in case of 
 a draught ; the ardent old dame thought this the most 
 acceptable guise in which to express her Liberalism. 
 
 My general idea of the Eisteddfod to-day, when we got 
 inside the tent, was that of a large show of old men : every 
 kind of old man in Wales — lean old men with coal-black 
 eyes, fat old men with crumpled cuffs, middling old men 
 with insignificant gestures, poetical old men with half- 
 open mouths, discreet old men with tight-shut lips, business- 
 like old men, polite old men and rude old men. They were 
 all herded on a rough wooden platform with a background 
 of red cloth. 
 
 I subsequently discovered that they were all ' Bards.' 
 Every Bard is apparently subject to two conditions : he 
 must abjure soap eternally, and light an undying fire in his 
 black, black eye. 
 
 The central figure to-day was a hugely stout gentleman 
 with a Beethovenish head, long grey hair anointed with 
 priestly oil which ran over to his coat in the absence of a 
 beard, on to which, scripturally speaking, it ought to have 
 fallen. He had an air of cheap but ineffable Mystery about 
 him, and of a secret in his Eye (which can only be spelt with 
 a capital to give the faintest idea of its power). His nom 
 de plume was Huffa Mone (which his real name was Williams, 
 but every Bard has a nom de plume), and he was the Chief 
 Bard of Anglesea. 
 
 There was also present the oldest Bard on record, with a 
 snow-white beard ten miles long like a nursery-rhyme, who 
 made a speech (also ten miles long) in a weak pipey inaudible 
 voice, and who was deafeningly applauded for his age and 
 for his inaudible words. Both he and the Bard of Anglesea 
 presented broad coat-fronts smothered in old Eisteddfod 
 medals and blue ribbons.
 
 24 NEW AND OLD 
 
 The Bards were complimented by a good many dusky 
 prelates— the Revd. LLBGWST-Hueffdwx, Canon Plllmn 
 Teddy, and others of like names. They were all cracking 
 wonderful consonantine jokes and guttural quips with the 
 Bards. A few Shropshire curates in low hats represented 
 England in the audience. 
 
 Roughly speaking, the Eisteddfod seemed to me to consist 
 in a succession of things like this : — as I said, to begin with, 
 an Old Man Show — swarms of hale old gentlemen clinging 
 together : deafening applause from the audience : the 
 smallest old gentleman leaps up without any warning, 
 roars out a dozen consonants in a gigantic voice, and throws 
 himself passionately on the neck of the largest old gentleman : 
 they embrace : they weep : the Welsh prelates snort and sniffle 
 some gutturals : the old men bow proudly to the audience : 
 the audience rises and screams : the old gentlemen retire 
 arm-in-arm blinded with tears ; and a brass-band strikes 
 up a tune quite enough to finish them off in their infirm 
 and highly nervous condition. Then a nimble gentleman 
 leaps down from the platform, seizes a coy lady from the 
 audience, leads her on to the platform, drags the two old 
 men back from their retirement, and lays their hands on 
 her kid glove ; they kneel ; other old gentlemen stand 
 round her, like post-Raphaelite angels, with their coat- 
 tails for wings outspread ; she wags her purple bonnet over 
 the kneeling ones ; a cheap brass-trumpet is blown over 
 both, and she alternately crowns their heads and pins 
 green favours in their button-holes. Then you find that 
 there have been competitions and that these prone octogen- 
 arians are the winners, the preux chevaliers of this Land of 
 Frumps. The provincial Rowenas and Clotildas in slate- 
 coloured flounces, from whom they receive their guerdon, 
 approach this greatest occasion in their lives as a High and 
 Holy Festival. The trumpet is supposed to increase the 
 impression of a joust.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 25 
 
 Oh what would you have said if you had seen me on my 
 bench suddenly pounced upon, dragged on to the platform 
 on the arm of a Welshman with an order in his button-hole, 
 and led forward before the crowded Hall ? If you had 
 beheld me first bowing and smirking and pinning a red, 
 white, and blue rosette on to the coat of a Cymric divine — 
 then clasping his hand and murmuring low intense con- 
 gratulations in his down-bent ear ? (Though why I pinned 
 that favour on or congratulated him, or what I said or what 
 he said, I shall never know till the end of the chapter, and 
 I 'm certain he won't either.) I only know that he made 
 a long speech in Welsh at which everybody roared, and that 
 I retired, again on the arm of Citoyen Taffy, and that it was 
 terribly formidable to be watched by an audience of at least 
 a thousand, especially with a disrespectful little sister in fits 
 of laughter just below. (1888.) 
 
 6 
 
 I have plunged into Borrow — you would adore him. His 
 first picture of the Gipsies in Lavengro sticks to one and, 
 like all racy great things, appeals to all ages and tastes. 
 Such a curious combination of magic and reality, dream 
 and adventure ! One feels all at the same time like a child 
 and like an old man in reading him. ... I can't conceive 
 what a spell is in the man, and how it is that he holds 
 you breathless over rat-catching, ' bruisers ' and philology. 
 The Romany part and the Thief part and the Tramp part, 
 etc., speak for themselves, and so does the authorship part. 
 He makes the commonplace uncommon and the uncommon 
 commonplace in the most extraordinary way. (1889.) 
 
 To-day the banks on the Witley Road are glowing with 
 amethystine heather dripping with raindrops ; the corn-
 
 26 NEW AND OLD 
 
 fields are turning gold, and shine out in glistening strips as 
 far as one can see amongst the green meadows and patches 
 of purple soil and russet field, so that from the distance the 
 land looks like Dame Earth's regalia, brimming over with 
 jewels and guarded by the opal wings of Seraphim — at 
 any rate that is what the clouds look like to-day — iridescent 
 and watery. Everything is much deeper in colour than 
 when you and I took the walk together which I have just 
 been. 
 
 I felt exceedingly contemplative, and thought how the 
 leaves and the fields had changed and how nothing can 
 remain the same by an immovable law, and remembered 
 Browning's 
 
 Nothing can be as it has been before ; 
 
 Better, so call it, only not the same. 
 To draw one beauty into our heart's core, 
 
 And keep it changeless ! such our claim ; 
 So answered, — Never more ! 
 
 And I thought, too, how the comfort and strength, as 
 well as the sorrow of life, lies in this, and how thanks are 
 most of all due to God for such a lav/, which may make one 
 year full of grief and labour but the next full of soothing 
 and rest ; which creates our very weakness that it may grow 
 into strength ; which changes our relations and positions 
 in life, that our souls and sympathies may widen and that 
 we may not stick always in the same form in the Big School ; 
 which takes away the crushingness of grief and the sore- 
 ness, and makes it the holiest place in life ; which takes 
 away pure lives that they may remain more steadfastly, 
 and that love may grow the stronger for their absence. . . . 
 I think one grasps more and more that it is the sweetness 
 of a life which lives on and is strong, and has power over 
 others. 
 
 George Sand's sunset certainly borders on sunrise, and, 
 as she grows old, her judgement gains more of the Prome-
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 27 
 
 thcan fire. She and Mrs. Kemble surely have the same 
 flaming judgement ? It seems as if by strength of passion 
 for life (no longer for living) and its problems she pierced 
 through them and saw beyond the veil, because she could 
 use both heart and head and therefore had Fire, which is 
 both light and warmth. 
 
 And as old Age, in which the passion of love, as it is 
 usually understood, has no place, gradually came upon 
 her, it seems as if she were left to us in all the dignity of 
 her one pure passion, glorious in tenderness, her heart 
 purified and facing the truth. ... I suppose people are 
 never truly adorable till they are patient, and they are 
 never truly patient till they are old, great and generous. 
 (1889.) 
 
 8 
 
 Such an Easter — the whole earth rising again into a miracle 
 of hope and the promise of fuller life to come ! 
 
 A sweet little Service, with the usual Easter combined 
 smell of primroses, mackintosh and school-children (which 
 I heard denned lately as ' l'odeur du bon Chretien '), and 
 the sea outside to lead the choir. One is filled with ardour 
 here by the great Easter-tide going on outside the four 
 Church walls, with the pulpit where a joyless Curate prates 
 of Easter Joy with limpest lips ; the Easter of Nature and 
 the truth behind it all — the ' Sterben und Werden ' which 
 is the law of all being, human as well as that of woods and 
 meadows ; the unceasing Resurrection of the Dead that 
 goes on in the midst of life. 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding - place to new, 
 And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 
 seems the best Easter text. . . . The most blessed thing 
 in it all seems to me that, in spite of outward circumstances 
 and personal ills and aches, something mysterious keeps
 
 28 NEW AND OLD 
 
 on growing inside one which makes more and more for 
 happiness. Even though one loses grasp of it for a time, 
 one gains a more sustained belief in the morning, and a 
 hope which may not be so impetuous as at the spring of 
 life, but will endure more surely since it has faced experi- 
 ence. It is curious how Faith grows unseen and by no 
 observable process — certainly by no actual reasonings 
 (often in spite of them) — but by living and feeling and, 
 above all, by waiting in silence. It sometimes seems as 
 if waiting perfectly were the real science of life, and patience 
 the highest secret of the soul, and that if we do not interrupt 
 God's order by irreverent fretful impatience we shall perhaps 
 ' see partly,' and find and fulfil the true meaning of our 
 lives, instead of forestalling it wrongly and turning our- 
 selves into futilities. 
 
 I have a fancy for reading George Sand just now (this 
 time last year I was deep in Vol. iv. of VHistoire de ma Vie) 
 and find her as bracing as ever. She writes to Prince 
 Napoleon : ' Soyez done heureux puisque le bonheur est une 
 conquete. — Les jours de degout et de la fatigue reviennent, 
 le bonheur a l'etat de realite complete n'est pas une chose 
 permanente, mais la morale est qu'il faut combattre toujours 
 pour augmenter votre tresor de force et de foi.' Is not that 
 a Baptism of fire ? I came upon it just after I had been 
 writing that rigmarole last night, which was curious. (1889.) 
 
 9 
 
 Lucca, Easter Sunday. 
 
 I have been thinking of you so much ever since I touched 
 the soil and consommes of France ; and at Nervi, which 
 reminded me so much of Cannes, it was all I could do to 
 refrain from running upstairs to fetch you for a walk. And 
 now here we are in this most mediaeval of all places — 
 ducal palaces, mullioned windows, Lombard churches,
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 29 
 
 Basilican churches, open shops and narrow winding streets 
 whose houses nearly meet — all set in a framework of old 
 red walls and violet hills, fold upon fold. So mediaeval is 
 it that yesterday evening, in our first walk to the Duomo, 
 when the city was wrapped in mysterious twilight, not only 
 did we see an old couple in deep mourning kneeling in 
 fervent prayer on the stone outside the Cathedral door (I 
 am almost sure they were murderers in mourning for the 
 murdered), but also we actually beheld a gleamingly hand- 
 some Italian in a dissembling cloak climb up to a mullioned 
 window, look in passionately, and descend. We imagined 
 he was looking to see whether his love was alone, but it 
 is probable he was only spying whether there was veal or 
 beef for dinner : the Italian's look for love and veal, I have 
 long since discovered, is one and the same. But this is a 
 digression, and the fact is I don't feel I can describe the 
 indescribable : the only adequate thing to do would be 
 to send you one of the enchanting glimpses we get at every 
 turn through a crumbling archway — a glimpse of garden 
 and russet wall — of a mist of pink peach-blossom, bare fig- 
 trees, and the glossy leaves and pale fruit of the lemon- 
 groves. Or I should like to forward you a whole long narrow 
 street of girls and women in scarlet and gold and faded 
 green, with bright kerchiefs on their heads, as they walk 
 along, dragging rainbow babies by the hand, or stand in 
 groups round the splashing fountains gossiping, their copper 
 jugs in their hands. 
 
 As for the Campo Santo, I will not bore you with its 
 wonders or the sculpture of Nicolo Pisano, all of which 
 doubtless you know. Pisa impressed me sadly as a town. 
 It seemed a dead city, with this one live secret of Art throb- 
 bing deep in its soul, like a faded woman who has once been 
 beautiful, now only kept alive by a passionate hidden 
 thought. I am writing utter nonsense, but the combina- 
 tion of cathedrals and risotto makes me high-flown. (1891.)
 
 30 NEW AND OLD 
 
 10 
 
 Rome. 
 
 Oh, it is difficult to write here ! When one isn't possessed 
 one is resting, and when one isn't resting one is thinking, 
 and when one isn't thinking one is sleeping. 
 
 What a region it is — this Caesar- world, one with this 
 Nature-world, and then this Art-world ! I feel as if I 
 had been confirmed by Apollo on the steps of the world — 
 There ! 
 
 You can't imagine the ineffable beauty of the Caesars' 
 Palace, and its ineffable pathos — the blackbirds singing 
 their hearts out in the empty halls carpeted with young 
 grass ! 
 
 I can't write about the statues ; of the immortal white 
 world in the Vatican and the Capitol I shall love to tell you. 
 You can't think how Cory-like the room of Philosophers' 
 Busts made me feel. It was like shaking hands — no, not 
 hands but souls, with them. ... I am happy, and getting 
 quite well. (1891.) 
 
 11 
 
 Rome. 
 
 You certainly ought to be here in this place without a 
 beginning or an end, without anything but a silent, speak- 
 ing eternity, peopled by still white citizens, instinct with 
 an inexpressible kind of life beyond life — the ineffable 
 enchantment of marble. It is the world of sculpture here 
 which seizes me most, I think — always excepting the world 
 of nature ; but that belongs to the city and includes it, 
 as one includes a person's atmosphere in speaking of his 
 existence. 
 
 Every Titan wall of russet-brown is seen through a mist 
 of pink peach-blossom ; every jagged archway is a frame 
 for violet hills and Judas- trees in ardent full blossom ; the 
 sheep-skinned shepherd-boys drive their flocks that wander
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 31 
 
 in and out between the broken columns and grass-grown 
 tombs on the Appian Way, nibbling the violets without 
 any respect of persons. To a sheep the dust of a Mr. 
 Jones is the same as that of Csecilia Metella. And so to me 
 the mighty walls and sculptured arches and the giant 
 battle-field of a Forum are part and parcel of the nature of 
 Rome and of her very essence — if you come to ask me about 
 them from their historical side I should say it is the Art 
 world which possesses me most here. 
 
 You ask me for one description of a statue, but, as I 
 can't put them into prose, I will send you the one I have 
 put into verse. Ilaria Caretta, in the Cathedral at Lucca, 
 is like a Browning poem cut in white marble — a very young 
 woman, heavenlily lovely and serene in the sleep of death 
 — all rest and no pain. 
 
 Death and the Sculptor hoth a lady loved : 
 Death and the Sculptor wrestled hand to hand : 
 The Sculptor conquered Death, as it behoved, 
 Since Art holds Life and Death at her command. 
 Death took the lady, hut the Sculptor kept 
 The beauty and the blossom of her youth, 
 And gave her back to men as if she slept, 
 A marble mystery of peace and truth. 
 Thou still white woman, sleeping evermore, 
 Eternity of silence and of grace ! 
 Time spell-bound stands afar, and we before 
 Such rest would kneel as in a holy place, 
 Thankful thy sleep can never finish, or 
 Life bring a shadow to that perfect face. 
 
 (1891.) 
 
 12 
 
 Siena, May 1891. 
 
 Since Rome 1 seem to have lived a lifetime of beauty — of 
 lights and shadows, of golden suns and white moons turning 
 the olive-trees to silver as they bend and sway to each other, 
 half angelic and half courtly, for all the world like Perugino's 
 Seraphs. The sight I almost like the best is that of the
 
 32 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Madonna-faced women here, gay-skirted, with figures of 
 such gracious curves, who watch their flocks in the fields 
 and work the while at their distaffs (real old fairy-tale 
 distaffs), or stand up to their waists in the bright green 
 barley, or walk in company of their fierce, sunny husbands 
 behind the carts drawn by great white oxen, bom for 
 mythological characters to sit on. 
 
 One of the things I enjoyed most was going to Assisi 
 and moving about where St. Francis actually did tread. 
 What those Churches of Assisi are you can't think. You 
 seem to have entered a solemn rainbow, and then discover 
 that every crannied wall, arch, apse, roof is smothered in 
 frescoes, three-quarters of them Giotto at his very best. 
 I can only say that it is more like Dante in colour than 
 anything else : the same dewy childhood of mind, the same 
 manly power — almost grim, — the same godly courage, the 
 same severity of judgement and sober truth, — not quite 
 the same might of horror. 
 
 St. Francis wedding Poverty is perhaps the most wonder- 
 ful — the bride is so grim, and yet so pure that she becomes 
 beautiful, with a purely spiritual beauty. Her face and 
 figure are quite white ; the bridegroom's clothes are grey- 
 black ; and all about them is the crowd of citizens and 
 nobles, in their coifs and birettas and Chaucer head- 
 dresses, whom Browning alone knew intimately. In one 
 comer, robed in lilac-grey, is a figure like Dante, beautiful, 
 uncompromising and full of religion. 
 
 One does so strongly realise here, in the fiery Baptisms 
 of Art one is having, that religion is born only of simplicity 
 and depends on it, and that, whatever these people believed, 
 they were bound to be religious because they were as simple 
 as babes. I feel that Giotto is the one who, above all, 
 through his mastery managed to convey soul as foremost, 
 together with beauty of body and without any rudeness. 
 Cimabue, and the early masters here at Siena, are sublime
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 33 
 
 in their pathos, because they have no body or (at best in a 
 Cimabue) a body of glorious rudeness, and so they express 
 nothing but soul piercing through the crude lines. But it 
 seems to me infinitely greater to possess the power of beauty 
 and yet to make soul the foremost impression. And, to 
 my ignorant mind, that is Giotto's crown of masterdom. 
 Giotto must have believed ardently in dogma as well as 
 spirit, and that dogma in painting is a divine sensation. 
 One can only return to ' just like Dante.' 
 
 13 
 
 Renan is at present employing — I can't say absorbing — 
 my mind. After reading Martineau it is like chewing rose- 
 leaves when one has been eating daily bread, however 
 heavily baked. I like his history, but his joie and charme 
 bother me, and there is — from whatever point of view 
 Christ be taken — a kind of golden blasphemy about his 
 yachting parties on the Lake of Galilee and ' courses ' among 
 the mountains. He cooks French dishes out of divine 
 truths, and makes the disciples on their apostolic mission 
 into a species of French excursionist ! 
 
 But he gives one infinite amusement and much interest, 
 so one ought not to grumble, — only I wish he didn't un- 
 simplify and un-sublimify things so much. (1891./ 
 
 14 
 
 I am truly thankful to have seen Mrs. Colman. 1 One cer- 
 tainly can say of her that ' Life is perfected in Death,' 
 though one would rather say something simpler. Specu- 
 lation seems more than ever vain after a sight like that of 
 her faith and suffering, and the only solution we can seek 
 about final things is to be found in humble life, in action 
 and endurance, far from the tangle of words. After all 
 
 [A poor woman dying in Whitechapel.]
 
 34 NEW AND OLD 
 
 it is the pure in heart, not the talkers, who see God. And 
 how strange it is that the same bodily suffering should 
 destroy faith in some and confirm it in others ! Behold, 
 these things are a mystery, (1892.) 
 
 15 
 
 [Tennyson's Funeral] 
 
 I have just returned from the Abbey, and I am sure you 
 would have felt with me that it bore a wonderful impression 
 of that kingly personality — of his state and his simplicity. 
 Every inch of standing-room was thronged by 11.30, and 
 every place seemed full of a noble sorrow. The Gordon 
 boys were outside and presented arms when the coffin 
 arrived, covered by the Union Jack and having only laurel 
 wreaths down its centre. . . . Poet's Corner was flooded 
 with sunshine. When the procession moved there from 
 the Altar-steps, all the poets seemed to be waiting for their 
 mighty brother and to be stretching white arms of welcome 
 to him. . . . And they and he seemed so much more alive 
 than most of the people around that one could only reverse 
 the usual words and say, ' In the midst of Death we are in 
 Life.' {October 12, 1892.) 
 
 16 
 
 There is some support, not consolation — is there not ? — in 
 the thought that the real things of life are sacred and one 
 with death and all that is beyond ; that, in feeling for 
 them, we are one with that which God has taken to himself. 
 . . . Theo's swift, tender insight, her fantastic grace, her 
 distinction of soul, her genius for companionship, and her 
 dainty mirth have put a fragrance into my life which will 
 always make the world a sweeter place for me. . . . One 
 knows, in thinking of her, why the world has lived on the 
 faith that God was made a little child. . . . For any one
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 35 
 
 who has known her there is no need to quarrel about creeds. 
 . . . Genius for life such as hers must include the life 
 beyond, beside every form of life here from highest to 
 lowest. (1896.) 
 
 17 
 
 [After visiting a dying woman in Whitechapel, a protegee 
 for sixteen years.] 
 
 It was all profoundly moving and heartrending. The 
 doctor had given her up, and she seemed to be dying, and 
 had that look of dignity and beauty which Death gives 
 alike to kings and beggars. The strangely faithful love — 
 so undeserved and so bountifully given — of a simple un- 
 trained heart like hers humbles and blesses one. (1898.) 
 
 18 
 
 My Lafayette experience has been wonderful in charm if 
 not in bulk. I started early from Fontainebleau, got out 
 at Montgeron, and of course found the distance more like 
 five than two kilometres. I first travelled in a sort of 
 coach to the dear, drowsy village of Yeres, which might 
 be buried ten fathoms deep in the Provinces instead of 
 being near Paris. The road to it runs by the silver river 
 Yeres, a tributary of the Seine, bordered by pollarded 
 willows. In the heart of the slumbrous little place is an 
 ancient feudal tower with turrets, and opposite to it a 
 Renaissance fountain. The tower, I find, is all that remains 
 of a castle, of which it formed the gateway and which 
 belonged to Charles vin.'s secretary ; the fountain was 
 formerly in the garden. The whole village became so much 
 excited by my arrival and the fact that there was nothing 
 for me to eat within a radius of some miles, that it seemed 
 likely an emeute would ensue. At last, as I was still wander- 
 ing about in search of food, two opulent old gentlemen in
 
 36 NEW AND OLD 
 
 straw hats (a kind of French Brothers Cheery ble) peered 
 over their villa-wall and directed me to a funny little pot- 
 house, where two Jacques-Bonshommes from the fields 
 were munching, and there I found bread and cream-cheese. 
 I hired the only carriage and drove about a mile, with beat- 
 ing heart, down the stately sycamore avenue of La Grange, 
 on either side the whitening wheat-fields which Lafayette 
 was so sanguine about ninety years ago. 
 
 The chateau is beautiful and wonderfully impressive ; 
 red-brick faced with white ; built in Henry iv.'s time, and 
 surrounded by a deep moat : with endless broad grassy 
 avenues on either side, like those at St. Cloud, and breezy 
 meadows with elms beyond them. It belonged at one 
 time to the murdered Guise's widow, then to Louis xin. It 
 is now let to a tenant — no descendant of Lafayette — who 
 has been there for twenty-five years. All approach is 
 forbidden, entrance inside impossible, and I had to bribe 
 the lady of the Bakery to allow me to go, accompanied by 
 her, round to the other side of the house ; and there I 
 sought and found Fox's ivy-tree. 1 No one knows any- 
 thing about it. It is the only one on the house. I was 
 separated from it by the moat, so I had to pick some leaves 
 growing near the bridge — one for you and one for me. I 
 came away, still more I stood there, with tears in my heart 
 if not in my eyes, and felt the spirit-touch of the noble 
 souls that haunt that avenue and hover over those sun- 
 tanned walls. The air was full of the scent of limes, and 
 the shifting clouds and lights and shadows seemed all one 
 with the house and its history. 2 (1897.) 
 
 1 [Fox and his wife stayed for some time with the Lafayettes in 1802, and 
 he planted against the house an ivy-tree, which had overrun its walls before 
 Lafayette died in 1834. — The Household of the Lafayettes, p. 304.] 
 
 2 [La Grange in later years was inhabited, and is so still, by the Marquis 
 de Lasteyrie, great-grandson to Lafayette. Edith Sichel met the Marquis 
 and Marquise in London, was much gratified by their appreciation of her 
 book, and paid a delightful visit to them at the chateau.]
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 37 
 
 19 
 
 The most formidable person in Paris is the old waiter who 
 guards the Eden of the Cafe Foyot with his violent whiskers, 
 for all the world like a fierce old prawn. I am sure that he 
 was born at the bottom of a Foyot sauce-pan in an ocean 
 of Bouillabaisse and had a prawn for his Papa. However, 
 the savants and charming French literary world still gather 
 comfortably together and dine beneath his awful aegis. I 
 seem to have dwelt rather disproportionately on him, but 
 he represents one whole side of Paris, the Olympian, matter- 
 of-fact side that makes them take food so seriously and 
 evoke so much from material life. (1898.) 
 
 20 
 
 Tours. 
 
 We began with Matthew Arnold's Church at Brou, the 
 most moving and lovely rendering of love in marble that 
 ever I beheld. Margaret of Parma herself is masculine, 
 regal, almost stern, excepting for her long rippling hair, 
 but her husband was not called Philibert le Beau for nothing. 
 He lies with his beautiful face turned tenderly towards his 
 mother, a lovely marble woman sleeping amongst sculp- 
 tured Saints a few yards behind him. His figure is sur- 
 rounded by stately child-angels, one holding his helmet, 
 another his gauntlet, the four others only looking at him — 
 not sad, only contemplative. Margaret's Oratory, where 
 she came eveiy day to pray after she had built the Church, 
 is now behind his tomb. It touched me doubly because it 
 had a fireplace, which gave it the feeling of a home ; one 
 felt that she lived there. The Church used to stand in the 
 midst of a wood, but now the forest has receded. 
 
 The whole thing brought before one the immensity and 
 endurance of love and the presence of death in so intense 
 a way that poetry would have been the only relief. The 
 thought was almost a weight of beauty and melancholy.
 
 38 NEW AND OLD 
 
 21 
 
 Hotel de l'Univers, 
 Tours, June 1898. 
 
 Take care of this crumpled leaf — for where do you think it 
 comes from ? From the garden of Nohant — from George 
 Sand's own shady path. Suddenly, at the junction of 
 Moulins, Emily and I discovered that we could arrive in a 
 few hours at La Chatre if we deserted our luggage, which we 
 knew to be safe, and arrived with the bag that we had in 
 the railway-carriage. After lunching at a dear small Bour- 
 bonnais village called Bessay we caught our train and duly 
 arrived. I can never describe to vou the romance of that 
 twilight journey through Berri, with the Indre winding like 
 a silver scroll, and the poplars bordering its banks, and the 
 elder-scent almost heavy on the evening breeze. Then the 
 rapturous, if flea-bitten, night at the pot-house of the little 
 town of La Chatre, wiled away by Berrichon songs and 
 brawls in the Cabaret two yards off ; then morning chicory 
 and water, and 8 o'clock start for Nohant. Our host was 
 the intimate friend of George Sand, a Berrichon like a 
 foaming bottle of French wine, who called us ' mes enf ants ' ; 
 and he drove us in the same Americaine in which he had 
 driven her constantly to and from Nohant. An Americaine, 
 let me tell you, is a kind of run-to-seed buggy with the 
 front of a cart and the other half a landau. It took us at 
 a trot through page after page of her books ; past wide and 
 gentle sweeps of country — generous uplands and rich meadows 
 ■ — with the charming Indre at every turn, fragrant hedgerows, 
 grey-green oat-fields thronged with poppies and cornflowers 
 — whilst gardeuses de trowpeaux, knitting as they walked 
 after their flocks or sate beneath clumps of elder, met the 
 eye constantly, their hair covered by the square white 
 bonnet she so often describes. Sometimes it was a cartful 
 of laughing Berrichons who crossed our road, their sunny
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 39 
 
 faces full of traditions and honesty and shrewdness. Every- 
 body who spoke to us of George Sand talked as if she had 
 died yesterday. Our driver said he used to see her almost 
 daily in the lanes. ' Elle marchait a travers les champs — 
 toujours comme 9a ' (wide gesture of the arms), in her man's 
 clothes unless she was on the high-road, ' et toujours, 
 toujours une cigarette a la bouche.' He and his wife 
 had been real comrades of hers. ' Elle venait chez nous 
 pour tout ; elle menait un grand train, souvent 25 pour le 
 diner. " Avez-vous des ecrevisses pour moi aujourd'hui, 
 mes amis ? " elle demandait, et elle prenait ce qu'elle 
 voulait.' The wife dwelt most on the ' grand train ' of 
 her existence, but the man had accepted her personality and 
 her genius, if not as God made them, at any rate as a pro- 
 duction peculiar to Berri in which he had a share. What 
 was striking was that everybody spoke of her as one of 
 them, greater than they but quite as much a Berrichon as 
 a celebrity, and as giving much employment to all the 
 country-side. ' Ah, elle faisait du bien, celle-la, il y avait 
 toujours des gens qui allaient et venaient de Paris.' Our 
 host had driven Alexandre Dumas Fils, Theophile Gautier 
 (je l'ai connu bien, celui-la), Victor Hugo, another whose 
 name ended in — he could get no nearer than that — et 
 tout 5a. He showed us the actual Mill of Angibeau, as 
 white as the Berri cows which pasture everywhere ; and 
 then came the vine-covered Cabaret where she took her 
 8 a.m. glass of wine, during her morning stroll, 
 
 Nohant itself is all that one has fancied, and much more 
 lovable than imagination could make it — a long low ram- 
 bling white house with a grey slate roof and a comfortable 
 rather ramshackle (or rather ungirt) look. The garden is a 
 delightful mixture of potager and wood, with one long path 
 untidily edged by roses, pinks, columbines and sweet- 
 briar, at the end of which are two small rustic benches 
 without backs and opposite each other, embodying in their
 
 40 NEW AND OLD 
 
 every inch untold hours of absorbing topics, and evidently 
 expressly intended for G. S. and (let us say) Flaubert. 
 Near this comes a large yard and then a charming broad 
 grassy plot, studded by huge elms. Here she used to make 
 the village lads and lasses dance to the cornemuse. It is 
 surrounded on three sides by tumbledown farm-buildings. 
 Behind the flower-walk is the little family burial-ground. 
 Her tomb has a simple slab with ' Georges Sand ' — nothing 
 more — written on it; the Sth of June had been her birth- 
 day, and the slab was piled high with wreaths. The graves 
 of Maurice and two grandchildren are there too. Maurice's 
 widow and her two daughters, Aurore and Lucie, live there, 
 but are absent just now. Aurore is artistic, and is said to 
 look like her grandmother. 
 
 One of the most vivid things was the village Cabaret 
 where George Sand used to go every night with her com- 
 rades, and for which she had painted a sign-board (very 
 badly) ; a house with ' Si nous alliens boire une bouteille ' 
 written underneath. It is kept by an old crone who had 
 been her waiting-maid for years and had served at table. 
 ' Ah,je Vaimais,'' she said, ' elle etait bonne envers tous . . . 
 non, non, elle n'etait pas coquette, pas du tout ; elle se 
 coiffait tout simplement en bandeaux comme mes sceurs, 
 j'en avais seize, moi (here followed spasmodic photographs 
 of sisters in groups). Seulement quand le Prince Napoleon 
 ou peut-etre M. Dumas venait, elle mettait une belle robe 
 et se coiffait tres-bien.' The gardener, who had been her 
 farm-man, showed us a little old summer-house where she 
 sometimes sat up all night writing, and told us that she 
 had ' toujours ete bonne et juste envers ses gens, quoiqu'elle 
 avait l'abord un peu rude.' 
 
 I must cease these emotions, and wish I had left room 
 to describe our lovely Chateaux — Chinon, Azay-le-rideau, 
 Usse, Langeais, or the Library of Tours where I read to-day, 
 or the Cathedral.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 41 
 
 22 
 
 We have been choosing a hedge to protect our border. I 
 wish you knew the charming nursery-gardener we deal with, 
 a regular Surrey pippin, always emitting unconscious 
 proverbs, who speaks of his plants as ' he ' or ' she.' Yester- 
 day he showed us a weeping beech. ' You wouldn't believe 
 it,' he said, ' wot that tree was ; he would not do nohow ; 
 we tried him flat, we tried him upright ; then sudden we 
 put him on a stand and tried him as a weeper, and he 's 
 done beautiful.' Isn't this like a certain sort of human 
 being ? I can count the ones who can't lie flat or stand 
 upright, but do beautiful as weepers. (1898.) 
 
 23 
 
 In the National Gallery I chiefly gave myself up to Piero 
 della Francesca. How subtle and how naif he is, both at 
 once ! He seems to foreshadow the moderns in his love of 
 the queer type, and in seeing what he painted in a way 
 that belongs to a special attitude of mind. What an appeal- 
 ing attitude ! And what a world of difference between 
 him and them ! He gives us beauty, and his love of the 
 strange comes from fresh morning senses, not from restless 
 and sated ones. 
 
 Certainly the outburst of the Italian painters has no 
 counterpart for simultaneousness except in our Elizabethan 
 outburst. Both keep the same glorious level for their 
 second-rates. So many could paint one picture or one 
 figure in a picture, could write one poem or play or one 
 passage in it, that belong to the best, if they could not keep 
 up their highest level for long. Sustained fertility at the 
 highest level must be the mark of the Titans alone, and 
 even they have their more or less. (1898.)
 
 42 NEW AND OLD 
 
 24 
 
 The sweet little class has just departed. B. arrived, very 
 alert historically and covered with aspinall physically, as 
 she had been blacking soldiers. H. and G. discussed Drake's 
 morals deliciously, and appealed to B. as umpire ; she was 
 modest but decided in Drake's favour. C. only answers 
 questions connected with the Magellan Straits. The class 
 might really have been denned to-day as a game of Ducks 
 and Drake. (1899.) 
 
 25 
 
 I have been finishing my book [Women and Men of the 
 French Renaissance], and I blush to think how much it 
 means to me. I shall indeed feel rewarded if you find an 
 improvement. The older one grows the more one finds 
 the great secret in art and in life is the same one — to forget 
 self, or rather lose yourself that you may find yourself. 
 And the work of the mediocre with the wish to write — like 
 myself — is to sacrifice anything and everything to the 
 subject in hand. 
 
 The Rabelais chapter was a joy to work at, and I enjoyed 
 Ronsard and Du Bellay. (1900.) 
 
 26 
 
 I have just been wandering in exquisite Corot and Diaz 
 woods and meadows and along the banks of a perfect 
 Daubigny river — a land which is, alas, to vanish this week. 
 Mary actually consented to come with me, and what I am 
 fullest of is the new Piero di Cosimo which we saw first 
 in Ryder Street, the battle of the Centaurs — very exciting, 
 full of fantastic beauty and fantastic ugliness and intel- 
 lectual wine — altogether the quintessence of the Renais- 
 sance spirit. We looked at it for half an hour to the tune 
 of Roger Fry's charming and humorous comments.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 43 
 
 The Robe Rouge was very enjoyable last night — a fine 
 literary satire by Brieux on the administration of Law in 
 France. Rejane's acting was very fine, though perhaps a 
 shade too violent, as the peasant woman ruined by Justice. 
 . . . How is it that French actors can put worldly success or 
 failure into their very beards and whiskers — simply through 
 some actor's mastery of expression ? The whiskers of the 
 magistrate who cannot rise because he is honest were a study 
 of dejection. (1902.) 
 
 27 
 
 I have been enormously uplifted by reading the Life of 
 Pasteur . . . the most Christ-like life it has been my 
 fortune to meet. His endless, victorious struggle with 
 suffering and disease for Humanity's sake, his simple 
 patience and infinite compassion, his intense faith in God 
 and the Life Eternal, make it a holy book and a much 
 richer one than the lives of other men of science. 
 
 Nothing helps sorrow — does it ? — like goodness and your 1 
 healing Nature ; words, even words of prayer, are bound 
 to ring thin at moments, often for much longer . . . and 
 how well do I realise that sense of futility which comes and 
 overwhelms you. But the life of Love and the Permanence 
 of Love are always there, often powerless to the eye, never 
 really so, and ever surrounding even the poor body with 
 kingly dignity. (1902.) 
 
 28 
 
 The two things that strike me most about people just now 
 are their incapability of changing and their faculty for 
 surprise at nothing at all, at utterly unimportant coinci- 
 dences, while they are quite unaffected by the really sur- 
 prising things of life — the sky and the trees and our own 
 stolidity, and the extraordinary temperings of the wind to 
 
 1 [The letter was written to Mary Coleridge.]
 
 44 NEW AND OLD 
 
 the shorn lambs, and the marvellous way in which one year 
 is made utterly different to another — and the patience of 
 God and the presumption of us mannikins. And this dis- 
 proportionate surprise is offensive because it is a sort of 
 vulgar relation to Awe and Reverence, keeping some sort 
 of outward resemblance to them but losing all their soul 
 and dignity. (1902.) 
 
 29 
 
 Rome. 
 
 It was beautiful on Christmas Eve to drive along the Appian 
 Way, by crumbling walls of giant girth, sad tombs standing 
 out against the silver sky in the silver and brown ocean of 
 the Campagna, with all the mystery of Rome pressing on 
 one's soul, yet enchanting it. There we met a Cardinal in 
 scarlet stockings hobnobbing with his coachman, and that 
 is the most Christian sight we have seen. ... I can pray 
 better in the Coliseum than in St. Peter's unless I am just 
 under Michael Angelo's Pieta. But what was really 
 sweet was hearing the children ' preach,' one after the other, 
 on their traditional wooden rostrum at Ara Coeli — tiny 
 curates of four and five, briskly reciting their hymns to the 
 Manger ; and getting nervous ; and smiling and shaking 
 their heads ; and being lifted from the pulpit by their 
 waiting congregation of parents — such dear shepherds and 
 Madonnas and St. Elizabeths from the Campagna, all so 
 devout and at home in their vast candle-lit temples. God 
 bless you all in 1904. (1903.) 
 
 30 
 
 Dresden. 
 
 I have been to the Meistersinger with Scheidcmantel singing. 
 I have sate in the 1.50 Mark gallery next a fat lady in a 
 plaid-silk blouse, who perpetually said ' Ach Gott, es zieht,' 
 and rushed out to shut all the doors of that suffocating but
 
 EXTRACTS FKOM LETTERS 45 
 
 happy place. I have adored the pictures ; I have bought 
 toys and Wunder-Knauel from a woman like a lighted 
 Christmas-tree ; I have bought cakes for three pence from 
 a woman like a delicious bun ; I have become so absorbed 
 in contemplating a drab-flannel jacket with a saque, marked 
 ' Hochst Modem,' that I was nearly run over by a Stadts- 
 Tram — I have in short led the Dresden life. One of the 
 things that has fascinated me most is that magic collection 
 of Chinese China — its heart-searching colours, and fairy- 
 like charm, and Great-Mogul vases, dead-blue and lilac 
 and gold. Those jars look for all the world like wicked 
 potentates condemned to stand on shelves, transformed — 
 superb and impotent. 
 
 The latest chic among the Dresden ladies is to dress like 
 travelling-bags neatly trimmed with straps. I actually saw 
 one in a dark green Russia-leather collar and revers. The 
 waiters, in face and manner, have been influenced by China 
 of a bad period, and mince and flourish like commercial 
 little shepherds. This hotel is in the pocket of the Opera 
 and of the Picture Gallery, and looks upon the river with 
 its evening stream of lights, like an urban heaven of sweet 
 sophisticated stars. 
 
 Prague was grim and fascinating — like a wild and fasci- 
 nating person with a secret grudge. One wants to leave it 
 at once, and yet it haunts one. I felt this especially in the 
 Jewish Cemetery — the oldest, proudest and most desolate 
 place I have seen. It gave me a strange feeling to stand 
 at the tombstone of our tribe, 900 a.d., and see its symbol 
 (each headstone has the name in a picture, the name never 
 written) ; in our case (the tribe of Levi) a tall jug — which 
 it pleased me to fancy was for ever full. The sign of those 
 learned in the Talmud is a bunch of grapes. The oldest 
 scholar's grave is 600 a.d., and heaven knows how many 
 great old Rabbis lie there, memorable and forgotten, below 
 their stone clusters of fruits. The sign of Aaron's tribe is
 
 46 NEW AND OLD 
 
 two hands, and Mr. Hahn lies interred beneath a crowing 
 cock. 
 
 And the wind and the rain were sobbing all round the 
 place, and all the melancholy of my race seemed to rise 
 up and answer them. (1905.) 
 
 31 
 
 Padua. 
 
 We are just back from a divine day at Castelfranco. 
 Giorgione's picture glowed in the mellow light, the St. George 
 and his armour so vital with beauty that he made every- 
 thing out of the picture seem mere shadow. The Madonna 
 on her throne is so beautiful that the restoration doesn't 
 seem to matter so much as I dreaded, and the whole is such 
 a heaven of tone and harmony as one could never realise 
 from any description. Then we had coffee in the sun- 
 flooded street, opposite the great red-brick city-wall, with 
 a tide of burning creeper flowing over it ; and so back 
 through the little tiny New Jerusalem, with the sunset 
 over the Alps and over the grape-hung festoons that 
 link the mulberry-trees together, while here and there 
 were groups of graceful peasants garnering in their 
 vintage. 
 
 To-morrow we go for the day to Vicenza and pursue 
 Montagna, that most fascinating painter, in his own Palla- 
 dian city. 
 
 Padua is entirely sympathetic. Every stone seem sim- 
 printed with learning, the glorious early-morning learning of 
 the first Renaissance, when every scholar came here to learn 
 with all the force of maturity and the passionate curiosity 
 of youth. There on their tombs they still look forth from 
 sunny cloisters and shady churches, sculptured at their 
 desks or in their pulpits with square caps and University 
 robes. (1906.)
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 47 
 
 32 
 
 Mantua. 
 
 A lucky star guided us at Mantua, for directly we arrived 
 we sailed out into the great mere that surrounds it, and into 
 depths of sunset amid fantastic armies of bulrushes and 
 fleets of water-lily leaves — rose-fire above and below us, 
 every spike and blade reflected also, and behind us the city 
 wrapped in deep blue mist : then the sharp crescent of the 
 moon above and below, and the evening star like a spiral 
 flame (by some secret of refraction), and so back by moon- 
 light — a most weird enchanted impression. We seemed to 
 have seen the ghost of the city of Mantua before we saw 
 its dead and cold body. (1906.) 
 
 33 
 
 1 have finished the appetising Fenelon. What a Frenchman 
 he is — the very root of all the spiritual chic in the R. C. 
 Church which some find so alluring ! Yet his central 
 doctrine that love is all — that it is not the path we tread 
 that matters, but the foot that treads it — is beautiful, wise 
 and consoling. All the same, the path that he trod was a 
 little slippery sometimes. He had, I think, in petto both 
 Montaigne (as to sense and wit, but the wit is sharper 
 than in Montaigne) and St. Frangois de Sales, but no Pascal. 
 What do you think of his ' Our days are short, but our hours 
 are long ' ? A profound saying, I think. (1907.) 
 
 34 
 
 Life certainly does seem the most hateful of things ; but 
 au fond it isn't. It will always be lovable because of love, 
 will it not ? And, after all, duty is only love hardened and 
 extended beyond the personal sphere. I suppose we don't 
 easily grasp, in earlier life at least, that love is a hard
 
 48 NEW AND OLD 
 
 discipline — both love of God and love of man, and that it 
 leads us into dark places while it glorifies them. It 
 certainly makes us stick to our post. 
 
 Sometimes it seems to me as if life and this planet meant 
 a long duel between God and Nature ; as if hitherto omni- 
 potence had been incompatible with all-goodness, and God 
 has renounced Power in order to be Goodness itself ; as if 
 omnipotence and goodness could only be one when man 
 himself had grown perfect and stood on the confines of 
 infinity — and then Nature would be conquered by God, and 
 happiness would begin ; so that perhaps we are building 
 up God's omnipotence by our bitter combat. Man, at all 
 events, seems to go through some such struggle, and for 
 ever provides the field on which Nature and the Spirit fight 
 for victory. And each advance that he makes is a fresh 
 victory over matter, so that perhaps, in the most mysterious 
 trials of all and the dustiest, the spirit is going strongest 
 by the very awfulness of the wrestling. Anyhow, or so it 
 seems to me, we must stick by our own spirits in the 
 conflict. 
 
 Forgive this rhodomontade. When one tries to express 
 definitely what one means, which is inexpressible, one always 
 ends by writing apparent nonsense. (1908.) 
 
 35 
 
 At St. Thomas's I found the Brave, walking on 
 
 two arms, shawl-less, across the yard to the Hospital, like 
 a Vi-Queen, after an operation. The Hospital (not the 
 Nursing Home) Christmas was one of the most beautiful 
 sights aesthetically as well as spiritually that I have ever 
 seen. The Babies' Ward made me feel choky. In the 
 middle was an immense Tree of the Knowledge of Sweet- 
 ness and Light, and the highly-polished floor reflected the 
 lights as if it were water. And in the midst of these opal
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 49 
 
 pools of light sate bunches of babies in spotless white 
 shawls, like clustered Bambini-angels, all round little low 
 tea-tables, each presided over by an older baby pouring 
 out tea. Round the room were the beds, full of prostrate 
 cherubs, too ill to get up ; before them trays laden with 
 presents ; and here and there the house-surgeons in white 
 linen coats, beaming and ministering, did not look so very 
 unlike the Saints. 
 
 Everywhere down the long shadowy corridors — like aisles 
 of some great Church of Humanity— one caught vistas of 
 other Wards, their floors also a mirror of colour and misty 
 brilliance ; and outside through the windows across the 
 grey river there moved, as if in space, fresh bunches of 
 luminous grapes, borne apparently by huge chariots which 
 turned out to be Trams or Buses. (1908.) 
 
 36 
 
 I have no business to have dumps after the Hippocrene 
 elixir of Anatole France last night — wine of the Gods, or 
 rather music. Wit hardly seems the word for the con- 
 tinuous warm tempered light which flowed from him — 
 never flashing or spasmodic, but like nature itself. 
 
 I agree with every word you say about Anatole France 
 and the metallic quality in him. My mind enjoys his 
 Hippocrene when my soul and heart rebel and hate. But 
 he is so much bigger than his books. I went only expect- 
 ing amusement, and was not prepared for a man who 
 seemed pushed by some force outside himself, instead of by 
 talent inside. And he looks like a Don Quixote who cannot 
 be Don Quixote because he cannot take windmills for any- 
 thing but what they are. His eyes are sad, but he has a 
 smile like winter sunshine over a frosty landscape. And 
 his voice is like a violin. And I am like a fiddle-de-dee. 
 (1912.) 
 
 D
 
 50 NEW AND OLD 
 
 37 
 
 To come back to Law, I agree with every word you say, 
 and you hit upon the passages I love best in the Liberal and 
 Mystical Writings. 1 I quite agree with you that these later 
 writings grew out of the earlier ones, and that his capitula- 
 tion to Boehme was natural growth and not conversion. 
 I suspect the intellectual side of him was too monochrome, 
 too much wanting in imaginative power outside religion, 
 to make him understand the true relation of the mind 
 to God. Nearly all mystics seem to me weak in this, 
 that they exclude the fact that we owe all our powers to 
 God — that the holy tiling is to turn them towards Him and 
 bathe them in His light, not to get rid of them ; and that 
 it is in using them thus that we can make goodness attrac- 
 tive, not by stripping our beings. That is only a short cut. 
 Tolstoi makes the same mistake, and it is bound to end in a 
 certain loss of force. As you say, it needs a very holy man 
 to throw away knowledge. Law could do it, but who shall 
 say that Law, whose path was light, would not have shed 
 his light more widely had he given it more channels ? It 
 always makes me uneasy when inspiring writers leave out 
 the sense of beauty. But ' stars are of mighty use,' and 
 Law is a star. And he has got hold of the great truth that 
 being is the main business of life, and that deeds only count 
 when they spring from being. I think I tend to believe 
 that mystics are born mystics : St. Theresa, St. Augustine, 
 that (to me) most tiresome Juliana of Norwich, and St. 
 Catherine of Siena. I don't count Madame Guyon. She 
 seems to me a kind of manufactured mystic and rather 
 smack-worthy ! Of course there must be many who come 
 to the mystic faith after much experience, but don't you 
 think that the seed was lying passive far down in their 
 
 1 [Liberal and Mystical Writings of William Law, ed. Scott Palmer and 
 Du Bose, 1908.]
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 51 
 
 souls till life brought it forth ? If it is grown from experi- 
 ence, then it is to be ranked with other structural growths. 
 But if it is really vision — God-given — then there is more 
 in it. Only to me that kind of vision appears to be given 
 to so very few, and then it is a fountain of life, not a rule 
 of conduct. It seems to me, as does all exceptional truth, 
 like Rabelais' wine in the temple of Bacbuc, which the 
 priestess gave alike to all seekers of her altar, but which 
 tasted different to the lips of each. . . . What a bore I 
 am. — Forgive me ! 
 
 Here we are in detestable Switzerland on the way to 
 adorable Italy. I can't bear its ugly beauty. I like ugly 
 ugliness and beautiful ugliness, but not ugly beauty. (1912.) 
 
 38 
 
 Perugia. 
 
 I should like to be able to send you a slice of the celestial 
 Valley of Perugia which I see from my window. To the east 
 Assisi shines like a pearl upon the hill girt with vineyards. 
 The vintage has begun. Piero della Francesca men and 
 women stand like kings and queens upon ladders, and throw 
 down the heavy purple bunches, and little Bacchuses of 
 four with tiny Ariadnes leap about crowned with vine- 
 leaves and shout something very like Io to the jolly lean 
 black pigs which they herd. One's soul becomes one's 
 senses here. It is very agreeable. 
 
 One of the most blessed things we did was to drive to 
 the Monte Cavale and sit there. Every inch of mountain- 
 path and brown earth and violet valley we looked at had 
 been trodden by St. Francis's feet, and the air, too, is still 
 alive with tales of his miracles — puerile often, heavenly also ; 
 and they and the little cell and the silent rocks are still 
 aggrandised by his faith — a greater miracle than all the 
 miracles. It was a pendant to our day at Port Royal. 
 And what a South Pole to Pascal's North Pole (ice burns,
 
 52 NEW AND OLD 
 
 so the N. P. is all right for Pascal) ! I do so like your calling 
 Pascal a Matterhom. I wish the light had made him 
 happier. I always feel, but I say it in abject humility, that 
 he made one terrible mistake — he hated evil more than he 
 loved his fellows. And his invention of the Omnibus for the 
 poor, always cited as a proof of his ' Agape,' does not mend 
 matters at all. In one way I feel as if he were like Tolstoi ; 
 he vents his repentance for his own sins upon mankind, and 
 lays down methods very suitable to those who have intel- 
 lectual pride, but not the rest. Yet nothing, nothing, beats 
 the Pensees, and I well understand bearing them when one 
 can bear nothing else. If only he and St. Francis could be 
 welded together ! For St. F. leaves out the mind, and prob- 
 ably doesn't help those whose minds get in the way of their 
 loving their brethren. In the letter that was living in 
 the depths of my trunk when I last wrote, you said so truly 
 that goodness must seem a difficult thing till it is found, and 
 then it would seem the simplest. And that applies to St. 
 Francis, but not to Pascal, who never found goodness simple 
 and never quite found it. St. Francis was certainly a 
 mystic who did apply his mysticism to conduct. I quite 
 agree with what you say of the need of ' daily bread unity ' 
 as one gets older, and I rather suspect mysticism ought to 
 work as unconsciously as love — as a presence which makes 
 action vital, not as a creed. Isn't mysticism like wine, only 
 dangerous when we drink it without food ? Every Sacra- 
 mental thought should be made of bread and wine together. 
 It (mysticism) might easily degenerate into a short cut to 
 goodness, and mistake monotony for unity. ... I expect 
 that the whole awful secret of life lies in the true placing of 
 being and doing. The average man overrates doing, and 
 the mystics see this and, knowing that being is the main 
 tiling, they virtually make it the only one. I do feel as if 
 they had got hold of a truer end of life than the Christian- 
 job end. (1912.)
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 53 
 
 39 
 
 BoRr;o Sax Sepolcro. 
 
 You cannot think what a sensation is Monte Casale with 
 its Monastery built on to the little stone hermitage hewn 
 out of the rock, to which St. Francis came after the Stigmata. 
 There you find him on the rude steep little staircase leading 
 up to the stone where he slept, with the great wooden 
 Madonna he brought with him and his rough primitive 
 Crucifix still there. And those big bare mountain-tops, 
 those boulders round which blue butterflies play, the whole 
 landscape austere yet smiling, is so wonderfully like him. 
 Not an inch of ground that he looked upon, either on the 
 heights or in the valley below, that had not been trodden 
 upon by his unwearying feet. Borgo was the last place he 
 stayed at before he returned to die at Assisi. 
 
 I saw a large brown butterfly in Franciscan dress embrace 
 a blue thistle. And now we are in divine Perugia, and our 
 walk in the valley yesterday was enough to make one cry 
 for beauty. Why is one so piercingly happy in Italy ? 
 One's senses become one's soul, and one's soul one's senses, 
 and the weary old battle between them ceases to be. 
 
 I send you three Umbrian Angels to take care of your 
 year. (1912.) 
 
 40 
 
 Barmoor Castle. 
 
 Such an exciting arrival at Berwick, still quite light at 
 9.30, the hills and Abbey-towers silver and grey, and the 
 broad stately river flowing silver under the strong grey 
 spanning bridges — all force and beauty. It is such a 
 congenial town to me, the town of middle-age, brave and 
 strong and come unto itself — grey without gloom, silver- 
 grey indeed with lights of its own, still full of contrasts 
 but without violence, large in its outlook, fortified enough, 
 but not walled.
 
 54 NEW AND OLD 
 
 It looked unearthlily beautiful as I sped through it in the 
 motor, and so did the long Northumberland roads encased 
 in full-blossomed hawthorn all silvery in the twilight ; silver, 
 too, the little fairy rabbits that sate in the wood with the 
 motor-light full on them, and scuttled off like elves of the 
 North to their homes in the down-like fields. Thrilling 
 was the first sight of the sea over which the Danes once came 
 sailing- — a grim, dim, resolute sea ; and thrilling the sight 
 of Durham Cathedral from the train, where I dined in the 
 Restaurant off fried leather. At Berwick the motor (con- 
 ducted by an angel of a chauffeur who will, I hope, drive 
 me on the Last Day) conveyed me to this haven of goodness 
 and pleasure, where I 'm being degenerately pampered. 
 (1912.) 
 
 41 
 
 E. and I have both absorbed with deep interest the 
 Rutherford Paper. He interests me more and more. His 
 mind was so strangely morbid for its vigour — a remarkable 
 vigour. And he is always as sincere as man can be, and 
 never sentimental — another spiritual feat in a man of his 
 
 introspective faculty. was describing to me his 
 
 impression of M. R. It 's a curious game to take the two 
 men who have tried to talk quite sincerely in these last 
 twenty years — the one with reverence, the other without — 
 and to reflect that, on the whole, they sum up this generation 
 — Mark Rutherford and Samuel Butler, I mean. — — thinks 
 their faces alike. Are they ? They both strip their thought 
 naked ; at least old Butler thought he did, but he often put 
 on petticoats of wit again, without knowing it. But M. R. 
 has suffered so much more in his heart, and S. B. in his 
 vanity, that the analogy has to stop. 
 
 Yet S. B. was at something serious even when he most 
 tried to shock — like a Frenchman ; and he had a passion 
 for truth — or perhaps it was a loathing for falsehood, rather
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 55 
 
 a different thing and less sympathetic ? M. R. had the 
 passion for truth. 
 
 42 
 
 I am particularly grateful for Mark Rutherford in this 
 Valhalla. 1 All round me are sprawling the inmates — the 
 larvae of living beings — who literally sit all day doing 
 nothing, only stirring their spines when they hear the gong 
 or are told of something to be bought cheaper somewhere 
 than somewhere else. We have been celebrating the Lord's 
 Day by eating more and better than on other days, and I 
 am writing in what I call the Cattery, presided over by 
 two old spinsters (we call them Castor Oil and Pollux) who 
 look as if they were holding Life in their pursed-up mouths 
 and found it nasty, but were too genteel to put it out. Now 
 two French folk, living, I think, in sin for purely business 
 purposes (a hairdresser's firm or the like), are quarrelling 
 about some very concrete point and are alive enough to be 
 refreshing ; at any rate they do mind when the pepper- 
 box doesn't pepper. (1913.) 
 
 43 
 
 It seems to me that Mark Rutherford was so personal a 
 man chiefly from his dependence on human sympathy, and 
 also from the inrootedness of his early soaking in the per- 
 sonal religious atmosphere of Evangelicalism ; and that he 
 rather confused the issues of the word ' personal ' and stuck 
 to our present sense-bound — at any rate limited — definition. 
 But if we believe anything to be beyond us — as I do — 
 we must believe that our perception of the personal will 
 change ; that it will be, perhaps, nearer to what we now 
 call the impersonal, though infinitely warmer, and that we 
 shall awake in its likeness, and not miss what we now feel 
 
 1 [A hotel.]
 
 56 NEW AND OLD 
 
 as if we should miss so badly. I wish we had more words. 
 The essential seems to me the truly personal, and whatever 
 there is of essence in us is surely here and now immortal, 
 much more then and there as well as here. (1913.)] 
 
 44 
 
 I find Lady Ponsonby, the wise judge, the firm Liberal, 
 more and more delightful. At last one feels she is growing 
 old — she is eighty-two. She is like a fine flame kindled by 
 sea-logs and sandal-wood — good to watch and good to 
 warm the mind at and the heart too. 
 
 I have met such a charming Director of ' Le vieux 
 Colombier ' Company, who has offered me seats whenever 
 I go to Paris. How pleasant it is to talk fluent and incom- 
 prehensible bad French with one who does not frown or 
 move a polite muscle. (March, 1914.) 
 
 45 
 
 I am a heretic, you know, and it seems to me that all who 
 call Christ Master with adoration of that life are of the same 
 band, whatever the view taken of the manner in which 
 that life came to us. The spiritual miracle of it was — is — 
 greater than all miracles, as Emily Lawless says so well ; 
 and it has never seemed to me that whence Christ was should 
 so trouble men, when what Christ was is so all-important, 
 so compelling, so life-filling. (June, 1914.) 
 
 46 
 
 Humbly and passionately I dare call him Master. And I 
 can't say more than that. The immanence of God and the 
 life of Christ are my treasures. They warm existence and 
 help one's worst hours. Buddha, Socrates, Mahomet, all 
 the long chain of revelations of God so dear to the Broad
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 57 
 
 Church (and rightly), do rank for mc in a long chain of 
 evolution, but they seem the more to show how much 
 greater, warmer, more mysterious, more near to God Christ 
 was. They never make one glow. (July, 1914.) 
 
 47 
 
 [The following short extracts are not in chronological order. 
 The first two come from an address to young people given 
 in 1912, the rest from letters.] 
 
 I want to lay stress upon the importance of the Graces, 
 and upon their sincerity. They arc only insincere when 
 they express nothing behind them and become gentilities. 
 But gentilities are only the poor relations of the Graces. 
 The real Graces smooth and sweeten life as much as the 
 baskets of daffodils and hyacinths at the street-corners 
 in the spring-time. They are generosities — something that 
 we give beyond that which is exacted of us : they are part 
 of the fine art of living. 
 
 We all think a great deal now of the health of our bodies, 
 and of the importance of opening our windows and airing 
 our rooms. I wish we thought as much of airing our 
 imaginations. To me poetry is just like that. It is like 
 opening the window daily, and looking out, and letting in 
 the air and the sunlight into an otherwise stuffy little room ; 
 and if I cannot read some poetry in the day I feel more 
 uncomfortable than I can tell you. 
 
 What a curious feeling it is when a book finds you out and 
 knows you better than your family and friends ! 
 
 There is nothing one is so impatient with as one's own 
 foibles when one sees them in others.
 
 58 NEW AND OLD 
 
 I feel a great wish to see again, only probably it would 
 
 not be so nice. Those meetings don't repeat themselves. 
 A strange Maeterlinck-like fact about intercourse is that 
 people never know when they really do something for one, 
 because, perhaps, they are only being something that comes 
 naturally to them ; deeds are so often cross. 
 
 She is indeed a tangled skein of shreds of immortality. If 
 one could only unravel her and wind her into a tiny ball ! 
 
 As for that novel, I can only feel again that, to approach the 
 deepest tragedies in humanity, one must either be entirely 
 and diabolically an artist and the heart must be out of it, 
 as in the case of Maupassant (and then one hates it), or must 
 be supremely pitiful. I can't bear such a deep gulf sounded 
 with a mere fishing-rod instead of with a plummet. 
 
 It seems to me rather curious that the silent worship of the 
 Quakers encloses much the same idea as a passage of George 
 Sand's on prayer — and she the most unquakerish person 
 that ever existed ! She never feels so worshipful as when 
 silence is made for her, at sunset or in the pauses of nature 
 when she is waiting for the Fiat of God. 
 
 x is 
 
 [Christmas Day.] I have just come back from Church. 
 As I heard the Athanasian Creed sung in the highest of 
 spirits in that prosperous Church, I felt life rather an untidy 
 hash till I remembered that the one force that gave it 
 unity was Love, and that Love ran through the day and 
 the sordid church, and through all that was best inside 
 those sealskin- jacketed Mamas and blowsy old gentlemen. 
 
 All the clergymen in the world cannot make one disbelieve 
 in God.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 59 
 
 [Christmas Bay.] Surely, surely, however Christ is 
 looked upon, if the life be looked upon at all, the world 
 may rejoice in it to-day, in the ineffable wisdom, the bound- 
 less love for love's sake, the deep humility which alone is 
 true dignity, the ideal so divine and so human that it 
 compels sanctity. Never was there a Personality that so 
 consecrated the obvious or made the ideal so much a 
 matter of every day. 
 
 When we lose ourselves and find ourselves we find God ; 
 and negations, like death, vanish before Him. We seem 
 to find Him in such strange ways — in the lowest depths as 
 much as in the highest heights— through badness, through 
 goodness — any way so long as it is real. 
 
 Tennyson is a great witness to immortality, for he has 
 passed through the high tide of sorrow and sees things as 
 they are. He is a seer seeing, not only a poetic soul dallying 
 with truth, all feeling and no reason. Perhaps it is when 
 the heart thinks that the greatest truths are come by ; at 
 any rate it is the men who have written their conviction 
 straight from the fire of pain that are the best comrades in 
 grief. 
 
 The only comfort, I should say the only rampart, is one's 
 passionate conviction of an Infinite Mystery, of the truth 
 we dare not profane by intimate explanation, — that loss 
 of life here may mean gain of fuller and intenser life there, 
 in the next stage towards God ; that Carlyle's ' Everlasting 
 Yea ' is affirmative and therefore Life, and not ' der Geist 
 der stets vemeint ' and therefore destruction ; and that 
 the very powers of enjoyment and vividness which give 
 the sting to death may be the powers which alone can give 
 full realisation of the free-er, less entangled, life that our 
 beloveds even now are leading.
 
 60 NEW AND OLD 
 
 I can only pray for you — not that He will take away the 
 pain which is part of love and the tax of mortality, but 
 that He may give you His and your best consolation, the 
 life of love with all it brings, compared to which all else is 
 as the ' shadow of a magnitude.' 
 
 Grief is a most sacred possession and belongs to the back 
 of one's soul, and becomes part of one, behind life, a holy 
 place where one can sit apart. And, to ' make the best of 
 life,' one must remember Death, for that means Love and 
 memory. Do what one will, Death has so much of one's 
 ' best ' that one dare not touch life without it. 
 
 Grief is a strange country— is it not ? — with its own ebb 
 and flow, its own radiance from the past, so that some days, 
 those upon which one lights on a forgotten memory, seem 
 almost festal, like summer. 
 
 How the happiness of those we have loved and lost grows 
 more and more vital to us, their unhappiness less ! I 
 suppose it is happiness which is real life, and we must will 
 through to it even here.
 
 THOUGHTS 1 
 
 We should rather be Life's good comrades than its passion- 
 ate lovers ; neither easily offended, nor imagining evil, yet 
 not taking its affairs too lightly. Let us hold Life faithfully 
 by the hand, loving it through fair and ill repute ; as good 
 travellers, grumbling little, praising much, and sharing 
 sun and shadow and wayside inns. 
 
 Life exacts good manners. If we importune her with 
 demands, she treats us like poor relations. If we smile at 
 her coldness, she smiles back again. 
 
 The art of living is an effort to gain style, to know where 
 to express and where restrain. In this we only follow 
 Nature, who strives to win beauty and order by unceasing 
 experiments in giving forth and in elimination. 
 
 4 
 
 Mind is the best screen to hold between the emotions and 
 life. 
 
 * 
 
 1 [These are taken from two notebooks, and, as far as might be, arranged. 
 See Introduction, p. 5.] 
 
 61
 
 62 NEW AND OLD 
 
 In a changeful world, a person with an unchanging heart 
 has no choice but to become a poet or a bore. 
 
 6 
 
 Youth goes ; childhood need never be lost. 
 
 In youth there is a period of discomfort, because then the 
 whole battery of a man's energies, meant for many, is 
 directed upon himself. 
 
 8 
 
 Whilst we walk through the Valley of Youth, its beauty, 
 its variety, its pleasant greensward and dancing lights and 
 shadows, make us forget that it lies low. As we climb into 
 Middle Age the road is steep, but we know that each step 
 takes us nearer the sun. 
 
 9 
 
 The power of being amused is the power of middle-age, 
 and to be content with being amused where we should once 
 have intensely enjoyed is the first sign that youth is past. 
 
 10 
 
 The aim of middle life should be to cut one's coat accord- 
 ing to one's cloth. The point is to be a good tailor and to 
 have a distinguished cut. 
 
 11 
 
 (For my thirtieth birthday.) 
 
 It is not enough to accept the present ; we should welcome 
 it with hospitality.
 
 THOUGHTS G3 
 
 12 
 
 (For my fortieth birthday.) 
 
 Life is sometimes delightful, often disgusting, always 
 infinitely worth living. 
 
 13 
 
 It is more difficult to love well as we grow older. Our 
 conception of love becomes bigger and our sensibility acuter, 
 because they are no longer blinded by the glorious egoism 
 of youth. 
 
 14 
 
 The. person who only regards one Tense of Life is bound 
 in some degree to lose sanity. 
 
 15 
 
 The dangerous moment in life comes when men begin to 
 over-value the past at the expense of the present. It is the 
 moment for religious controversies, for ancestor-worship, 
 for narrowing in, for exalting one set of people and excluding 
 another. When we reach it, it means that we are growing 
 old. But we need never reach it. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 16 
 You must have been happy before you can give happiness. 
 
 17 
 
 When happiness has once sat upon the hearth, the fire 
 is always alight. 
 
 18 
 
 The secret of happiness, as of art, lies in circumscription, 
 in the power to confine an infinite idea within right limits.
 
 64 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Men must learn to restrain happiness within the boundaries 
 of pleasure, as surely as music and poetry are fenced in by 
 the laws of composition. But confinement must not be- 
 come imprisonment, or the idea will lose life and stiffen 
 into formalism. 
 
 19 
 
 The most mortal blunders in life arise from the confusion 
 of pleasure with happiness. 
 
 20 
 
 Enjoyment should not be the screen by which we shelter 
 our eyes from the light, but the sunshine which warms our 
 blood. 
 
 21 
 
 Enjoyment lies in a sense of the value of what is enjoyed ; 
 it implies the power of seriousness. Frivolity implies an 
 ignorance of enjoyment, together with the show of it. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 22 
 
 Les hommes marchent, les femmes sautent. Elles arrivent 
 done plus vite au bout, mais en ne se rendant pas compte 
 du chemin. 
 
 23 
 
 II y a une difference profonde entre les amities des hommes 
 et celles des femmes. Les hommes sont lies par leurs 
 plaisirs, les femmes par leurs chagrins. 
 
 24 
 
 C'est peut-etre une ordonnance de Dieu que les femmes ne 
 peuvent etre Pretres, puisqu' elles ont deja, un peu trop, la 
 nature des Pretres, et par leurs qualites et par leurs defauts.
 
 THOUGHTS 65 
 
 Les femmes naissent le plus souvent directrices devouees, 
 casuistes exaltees. Les meilleures sont nees avec le besoin 
 d'ecouter les confessions, de guerir, d'aider, de veiller sur 
 les ames. Dieu lcur en a donne un brevet naturel. II ne 
 veut pas qu'clles se formalisent, qu'elles se petrissent dans 
 une hierarchic 
 
 25 
 
 When good women love power they generally confound it 
 with the power of doing good. 
 
 26 
 
 The art of painting does not offer women the same kind 
 of opportunity for their special endowments — those of critics 
 and interpreters rather than of originators — as that of poetry, 
 intense and personal poetry, and of novel-writing ; still less 
 does music. 
 
 * 
 
 27 
 
 There are two sorts of people, those who want to be like 
 their kind and those who want to be different from it. 
 
 28 
 
 Some people add to the depth of life, others to its bright- 
 ness. And brightness is not necessarily more shallow than 
 the depths — only more accessible. 
 
 29 
 
 Some people are like life-buoys, and weather the storm 
 by dancing over the waves ; others are like the spars of a 
 wreck lying tragically in mid-ocean for others to cling to. 
 But more men are helped by the life-buoy, and wisdom is 
 with the dancers. 
 
 E
 
 66 NEW AND OLD 
 
 30 
 
 Every deep nature has its stupidity, but to be absolutely 
 clever is to be shallow-souled. The world wounded Pascal 
 when it made Voltaire laugh. 
 
 31 
 
 There are people who always want to cut your coat 
 according to their cloth. 
 
 32 
 
 Dull people are without an atmosphere. Therefore 
 persons (among them many philanthropists) who are all 
 character and no temperament are often the dullest of all. 
 
 33 
 
 II y a des personnes comme des albums, dans lesquels tout 
 le monde ecrit. Tout le monde croit aimer Palbum, tandis 
 qu'en verite il n'aime que ce qu'il y a inscrit. 
 
 34 
 
 Small people make small things into mysteries and explain 
 away the mystery of big things. 
 
 35 
 
 To the superficial everything is superficial. 
 
 36 
 There is nothing that cannot be imagined by people of 
 
 no imagination. 
 
 37 
 
 Civilisation provides a vast apparatus of mechanical 
 facilities for the unimaginative.
 
 THOUGHTS 67 
 
 38 
 
 It is dangerous to sanity when perceptive people have no 
 imagination. 
 
 39 
 
 Frivolity is the art of avoiding set ties and lasting emotions. 
 
 40 
 
 Educated people often deceive themselves and others by 
 putting business as a screen between their eyesight and 
 reality. A Committee may be as frivolous as a gaming- 
 table. 
 
 41 
 
 Work is a natural appetite of mankind ; even the most 
 frivolous make a business of pleasure. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 42 
 
 It is the intellectual and the frivolous who feel the need 
 of conversation. The majority — the practical — seek col- 
 leagues rather than friends. 
 
 43 
 
 Talkers may be divided into those who wish to be amused 
 and those who wish to be interested. If the two moods 
 clash friction or boredom must ensue. 
 
 44 
 
 The power of self-expression is the essential thing in 
 intercourse ; language is only the lesser part of it. 
 
 45 
 
 Free-trade in intercourse is the only law of companion- 
 ship. A bore is a person who breaks it.
 
 68 NEW AND OLD 
 
 46 
 
 There is nothing that can spring such a gulf between one 
 man and another as a laugh ; nothing that can so bridge 
 it over as a tear. 
 
 47 
 
 Laughter partakes of the nature of what is laughed at. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 48 
 
 If we take people wisely as they are, we go far towards 
 making them what they should be. 
 
 49 
 
 Too much admiration judges more truly of character 
 than too much severity. The former wakens possibilities of 
 good ; the latter rouses faults that need never have appeared. 
 
 50 
 
 In philanthropy one must go on believing oneself to be 
 of use in order to become so, on the same principle that 
 one pursues in religion, acting its central truths as if they 
 had already been proved, and thus alone verifying them. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 51 
 
 The danger of the enthusiastic temperament is an un- 
 conscious exactingness from the bodies and spirits of others. 
 The danger of the lymphatic temperament is to confound 
 philosophy with indifference, and calm with a shrinking 
 from emotion. The best things in the world spring from 
 the union of both elements in one person.
 
 THOUGHTS 69 
 
 52 
 
 A man's most dangerous fortress is his arm-chair, his 
 most dangerous moment when he has no wish while sitting 
 in it. 
 
 53 
 
 The calm which is reposeful is the calm of victory. It is 
 force at rest. 
 
 54 
 
 Stillness is a force when it implies poise ; otherwise it is 
 stagnation. 
 
 55 
 
 Most people who think that they love liberty love no 
 more than the choice of their chain. 
 
 56 
 
 He who really loves liberty must walk alone. 
 
 57 
 
 The service of an idea is cloistral. It needs vocation ; 
 it needs the austerity of a novitiate to prove its reality. 
 
 58 
 
 The only practical man is he who can attempt the 
 impossible. 
 
 59 
 
 Moving off the rails may be better than not moving at all. 
 
 60 
 
 The man who is in the swim is one who does not get out 
 of his depth. He is concerned with his own strokes and 
 with the current. The drowning man knows more of the 
 waters beneath, and of the sky above his head.
 
 70 NEW AND OLD 
 
 61 
 
 Those who depend on what ' people ' think, depend on 
 the thought of those who do not think. 
 
 62 
 
 Les bien-pensants sont sou vent ceux qui ne pensent pas. 
 
 63 
 
 What we do not believe is of no importance. The secret 
 of life is to discover what we believe. 
 
 64 
 
 The part of a man's beliefs which is based upon disillu- 
 sion is not the valuable part of them. 
 
 65 
 
 A cynic is one who assigns unworthy causes to great 
 things. 
 
 66 
 
 Some men are born and some are made cynics. The 
 natural cynic is far worse to deal with than the man who has 
 become one through disappointment. La Rochefoucauld 
 was more immovable than Swift. 
 
 * 
 
 67 
 
 Hope is Faith in action. 
 
 68 
 
 The world is riddled by fear. Men fear their souls and 
 their bodies ; they fear Love and God. The laws of morality 
 only mean extended fear, and the earth will not grow better 
 until fear turns into love.
 
 THOUGHTS 71 
 
 69 
 
 Most of the confusions of life spring from a wrong use of 
 the verb must. 
 
 70 
 
 Morality is the grammar of goodness. 
 
 71 
 
 Goodness is bound to strain at the leash of morality till 
 it learns how to lead. 
 
 72 
 
 Preventive religion, the religion of fear, is a primitive 
 form of faith bound to break before enlightenment. Be- 
 tween its fall and the dawn of incentive religion, the religion 
 of love, there must be a time of moral disintegration. After 
 the Middle Ages came the Renaissance ; after Puritanism 
 
 the Restoration. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 73 
 
 We can tell a man by his friends as surely as we can not 
 tell him by his loves. 
 
 74 
 
 In friendship everything and nothing must be taken for 
 granted. 
 
 75 
 
 To those who come to stay in our hearts we can offer no 
 less than our best ; and our best is the truth. 
 
 76 
 (Of friendship.) 
 What was, is. What is not, can never be. What shall 
 
 be, was. 
 
 * * 
 *
 
 72 NEW AND OLD 
 
 77 
 
 The world would be a different place if we realised that 
 Love is the most austere discipline of Life as well as its 
 sweetest balm. 
 
 78 
 
 Great hearts should remember that their hunger is due 
 to their own voracity, not to the deficiency of others. A 
 genius for Love, like any other genius, must be content to 
 exist for its own sake, not for what it receives. Love must 
 be for ever loving or it would be miserable. This is the 
 treaty it has made with happiness, and happiness honestly 
 keeps the bargain. 
 
 79 
 
 When we cry out that we have loved too much, it is a sign 
 that we love too little. 
 
 80 
 
 Love is of little help unless you can draw small cheques 
 upon it. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 81 
 
 The work of religion is to clear the will of desires and to 
 set it free. 
 
 82 
 
 There are two conceptions of religion : that which adapts 
 God to the needs of man ; that which fashions man to the 
 needs of God. 
 
 83 
 
 Poetry and religion are truer than fact, because they 
 attest the solidarity of life, and its permanence, through love.
 
 THOUGHTS 73 
 
 84 
 
 The confusion of truth with fact is at the root of most of 
 the mischief in the world. 
 
 85 
 
 There are men who always believe that a measure can 
 kill an idea. 
 
 86 
 
 The poor man who sacrifices his food rather than go 
 without his Music-hall is a misguided witness to the 
 dominance of spirit over matter. 
 
 87 
 
 Men talk as if reality were outside us, as if it were more 
 real to make shoes than to write books. But reality comes 
 from within : it is what we bring to life : it is the currency 
 of experience. 
 
 88 
 
 Sorrow does not really change people, it only develops 
 what is already in them : that which they bring to it they 
 
 will reap from it. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 89 
 
 Life lies in experience, not in movement. To-day we 
 are too apt to reduce life to movement, and our art is bound 
 to grow narrower and more external — dependent upon 
 science rather than upon ideas. 
 
 90 
 
 It might be well for the modern realist to remember that 
 literalness is not the same as truth, nor curiosity as courage.
 
 74 NEW AND OLD 
 
 91 
 
 Art is an attempt to wrest what is permanent out of the 
 transitoriness of things. The attempt to arrest what is 
 transitory kills art and makes journalism. 
 
 92 
 
 The aesthete and the artist are often hostile one to another. 
 The aesthete depends upon externals, the artist upon the 
 inner life as well as the outer. The artist at work reacts 
 upon his surroundings ; he is free. The aesthete is the 
 passive prey of his impressions. 
 
 93 
 
 Fastidiousness is a kind of asceticism of the intellect. 
 Men can be as austere from taste as from religion. 
 
 94 
 
 The ugliness that comes from an individual way of seeing, 
 or from the absence of adequate means, is attractive : it 
 is disinterested. The ugliness that comes of a general way 
 of living, or from the use of superfluous means, is repellent, 
 and it is utilitarian. The one is grotesque, the other vulgar. 
 There is a difference between the gargoyle and the advertise- 
 ment. 
 
 95 
 
 An inspiring human being, rich in instinct, is often an 
 excellent writer who yet wholly lacks the vital spark of 
 spontaneity ; while others, in life elaborate or inhuman, 
 become natural and convincing when they write. Litera- 
 ture is their element, their emotion. They make good 
 creators and shocking lovers. 
 
 96 
 
 There are two kinds of literary creator : there is the 
 creative writer and there is the creative reader. The creative 
 reader is the true critic : he sees all he reads anew.
 
 POEMS 
 
 1 
 GRASSE 
 
 The milk-white town comes climbing, 
 
 Climbing over the hill, 
 With a grace that is past the rhyming, 
 
 And smiles at its own sweet will ; 
 The crystal dawn rejoices, 
 
 The cock crows silver-shrill, 
 And a din of sweet small noises 
 
 Wakes up where all was still. 
 
 The dewy sounds of labour 
 
 Arise most debonair ; 
 The bell calls each good neighbour 
 
 To say his morning prayer ; 
 The faithful hammer's clinking 
 
 Rings out a measured beat, 
 And the daisies open blinking 
 
 Amongst the young green wheat. 
 
 The little red roofs, they quiver 
 
 In the golden light of noon, 
 And the lowly voice of the river 
 
 Is heard both late and soon ; 
 A jocund noise of laughing 
 
 Rings up the sunny street, 
 Where the burghers sit a-quaffing 
 
 And sing that life is sweet. 
 
 75
 
 76 NEW AND OLD 
 
 The black-stoled priests come sweeping 
 
 Adown the moss-grown stair, 
 Where the market-place lies sleeping 
 
 In the shining evening air ; 
 And old age steals a-creeping 
 
 Whilst two grey gossips croon, 
 And the children rush home leaping 
 
 By the light of the rising moon. 
 
 Two tardy nuns step-keeping 
 
 Come wagging their holy heads, 
 And a white-souled star out-peeping 
 
 Will light them to their beds. 
 The reaper leaves his reaping, 
 
 The lambkins go to rest, 
 And a young bird rustles cheeping 
 
 To its olive-cradled nest. 
 
 But, as day's hum dies, sinking 
 
 Below the great red sun, 
 The little gold lights come winking 
 
 And flash out one by one ; 
 Sweet day in grey is hooding, 
 
 There 's not a soul that frets, 
 And over all is brooding 
 
 The breath of violets. 
 
 1888. 
 
 A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S 
 
 Who knoweth whence we come and what we are ? 
 This Man of Music had eternal eyes, 
 And on these wings of Melody there lies 
 The echo of an answer from afar.
 
 POEMS 77 
 
 It tells how round a Soul stand mists of morn, 
 
 And still it knoweth not the morning nigh, 
 
 But gropes through doubts and does not see the sky, 
 
 Yet travels to the East where it was born ; 
 
 And how that Soul is purified by Pain, 
 
 And, learning perfect Love, forgetteth Fear ; 
 
 Still soars and loves, half-free ; yearns once again ; 
 
 Then turns to flame celestial, crystal-clear, 
 
 And, standing rapt beyond our Now and Here, 
 
 Cries out to men to suffer and attain. 
 
 1888. 
 
 3 
 A WISH 
 
 Death, when I die, in Autumn let it be, 
 
 In Autumn when across the spiky furze 
 
 There floats the film of silver gossamers ; 
 
 In early Autumn, when the cherry-tree 
 
 Is touched with flame, the beech with russet gold, 
 
 And o'er the fallow field and purple lea 
 
 The starlings scream, and swallows put to sea, 
 
 And woolly mists hang light on wood and wold ; 
 
 Now when no sound is heard, unless it were 
 
 The thud of acorns on the wrinkled earth, 
 
 While thoughts of summer linger in the air 
 
 Sweet with the smell of apples ; now when Mirth 
 
 Is grey as Grief, and Peace is everywhere, 
 
 Bring me, O Death, into the arms of Birth. 
 
 1896. 
 
 4 
 
 The Path of Love is made for twain ; 
 
 Hate walketh not alone : 
 The Path of Death and the Path of Pain 
 
 Are only trod by one.
 
 78 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Yet he who hath ta'en the Path of Pain 
 
 Hath found both friend and foe ; 
 The depths of weakness, the power of meekness, 
 
 The strength to overthrow. 
 
 1902. 
 
 5 
 AFTER MARY COLERIDGE'S DEATH 
 
 A late day of summer is over ; 
 
 It has not been long. 
 The bee has gone out of the clover ; 
 
 Hushed is the song. 
 
 Yet the sweetness grows sweeter and lingers, 
 
 While the form of it dies ; 
 And the song does not cease with the singers, 
 
 Though night close their eyes. 
 
 When dark falls a light shines the stronger, 
 
 A flame burns more clear ; 
 The day would grow grey were it longer — 
 
 It is past — it is here. 
 
 1907. 
 
 6 
 
 IN THE STATUE-HALL AT THE LOUVRE 
 
 The generations of the dead, 
 
 White and free and very still, 
 
 Wait us in infinite halls, until 
 
 We too grow strangely quieted. 
 
 Their number who stand above good and ill, 
 
 Their measureless number who hath said ?
 
 POEMS 79 
 
 For each of these did the salt tears flow, 
 
 And the head was bowed and the heart was sore, 
 
 Hundreds and thousands of years ago, 
 
 Hundreds and thousands of years and more : 
 
 Yet we are weeping for one as though 
 
 No man had ever wept before. 
 
 1907. 
 
 7 
 
 MEMORY 
 
 The memory of that which was 
 
 Floats like a water-lily leaf 
 
 Over the tideless depth of grief, 
 
 Dark and cold and still as glass, 
 
 There where no change can ever pass, 
 
 Where shadows are long and light is brief. 
 
 The living thought of the days gone by, 
 With roots deep down below the deeps, 
 Gently rocks and gently sleeps, 
 Shining and green where the waters lie, 
 Until to him who vigil keeps 
 What was is the life that cannot die. 
 
 8 
 DEATH AND THE DAWN 
 
 Damp and dying and dark 
 
 Was the night ; 
 Closely shrouded and stark 
 
 Lay the light : 
 And the tale of the stars was told, 
 
 Save for a tremulous spark 
 
 1907.
 
 80 NEW AND OLD 
 
 In a streak of misty white. 
 
 The earth was heavy and cold 
 As a mourner's heart, and the sight 
 
 Of the dawn seemed far from the wold. 
 
 When — from the deeps of the dew 
 
 And the dark, 
 Sudden, up, out of view, 
 
 Shot the lark. 
 Swift as a flame she flew 
 
 To her invisible mark, 
 Swift as a soul that knew 
 
 Where the dawn would be : 
 The lark pierced through to the blue 
 
 And the soul was free. 
 
 1908. 
 
 9 
 
 THE LAVENDER HEDGE 
 
 All day long like things of light, 
 All day long without noise or stir, 
 Flutter and float the butterflies white 
 Over the hedge of lavender. 
 Blue is the sky, a milky blue, 
 Silvery blue is the lavender too, 
 Sweeter than honey, richer than myrrh. 
 
 Poets' souls are the butterflies white, 
 Dancing spirits come from afar, 
 Come from the land of lost delight 
 Where all the ancient raptures are ; 
 Poets return to float and fly 
 Over a blossoming memory, 
 Over a hedge of lavender. 
 
 Hambledon, 1908. 
 
 'a 1 -
 
 POEMS 81 
 
 10 
 
 TRIANON 
 
 The hand of Autumn rests upon 
 
 The dreaming woods of Trianon ; 
 
 On silver birch and on beech turned gold, 
 
 The woods of pleasure long since grown old, 
 
 And of youth still playing at games that are dead 
 
 On a floor strewn thick with brown and red, 
 
 Where Death himself cannot fall cold 
 
 Or lay him down in a quiet bed. 
 
 For here, where white mists rise from the mould, 
 
 Young Love once stopped in the midst of a song, 
 
 And Life broke off in a tale half-told 
 
 Before Life knew that the tale was wrong. 
 
 And now nought stays but a floating swan 
 
 To guard the silence of Trianon. 
 
 October 1913. 
 
 11 
 
 And I, who know what Love, what Beauty is, 
 I might have been a poet, might have told 
 Of all the pain and all the summer bliss 
 Earth and the heart contain a thousandfold. 
 I might have been a poet but for this, 
 That He who fashions spirits did withhold 
 The final tip of flame — the flame all His — 
 Which turneth thought to words of molten gold. 
 For ever must I aim, for ever miss, 
 Wanting the gift that 's neither bought nor sold. 
 Yet have I that which frees from Life's caprice, 
 And makes the day fresh and the footstep bold ; 
 Mine are the dreams that bring a central peace, 
 And mine the joy that never can grow old. 
 
 1901. 
 
 F
 
 GLADYS LEONORA PRATT 
 
 The existence of Gladys Leonora Pratt was a series of dull 
 dislocated sensations. She led a ' gay life,' as it was called 
 in her professional terminology ; and she led it in a dirty 
 little room with a curtained window that would not open, 
 at 259 Brecon Street, Euston, a dingy narrow street that 
 ended in a blind wall. The dull sensations were many, but 
 there was no thread to bind them together or give them 
 sequence ; she did not know the reason why she did this 
 or that, unless it were to eat or drink or get warm. She 
 could not count upon herself from one hour to another ; she 
 was the prey of each passing impression ; and she felt no 
 wish to be different. Her consciousness indeed was like 
 a sheet — none too white — across which were thrown, now 
 blurred, now clearer, a number of incoherent lantern-slides. 
 Among them, it is true, there were some more vivid than the 
 rest — spots of light which punctuated the dead level of the 
 days ; but what these particular images were Gladys Leonora 
 alone could tell, and, as far as may be, she must tell them 
 for herself. 
 
 There were the evenings when your ' chap ' took you to 
 the picture palaces, or to the halls, or to some theatre over 
 the river, where a lovely lady in yellow satin, a real lady, just 
 like the poster on the hoardings, committed a real crime. 
 And the night would end up with a drink in a jolly bar, 
 brilliant with electric light, where every one forgot drab 
 to-morrow and drab yesterday ; and sometimes you danced 
 and men were sweet on you, although they were not always 
 pleasant, until your own chap grew jealous and hit you — 
 
 82
 
 GLADYS LEONORA PRATT 83 
 
 only you didn't know much what happened till next morn- 
 ing. Or sometimes he was in a good mood and gave you a 
 set of glass beads, or cigarettes, or some liquorice sweets ; 
 or Mother Mack, ' her wot keeps the house,' was in a good 
 temper and cooked a currant pudding for dinner, and you 
 had the taste of it in your mouth long afterwards. And then 
 there were the bad hours, equally distinct on the lantern 
 sheet. In the first place there were your fears — shapeless, 
 indefinite terrors which jumped out upon you, you didn't 
 know how, and made you feel sick and scream. You got 
 them when you were alone in the dark, or in hot close weather 
 and in thunderstorms, or when you had had nobody to talk 
 to for some time. And there were the days when your chap 
 came home drunk and gave you a black eye ; or when Mother 
 Mack was in a bad temper and starved you ; or, worse 
 still, when the weather was bad and you ' got no work,' and 
 brought no one home, and she beat you, and you had the 
 hump. 
 
 And then there were other slides — pictures, some of them, 
 from times remoter and more confused ; but those pictures 
 were the strongest of all. They were very few, though. 
 There was a wood of blue-bells where you had seen a big 
 butterfly : it was at home when you were eight, and it was 
 near Stroud. And there was a pearl necklace you had once 
 caught sight of on the neck of a Jewess who was looking out 
 of a window over a tailor's shop in the Charing Cross Road. 
 And there was a child with fair curls that ran to you in the 
 street, because it took you for its mother. And there was a 
 big fight in Hampstead Road, when young Muriel's bloke 
 licked old Lily's bloke, and ' Golly, it was a bloody game.' 
 And there were those words, ' Far, far away,' from the poetry 
 piece you once learned at school, that came into your head, 
 you couldn't say why, and went on sounding there like a 
 tune — but it made you feel nice and comfortable. And there 
 was the teacher with the blue eyes — at school too — the one
 
 84 NEW AND OLD 
 
 you thought so sweetly pretty. And there was your chum 
 at the beginning ' here,' Sally Riley, who was taken off to 
 ' the Castle ' (Quod, that is) as a ' drunk and disorderly,' 
 and had to wear a cap and number ; and her it was wot told 
 you how dreadful it was not to talk or hear no noise, and how 
 it made you scream. And, of course, there was your mother 
 — but she gave you an odd feeling when you thought of her. 
 You didn't want to, and yet you did. You were so proud 
 of having a respectable mother, different from most of the 
 girls ; but you couldn't bear to think of her ; and you couldn't 
 really remember her, because she died when you were nine ; 
 only you knew she had a terrible cough. And you knew, 
 too, she had stuck to your father, though he had never kept 
 his word to marry her and was cruel bad to her. And after 
 she died — and before it — he brought back strange women 
 with loud laughs, who carried on with him, and were fearful 
 unkind to you ; till one day you were sick of it all, and you 
 had a young man of your own, and you stayed out late with 
 him two nights, and your father gave you a hiding, and 
 the third night you were afraid of going home (home was 
 Marylebone way), and your bloke treated you at the ' Angel,' 
 and you got pretty well screwed, and you laughed a good 
 deal and said ' yes ' to all he asked, and you remembered 
 nothing more and woke up ' here.' And ' here ' you had 
 stayed ever since, you didn't quite know how long, only 
 when you came it was before Christmas, and now Christmas 
 was past again. (That last picture was longer than a picture 
 — it was a memory, one of the very few in Gladys Leonora's 
 possession.) 
 
 And after the first strangeness — you were frightened and 
 excited for a week — it didn't seem very different from home, 
 except that you got better food and worse colds. It was 
 cruel work standing out at night in all weathers, and Mother 
 Mack didn't leave you much money, scarcely enough for 
 ostrich feathers or a plush ' pallytoe,' and hardly ever
 
 GLADYS LEONORA PRATT 85 
 
 enough for cheap scents. It was duller here in the day, 
 because at home you used to go and work at the sweet- 
 factory, and here you only slaved for old Mack till the nights 
 came ; and they were monotonous too, and you were dog- 
 tired, and men were brutes and often you hated them, and 
 all the same there seemed no doing without them. As for 
 your pals, sometimes you liked them and walked arm-in-arm 
 with them in the Euston Road ; and sometimes, when 
 Mother Mack favoured them or they riled you, you hated 
 them, and wanted to hurt them. Now and then you did, 
 and they hurt back again. But if they were ill or hungry, 
 you stood by them and went without yourself. And you 
 never would have taken the smallest thing belonging to 
 them, or to any one, not you ! You were as honest as the 
 day. That was perhaps the one fact that you knew about 
 yourself. But did you know it ? Directly you tried to put 
 things together, the thread somehow snapped. 
 
 Now and again you had ' wishes.' They drifted like 
 aimless winds across this waste of rubble, and yet, aimless 
 though they were, they carried something like a fragrance 
 from afar : for one moment they made an air-current. 
 You got them most often in the spring, at the time when you 
 would suddenly burst out crying and your shoulders shook 
 with sobs for nothing at all ; or else odd things set you off — 
 a basket of daffodils at the street corner, or a barrel-organ 
 playing a slow tune. You frequently laughed, too, for no 
 reason, excepting that others near you were laughing ; or 
 because when you went out walking you saw somebody 
 different from the rest — a coloured man, or a very tall one, 
 or a woman with a squint. The crying, however, was 
 different ; it made you feel better, and your ' wishes ' often 
 came along with it. Not wishes for finery or motor-cars — 
 another sort. You wished to see some green grass and some 
 trees (Mother Mack never let you get as far as the parks), 
 and you wanted to have a baby of j^our own ; it was when
 
 86 NEW AND OLD 
 
 you saw the children playing, above all when that little girl 
 ran up to you and put up its face to be kissed. And occasion- 
 ally, at rare intervals, you vaguely wished to be good. You 
 didn't know how, or even try to know ; but you thought of 
 your mother, and once when you felt like that you gave 
 Mother Mack the go-by and, when none of the girls was 
 anywhere about, you nipped into a church. Gawd ! wouldn't 
 they have jeered and pinched if they had seen you ! But 
 when you got inside you couldn't understand a word. 
 Still, the organ and the flowers and the smell of fur and heat 
 was very nice, and you liked the quiet when the ladies put 
 their faces down. 
 
 Church was tabooed by all self-respecting ladies of Brecon 
 Street and other streets like Brecon Street : church and 
 chapel and kind ladies — kind ladies, perhaps, most of all. 
 What had they got to do with the other ladies of Brecon 
 Street ? And they thought they had. They seldom got at 
 them, but when they did they used silly words like ' pure ' 
 and ' save ' and ' religious ' — words that had nothing to do 
 with anything. If they spoke to you, you knew what to 
 do : you let fly a volley of your own language, and you 
 made one of your own jokes — and serve them jolly well 
 right for interfering. Outside such volleys, Gladys com- 
 prehended few words and possessed fewer, not enough to 
 make ideas with ; and when she read, if they began with 
 the same letter and were of about the same length, one 
 looked much the same to her as another. 
 
 But when she felt angry with kind ladies she generally 
 stopped, suddenly checkmated by something else. The 
 something was almost the most vivid of all her odd set of 
 lantern-slides. It was a sight she had seen, and it had 
 left a picture which lasted — an indelible picture which came 
 back oftener than the rest and with greater force. She had 
 seen it one late afternoon in November in Roach Lane, 
 next turning but two from Brecon Street. It was a Satur-
 
 GLADYS LEONORA PRATT 87 
 
 day, and Roach Lane market was in full swing. The dark 
 had fallen and yellowish fog hung in the air, so that the 
 flaring torches, stuck in each of the crowded stalls — so 
 crowded that you could hardly thread your way between 
 them, threw a tawny light on the blackness, and strange 
 shadows on the faces of the jostling buyers and sellers. 
 The kerb-stone was thick with them, elbowing and pushing 
 one another with good-natured oaths and loud hagglings, 
 while they fingered the dried haddocks or felt the quality 
 of second-hand plush with the hands of connoisseurs. 
 Gladys was the quicker to notice the incongruous figure of 
 a ' kind lady ' issuing rather precipitately from a door down 
 the Lane. A woman with dishevelled hair, ' more than 
 half seas over,' Gladys noted, ran after her and struck her, 
 so that the lady staggered against a stall, and it would have 
 gone worse with her had not the woman's attention been 
 caught by the sight of a man bargaining at the clearer end 
 of the alley. She made for him at once, and the lady, 
 though she gave a wince of pain, said no word. She was 
 a queer one, thought Gladys, to come along here and get 
 that, when she might stay comfortable in the West End 
 minding her own business. What for did the bloomin' 
 idiot want to go and meddle with them as she had no con- 
 cern with ? It must be that she got somethink out of it, 
 a pryin' in other ladies' houses like that ! But there was 
 no time for further comment, for at this moment the atten- 
 tion of Roach Lane was diverted. The woman who had 
 made for the man was catching it hard from him with a 
 stick, and she was crying — crying at the top of her voice. 
 The sight and sound were so common in Roach Lane that 
 no one stirred from his place, but the little groups stopped 
 marketing and looked on, half-curious, half-indifferent, as 
 they might watch a hackneyed play. Only the lady did 
 anything. She suddenly ran across the road, caught the 
 man's arm, and, taking him by surprise, contrived to knock
 
 88 NEW AND OLD 
 
 the stick out of his hand. The woman fell upon her at 
 once with her fists. ' It 's you agin, yer sniveller, is it ? 
 I '11 teach yer, by Gawd, I will ! ' she cried ; and the man, 
 stung to fury, lashed out blindly and threw the interloper 
 down. This was a new sensation, even in Roach Lane. 
 A crowd gathered round her, Gladys among the rest, ' Well, 
 I 'm darned if this ain't a rum go,' she muttered. But a 
 policeman came up, and then there was a rummer go still. 
 The lady, who had struggled to her feet, her hat crushed 
 in, her clothes all splashed with mud, refused to give the 
 couple in charge. ' It was my fault,' she said, ' I attacked 
 him first ' ; so the policeman did nothing but support her, 
 and she passed away, limping, down the street. Only, as 
 she did so, Gladys caught sight of her face ; and she never 
 forgot it. It was the face of an angel she had once seen in 
 a shop on a Christmas card. She did not look angry, only 
 pitiful and very quiet, and her hat had a bunch of lovely 
 Parmer voylets in it, and they was all bashed in and spoilt, 
 which was a dreadful shame ; she had turned orful white, 
 too, and yet she had never made one sound. Any gurl she 
 knew would have screamed — wouldn't they jist ? It was 
 the look in her eyes, though, which gave Gladys that queer 
 feeling — one she had never had before — a kind of feeling 
 as if she were going to choke. What on earth did she go 
 and do that for ? She couldn't have anything to make out 
 of that ; and the woman had hurt her just a moment ago. 
 Well, she 'd be blowed if it wasn't the rummest go ! She 
 was a plucky one, no mistake. Then that look in her eyes 
 returned to Gladys, and the queer choked feeling came 
 again, and deep down in her, where she could not get at it, 
 there rose, or there tried to rise, a wish that she could do 
 a spunky thing like that — something handsome ; and still 
 more that she could look like that about the eyes, and have 
 pale Parmer voylets in her hat. Yet all the time she knew 
 that the lady belonged to Church and the West End, and
 
 GLADYS LEONORA PRATT 89 
 
 all the things in life that were most against the code of 
 Brecon Street. 
 
 This had happened weeks since, and weeks were ages to 
 Gladys ; but the picture had not faded in the least when it 
 recurred to her vision, although the lantern had since 
 then added other slides to the confused store of her im- 
 pressions — the impressions of which she seemed to be 
 made up. For such, in some measure as she stands here, 
 was Gladys Leonora Pratt. 
 
 That is to say, as far as her inward self was concerned. 
 There was also the outer woman. Her appearance was not 
 adventurous. She seemed as like to many other Gladys 
 Leonoras as is one sparrow to another. Rather short and 
 thick-set she was, with shapely hands and arms, round 
 which jingled cheap gilt bangles ; with heavy cheeks, sallow 
 complexion and nondescript features, except that her small 
 brown eyes always looked you straight in the face. She 
 had tried to dye her indistinguishable brown hair, straight 
 hair, parted on one side, that lay flat and heavy upon her 
 forehead as if it had no life left ; but the gold dye had not 
 taken properly and remained in patches that showed the 
 brown underneath. Mother Mack had let her know what 
 she thought of it ; she had also let her know what she 
 thought of her cough. 
 
 For, at the moment when we find her, Gladys was cough- 
 ing pretty badly. She was sitting in her stuffy little room 
 where everything was soiled- — bed-linen, and yellow plush 
 divan, and close-drawn muslin blinds, and the folk who 
 entered there. There was a looking-glass, and a shaky 
 chest of drawers, of which one foot was wanting. A man's 
 bowler lay upon it, with three cigarette-ends and a cheap 
 cigarette-box, empty, an oriental beauty's head upon the 
 lid. On the mantel-shelf stood Gladys's one treasure, a 
 biscuit china ornament — a little girl holding a large hat. 
 You put flowers into the hat, only she never had any to
 
 90 NEW AND OLD 
 
 put there ; but she thought it the most beautiful thing she 
 had ever seen, and sometimes she imagined a red rose in it. 
 She had looked at it for a fortnight in a fancy-shop off 
 Tottenham Court Road, and once — in the early days of 
 Brecon Street — she had asked a chap to give it her, and 
 he had. But that seemed long ago. For the dingy little 
 room had, since then, seen a series of dingy inmates, chiefly 
 under-clerks and shop-assistants ; and she had not liked 
 one of them more than another, until three weeks ago. 
 
 And then there was an exception. The exception was 
 in the jewellery line ; he ' travelled ' for a city firm, and he 
 was German. It is not to be supposed that Gladys nourished 
 an interesting passion, or even any feeling that came near 
 what we call love ; but there was within her some faint 
 sluggish stirring of life, some movement of a half-sentient 
 germ that might, somewhere else, with sun and rain have 
 struggled towards birth. Her soul for one moment had 
 turned in its sleep. The traveller in jewellery had given 
 her a kind of sense of home — an inarticulate desire to settle, 
 even to marry him, the first of such desires that she had 
 experienced. He had talked politely to her and asked after 
 her cough, just as if she had not lived in Brecon Street ; and 
 one evening he had had a cold and had let her put on a 
 mustard-leaf. And he was clean and fair, and wore a real 
 white collar, not a paper one ; and he had given her his photo- 
 graph, quite the gentleman, with his hand in a cuff resting 
 upon a marble table, an india-rubber plant by his side. He 
 had come back every evening for a week and more ; then he 
 had gone off, like the rest. It had not made her unhappy ; 
 but the first day or two she felt restless and rather uncom- 
 fortable, as if she had lost something, and even now his clean 
 face came up before her eyes. It was one of the clear-cut 
 images in her gallery. 
 
 He had given her more than his photograph. In the first 
 place there was a treat at the theatre ; and the play was
 
 GLADYS LEONORA PRATT 91 
 
 about a pore guii like her, wot married a bloomin' toff and 
 had a face like the lady's in Roach Lane, the same as the 
 angel's on the Christmas card ; and her sister was cruel 
 jealous and wanted the oof; so she strangled the bride in 
 her bed with the coverlet, and the strangling was finished 
 that clever and easy — every bit of it done on the stage — till 
 Gladys felt she was a doin' of it herself. And then there 
 came the bride's scream — quite 'orrible — and the sister 
 stifled that too. But after the play was ended it went on 
 ringing in her ears ; and so it had done since, though it was 
 just over a week ago that she had heard it. 
 
 Besides the treat, ' he ' had made her a wonderful present ; 
 it had superseded the china vase ; it was her most precious 
 possession, such as she had never thought to own. For it 
 was a brooch — a real gold brooch ; one of those shaped like 
 a merry-thought bone, and on it was ' Mizpah ' in false 
 rubies. She could not think much of the giver ; she soon 
 liked the brooch a great deal more. It came to be almost 
 her only thought all day — how she would look wearing it, 
 and how the gurls would envy her, but. most of all how she 
 could hide it from Mother Mack : you never knew what old 
 Mack would grab. 
 
 Especially just now. For soon after she got it (the day 
 before he left), her cough became worse, and her cheeks grew 
 pale and thin, and her ' work ' fell off, and Mack, the old 
 Devil, began to threaten her and to say she did not pay her 
 way. So Gladys tied the brooch up in a stocking at the 
 back of her drawer, where no one could get at it, and felt 
 quite easy in her mind. 
 
 The day after she had done this, the calamity happened. 
 Her cough was constant and she felt too bad to move. 
 There had been a hand-to-hand set-to with Mack, who was 
 the worse that afternoon for neuralgia and for drink. She 
 had heaped vile names upon Gladys Leonora, had hit her 
 about the head and pushed her out of doors ; she would
 
 92 NEW AND OLD 
 
 have no ugly devils as couldn't pay their keep, she shouted. 
 And when in the late afternoon Gladys came back, she found 
 her drawers rifled and the brooch gone. Mother Mack had 
 stolen it, curse her ! And it was only too clear what she 
 would say if she were asked for it ; she had taken it as her 
 right, to pay what was owing to her for food. It was a 
 damned lie ; she owed her nothing, bloody thief that she 
 was ; and so she would tell her. But at the very thought she 
 cowered and knew she could not ; she felt the blows of 
 that big thick arm raining upon her back ; she was powerless 
 against her. No, she would run away, she would. Yet 
 where had she to go ? 259 Brecon Street was the only roof 
 she could think of that would shelter her. She did not 
 dream of informing the police ; they were the natural 
 enemies of herself as well as of Mother Mack — of herself and 
 of all her clan. There is a code of honour in Brecon Street 
 — limited, no doubt, like the locality, but more rigorous 
 than many wider codes. 
 
 Gladys Leonora was seized with a paroxysm of blind 
 helpless fury. She tried to scream, but her cough had made 
 her hoarse, and the words stuck in her throat. Then she 
 beat the floor with her fists, and she got up and beat the 
 door too, and she knocked her poor head against the wall. 
 After which, thoroughly exhausted, she sank in a heap upon 
 the ground. Her chest heaved with loud, dry sobs, and she 
 cried till she thought she would break in half. As she lay 
 there, the room grew dark and dreadful. Mechanically she 
 heard the rain drip outside, and the bell of a Baptist chapel 
 some way off sound on with a muffled regularity ; mechani- 
 cally, too, she heard young Muriel and Lily go downstairs. 
 ' Mother Mack 's that bad with her neuralgy, she 's gone to 
 bed,' Muriel was saying, and the words entered Gladys's 
 ears without her taking in their meaning ; then the house- 
 door shut, and all was quiet again. 
 
 At last she got up, stiff and aching from the hard boards ;
 
 GLADYS LEONORA PRATT 93 
 
 she had not had a crumb since morning, and her hands and 
 legs were trembling. As she stood there, the first thing her 
 eye fell upon was the open drawer where the brooch had 
 been. An awful wave of hatred swept over her, such as she 
 had never before experienced. It had her — she turned giddy 
 and reeled. She must do something to old Mack, something 
 at once. But, again, what ? And how could she do it ? 
 Mack was three times as strong as herself. All of a sudden 
 the words she had heard automatically came back into her 
 head. ' Mother Mack is in bed with her neuralgy,' and when 
 she had the neuralgy they always called her the Hell-cat, 
 it made her double as bad as usual ; besides, the gurls had 
 gone out — even they would not be there to defend her ; 
 she was alone in the house with Mother Mack. . . . Still 
 she would do something. The fierceness and giddiness grew 
 worse. Yes, she would do something. What, she had no 
 idea. She only felt that she must rush downstairs, out, 
 vaguely, into the dark, and smash. What she would smash, 
 she did not know. 
 
 Downstairs then she ran, Maenad-like, her hair half 
 fallen on her shoulders. Her pals' black empty room stared 
 at her across the landing till it frightened her, but she was 
 running so fast that she had little time for any sensation. 
 She did not even notice the strange suffocating smell there 
 was on the staircase — an extraordinary smell, strong 
 enough even to overpower the usual stale perfume of paraffin 
 and onions which was chronic in the house. As she made 
 for the front-door, it reached even her benumbed senses ; 
 it gave her nerves a kind of awakening shock. She had 
 smelled it ' here ' once before in the kitchen ; somewhere 
 the gas must be escaping. What did that matter to her ? 
 She had her hand upon the door, when her attention was 
 really arrested. From Mother Mack's room on the right 
 of the entry passage there came a strange muffled groan ; 
 then another groan as if from one unconscious ; then the
 
 94 NEW AND OLD 
 
 heavy broken gasps again. Curiosity, savage curiosity, 
 took hold of Gladys. Old Mack was evidently asleep ; she 
 could not spring out and beat her. Stealthily she opened 
 the bedroom door and stood upon the threshold. But at 
 first she staggered, almost falling backwards, choked by 
 the fumes that met her. It was here then that the gas was 
 escaping — from the jet near the mantel-shelf. Mother 
 Mack's bedstead was opposite the fireplace, along the wall, 
 with its foot towards the door. The street-lamp outside 
 shed through the window a fitful half-light upon the room, 
 and when Gladys had stood there a moment her eyes got 
 used to it and she saw. As she looked upon the heavy, 
 helpless, prostrate form, that wild hatred surged up in her 
 again, and it passed into an active thirst for vengeance. 
 Yes — she must do something to pay her out. You had 
 only to glance at old Mack's grey face to know that she 
 could not jump up. She was drugged, stifled by the gas ; 
 she knew nothing ; if it went on long enough it would 
 finish her ; she would have gone by now, very likely, if the 
 jet had been nearer and if there were not such a draught 
 from the door. Yes, she must pay the old brute out. 
 
 Then, as Gladys stood there, something happened. 
 There rose before her, till she seemed in it, of it, the strang- 
 ling scene upon the stage. The figure in the bed here was 
 lying in the same position as the figure had lain there ; the 
 light was the same, falling from without on the dark room 
 within. And Gladys was waiting on the threshold of the 
 room in just the same place as the sister had waited. What 
 easier than to go on with the part — to take the rug off the 
 bed as the sister had done, get your fingers round that un- 
 resisting neck, and make an end of her ? She might revive 
 if she were left ; Muriel and Lily, or their chaps, might 
 come in and save her. But Gladys was scarcely conscious 
 of these thoughts, she was so much part of the play. 
 
 Children, Geniuses, Gladys Leonoras put nothing between
 
 GLADYS LEONORA PRATT 95 
 
 idea and action — there where the average man puts reason. 
 Children, Geniuses and Gladys Leonoras get suggestions 
 and at once convert them into life. With children they 
 become games, with geniuses creation, with Gladys Leonoras 
 crimes or heroisms — the kind of heroisms that makes news- 
 paper-readers exclaim at the wonder of them in such 
 surroundings. As Gladys advanced relentless, like one 
 who was walking in a dream, the deed was nearly done. 
 
 And then, again, something happened. Without reason, 
 in the flash of a moment, another picture put itself over 
 the scene on the stage, and obliterated it. It was the 
 picture of the lady limping painfully across Roach Lane — 
 the lady with the angel-face outlined clearly on the tawny 
 darkness, as she passed between the flaring stalls and dis- 
 appeared. The image was so strong and unexpected that 
 the other image yielded before it, faded off the sheet. 
 Gladys was no longer on the stage ; she w T as absorbed in 
 the lady. And once more that queer wish came over her 
 — the sense how nice it would be to feel ' like that.' Her 
 muscles relaxed, her arm fell. In an instant, vision changed 
 to action. She ran to the jet and turned the gas off ; then 
 to the window. With forces strained to the utmost, she 
 wrenched the tightly- jammed bolt and flung it open, and 
 she threw the door open too : she had seen these things 
 done when the gas escaped before in the kitchen. Next, 
 she turned to Mother Mack. Brandy she knew was what 
 the ambulance men — them in medals and uniforms — gave 
 to people who fainted in a crowd. And the brandy-bottle 
 was never far from Mack ; no difficulty in finding it now, 
 for it stood, half-empty, on a chair near the bed. She 
 poured some down her throat : her mouth, which was all 
 swollen, was still open, but her breathing, although it was 
 laboured, was getting better. Presently her eyelids fluttered, 
 and she moved ; then she turned on her side and made an 
 indistinct muttering. It was high time for Gladys to be
 
 96 NEW AND OLD 
 
 off. If Mack woke to find her there, she 'd play Old Nick 
 and suspect her of taking the brandy, or anything else. 
 No, she hadn't no mind to stick out that. She slipped 
 away to the front-door and opened it. Their neighbour, a 
 pendant to Mack, was standing as usual on her doorstep. 
 ' So Mrs. Mack had the neuralgics, pore dear ? Oh, no, 
 she wouldn't mind comin' in and givin' an eye to her while 
 the gurls were out.' Gladys mentioned no word of what 
 had just happened. She was in a tremor lest it should be 
 discovered that she had been in Mack's room. 
 
 By now it was the hour for her to go out on her usual 
 beat. Only she did not feel as usual. She was no longer 
 tired and sick of everything. Her cough had stopped, and 
 she had a sense of peace foreign to her — peace that was 
 almost pleasure. For the moment, as she went up to her 
 room, she had even forgotten about the brooch. So she 
 stood quite cheerful before the glass (it had a crack across 
 the middle), and put a patch of cheap rouge upon either 
 cheek ; after which she tousled her hair, pinned it up, 
 cocked her big velvet hat with its uncurled green feather 
 at the professional angle upon her head, and went out into 
 the drizzling mist. ' We shan't get much work to-night, 
 it 's raining,' said Irene from next door. Gladys only 
 nodded and walked on, for nothing seemed to matter much 
 this evening. And she went to wait at her customary 
 corner. 
 
 The germ of the spirit lay dormant again in the inchoate 
 body with which nature had provided it — the muddy 
 tenement where, in spite of all things, it had kept itself 
 alive. And there was joy in heaven. The Angels felt no 
 need of waiting till Gladys Leonora Pratt should repent.
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER-WRITERS 
 
 ' A letter behoves to tell about oneself,' writes Mrs. Carlyle 
 to John Sterling, and she could certainly speak as one having 
 authority. She hits the truth, for women at any rate. 
 Good letters need not necessarily talk of their writers, but 
 they must, consciously or unconsciously, tell about them ; 
 must, above all else, transmit their personality. And the 
 means of transmission becomes almost as important as the 
 matter in hand. It is one thing to have something to say 
 and another to have the art of saying it ; an art which must 
 always be individual to the writer, and which, in a flash, 
 conveys the essence of his subject in so intimate a manner 
 that the reader feels like his confidant. It is an art hard to 
 regulate by any general rules, except that of simplicity, 
 especially in the case of letter-writing. The sweetest and 
 most pensive of correspondents, Dorothy Osborne, said all 
 there was to say about it as long ago as 1653 : ' All letters, 
 methinks, should be free and easy as one's discourse ; not 
 studied, as an oration, nor made up of hard words, like a 
 charm. Tis an admirable thing to see how some people 
 will labour to find out terms that may obscure plain sense, 
 like a gentleman I know, who would never say " the weather 
 grew cold," but that " winter began to salute us." I have 
 no patience with such coxcombs, and cannot blame an old 
 uncle of mine that threw the standish at his man's head, 
 because he writ a letter for him where, instead of saying 
 (as his master bid him) " that he would have writ himself, 
 but he had the gout in his hand," he said that " the gout 
 in his hand would not permit him to put pen to paper." 
 
 G
 
 98 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Dorothy Osborne herself here gives the best proof that 
 not only simplicity but also spontaneity is needed, if a letter 
 is to be perfectly satisfactory — spontaneity, which is a matter 
 of the heart as well as the head, and implies the invaluable 
 possession of mental sympathies. The best letter- writers, 
 indeed, give the impression of their correspondents' per- 
 sonality along with their own and vary, almost imper- 
 ceptibly, with each of them. A brilliant critic of ' The Art 
 of Letter- writing ' * has recently told us that ' as a jest's 
 prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears, so a letter must 
 depend upon the person to whom it is addressed.' Many of 
 the persons thus addressed have been women, and in this 
 way alone they have exercised a great influence on letter- 
 writing — on the letter-writing of men. Letter-receiving 
 has been a calling for them, and, skilled in the arts of evoking 
 and provoking alike, they have become as good as a School 
 for style, and an Academy of nimble wit. 
 
 But they have been far from playing only a passive part. 
 Letter-writing seems, indeed, an art especially invented to 
 suit the talents of women, and (since their defects are often 
 their graces) even to suit their foibles. Women are not 
 creators ; they are interpreters, critics ; their best qualities, 
 sympathy and insight, are the essence of criticism ; and 
 good letter-writing is criticism — of life, of people, of art, as 
 the case may be. The quick perceptions and elusive grace 
 that are natural to women, their habit of producing and their 
 gift for expressing themselves, their mastery of detail, their 
 power of subtle suggestion and of intuition, their very 
 inability to sustain thought and therefore to become heavy, 
 their faculty for intimacy which sums up all the rest — these 
 are so many qualifications for the writing of letters, and of 
 personal letters in particular. 
 
 Generally speaking, correspondence can be divided into 
 
 1 'The Art of Letter-writing,' by H. W. Paul, Ninetcetith Century for 
 July 1898.
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER-WRITERS 99 
 
 two chief kinds — the letters written for one, and the letters 
 written for more than one. The first are the intimate letters, 
 often from people comparatively unknown ; only existing 
 to reveal individual character, and bringing with them a 
 particular and penetrating charm, a sense of personal 
 discovery. Those of the second sort are written with an eye 
 to an audience, whether it consist of posterity, of the public, 
 or only of a coterie. They are literary achievements that 
 belong to all the world, and we have no desire to appropriate 
 them, no enjoyment of them as private property. They are 
 not so much loved as admired, especially by men, and it is 
 perhaps by men that they are best written. The lovable, 
 intimate letter, on the contrary, comes most naturally from 
 a woman's pen, and, as often as not, the masculine mind 
 thinks it trivial. But the foremost letter-writers of the 
 world have contrived to combine both set form and personal 
 distinction. Madame de Sevigne, of course, achieved this 
 and, in herself, includes almost every sort of letter-writing. 
 It is dull however to discuss the unquestionable, and to 
 comment upon Madame de Sevigne's position in this respect 
 is as futile as comment upon Shakespeare's position as a 
 dramatist. 
 
 If we come to the letters that aim at being literature, and 
 to such women as have written them, we find any kind of 
 classification impossible. Eloquent letters, political letters 
 belong to this province, such as Madame Roland's heroic 
 and persuasive epistles to the Girondins, which are neces- 
 sarily written from a platform. But the great era of corre- 
 spondence in France immediately preceded Madame Roland 
 and the Revolution. It was the period of writing for a 
 coterie — the most elaborate kind of writing ; for nothing 
 can be more self-conscious than sentences penned for the 
 perusal of a group of critical intimates, whose opinion is vital 
 to the writer. Not a note could be composed in certain 
 circles without being read aloud to them, and this in the days
 
 100 NEW AND OLD 
 
 when one lady alone sent sixteen thousand letters to one 
 gentleman ; when not only gentlemen wrote to ladies, but 
 adoring ladies wrote to each other, once, sometimes twice, 
 in twenty-four hours, on topics as often as not impersonal. 
 The queen of these brilliant but rather malicious Muses was 
 Madame du Deffand, the most brilliant, the most malicious 
 of them all. Her physical blindness seemed to endow her 
 with an extra acuteness of mental vision, and her pen darts 
 like lightning, withering wherever it passes. Byron him- 
 self could not be more bored or more unkind than Madame 
 du Deffand, and she had none of the high spirits which often 
 redeemed his sallies. In her day kindness was too often 
 confounded with stupidity. She certainly fulfilled Mrs. 
 Carlyle's injunction to letter- writers, and her letters may be 
 cited as masterpieces of self-revelation. They are chiefly 
 written to her friend the Duchesse de Choiseul ; to Voltaire, 
 on whom she practised platonics ; and to Horace Walpole, 
 with whom, when she was seventy, she had an arduous 
 flirtation. She demanded a heart from others, but did not 
 care to possess one herself ; she tried to replace it by a large 
 and lucid mind, which wielded epigram like a sword and 
 forced upon her a panoramic view of the evils of life, without 
 any cloud-effects to soften them down. Her letters seem 
 made up of mind and decorum — sceptical decorum — and 
 sound no higher note than an enthusiastic avoidance of 
 discomfort. 
 
 Here, for instance, is her description of her day. She has 
 ' torn herself out of bed that her frisure, begun the day 
 before, may be completed.' Her ' poor head is overpowered 
 by four heavy hands . . . her curling-irons resound in her 
 ears.' An officer and an archbishop are chattering to her ; 
 her head-dress and panier are being prepared. Suddenly a 
 voice from the next room announces that the King is passing 
 on his way to Mass ; it is church time. ' Allons ! ' she cries 
 in her letter, ' quick, my head-gear, my muff, my fan, my
 
 WOMKN AS LETTER-WRITERS 101 
 
 prayer book ! Ne scandalisons personnc ! My chair ! 
 My porters ! One, two, three, off ! ' Or if we want her 
 philosophy, ' There is but one decision to make about the 
 world,' she says : ' to let it be as it is ; to laugh at it without 
 pretending to reform it ; and to abandon la Marechalc to 
 her levity, her low instincts, and her inconsequences, without 
 bothering one's head about her.' 
 
 ' Elks sont commc il plait a Dieu, comme clles vous vien- 
 ncnt ; et si vous avez de l'esprit ce n'est pas votre faute,' 
 says Madame du Deffand to a witty Abbe about his letters. 
 She and her contemporaries often thought they were admir- 
 ing spontaneity when they were carefully cultivating light- 
 ness, for the prevailing worship of mind made self-con- 
 sciousness natural. Her seriousness — and she could be 
 admirably serious — is so artistic that it seems simple, almost 
 obvious, and one finds oneself wondering why such essential 
 things have not been said before. The quality of unosten- 
 tatious gravity is the distinction of French writers, and we 
 sometimes find these ladies of last century having the most 
 delicate literary discussions on paper. 
 
 It was the fashion of the times also (and Madame du 
 Deffand was its leader) to write pages of analysis of one's 
 friends' characters — and of one's own. Women are audaci- 
 ously interested in themselves, and therefore audaciously 
 personal, even in such deliberate epistles as these. They 
 are also unabashed by detail, and can trifle to profound 
 purpose. Certain letters, like thistle-down, live only by 
 virtue of their lightness, and skim over Time too quickly 
 for him to lay hold on them. What man — what Horace 
 Walpole even — would dare to confide to an audience such 
 a tissue of gossamer scandal and delicate intuition as most 
 of these letters represent ? Yet in these airy nothings lies 
 the secret of French genius — the Genius of Intercourse. 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was more ambitious than 
 Madame du Deffand. She did not confine her attention
 
 102 NEW AND OLD 
 
 to a coterie, but wrote for posterity, and rather rashly pro- 
 claimed that her letters would be read long after Madame 
 de Sevigne's were forgotten. In other respects she reminds 
 us of the blind old Frenchwoman, especially in her power 
 of epigram and Book of Ecclesiasticus wisdom. But she, 
 at any rate, regarded her race with a cold kindness which 
 made her take pains to help it ; her philosophy, too, was 
 no mere shield against spiritual discomfort and showed 
 some of the real Stoic's courage and austerity. Her letters 
 reveal a curious mixture of later Rome and modern London ; 
 they seem to be written by an Epicurean who is watching 
 Christianity with approbation. If they are less amusing 
 than Madame du Deffand's, they are also more solid and 
 not so fatiguing to the spirit. But then, unlike that 
 lady, she is never bored and is gifted with an endless 
 curiosity, an endless interest in fact. Her flirtation by 
 correspondence with Pope was probably as great a piece 
 of vanity as that of Madame du Deffand with Horace 
 Walpole ; but it was more abstract and better disciplined. 
 In all her letters, but especially in those to him, she is mistress 
 of classical description and of a precision which is refresh- 
 ing. The modern quality of humour, of seeing things 
 through a personal atmosphere, was as unknown as it would 
 have been repugnant to her. She never paints, she engraves; 
 and her best accounts are like intaglios, clear-cut and excel- 
 lently designed. She is a scholar even in her frivolities, 
 and there is the same nicety in her account of a rakish card- 
 party as in her sober pictures of Oriental scenes. 
 She writes to Pope from Belgrade in 1717 : 
 ' This place . . . perfectly answers the description of the 
 Elysian Fields. I am in the middle of a wood consisting 
 chiefly of fruit-trees watered by a vast number of fountains 
 . . . and divided into many shady walks upon short grass. 
 . . . The village is only inhabited by the richest among 
 the Christians, who meet every night at a fountain, forty
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER- WRITERS 103 
 
 paces from my house, to sing and dance. But what per- 
 suades me more fully of my decease is the situation of my 
 own mind, the profound ignorance I am in of what passes 
 among the living (which only comes to me by chance), and 
 the great calmness with which I receive it. Yet I have still 
 a hankering after my friends and acquaintances left in the 
 world. . . . And 'tis very necessary to make a perfect 
 Elysium that there should be a River Lethe, which I am 
 not so happy as to find. . . . The reflection on the great 
 gulph between you and me cools all news that comes hither. 
 I can neither be sensibly touched w r ith joy nor grief when I 
 consider that possibly the cause of either is removed before 
 the letter comes to my hands.' 
 
 This is admirable of the academic kind, the charm of 
 which lies in the absence of strong contrasts. Lady Mary 
 never sinks below cheerfulness, or gets beyond the ' sprightly 
 folly ' she ' thanks God she was born with.' Perhaps the 
 art of aphorism suits her best of all. ' Our proverb that 
 knowledge is no burden may be true as to oneself,' she 
 writes, ' but knowing too much is apt to make one trouble- 
 some to other people.' Or, ' We are little better than 
 straws upon the water ; we may flatter ourselves that we 
 swim, when the current carries us along.' Or, ' Does not 
 King David say somewhere that man walketh in a vain 
 show ? ' she writes on another occasion ; ' I think he does, 
 and I am sure this is peculiarly true of the Frenchman ; but 
 he walks merrily and seems to enjoy the vision, and may 
 he not therefore be esteemed more happy than many of 
 our solid thinkers, whose brows are furrowed by deep reflec- 
 tion, and whose wisdom is so often clothed with a rusty 
 mantle of spleen and vapours ? ' 
 
 If Lady Mary was born scholarly and classical, Dorothy 
 Osborne, her predecessor by sixty years, was born classical 
 and natural. The daughter of a Cavalier and plighted to 
 a Roundhead's son, she has about her style a kind of sober
 
 104 NEW AND OLD 
 
 grace which seems to express her relation to both parties. 
 Besides, she lived within hail of the Elizabethans, and her 
 words ' have the dew still upon them.' She is a dainty 
 preacher, and nurses wisdom with a kind of maternal tender- 
 ness ; the thoughts that she sends forth from the lonely 
 Bedfordshire home, where she tends a sick father and pacifies 
 a quarrelsome brother, are scented with lavender. There 
 can be no more pleasant contrast than that between Lady 
 Mary's Ottoman Elysium and Dorothy Osborne's English 
 Arcadia. ' About six or seven o'clock,' she writes, ' I walk 
 out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a 
 great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit 
 in the shade singing of ballads. I talk to them, and find 
 they want nothing to make them the happiest people in 
 the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most com- 
 monly, when we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks 
 about her and spies her cows going into the com, and then 
 away they all run, as if they had wings at their heels.' 
 
 But Dorothy Osborne really belongs to the intimate 
 letter-writers and wrote for one eye alone — that of her 
 betrothed, Sir William Temple. Her letters, properly 
 speaking, form part of the most personal of all provinces, 
 that of love-letters and letters of sentiment ; but she writes 
 as a wife rather than as a lover, and this is as well for the 
 reader. Ego'isme a deux is as unallowable and as tedious 
 in correspondence as it is in society, and the most charming 
 letters are those that introduce us to a hospitable and 
 friendly circle. Dorothy Osborne was at once too modest 
 and too observant to be guilty of egoism. She liked to 
 know many people of different kinds, and described, or 
 rather suggested them with a pretty humour of her own. 
 Her mind has an English climate, and though her pages 
 are rich in tender expressions of love, they still keep the 
 temperate sweetness of an English landscape. She reminds 
 us of one of Shakespeare's gentler heroines, in whom devo-
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER- WRITERS 105 
 
 tion and fidelity take the place of passion, and playfulness 
 that of spirits. ' Tis not that I am sad,' she says, ' I thank 
 God I have no occasion to be so, but I never appear to be 
 very merry, and if I had all I could wish for in the world I 
 do not think it would make any visible change in my humour.' 
 
 If we want a more fervid feeling we must go to France 
 in the last century ; the letters of Madame d'Epinay, for 
 instance, are a Journal of Sensibility, though not of Despair. 
 We shall find that quality in the letters of Heloise to Abelard 
 — in 1131 — terrible and beautiful in their concentration ; 
 or if we seek chronicles less remote, there are the corre- 
 spondences of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, once Madame 
 du Deffand's ' companion,' or of Madame Desbordes Valmore 
 in our own day. Letters of passion should never be collected 
 in a volume, and not more than two or three from the same 
 person should be read, for passion is naturally monotonous. 
 The death song of the swan is a beautiful thing, but when 
 he goes on singing ad infinitum without dying, it becomes 
 tiresome. The right medium for the expression of passion 
 is poetry, which arrests thought and feeling at white heat 
 and crystallises it, compelling it to brevity. Madame Des- 
 bordes Valmore's love poems, for example, are much finer 
 interpretations of love than her letters on the same theme, 
 which are so intense as to become oppressive. 
 
 As far as style goes, the love letters of Mademoiselle de 
 Lespinasse to M. Guibert may be taken as a model of elo- 
 quence and of fiery grace. She is in turns reckless and 
 restrained, and there is something splendid — something of 
 the grand manner — in the way she risks herself, in her 
 prodigal and daring simplicity. ' Cette ame de feu et de 
 douleur, e'est votre creation,' she writes to her lover ; 
 ' l'esprit trouve des mots, l'ame aurait besoin de trouver 
 une langue nouvelle.' But with the best will in the world 
 one is wearied by these pages of egoism — egoisme a une in 
 this case — and it is difficult to sympathise with a woman
 
 106 NEW AND OLD 
 
 who kept a pair of passions ; who was broken-hearted about 
 her first love (then dying of consumption) when she adopted 
 her second, to whom all these letters (one hundred and 
 eighty in two years) were addressed. 
 
 There is another kind of personal confession, often as 
 self-centred as the love letter, but deeper and of far wider 
 interest — the letter of religious experience. It is dangerous 
 to remove the spiritual from the realms of the imagination 
 to those of colloquial prose and colloquial imagery, where 
 materialism too often overtakes it, as evangelical corre- 
 spondences abundantly testify. It would perhaps be better 
 if religious letters also could be turned into poetry, or at 
 least written by poets. Eugenie de Guerin, whose poems 
 deserve to be better known, has given us letters which 
 fulfil this condition, and show us how graceful, how hospit- 
 able religion can be ; pages rich in spiritual delicacy, and 
 therefore impossible to quote from without injuring them. 
 It is equally difficult to cite the correspondence of Madame 
 Guyon, the reactionary saint of Louis xiv.'s reign, not 
 because it is too subtle, but because it is too rhapsodical. 
 It is full of startling effects, for she was a mystic of intense 
 inward vision, and therefore a realist about the unreal, 
 and over-familiar with the invisible. 
 
 Madame Swetchine and Caroline Fox should hardly be 
 reckoned amongst religious letter-writers, although they 
 wrote religiously. Both lived on the borderland of religion, 
 but their atmosphere is more intellectual than that of the 
 religious world, and their intellect was foremost in the 
 search after truth. The writer really representing this sort 
 of metaphysical correspondence is Sara Coleridge, who 
 inherited her father's voracity for abstraction even in 
 doctrine. Her letters can scarcely be called letters — they 
 are treatises ; far from falling into Madame Guyon's error, 
 they make even the visible invisible and obscure it by a 
 fog of speculation.
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER- WRITERS 107 
 
 The history of letter-writing would make an interesting 
 volume ; like the history of comedy it is practically that 
 of society, and a good letter is an epitome of civilisation. 
 The letter of feeling, whether of passion or religion, is the 
 most primitive expression of the art, as Abelard and Helo'ise 
 testify ; and it is only as family grows and expands into 
 social life that amusing letters become possible. The Paston 
 letters in Caxton's time are the first, and there are others 
 that date from Elizabethan days and abound in Elizabethan 
 grace ; but their interest is mostly historical, and they do 
 little to disclose character. The personal letter can only 
 come later, when personality has room to develop and 
 culture has affected women as well as men. Nearly all 
 the letter-writing of women is due to the last hundred and 
 fifty years, and during that period they have written every 
 kind of letter, excepting that of whims and crotchets, for 
 which their minds are perhaps too constant ; a Charles 
 Lamb, an Edward FitzGerald, has never yet been translated 
 into the feminine. The most difficult letter to write, and 
 the one generally best unwritten, is certainly the letter on 
 Nature. The Lake school, including Dorothy Wordsworth, 
 were alone adequate to it. Since their time one or two 
 others have partially succeeded, but on the whole who 
 would not exclaim with Mrs. Carlyle : ' Oh, my dear ! if 
 "all about feelings" be bad in a letter, all about scenery and 
 no feelings is a deal worse !'...' Such a letter,' she goes 
 on, ' as I received from you yesterday, after much half 
 anxious, half angry waiting for, will read charmingly in 
 your biography, and may be quoted in Murray's Guide 
 Book ; but for " me, as one solitary individual," I was not 
 charmed with it at all.' 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle, at any rate, could not have existed in any 
 century but her own, any more than the sort of human 
 letter which she creates for us. She inverts Jeffrey's advice 
 to young writers, ' If you think you have a good thing to
 
 108 NEW AND OLD 
 
 say don't say it,' for she never thinks she has a good thing 
 to say, and always says it. More almost than any other 
 woman letter-writer she has humour, the most personal of 
 all qualities and the most modern, for it grows with our 
 taste for character-study and our sense of life's incongruities. 
 Too many things have already been said about humour and 
 its relation to wit, but thus much may, perhaps, be hazarded 
 here : humour is an atmosphere of the mind ; humour is 
 colour, wit is form ; humour has to do with the character, 
 wit with the head. Madame du Deffand and Lady Mary 
 wrote letters essentially witty ; Mrs. Carlyle does not so 
 often condense her humour into wit, but she can do so 
 whenever she wishes. She writes on one occasion that she 
 is not up to visitors, not even to ' an angel awares,' like G., 
 and one might quote a dozen more of her racy phrases. 
 Humorous description, however, is what she enjoys, and 
 the peculiar flavour of her humour is that it attaches itself 
 mostly to the limitations of existence and to minute domestic 
 drawbacks. ' She is not what is called a thorough servant,' 
 she says of one of her many ' generals,' ' but that will be no 
 objection to signify, as I am not a thorough lady, which 
 Grace Macdonald defined to be " one who had not entered 
 her own kitchen for seven years." ' 
 
 Nothing can be more succinct than her humour, and yet 
 no letters seem more haphazard — it is one of their chief 
 charms. The fact is she was a great artist in her own way, 
 and her power of selection was instinctive, — a much more 
 finished production than when it is artificial. She was 
 quite as good a housekeeper of her wits as of her home. 
 ' It is not only a faculty with me,' she says, ' but a necessity 
 of my nature to make a great deal out of nothing.' Her 
 thrift is like that of the bee ; she darts into the centre of 
 each subject she touches, and returns with its honey packed 
 into the smallest possible space. She can be bold, too, 
 and vivid in a large way when she attempts large subjects,
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER-WRITERS 109 
 
 as, for instance, in her description of Father Mathew's 
 Temperance Meeting in the East End ; and, like most 
 humorists, she can be sentimental — none more so. 
 
 ' Blessed be the inventor of photography ! ' she writes ; 
 ' I set him above even the inventor of chloroform. It has 
 given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity 
 than anything that has " cast up " in my time, or is like to, 
 this art by winch even the " poor " can possess themselves 
 of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't 
 it be acting favourably on the morality of the country ? I 
 assure you I have often gone into my own room in the devil's 
 own humour — ready to swear at " things in general " and 
 some things in particular — and, my eyes resting by chance on 
 one of my photographs of long-ago places or people, a crowd 
 of sad gentle thoughts has rushed into my heart, and driven 
 the devil out, as clean as ever so much holy water and priestly 
 exorcisms could have done.' 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, Mrs. Carlyle just falls short of the 
 poetic ; the sense of poetry was the one mental equipment 
 she did not possess, and if she had possessed it she would 
 oftener have been able to look beyond the moment. ' You 
 are the most concrete woman I have ever known, Jane,' 
 a friend once said to her ; and ' concrete,' not ' matter of 
 fact,' is the word which expresses her. 
 
 The same epithet might, with equal justice, be applied to 
 another letter- writer and another ' Jane ' — Jane Austen. 
 In some ways she may be compared to Mrs. Carlyle. Her 
 mind also enjoys playing upon the limitations and incon- 
 veniences of daily existence with sustained vivacity. But 
 in her case, form, neatness, and occasionally wit are more 
 prominent than humorous description. She had not so 
 rich a nature as Mrs. Carlyle, and needed her own creations 
 to bring out her full brilliance. Her letters are sprightly 
 but rather cold chronicles of family plans, illnesses, meals, 
 acquaintances — here and there enriched by flashes of fun
 
 110 NEW AND OLD 
 
 and epigram and by the almost imperceptible threads of her 
 cobweb malice, in which she caught so many buzzing flies. 
 She is perfect in the art of implication, and nobody can imply 
 a bore as mercilessly as she does. ' A widower with three 
 children,' she writes, ' has no right to look higher than his 
 daughter's governess ' ; ' I am forced to be abusive for want of 
 subject, having really nothing to say.' Here are a few of her 
 nothings : ' Charles Powlett has been very ill, but is getting 
 well again. His wife is discovered to be everything that the 
 neighbourhood could wish for, silly and cross as well as 
 extravagant.' ' At the bottom of the Kingsdown Hill we 
 met a gentleman in a buggy who, on minute examination, 
 turned out to be Dr. Hall, in such very deep mourning that 
 either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.' 
 ' We had a Miss North and a Mr. Gould of our party ; the 
 latter walked home with me after tea. He is a very young 
 man, just entered Oxford, wears spectacles, and has heard 
 that Evelina was written by Dr. Johnson.' 
 
 Miss Austen seldom shows her sweeter side in her letters, 
 but, when she does, her sweetness has a brilliance which gives 
 it a charming distinction. Most of them were written to her 
 beloved sister Cassandra, during their yearly separations. 
 If they are sometimes monotonous in their detail, they 
 certainly have the virtue of absolute spontaneity. Nobody 
 could detect a genius in them, still less the genius of the 
 family. There are few letters from famous women of which 
 this can be said. Those of Charlotte Bronte and Mrs. Brown- 
 ing are indeed equally unconscious ; but Miss Bronte's 
 letters are more characteristic of the whole woman than Miss 
 Austen's — of her passion and her austerity — while in Mrs. 
 Browning's we are aware of the poet, beside the lovable 
 companion. 
 
 There is a very different sort of letter written by the great 
 — more edifying and less intimate — which, for want of a 
 better term, may be called the Sibylline letter. Madame de
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER-WRITERS 111 
 
 Stael was probably its first parent, but she is too much of a 
 Muse to be reckoned with, and George Sand is the High 
 Priestess who has given us the best of such oracles, a High 
 Priestess rich in human love for human correspondents. 
 Beautiful thoughts on Life and Death and Immortality, 
 tender wisdom, eloquent political outbursts and pleadings 
 for freedom— j>uch is the poetry in prose which makes up her 
 correspondence. It is unsatisfactory to give fragments of it, 
 and her letters should be read as wholes. The same cannot 
 be said of George Eliot's correspondence, for she is a Sibyl 
 too deeply versed in German philosophy, too much weighed 
 down by the responsibilities of utterance, to make a letter- 
 writer. It is often the Minor Prophetesses who have the 
 finer turn for expression — Fanny Kemble, for instance, 
 whose letters frequently have the Delphic ring. But they 
 are always natural, always abundant, and enrich us with the 
 wealth of her varied experience. 
 
 There is one large region of letter-writing which remains 
 to be touched on, a region which lies between the unconscious 
 intimate letter and the conscious literary one, and partakes 
 of both ; this is the world of social letters, and social letters 
 are identical with the graceful correspondence of the eigh- 
 teenth century in England. It was the only time when our 
 reserved island could boast of an outburst of letter-writing. 
 French influence, French expression, and travels in France 
 were then the fashion, and no doubt intercourse with our 
 neighbours schooled our taste and taught us to formulate 
 more readily. The practice of letter-writing was almost 
 as universal as in Madame du Deffand's France, and much 
 less self-conscious than in her circles. Like their French 
 contemporaries, too, these English letters are typical rather 
 than individual. If one had to express them by a single 
 comprehensive epithet, one would choose the word ' sprightly.' 
 ' Sprightly ' often rises to ' brilliant,' and that not only in 
 the best hands. The great Hannah More, Miss Burney, and
 
 112 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi amaze us by the vitality of their pens ; but many 
 of the less known ladies, Maria Holroyd and Mrs. Boscawen 
 in particular, are not far behind, and there does not seem to 
 be one of them who was guilty of a dull page. They always 
 write letters ' of the news sort,' never of ' the inner-woman 
 sort ' — purely external chronicles of external things described 
 with animation and intelligence. 
 
 Most of the charmers of that time knew the same people 
 and had the same tastes as well as the same style, so that it 
 is often hard for the reader to tell one from another. Beside 
 the Drums and Routs, the quizzings and scandals, and all 
 the gay bustle which go on in their correspondence, it is also 
 full of the fashionable curiosity about travellers and remote 
 facts from foreign lands. ' Miss Harris, I hope,' writes one 
 lady, ' will tell you next winter how she skaited [sic] through 
 the northern climate almost to every Court over frozen seas.' 
 Miss Harris and her ' skaiting ' were doubtless discussed in 
 twenty drawing-rooms, over twenty cups of bohea. Those 
 were elegant days, when the object of life was ' to be enter- 
 tained,' and even Captain Cook and his savages were de- 
 scribed elegantly ; days so elegant, indeed, that we find one 
 of Hannah More's feminine correspondents anxious to address 
 her as Hercules, but refraining on the score of delicacy. 
 
 All these writers belonged to distinguished circles, and 
 the real value of their letters lies in their familiar pictures 
 of great men and of great events. Their pages are pages of 
 history, and as such they should be read. The presentation 
 of some striking scene shows them, perhaps, at their best ; 
 such, for example, as the trial of Warren Hastings, which 
 Hannah More witnessed. ' Poor Hastings,' she wrote, 
 ' sitting and looking so meek, to hear himself called " villain ' 
 and " cut-throat." . . . The orator (Edmund Burke) was 
 seized with a spasm . . . and I did not know whether he 
 might not have died in the exertion of his powers, like 
 Chatham.'
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER-WRITERS 118 
 
 'Mrs.' More's correspondence is not nearly so well known 
 as Miss Burney's, and yet, though its writer is not so attrac- 
 tive, it is quite as sparkling and representative. No one had 
 better matter for her letters. Until her conversion in early 
 middle age, she led a life as brilliant as it was possible for a 
 Sabbatarian to lead ; and a great deal of brilliance can be 
 put into six days out of seven. She spent several months 
 of each year with the Garricks — who adored her— -met 
 everybody of interest, and spent her nights, as she tells us, 
 ' raking it ' in a hackney coach with Dr. Johnson, or hearing 
 him talk at Sir Joshua's. She was a thorough bluestocking 
 and much enjoyed stately badinage with Bishops, or Gothic 
 compliments from periwigged divines. 
 
 Blow, blow, my sweetest rose, 
 
 For Hannah More will soon be here ! 
 
 so writes the learned Dr. Langhorne to her, and her letters 
 to him are as liturgically flirtatious as he could desire. Pier 
 correspondence does not show much change even after her 
 conversion, for she was one of those fortunate people who 
 can regard their social position as a Means of Grace, and the 
 more she used it the holier she felt. When a couple of 
 illustrious Turks came to visit her, she writes, they sat down 
 on the carpet and tried to convert her to the Koran, in return 
 for which attention she pressed White's Sermons upon them. 
 It is true she had some passing qualms about Horace Walpole's 
 free-thought, but she continued her witty budgets to him 
 on the chance of their effecting his reform — unlike her French 
 rival, who would have written for the opposite purpose. 
 The sincere Evangelicalism of this busy and popular Pharisee 
 makes her letters rather distincter, perhaps also more 
 amusing, than those of her amiable compeers ; and her 
 copious sheets to her courtiers, who were often of her own 
 sex, can be safely recommended as excellent company for a 
 solitary evening by the fire. 
 
 H
 
 114 NEW AND OLD 
 
 The publication of family correspondence has lately come 
 into vogue, and it is to be hoped it may continue. We have 
 had the private letters of the Verney family, and also those 
 of the Newdegate ladies, first in the time of Elizabeth, then 
 in the time of the Georges. 1 These simple communications 
 from unknown people make quite as valuable a chapter in 
 social history as the letters of celebrities ; more so, perhaps, 
 because they are not brilliant and only give us a picture of 
 comfortable average people. Public spirit is a rare and may 
 be a conceited quality ; as a motive for correspondence it is, 
 at any rate, impossible. But how charming would it be if, 
 from any motive whatever, more members of more families 
 would write full chronicles of their doings— and if other 
 members would keep them ! The clothes, the walks, the 
 jam-making — even the jam-eating — of a hundred years ago 
 are vitally interesting. It requires, of course, much greater 
 self-suppression to figure namelessly as one of many corre- 
 spondents than to write a novel, the unfailing vent for every 
 young lady with a pen. But then there is this compensation : 
 a letter is bound to give pleasure at least to one, but there is 
 no such certainty about a novel. 
 
 The qualities too which mar a book may often make a 
 letter ; and letter-writing is the legitimate channel for 
 immediate expression, of which women feel so much greater 
 a need than men. Then it is a craft which is peculiarly 
 adapted to a woman's avocations and the life of little inter- 
 ruptions which usually falls to her lot. There is no solemn 
 thread of Fate to spin when we take up our correspondence — 
 no thread, indeed, that we may not comfortably lose, and 
 find again half an hour later. Letter-writing has another 
 advantage : it fulfils the first condition of any feminine 
 occupation ; it includes men and admits of all the finer 
 shades of their relations to women. It is an interesting 
 
 1 Gossip from a Muniment Room and The Cheverels of Cheverel Manor, 
 both edited by Lady Newdegate.
 
 WOMEN AS LETTER- WRITERS 115 
 
 question whether women write best to men or to women, and 
 one which either sex will probably settle differently. It. is 
 evident enough that men write best to women, for women 
 alone have power to draw out their tenderer side — to make 
 them most themselves. But, excepting in love-letters, it is 
 just this side which disappears when women write to men ; 
 chameleon-like, they try to write from the brain, to condense 
 more, to become less personal, and consequently least them- 
 selves. Such letters are more artistic than those they send 
 to each other, but they have not the frankness and vitality 
 that these possess. Lady Mary is nicer when she writes 
 to her sister or daughter than when she writes to Pope ; and 
 Mrs. Carlylc reveals herself more vividly in her letters to her 
 Scottish women friends than in those to Sterling and to 
 Forster. 
 
 However that may be, a paper such as this can have but 
 one ending, a plea for the Employment of the Pen. Every- 
 body knows the reasons against it. There is no School of 
 Art where we can all learn it and take ourselves seriously ; 
 there is no leisure ; and there are newspapers, railway 
 trains, high pressure — those often-quoted lions in the way. 
 But, after all, there is a constant demand for the revival 
 of other and less useful crafts — handlooms, lace-making, 
 and the like. Why not then for that of letter-writing, which 
 cannot fail, as these do, because of insufficient funds ? 
 There is no real reason why the women of to-day should not 
 produce as good letters as their great-grandmothers, and 
 every reason why they should. And if they have grown too 
 far-seeing to write for the moment and need a nobler purpose, 
 let them write for the poor unamused ' unborn generations ' 
 who will have nothing but postcards to divert them. (1899.)
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 
 
 The race of governesses is now almost extinct, driven out 
 by the invading hordes of university teachers. The gover- 
 ness of the last generation — the lady born in Central Germany 
 and offended about many things — she who taught the 
 glorious motions of the universe by means of an orange and 
 a knitting-needle — is fast disappearing from the planet 
 that she dealt with thus intimately. If only there were 
 time and space to write about every interesting subject, 
 some one might give us a remarkable book on the Evolution 
 of Governesses. It is a more fruitful theme than would at 
 first sight appear, for governesses have gone through many 
 periods. They seem to have begun in France, where, as 
 early as the fifteenth century, we read of the Court Chaperone 
 or ' Gouvernante,' who superintended the ' Chamber of the 
 Damsels ' and never left them except at the approach of 
 their confessor. She taught no more than intricate needle- 
 work and the proprieties, existed nowhere outside the Court, 
 and was but the rudest foreshadowing of the ladies who 
 succeeded her some two hundred years later. For the hey- 
 day of governesses — their zenith of opportunity — was in 
 the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries : 
 the France that produced Madame de Maintenon, Madame 
 de Genlis, Madame de Campari. These names — at any 
 rate, the first two — prove that there have been immortal 
 governesses as well as immortal poets ; and it is fitting 
 that France, the home of deportment, should have been 
 their birthplace. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon was so much made of in her life- 
 
 116
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 117 
 
 time that posterity owes her nothing, and is perhaps justified 
 in behaving somewhat coldly to her memory. Love il 
 would be difficult to give her : amazed curiosity and admira- 
 tion of her dignity and her distinction are the warmest 
 feelings that she inspires, whether as the toiling wife and 
 secretary of the scholar Scarron, the Court Governess, the 
 Mother of the Church, the Abbess of St. Cyr, or the consort 
 and widow of the King. 
 
 ' There is nothing so agreeable as to make oneself esteemed,' 
 she once wrote to her brother; and Sainte-Beuve, with his 
 customary insight, puts her character into a nutshell when 
 he says that she was ' always occupied with others and 
 never loved them.' Like him, we feel her charm while we 
 are reading her letters ; but directly we shut the book the 
 charm disappears. Still a life of consistent self-sacrifice 
 and self-discipline, with self in the guise of influence as its 
 object, is rare enough to command our respect ; and so 
 does her strong but fastidious will, which was not content 
 with gaining whatever it strove for, unless it achieved its 
 purpose in the best possible taste. 
 
 Her stoiy reads like a political fairy tale. She was born 
 in a Poitou prison in 1635. Her father, son of the great 
 Calvinist, D'Aubigne, was a rake and a ne'er-do-weel, his 
 father's despair — a political and aristocratic Micawber 
 who was never out of a scrape. Her mother, on the other 
 hand, was a devote and a Stoic, with fine practical faculties 
 — a stern fidelity to duty — and real depth, though little 
 grace, of heart. She was glad to place the baby Francoise 
 with her Huguenot sister-in-law, Madame de Villette, who 
 brought up the child in the Reformed faith till she was 
 seven years old. Then she returned home, an eager little 
 Protestant, willing to take the maternal buffets for non- 
 observance of Catholic rites in the spirit of a martyr. 
 
 About this time the family migrated to La Martinique, 
 in the West Indies, where for several years she was educated
 
 118 NEW AND OLD 
 
 rather severely on scant means and Plutarch's Lives. It is 
 a relief to hear that once, when the house caught fire, and 
 her mother was anxious to save the books, she was found 
 ciying for her doll and its toy bed. She began very early 
 to have adventures in the grand style. Once, on the 
 journey out, she fell ill, was said to have died, and was just 
 about to be lowered into the sea when her mother, clasping 
 her for the last time, felt a faint movement that convinced 
 her of life. Another time she was miraculously saved from 
 a serpent. When she was about eleven her father died 
 penniless ; and his wife and children returned to France, 
 the mother to engage in a lawsuit about a family estate, 
 the little girl to return to Madame de Villette and become 
 a stauncher Protestant than before. This was put an end 
 to by her mother's sister, Madame de Neuillant, a bigoted 
 Catholic, who procured an order from Anne of Austria to 
 remove her from heretical influences and take her into her 
 own care. This lady, who lived on her country estate and 
 was very rich, combined a rather sour religion with provincial 
 parsimony, and used her niece as a servant. Madame de 
 Maintenon tells us she was sent every morning into the 
 fields in a peasant's dress, to look after the turkeys — work 
 pleasant enough if she had not been obliged to wear a 
 mask for her complexion's sake, and to carry a volume of 
 Pibrac's elegant quatrains to learn by heart. She did 
 menial jobs in the basse-cour also, quite unconverted mean- 
 while, till her exasperated aunt ended by sending her to 
 an Ursuline convent in Poitou. She was eventually con- 
 verted at fourteen in a Paris nunnery of the same sister- 
 hood, after obstinate discussions with eminent divines. 
 And a little later she returned home, to live first with her 
 poverty-stricken mother and then with Madame de Neuillant. 
 It was the latter who introduced her to the paralysed Abbe 
 Scarron, scholar, sufferer, wit, buffoon, who had expressed 
 a desire to see ' la jeune Indienne,' or ' la belle Indienne,' as
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 119 
 
 she was subsequently called. When she entered the room, 
 full of brilliant guests, and met their stare of curiosity, sh< 
 became conscious that her stuff frock — the only om that her 
 aunt allowed her — was far too short, and she burst into tears. 
 This was perhaps the most impulsive action of her life ; per- 
 haps, too, the only occasion on which her vanity was wounded. 
 
 She could not have begun better (though this time her 
 cleverness was unconscious) than by inviting the compas- 
 sion rather than the jealousy of wits, and she soon became 
 intimate with the Scarron circle. Not for long, however ; 
 for when she was about fifteen she was obliged to accom- 
 pany her mother, whose affairs compelled her to retire to 
 the country ; and shortly afterwards Madame d'Aubigne 
 died there, broken down and almost starving. The girl 
 remained where she was, for several months, alone, and 
 practically destitute but for the Abbe Scarron's letters. At 
 the end of the fourth month (she was sixteen) he wrote and 
 begged her to marry him : an offer which she promptly 
 accepted, because, as she afterwards admitted, acceptance 
 was better than going into a convent. 
 
 ' The poor cripple ' was the phrase with which in later 
 days she designated her husband, and it expresses her whole 
 attitude towards him — faithful, attentive, cold, and inde- 
 fatigable. It was not even compassionate, for she dis- 
 approved of the jester's mask under which he persistently 
 hid his bodily distress. She made herself his secretary (he 
 was one of the first men of letters in Paris), and often wrote 
 all day for him, trying, as she takes care to inform us, to 
 modify the lightness of his language. The cloven hoof — 
 or should we call it the winged sandal ? — of her influence 
 began to appear, and she felt sure that with him she had 
 succeeded. He, on the other hand, took pains to initiate 
 her into the habits of the world, and produced her there as 
 if she were some choice edition of one of his favourite 
 classics. He gave her great opportunities. All the best
 
 120 NEW AND OLD 
 
 people of the time frequented his house, the grand folk and 
 the literary ones : Ninon de l'Enclos, the Richelieus and 
 Albrets, Madame de Sevigne, Lafontaine, Mademoiselle de 
 Scudery, the charming Madame de Sabliere. Madame 
 Scarron at once took her place among them. She was 
 witty, she was tactful, she was tall ; she had a beautiful 
 figure, chestnut hair, a brilliant complexion, and the most 
 speaking black eyes in the world — so says Mademoiselle de 
 Scudery, who described her under the name of ' Lyriane.' 
 Added to this, she had a certain reserve and a conventual 
 charm which made her seem more piquant to this world of 
 fashion. These would have availed her less, however, had 
 she not possessed the invaluable social qualities of gaiety 
 and good sense — supreme good sense, we may say. The 
 quality of gaiety, Sainte-Beuve remarks, is the one which 
 as her readers we do not recognise ; a good deal of the 
 charm she exercised over her contemporaries was no doubt 
 due to it, and would have gone far to soften the pontifical 
 manner of her writings. ' Gay by nature, sad by circum- 
 stances,' she said of herself later, in her Court days ; and 
 the ' nature ' was probably more conspicuous in her youth. 
 
 Curiously enough, of all the galaxy whom she entertained, 
 it was Ninon de l'Enclos who took her up the most warmly. 
 ' Elle etait trop gauche pour l'amour,' said Hemy iv.'s 
 dowager mistress of Louis xiv.'s future wife ; and this may 
 possibly have been the secret of the elder lady's friendship 
 for the younger. In spite of this, Mademoiselle de l'Enclos 
 tried to blacken Madame Scarron by insinuations about her 
 friendship with her husband's friend, Villarceaux, though 
 even Ninon said she had no real proof of her guilt, and there 
 is no reason to credit this single accusation against her. 
 She herself — and how she would have gloried in a conquered 
 temptation ! — alludes to this period as free from passion 
 and from any moral trial. 
 
 She went on writing gay and often improper epistles in
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 121 
 
 verse at her husband's dictation, till his death left her, 
 at twenty-five, an attractive and almost penniless widow. 
 After much delay, a pension was obtained for her from the 
 King ; but meanwhile she had no lack of friends. Madame 
 de Richelieu, most fastidious of great ladies, adopted her as 
 one of the family, and she lodged near the Richelieu Hotel. 
 The Marechal and Marechale d'Albret hastened to show her 
 an equal affection ; all her acquaintance followed suit. She 
 had, as in later days she was particular to impress on the 
 young ladies at St. Cyr, a special talent for making herself 
 invaluable in a household. In her lecture to the ' Classe 
 Bleue ' on how to make oneself loved, she gives the recipe on 
 which she acted : never to talk of oneself, always to dis- 
 cover — if possible, to forestall — the wants of others, to be 
 pleased with everything and turn one's hand to any task, 
 to expect nothing and resent no neglect : all the Christian 
 duties, in fact, performed from motives of good taste. The 
 discipline of taste is perhaps severer, drier, less rewarded, 
 than the discipline of religion ; and it needed something 
 like sweetness, at any rate a large amenity, to enable her to 
 practise her precepts. But she possessed, in a still greater 
 degree, an instinct for calculation, which, in her case, 
 amounted to genius. All through her life it was her creed 
 that, failing the religious motive, the desire for reputation was 
 as good as any other and ought to be earnestly cultivated. 
 Years afterwards, when she was over seventy, she told the 
 same pupils at St. Cyr that at this early time in her career 
 she performed her deeds of virtue — even nursed a poor man 
 through the smallpox — from no love of God, but because 
 she wished her goodness to be different from that of other 
 people. She actually records that on one occasion she de- 
 liberately made herself ill, and then went out to pay a visit — 
 in the hope that she would hear her friends exclaim, ' What 
 a courageous woman ! ' — but she only ended in feeling so 
 faint that she had to beat a hasty retreat.
 
 122 NEW AND OLD 
 
 The restraint she imposed on herself was the more sur- 
 prising because she had a brilliant tongue which loved to 
 amuse — and did amuse till 1666, when first she came into 
 contact with the Abbe Gobelin, the man who became her 
 Director, and occupied that post for the greater part of her 
 Court life. Till then she had not been devout ; but his 
 subtle, courtly religion kindled her faith, and one of the 
 first spiritual exercises he prescribed for her was ' to make 
 herself a bore to others.' One cannot but admire the 
 fortitude with which she, the centre of her circle, sat silent 
 in the midst of coruscating gossip, social and intellectual, 
 till her silence told, and the talk slackened : she saw her 
 friends yawning round her and knew that it was owing to 
 her dulness. 
 
 It was about this time, before the long-demanded pension 
 had been granted, that poverty had forced her to accept 
 the invitation of her friend, the Queen of Portugal, formerly 
 Princesse de Nemours, to accompany her to the Portuguese 
 Court. She was anxious before her departure to gratify one 
 wish, to see the new Court beauty, Madame de Montespan, 
 who was talked of as a wonder of the world. Made- 
 moiselle d'Heudicourt offered to present her, and the intro- 
 duction was achieved. Madame de Montespan, much 
 charmed by her homage, deplored her desertion of France ; 
 Madame Scarron told her the reason and how her pension 
 had been delayed. ' I will speak to the King myself,' 
 exclaimed Madame de Montespan, and she was as good as 
 her word. The King was testy. ' Encore la Veuve Scarron,' 
 he said ; and when Ave think of the indefinite extension of 
 that ' Encore,' it seems as if the irony of life had spoken for 
 him. For Madame de Montespan also the pension was 
 ensured — Madame Scarron stayed in France at her inter- 
 vention — her own hand had forged the sword that was to 
 kill her. It was she too who, when the time came, thought 
 of the widow as a desirable governess for her children. Her
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 123 
 
 first child was born in 1G69, and a governess became neces- 
 sary. When the post was offered to Madame Scarron, 
 then thirty-five years old, she cautiously said that she 
 would only become the governess of the King's children, 
 and refused to accept it till Louis xiv. himself begged her 
 to. It was no sinecure, and the secrecy alone was worth 
 a large salary. At the birth of each of the four elder children 
 the doctor was blindfolded and did not even know of the 
 King's presence, though on one occasion his Majesty gave 
 him a glass of wine. Madame Scarron, closely masked, 
 received the child and bore it away wrapped in a shawl to 
 Paris. Her house was in the Rue Vaugirard ; and, in order 
 to keep her oath of secrecy, she was obliged to go on with 
 all the rush of her daily life, as nobody was to know of the 
 existence of the children, and any change in her habits 
 might have roused suspicion. No workmen were admitted 
 to repair the house ; she had to supply any need of them 
 herself, plumbing, papering, and painting with her own 
 hands. She was even bled, because she had a habit of 
 blushing and feared it might lead her to betray her charge. 
 As the Montespan family increased, the governess placed 
 them out in different parts of the town, and, muffled in 
 veils, sallied forth every night to visit and superintend each 
 one of them. No detail of their diet, their clothing, the 
 awakening of the infant intelligence, was neglected ; the 
 nurses under her must have worked hard for their living. 
 At first she saw little of the King, who thought her a 
 prude and a bluestocking, and did not like her. But later 
 when the firstborn (who died) had been succeeded by the 
 little Due de Maine, the Due de Vexin, and Mademoiselle de 
 Nantes, the children were legitimised : the secrecy was 
 over, and she brought the Due de Maine to Court. 
 
 The little boy adored her and hardly knew his mother. 
 It was not long before Madame Scarron found out that 
 Madame de Montespan was jealous, had a temper, and loved
 
 124 NEW AND OLD 
 
 ' scenes.' She made them on every occasion with her gover- 
 ness, whom she envied, dreaded, and found indispensable. 
 ' For God's sake, do not make any of your great eyes at me ! ' 
 she once exclaimed to Madame Scarron, who, no doubt, 
 was as provoking as calm people know how to be. The 
 quarrels were reported to the King by his mistress, and 
 Madame Scarron complains of being constantly misrepre- 
 sented. From rather disliking her as ' Your Bel Esprit ' 
 (his manner of alluding to her), Louis xiv. came to regard 
 her as a queer- tempered person who had to be humoured. 
 The first thing that made him change his mind was a day 
 he spent alone with her pupil, the Due de Maine, whose 
 wit and reason reflected credit on his teacher. It was 
 about this time that Madame de Montespan employed 
 Madame Scarron to write for her one of her daily notes to 
 the King. He at once perceived the difference, and from 
 that moment sought occasions for corresponding with the 
 governess of his children. Not long after, he entered 
 Madame de Montespan's apartments in the middle of a 
 dispute between the two ladies. He asked the cause. 
 Madame de Montespan was sobbing too violently to inform 
 him. Madame Scarron, as composed as a statue, begged 
 him to step into the next room, where she gave him her 
 version and said she must resign her situation. It may 
 have been at this interview that the King defended his 
 mistress by dwelling on her sensibility, which was so great 
 that she wept at tales of generous deeds. But in the end 
 Madame Scarron impressed him with her sincerity. He 
 implored her to stay, and she consented. 
 
 For some time her tyrant had been moving the King to 
 give his governess a pension, that she might buy an estate 
 and retire from Court ; and now he acceded to the request. 
 He gave Madame Scarron a sum large enough to enable 
 her to buy the estate of Maintenon (the name which, after 
 the purchase, she adopted as her own) ; but she remained
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 125 
 
 at her post, and the King very sensibly avoided further 
 complications by sending her off to the Baths of Bareges 
 with the crippled Due dc Maine. This was the beginning 
 of an era. On the journey, she wrote that she was receiving 
 letters ' from one man alone.' Her triumph was complete 
 when on her return the little boy, who had never been able 
 to walk, limped into his father's room holding her by the hand. 
 From that time she had ascendency over the King. 
 We cannot forbear from sympathising with Madame 
 de Montespan, who must have found Louis' new-born 
 taste for the domestic virtues very annoying. There was 
 one famous occasion when, flashing with jewels, she rushed 
 for a moment into the royal nursery to say good-night to 
 her sick children, and found him there in sentimental con- 
 templation of Madame de Maintenon, who, pale and dis- 
 ordered from long watching, was rocking the Due de Maine 
 on one arm, while with the other hand she soothed the 
 wailing Mademoiselle de Nantes. 
 
 In order to measure the new influence on the Great 
 Monarch, we must try to realise his charm. The nature of 
 his morals has perhaps blinded the world to his sense and 
 intellect. He seems to have had a real power in conversa- 
 tion — the power of hitting the nail on the head, of using 
 few words, all of them apt, of delicate discrimination and a 
 brilliant sobriety which never sought for effect ; and these 
 qualities, which became more conspicuous as he grew older, 
 found a ready response in Madame de Maintenon. But past 
 fascinations must always remain a mystery, and in her case 
 can only be partly accounted for. The secret of her bound- 
 less sway over him lay somewhat in this need of his for 
 mental companionship (a middle-aged mode of flirtation, 
 not unknown to others beside kings) ; still more, perhaps, 
 in the fact that she was a woman of common sense at a 
 moment when common sense was hard to find — scarcely 
 discoverable in the corrupt Court. ' A King's title,' he
 
 126 NEW AND OLD 
 
 used to say, ' is " Sa Majeste," a Pope's " Sa Saintete " ; 
 Madame de Maintenon's is " Sa Solidite," ' and this was 
 always his name for her. 
 
 Her attitude towards her patroness is more difficult to 
 write about. As early as 1674, urged forward by Gobelin 
 and Bossuet, she had resolved on the ousting of Madame de 
 Montespan, or, as she put it, the conversion of the King. 
 In the latter purpose she was quite sincere and devoutly 
 concentrated — single in aim, if not in dealing. She could 
 afford to be mean in the interests of religion, for she was 
 convinced she was the instrument of God — by means of 
 the Archbishops. In her own eyes she was not untrue to 
 a friend : she was sapping an unlawful tie likely to damn 
 her Sovereign here and hereafter, and was bringing him 
 back to the wronged and deserted Queen. Her fervent 
 desire to leave the Court, which she daily expressed to 
 her Director during her first years there, waned after the 
 Montespan's disgrace, and vanished altogether with the 
 Queen's death. 
 
 In all this there was an overweening love of power and 
 of affairs — especially Church affairs— and a grand passion 
 for the King's salvation, the King's position, the King's 
 training : for everything, it would seem, but the King's self. 
 Or, if she loved him (and the same may be said of her rival 
 feeling for the Church), it was with the almost extravagant 
 adulation of a governess for her pupil after he has grown 
 up, when she still regards him as her handiwork. 
 
 The plot of Bossuet and the priests against Madame de 
 Montespan first took effect in 1675, when one of them refused 
 to give her Communion at the Easter Festival. Louis broke 
 with her, for a time only ; and the next five years were made 
 up of such breaks and returns. It was during one of these 
 that the poor creature, devoured by fright and supersti- 
 tion, went with Madame de Maintenon to a fortune-teller 
 in Paris, who prophesied her fall, but, turning to her com-
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 127 
 
 panion, declared that she would mount high — a saying 
 which did not improve Madame de Maintenon's relations 
 with her mistress. But the more Madame de Montespan 
 hated her, the less could she do without her. Presents were 
 showered on her daily, and they remained together * arm- 
 in-arm, but not loving each other the better for that' (as 
 Madame de Maintcnon wrote on one occasion), till the King's 
 final separation from his mistress in 1680 — when Madame 
 de Maintenon's lips conveyed the fatal verdict. And this 
 was only brought about (after interludes of several minor 
 loves) by the appearance of a new star, Mademoiselle de 
 Fontanges, ' sotte commc un panier ct belle comme un 
 ange.' Not too * sotte ' to administer a snub to Madame 
 de Maintenon, who tried to wean her from her sins. ' You 
 talk of putting off a passion, Madame, as if it were a coat,' 
 she observed — and went on as before. ' The King,' said 
 the enraged Montespan to Madame de Maintenon, ' keeps 
 three mistresses : me nominally ; that creature actually ; 
 and you from inclination.' Madame de Maintenon, mean- 
 while, went about from one mistress to the other, exhorting 
 and persuading them. After a year Mademoiselle retired 
 to a convent, and then at last Sa Solidite triumphed. She 
 restored the King to the devoted Queen, who lavished 
 gratitude upon her ; and the Dauphin's marriage, soon 
 after, enabled Royalty to appoint her as the Dauphine's 
 ' Dame de l'atour,' a post of importance. The little Due 
 de Maine was now ten years old and consigned to the 
 care of a tutor; but the governess, unable to resign her 
 sceptre — she never wielded a rod— turned her attention 
 to training the tutor, who must have been blessed with 
 a patient temper, and to forming the young Duke's style 
 by correspondence. 
 
 She was much taken up with her countless philanthropies 
 — the founding of industries on her Maintenon estate, the 
 supervision of workpeople — more especially with her poor
 
 128 NEW AND OLD 
 
 girls' orphanage at Neuilly, which was now under the 
 courtly care of her great friend, Madame de Brinon. But 
 ever foremost she was working at the King's further salva- 
 tion — at obtaining for him the highest place in the New 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 He now no longer pretended he could do without her, 
 and never parted from her. She was mistress of the most 
 delicate art of flattery : she told him his faults — another 
 reason of her charm for him. She even once reproved him 
 for reproving his musketeers on the score of their morals — 
 and he submitted to her censure. ' What it would be to 
 be loved by one who can love so well ! ' his Majesty ex- 
 claimed to her one day with all the sentiment of a cold 
 man ; and his platonics were highly favoured by the pious 
 little Queen, who believed in Madame as in a divine insti- 
 tution. The latter accompanied her Sovereign and the 
 Court to Luxembourg, the central point of the war in the 
 Netherlands ; after which, in the autumn of '83, they all 
 repaired to Fontainebleau. It was here that the Queen 
 fell ill, and died after three days' illness, causing her husband, 
 he said, the first vexation in twenty- three years of married 
 life. It may be added that he made this victory of tact 
 easy for her by his absence ; but this was now forgotten, 
 and for a day or two he was dissolved in grief. Well in 
 sight of Canaan, Madame de Maintenon, for the first time 
 in her Court life, lost her self-control : she was agitated, 
 unstrung, and refused to approach the King till the Due dc 
 la Rochefoucauld pushed her by the arm into the Royal 
 presence with the words, ' This is not the time to leave 
 him, Madame : in nis present condition he really wants 
 you.' (This Duke was not the author of the Maximes, 
 or one might wonder whether he spoke the words as man 
 or as cynic. There are many of the Maximes which 
 might have been the result of a conscientious study of 
 Madame de Maintenon.) She did not meet the King
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 129 
 
 again for some days, but remained at Fontainebleau in a 
 highly emotional condition, amazing to all who knew her. 
 She walked out daily in the forest, unattended save by a 
 friend, and frequently burst into tears — both of which 
 proceedings were quite unheard of. When she again 
 saw the royal widower, less than a week after the Queen's 
 death, he only rallied her on her sad looks — his had dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 It is supposed that soon after this they were betrothed. 
 She was far too clever a tactician to yield at once, and often 
 sent him away in suspense. ' He easily desponds, but is 
 not repelled,' she wrote of him in one of her letters ; and 
 the result justified her policy. They were married in 1684 : 
 probably in June. About this date a mysterious Mass was 
 celebrated secretly in the King's apartment at midnight, 
 Madame de Maintenon being the only woman present. Pere 
 la Chaise, the King's confessor, was there ; and Harlay, 
 Archbishop of Paris, to bless the union ; together with 
 Minister Louvois and the Marquis de Montchevreuil, as 
 witnesses, and the royal valet Bontemps, to prepare the 
 altar. There has never been a statement in black and white 
 about her marriage ; but she alluded to it in her talks with 
 the Superior of St. Cyr and with the Abbe Choisy ; in her 
 letters to her only brother she more than once almost con- 
 fesses it. The first instance is characteristic : she begs 
 him not to come to Paris, as it will look so strange for them 
 not to meet — and that they cannot do, because of the 
 station in which God has placed her without her seeking. 
 ' I shall never get higher ; I am too high already,' she adds. 
 Even on her heights she was not contented. ' Ce serait 
 done Monsieur le Pere que vous voulez ? ' was her brother's 
 retort to her complaints on one occasion. But he was 
 wrong : she wanted more — a whole hierarchy of angels to 
 acknowledge her position. She obtained partial recognition 
 — the royal children always spoke of her and the King as
 
 130 NEW AND OLD 
 
 the ' Chefs de famille ' ; Louis openly called her ' Madame ' ; 
 and a few people, her confessor for one, addressed her in 
 private as ' Votre Majeste.' 
 
 She had no bed of roses. Though she did all the work of 
 a queen and more, she had little of a queen's glory and no 
 one was afraid to importune her. The description of her 
 days is almost terrifying. It is interesting to compare it 
 with those she had planned for herself a few years earlier, 
 when she thought of retiring from the Court to Maintenon. 
 Then she was to rise at eight in winter, at seven in summer, 
 and pray for an hour before summoning her women to dress 
 her. After this she was to give the needful interviews to 
 workmen and mercers, and go to church till dinner-time. 
 Two afternoons a week were to be devoted to visits of duty 
 or pleasure, till 10 p.m. ; two to receiving visitors until 
 the same hour, when prayers were read with the servants ; 
 bed followed at eleven. Of the remaining three days, one 
 was to be taken up with going to see the poor of the parish, 
 another with the local Hotel-Dieu, the third with the prisons ; 
 and the evenings were to be spent alone, working or read- 
 ing. On the eve of feast-days or of taking Communion 
 she was to see no one—certain private devotions were never 
 to be omitted — she was to wear neither gold nor silver, 
 and the tenth of her income was to be dedicated to the poor. 
 This was her scheme, and she defined it as the rudiments 
 of a pious life. 
 
 Very different is the day she describes in 1705 to Madame 
 Glapion, her confidante at St. Cyr. She rises at cock-crow 
 for Mass and private devotions, for people begin to crowd 
 her room at half-past seven : first, the King's physicians, 
 followed by the royal valet ; then the ministers, the Arch- 
 bishop, the young dukes and princes, each remaining till 
 some one superior in rank arrives. Everybody leaves when 
 the King appears, and he remains till he goes to Mass. All 
 this time she is not yet dressed : ' If I were,' she says, ' I
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 181 
 
 should not have had time for my prayers. I am still, there- 
 fore, in my nightcap ; but my room, notwithstanding, is just 
 like a church.' After Mass the King returns ; then comes 
 the Duchess of Burgundy with a company of ladies, who 
 stay while Madame dines. Her digestion is impaired by 
 the conduct of the indiscreet duchess who treads on every- 
 body's toes, or else by her confidences about her domestic 
 unhappiness. The general ' strife of minds . . . unlike 
 anything else ' disturbs her, and she is so hemmed in by 
 ladies that she can get nothing to drink. At last the world 
 goes off to dinner, and she is left with her two invalid friends, 
 Madame d'Heudicourt and Madame de Dangcau. This 
 might be a free time for amusement, 4 for chat or for a 
 game of backgammon'; but the Dauphin takes that hour 
 for his own, and ' is the most difficult man in the world 
 to entertain, for he never says a word.' After dinner, ' the 
 King and the whole royal family come into my room and 
 make it frightfully hot.' The King departs after half an 
 hour's talk ; but the rest remain to tell the last scandal, 
 ignorant that their hostess is full of far graver subjects, 
 State affairs and the like, which often depress her. When 
 they quit her there arrives a file of ladies, one by one, 
 friends and foes, to confide their troubles and beg for her 
 influence with the King. And when he comes back from 
 hunting, he goes straight to her — ' the door is shut and no 
 one comes in again.' They are alone together, and she 
 must amuse him. ' Sometimes he is subject to fits of un- 
 controlled weeping ; at others he is unwell. There is no 
 conversation.' Presently ministers and courtiers arrive, 
 often with bad news that prevent her sleeping at night. If 
 the King does not need her, she goes a little apart and uses 
 this time for prayer. Afterwards she sups off fruit and meat, 
 which, for fear she should be wanted, she eats hurriedly, 
 though hurrying always makes her ill. By this time it is 
 late :
 
 132 NEW AND OLD 
 
 I have [she says] been up ever since six in the morning, and 
 have not had time to breathe all day. I am worn out, I have 
 fits of yawning; and, more than all the rest, I begin to feel the 
 effects of age. 
 
 Louis bids her go to bed — she complies. Her women come 
 to undress her ; but either the King wants to speak to her, 
 or a minister is waiting and Louis is afraid her women may 
 hear. 
 
 This puts him out and me too. ... At last I am in my bed 
 and my women are sent away. Then the King draws near, 
 and sits down at the head of the bed. . . . There is no one 
 there whom I can ask to give me what I need. Sometimes I 
 want some clothes to be aired ; but there is no woman present. 
 . . . Sometimes., when I have had a very severe cold, I have 
 been nearly suffocated by keeping in my cough. . . . The 
 King stays till he goes to supper, and about a quarter of an 
 hour before that the Dauphin and the Duke and Duchess of 
 Burgundy come in. At ten, or a quarter past ten o'clock, 
 everybody goes away. I am at last by myself and I can refresh 
 myself according to my needs ; but the anxieties and fatigue of 
 the day often hinder me from sleeping. 
 
 She certainly had ground for her stately grumblings (she 
 prided herself on never complaining), and the King never 
 yielded an inch to her tastes. He kept her talking for 
 hours in draughts, till she thought of inventing a hood to 
 her chair ; and he insisted on having her windows wide 
 open while she lay shivering with fever. On one occasion 
 she wrote that ' she was perishing of Symmetry,' for the 
 sake of which her Fontainebleau windows — ' as big as 
 arcades ' — were not allowed either curtains or shutters. 
 These were no trifles to a woman who was growing old, 
 and they went on till she was eighty. Nor was she exacting 
 in her demands ; on the contrary, she was always austere. 
 Some time already before the King's death she had reduced 
 herself to one meal a day, consisting of a single dish sup-
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 188 
 
 plemented by a cup of chocolate, which she took later and 
 subsequently gave up. During her widowhood at St. Cyr, 
 although she had passed her fourscore years, she ate her 
 meals at the common table with the nuns. 
 
 One wonders how Car the King really cared for h< r after 
 marriage. ' He loves me,' she once said to a friend, ' but 
 only so far as he is capable of loving.' Her scoldings were 
 taken as well as ever. On one occasion she told him he 
 had done very wrong, and he acquiesced ; later he repent- 
 antly referred to his fault. ' All that is past, Sire,' slic 
 replied ; but he insisted on humbling himself. As years 
 went on, his dependence on her increased. ' What docs 
 Reason say ? ' he was wont to ask, and did not at all like 
 transacting business without her. She was present at one 
 at least of the State Councils, sitting apart at her spinning 
 wheel — an emblem of feminine modesty and machination- — 
 in her dress of feuille morte colour, permanently adopted 
 because it brought out the lustre of her eyes. 
 
 The affairs of the Church doubled her labours. Her 
 mission for converting others besides the King developed 
 even before the Queen's death, when, not content with 
 proselytising at home, she directed her attention to the 
 distant Duchesses of Portsmouth and of York. She besieged 
 all her Huguenot relations with letters, and refused to apolo- 
 gise to her cousin — one of the Villettes — for carrying off 
 and converting, without his knowledge, his little girl of 
 nine, whom she kept and educated. However, in spite of 
 all this, the old story that she urged the King to persecute 
 the Protestants and revoke the Edict of Nantes (which he 
 did in '85) seems only to be founded on a letter long sup- 
 posed to be hers, but really forged by La Beaumelle, who 
 invented many others for her also. In reality, we find 
 more than one passage in her letters about this time, per- 
 suading Louis to be less severe in his conduct towards the 
 Huguenots. Had it been otherwise it would not have
 
 134 NEW AND OLD 
 
 tallied with the rest of her character : she had too much 
 good taste to like persecution. She became, however, more 
 and more the centre of orthodoxy (' L'Abbesse universelle ' 
 and ' La femme d'affaires des eveques,' St. Simon calls her) ; 
 but nothing of her work remained, and, woman-like, she 
 dealt more in ecclesiastical intrigues than in enduring affairs. 
 Later, between 1695 and 1699, when first the Quietist and 
 then the Jansenist heresies appeared and she was bent 
 upon crushing them, she was more occupied with the 
 making and unmaking of archbishops than with the ideas 
 she was suppressing. She was guilty of the fanatic's 
 mistake of believing that thought can be stamped out by 
 persons carefully chosen to effect such a purpose. Her 
 conception of her importance in the Church was stronger 
 even than her common sense, and led her (to resume the 
 words of the spiteful St. Simon) into ' a sea of frivolous, 
 delusive, wearisome, sham occupations, an infinity of 
 letters and answers, the direction of select souls and all 
 sorts of childishness.' 
 
 Such a line of conduct was bound to be very effectual at 
 the moment, and it is not surprising to find her the darling 
 of Rome. Innocent xi. sent her a martyr's body from the 
 catacombs as a delicate attention ; and Alexander viii. 
 consulted her about the King's business and addressed her 
 as ' our very dear daughter in Jesus Christ, the noble woman, 
 Lady of Maintenon.' 
 
 She was one of those women who sigh over having too 
 much to do, and all the time invent fresh tasks for themselves. 
 Her real talent, as she always said, was for education, a 
 gift which might have found scope enough in the training 
 of the young and giddy Duchess of Burgundy (wife of the 
 Dauphin's son), whom the King had entrusted to her care. 
 But the work she cared most about was her orphanage at 
 Noisy, a home for both rich and poor, which soon after 
 developed into the royally-endowed Convent School of St.
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS LS5 
 
 Cyr. Nothing so fully embodies her spirit as this inslilu- 
 tion for educating the daughters of poor noblemen and 
 housing aristocratic nuns. Its courtly, rather interested, 
 piety, its cold, high-bred good sense, its capable organi- 
 sation and impeccable success were all characteristic. 
 Louis xiv. provided the young ladies with pensions when 
 they left, and visited them more than once — calling them 
 ■ his Daughters of Zion,' and always impressing on them 
 the need of his favourite virtue, Regularity. It was to 
 amuse his jaded mind that his wife invented the famous 
 dramatic performances of her pupils. At first they played 
 Andromaque, but the heroine acted with too much passion, 
 and the powerful foundress applied to Racine to write for 
 her a Riblical play. Esther was the result, in the presence 
 of the King ; and Racine, who had retired to the chapel to 
 pray for a blessing on his drama, was summoned thence 
 to receive His Majesty's compliments. There was a second 
 representation before James n., Mary of Modena, and 
 Madame de Sevigne ; and by and by Aihalie followed. But 
 by this time Madame de Maintenon had discovered that 
 the girls' heads were turned — that they had too great a zeal 
 for intellectual things — that the whole system of their 
 education must be changed. After tbis poetry and accom- 
 plishments were discarded, and they chiefly learned house- 
 wifely arts and common sense. She instructed them herself 
 admirably in temporal and spiritual deportment, and her 
 discourses are models of elegant sanity. Simplicity alone 
 suited her fastidious senses ; and so she preached it, and 
 believed her sermons to be purely religious. The young 
 ladies were to dress in homespun and live on their estates 
 and hate Paris and submit to their husbands, whether these 
 were good or bad, sots or rakes. Above all, they were 
 never to be women of influence, the most miserable fate 
 on earth ! Sometimes she disguised her sermons in little 
 plays and dialogues, taking herself as the central figure and
 
 136 NEW AND OLD 
 
 recommending her virtues, even her faults, for their 
 imitation. 
 
 She was distracted from St. Cyr by the death from small- 
 pox of the Dauphin, in 1711 ; still more by a greater calamity 
 in the following year, when his son, the Duke of Burgundy, 
 the little Duchess (whom she loved as much as she could 
 love), and their child, all died in a few days of measles. 
 The King did not survive them long. In 1715 he passed 
 away with a calm and august courage, begging pardon for 
 his faults, saying farewell to all, even his servants, and 
 commending Madame de Maintenon to the care of the 
 Regent Orleans. He transacted a good deal of State 
 business with a lucid brain, bidding her destroy some 
 papers which might have made mischief between two of 
 his Ministers, and laughing at other documents that would 
 be useless after his death. ' I do not regret leaving any- 
 body but you,' he said to her; on which she bade him 
 transfer his thoughts to his salvation. She hardly left his 
 bedside day or night, and, though she was eighty years old, 
 she did not take off her clothes for three days. But directly 
 he became unconscious she consulted her confessor as to the 
 need of her presence, and on being told that the King would 
 not want her again she hurried away in her coach to say 
 Masses for his soul at St. Cyr. There was still something 
 to be done, and doing was always her method of salvation. 
 The King did not, however, die till two days afterwards. 
 He had been conscious enough to mutter prayers to himself 
 till the end. It is for thus deserting the King that she has 
 been the most severely blamed ; but her deed was the out- 
 come of her nature — a nature that was more practical than 
 loving — and she cannot be censured for an isolated action 
 in harmony with herself. 
 
 How far such a woman had a heart it is difficult to say. 
 She only felt affection where she influenced, and could love 
 nothing but success. Failure was a bugbear to her, and
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 181 
 
 her practice of the Christian virtues failed wofully in ihis 
 respect. Even her attentions to the poor, thoughtful and 
 regular as they were, were done officially, for the sake of 
 her soul, and were not warmed by charity. The creatures 
 
 she was most near loving were the little Due de Maine and 
 the Duchess of Burgundy. But the former, with some 
 justice, she looked upon as her creation ; and the latter 
 had to be perpetually reclaimed from the gambling-table, 
 to which, in spite of her sweet nature, she was incurably 
 addicted. To her adopted niece — a girl of independent 
 spirit — Madame de Maintenon was very chilly as long as 
 the girl lived with her ; and it was only when she married 
 and made a social success that her aunt recognised her 
 merits. 
 
 In speaking of those she was near loving, we should 
 perhaps have made earlier mention of her only brother, !• 
 whom so many of her letters are addressed. She Mas really 
 attached to him, was patient about his frequent scrapes, 
 and made noble sacrifices — financial and otherwise — for his 
 sake. Nevertheless, her affection w T as overpowered by the 
 fact that he was only a ' bourgeois de Paris,' and when he 
 married a bourgeoise of fifteen Madame de Maintenon's 
 heart — we should say her taste — was almost broken. But 
 despair was not for her. With her usual courage and 
 capability, she set about schooling her ill-bred sister-in- 
 law. ' Je suis en train d'education,' she announced, and 
 she found plenty to correct. Madame d'Aubigne must 
 not eat jam at the wrong meals (there were meals for jam 
 and meals for butter) ; she must leave off imitating the 
 grimaces of Madame de Longueville and laughing in a 
 forced manner ; she must write oftener, and then Madame 
 will ' have the complaisance to answer her ' ; she must walk 
 out with a ' prudish woman from the middle classes,' and 
 not pretend to a fashionable chaperone. When she was 
 good she should be rewarded ; when she was not she should
 
 138 NEW AND OLD 
 
 have no presents ; and when she was exacting Madame de 
 Maintenon sent her a long list of the favours she had already 
 conferred on her, among which were a ' robe de chambre 
 de peluche couleur de feu,' a ' sac de velours cramoisi,' two 
 caps in point de France, and other garments, amounting in 
 all to 2661 francs. In spite of her regrets for her brother's 
 position, she never tried to make his wife into a woman of 
 the world, and had the good sense to do no more than try 
 to equip her for the post she occupied. 
 
 Nowhere is the superiority of her practical qualities over 
 her feeling more apparent than in these particular letters. 
 She arranged the embarrassed finances of the couple in a 
 masterly way, going into every detail of their income and 
 necessities — the candles that were needed in each room 
 and the proper uses of candle-ends and scraps of chicken. 
 Their annual expenditure, she reckoned, should come to 
 £480, allowing £20 a month for food, light, and firing in a 
 household of eleven, £40 for rent (which she called an over- 
 statement), £40 for Madame d'Aubigne's dress, and £120 for 
 her brother's private expenses. If she were allowed to play 
 absolute Providence, she acted with real beneficence ; but 
 she turned Providence into a governess, and if her advice 
 was refused she was offended. 
 
 It is an accepted axiom that poets alone are extravagant ; 
 but it is no less true that mentors have their excesses, and 
 Madame de Maintenon's correspondence might stand as a 
 proof of this assertion. Like many reprovers of others' 
 folly, she was afraid of making herself absurd : 
 
 I had [she once observed] a great fund of religion, which 
 hindered me from doing any evil . . . which made me hate 
 anything that could bring me into contempt. 
 
 She ran riot in self-preservation — mental preservation, be 
 it understood — and composed a kind of spiritual grammar 
 by which she regulated her feelings.
 
 A FRENCH GOVERNESS 139 
 
 The liking that people had for me [she Bays] was an abstract 
 friendship— a friendship founded on esteem rather than on love. 
 I have never wanted to be loved intimately by any one : I wished 
 to be loved by all the world and to hear my name pronounced 
 with admiring respect . . . above all, to be approved of by 
 people of standing— that was my idol. 
 
 It was not a lovable idol. Prudence is only a means, and 
 when it is taken as an end it revenges itself on the blunderer. 
 The reputation that Madame do Maintenon cherished hfes 
 certainly suffered for her coldness. 
 
 The last years of her life were perhaps the most amiable, 
 for in the retirement of St. Cyr she reigned supreme and 
 was constantly exercising her best faculty — that of teaching. 
 Until her death, at eighty-four, the children and the novices 
 came every afternoon to her bedroom for instruction. She 
 rose at six every morning, attended two Masses in the Chapel, 
 returned there at four, and remained till six in the evening. 
 One day a month she prepared her soul for death, and her 
 good works were countless. ' Ah, Madame ! ' said one of 
 the adulating nuns, ' it is not everybody who has a heart 
 like you.' ' Je le sais,' was all that Madame answered. 
 Another time, when she was pressed to write her life, she 
 refused. It would, she said, be only a spiritual record. 
 ' None but the Saints could be interested.' Such was her 
 conclusion— a fair measure of the position she assigned to 
 herself. 
 
 In 1717 the Czar and his interpreter came to pay a visit 
 to her bedside. He asked her what was the matter. She 
 answered that it was old age and weakness : but, as he did 
 not understand and the interpreter could not interpret, 
 the call came speedily to an end. This was practically her 
 last State function. In April, 1719, she fell ill of fever, and 
 knew that she was dying. Her confessor begged her to 
 bless her household. She abased herself by refusing ; but 
 he insisted, and she raised her hands in benediction. It was
 
 140 NEW AND OLD 
 
 her last action, and soon after she died in peace. She was 
 buried in the Church of St. Cyr with great pomp, and 
 followed to the grave by Cardinals and Princes of the Blood. 
 She might be the text of a hundred sermons ; but it is 
 not for us to preach them. One merit she certainly had, 
 and that was to tell the truth about herself as far as she 
 knew it. Whoever will turn to her writings — her Letters 
 and Conversations — will find her whole self there. They 
 are fascinating reading, whether as human documents or 
 as models of elaborate simplicity and lucid advice. When 
 we have put them down little remains to be said, and that 
 little Madame du Deffand has said for us. ' I have finished 
 reading her,' she wrote a century after Madame de Main- 
 tenon's day ; ' and the result is a high opinion of her mind, 
 a low opinion of her heart, and no taste at all for her person ; 
 but I persist in maintaining that she was by no means 
 false.' It is not the epitaph Sa Solidite would have chosen ; 
 but there are many to endorse it. 
 
 1900.
 
 CHARLOTTE YONGE AS A CHRONICLER 
 
 It was only the other day that Charlotte Yonge was laid to 
 rest at Hursley in Hampshire, near the cross of John Keble, 
 her guide and her intimate friend. There are probably few 
 people born between 1845 and 1865 who did not leave a 
 little piece of their hearts in her quiet grave. What eager 
 girl of the 'seventies did not mould herself upon Ethel in 
 The Daisy Chain, with her untidy skirts and her visions of 
 reforming Cocksmoor ? Who has not thrilled over the 
 Doubts of Norman at Oxford ? And which of us that 
 happened to have an ailment in that period did not try to 
 give the sweet if impossible smile of Margaret May upon 
 her sofa ? Robert Browning says that ' if you die, there 's 
 the dying Alexander ' ; but who would not much rather 
 have died like Guy Morville, the heir of Redclyffe ? We 
 may have been the greater prigs for doing so, and self- 
 examination can be a morbid habit. And yet is it more 
 unwholesome than the self-analysis and the fear of being 
 absurd that possess the present generation ? It is, at all 
 events, the outcome of moral enthusiasm, not of rather 
 aimless criticism ; and the annals of commonplace virtue 
 are not more tedious than the annals of commonplace vice. 
 Miss Yonge is as lengthy as you choose, but what can be 
 lengthier than a modern realistic novel ? 
 
 In limited space it is impossible to do justice to all her 
 efforts. Perhaps her historical stories and studies are the 
 most irreproachable of these. When she gets to other 
 centuries than her own she is freer from the trammels of 
 
 duty and moralising, and is able to put her particular tenets 
 
 1 i
 
 142 NEW AND OLD 
 
 into fancy dress. But her domestic chronicles best embody 
 herself. All that was original in her is there, and it is to 
 them that this review will confine itself. 
 
 Charlotte Yonge's chief gift is not a literary one : it is 
 rather a moral gift— the faculty of intimacy. This it was, 
 perhaps, which endeared her to more than one distin- 
 guished mind. In the Memoir of Tennyson, Mr. Palgrave 
 records how one night, in a Devonshire inn, he shared a 
 room with him, and how the poet lay in his bed with a 
 candle persistently reading a book of Miss Yonge's, which 
 he had already been opening ' at every disengaged moment, 
 while rambling over the moor.' ' I see land ! ' cried Tenny- 
 son at last : ' Mr. is going to be confirmed.' It is well 
 
 known, too, how Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites read and 
 re-read The Heir of Redclyffe, the novel to which we find it 
 most difficult to return. There are, of course, obvious 
 reasons outside her characters to account for their taste. 
 Charlotte Yonge was the child of the Tractarian School, 
 without any of its extravagances, and her tone of symbolism 
 was congenial to the Brotherhood ; so were the books that 
 were influencing her — Sintram and the Morte d? Arthur. 
 And however different was her treatment of material, 
 her range of subjects was analogous to theirs, and varied 
 between historical romance and the homeliest themes. But 
 she could hardly have affected them as she did had it not 
 been for her deep, if narrow, moral insight and her faithful 
 minuteness of description. Her work, as a recent critic 1 
 has cleverly pointed out, was in her own little province 
 the result of Wordsworth. 
 
 The secret of Charlotte Yonge's strength lies in this : she 
 plucks the heart out of the obvious — she evokes the familiar. 
 No one can more potently stir the associations that recall 
 our childhood's excitements : the emotions of lessons ; the 
 dual life of inner visions and walks with the governess ; 
 
 1 'Charlotte Yonge,' by Ethel Earl, The Pilot, March 30, 1901,
 
 CHARLOTTE YONGE AS A CHRONICLE* 14S 
 
 the very smell of a school-treat at Christmas ; the hissing 
 of the tea-urn which brought us our evening liberty. The 
 Daisy Chain is an epic, the Iliad of the schoolroom, and 
 should hold its place as a moral classic. 
 
 But if we are to make a preposterous analogy, Miss Yonge 
 is, on the whole, more like Zola than Homer in her methods. 
 Both she and the French novelist take an enormous canvas 
 and, with prodigious industry, work out the experience 
 of each of their characters. The Rougon-Macquarts are 
 almost as numerous as the Mays, or the Pillars of the House, 
 and, like them, recur through an endless series of volumes. 
 Both writers have the same courage in the face of tedious- 
 ness, and the same faults — overgrown conscience and pro- 
 lixity. Their themes, it must be owned, are very different. 
 Miss Yonge is at her best when she describes youth. The 
 life of girlhood between twelve and twenty-five lies open 
 to her with its joys and struggles, and so does every un- 
 important, all-important detail of daily existence in a 
 country neighbourhood. What, for instance, can be more 
 arresting — what can carry us more directly into the centre 
 of things — than the opening of The Daisy Chain ? 
 
 1 Miss Winter, are you busy ? Do you want this afternoon ? 
 Can you take a good long walk ? ' 
 
 ' Ethel, my dear, how often have I told you of your im- 
 petuosity — you have forgotten.' 
 
 ' Very well ' — with an impatient twist — ' I beg your 
 pardon. Good morning, Miss Winter,' said a thin, lank, 
 angular, sallow girl just fifteen. 
 
 Here is the gift of intimacy : a something that puts us 
 in touch with her people at once. And she knows in their 
 essence all the little things that affect family life, even to 
 the frictions that exist, without fault on any side, between 
 differing temperaments in the same circle. That is why 
 we do not so much read her stories as live next door to
 
 144 NEW AND OLD 
 
 her characters, embracing all the worry and tedium as well 
 as the pleasure which identification with a family must 
 mean. When the Underwoods and Merry fields have the 
 measles we know exactly which one is the worst, and want 
 to go and inquire after them. When the Pillars of the 
 House give a party on about eighteenpence and entertain 
 the County on that modest sum (Miss Yonge has a discreet 
 partiality for orthodox lords), we find ourselves growing 
 needlessly harassed lest the home-made cakes should be too 
 heavy. And when (in The Clever Woman of the Family) 
 Ermine Williams, the Absolute Idea of the Invalid, puts 
 on her ' Niirnberg horn brooch ' to welcome the lover she 
 had counted as dead, we are consumed with desire to see 
 what she looked like. Or take Countess Kate, perhaps the 
 most flawless of her domestic stories. How well we know 
 the ardent, aggravating, lovable, grandiloquent little girl, 
 with her private heroics, her awkwardness in public, her 
 unsatisfied heart ; and Rachel, too, the infallible, ' the 
 Clever Woman ' of a small set, who made a ' mission ' of her 
 ladylike cousin's family, to the destruction of their com- 
 fort, and in due time landed herself in a happy marriage 
 with a soldier of iron will. These and a dozen more come 
 back to our mind like well-remembered visitors. Indeed, 
 if we search Miss Yonge's many novels, we shall find there 
 the germs of most of the women's characters that we come 
 across in the world ; it is the circumscribed development 
 she gives them, apart from the accidents of time and fashion, 
 that makes them often seem remote from our knowledge. 
 There is at least no lack of depth in Charlotte Yonge. If 
 we want the deeper aspects of family experience- — the things 
 all feel and seldom formulate — no one is better at suggesting 
 them. When scarlet fever seized the delicate boy of the 
 May family, Ethel and her father felt grave forebodings. 
 
 Ethel silently and rapidly moved about, dreading to give an 
 interval for tremblings of heart. Five years of family prosperity
 
 CHARLOTTE ¥ONGE AS A CHRONICLER M> 
 
 had passed, and there had been that insensible feeling of peace 
 and immunity from care which is strange to look back upon 
 when one hour has drifted from smooth water to turbid 
 currents. There was a sort of awe in seeing the mysterious 
 gates of sorrow again unclosed. 
 
 In work, in character-drawing, such as all this, there is 
 the saving grace, the steady force of reality. From the 
 heart it comes ; to the heart it goes. And, in so far, it 
 will retain its vital quality. 
 
 It is when Miss Yonge leaves her set limits that truth 
 forsakes her. She is not an artist ; the aesthetic sense is 
 outside her and generally counts as a danger in her scheme 
 of existence. Mr. Rivers in The Daisy Chain — who pos- 
 sesses a Claude and a portfolio of engravings from Raphael, 
 and likes ' a show set of peasants in rustic cottages,' and 
 puts ' all that offends the eye out of the way ' — has, accord- 
 ing to Dr. May, ' cultivated his taste till it is getting to be 
 a disease.' And Cherry Underwood's picture, painted to 
 the glory of heaven, without much knowledge of drawing, 
 was at once accepted by the Academy, and must have been 
 a pretty bad specimen. None, indeed, of her artists are 
 happy in their mind when once outside the lych-gate of 
 their church. But, after all, bad art for the glory of heaven 
 is no worse than bad art for art's sake — the ideal of modern 
 stories — and has the advantage of possessing a practical 
 motive which is applicable to other forms of activity. It 
 must be owned, though, that Miss Yonge carries that motive 
 pretty far. Sports, games even, do not escape. Croquet 
 is frequently a matter for prayer : for or against, according 
 as the croquet-player is indolent by temperament or too 
 much absorbed in the game. Her favourite lady in The 
 Clever Woman of the Family yields to it only by degrees, 
 because she long believed it to be the monopoly of fast 
 officers and their set. And bicycles (touchingly intro- 
 duced into her last volume, Modern Broods) are merely 
 
 K
 
 146 NEW AND OLD 
 
 allowed because they can be ridden in the service of the 
 Church. ' Magdalen (runs the story) had, however, decided 
 on granting the bicycles. She had found plenty of use for 
 her own, for it was possible, with prudent use of it, avoid- 
 ing the worst parts of the road, to be at early celebration 
 at St. Andrew's, and get to the Sunday School at Ams- 
 combe afterwards.' 
 
 It is impossible to imagine many men reading Miss Yonge. 
 There is an intemperate tameness about her — at once her 
 charm and her defect — which forbids our associating man- 
 kind with her. It would be as if we dreamed of them 
 taking high tea in perpetuo. Her masculine portraits are 
 generally impossible. She can manage a father or a colonial 
 bishop, or even a widower clergyman. Dr. May is the real 
 hero of The Daisy Chain and The Trial ; and the Diocesan 
 in the last story, or blind Mr. Clare in The Clever Woman of 
 the Family, can mildly hold his own. But her lovers, clerical 
 and military, and, worse still, her man of the world ! Her 
 conception of the latter is embodied in Philip Morville, who 
 frequently stays with a lord in a gay country-house, and 
 says ' Encore ! ' when the visitors' bell rings a second time 
 in the villa of his untitled uncle ; or again, in Dr. May's 
 utterance when he found the sitting-room ' pervaded with an 
 odour of nutmeg and port-wine,' while ' a kettle, a decanter 
 and empty tumblers told tales ' — of nothing worse than 
 Tom's attempt to cure his younger brother's cold. ' Cold,' 
 says the Doctor, ' is always the excuse. But, another time, 
 don't teach your brother to make this place like a fast man's 
 rooms.' 
 
 Miss Yonge prefers the Church or the Army as a calling 
 for her favourites, but she allows other vocations. That 
 Pillar of the House who became the editor of a high-toned 
 newspaper, besides squires, doctors, sailors, the weary 
 politician and an emigrant farmer or two, come across our 
 memory as we write. But as all of them are bent on devot-
 
 CHARLOTTE YONGE AS A CHRONICLER H7 
 
 ing their professions to the cause of the Anglican Church, 
 their talk is, so to speak, reduced to a common denominator. 
 Extreme heartiness is her favourite method of producing a 
 manly note in conversation ; and rather outlandish ejacula- 
 tions, such as ' Aye: ! ' ' Ha ! ' ' Nay ! ' 'What say 
 you ? ' are frequent in the mouths of the men in her books. 
 They are not much more successful in feeling than in speech. 
 When Leonard Ward is condemned to death for a murder 
 of which he is innocent, he is resigned, even pleased to be 
 hanged, because he had once, unpunished, thrown a stone 
 (which did not hit) at his elder brother for telling him the 
 drawing-room was untidy. Guy Morville, the heir of Iled- 
 clyffe, cures himself of the Rcdclyffe temper by playing 
 the ' Harmonious Blacksmith ' whenever he is impatient — 
 though the amount of time he must have wasted in running 
 to and from the piano is incalculable. Or, if we want a 
 Bacchanalia of mildness, let us look in upon the proceed- 
 ings on Philip Morville's wedding-day — the crown of a 
 long and faithful though clandestine love. 
 
 It was late before he appeared at all, and when he came down 
 there was nothing so plainly written on his face as headache. 
 It was so severe that the most merciful thing Mas to send him 
 to lie on the sofa in the drawing-room. Amabel said she would 
 fetch him some camphor, and disappeared, while Laura (the 
 bride) sat still with forced composure. Her father fidgeted, 
 only restrained by her presence from expressing his fears that 
 Philip was too unwell for the marriage to take place to-day, 
 and Charles talked cheerfully of the great improvement in his 
 general health. ... At the last moment she (Amabel) went 
 to warn Philip it was time to go, if he meant to walk to church 
 alone, the best thing for his head. 
 
 It should perhaps be mentioned that the headache came 
 from remorse and had already lasted eighteen months. 
 There should be a separate treatise on Miss Yonge's treat- 
 ment of illness, as the maladies in her novels, whether
 
 148 NEW AND OLD 
 
 proceeding from fire or fever, whether from shrunken tendons 
 or overwork, are alike only cured by joy, repentance, or 
 some other well-regulated feeling. But these, like Philip's 
 remorse, belong to the machinery of her tales. She is 
 happily too sensible a woman to make for a plot as a rule. 
 When she does so it is an anomaly, whether in The Trial, 
 where for three years the escaped villain keeps in his pocket 
 the only document that can inculpate him ; or in The 
 Clever Woman of the Family, where the deceptions prac- 
 tised by the robber and forger are such as a baby-thief 
 would not attempt. In that book, too, so that no fault 
 may be left unwarned in her works, she conscientiously 
 allows Bessie Keith the mildest of married flirtations with 
 Mr. Carleton, formerly rejected by her. But where it 
 reaches its apex (we cannot call it a crisis) she has the mis- 
 fortune to be upon a croquet-lawn. In her guilty excite- 
 ment and desire to reach her relations she trips over a hoop, 
 falls, and dies a few hours afterwards from an internal 
 injury, the effect of the accident. The culprit gives up 
 fishing in the agony of his regret and takes to a serious pro- 
 fession, much to the pleasure of his Mama. Her uncle 
 reads the burial-service, and all the other clergymen and 
 officers, with their wives and nieces, live rather happily 
 ever afterwards. 
 
 When we consider episodes such as these, we cannot be 
 surprised that the rising generation for the most part refuse 
 to read Charlotte Yonge — except for her historical stories. 
 The smallness of her experience, or rather (for that might 
 apply to Miss Austen) of the results of her experience, puts 
 them off her track. She is never perfect outside the hearth, 
 and the hearth is not very popular just now. No more is 
 the British Gentlewoman, but if ever a temple were built 
 for her Miss Yonge should figure as its goddess. The young 
 people brought up on Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling 
 demand more colour and movement than she can give them.
 
 CHARLOTTE YONGE AS A CHRONICLER 149 
 
 And yet in her last book she has tried hard to put herself 
 in touch with them and has made pathetic concessions. 
 Pneumatic tyres arc adapted to self-sacrifice. The girl 
 who longs for Girton is allowed to go to Oxford, and finds 
 the womanly daughter and modest niece of an Anglican 
 lord as her fellow-students ; Dolores, the author's favourite 
 maiden, gives lectures on electricity and founds a reading- 
 settlement. But it is no good. The girls of to-day cannot 
 see themselves in Miss Yonge, and that is their chief demand 
 from literature : for young people are not imaginative. 
 Besides, this is a critical age. ' I can't read Miss Yonge ! ' 
 said a little girl the other day : ' she makes such long con- 
 versations, and thinks everything she talks of is the same ; 
 it doesn't seem to matter to her if it 's a little dog, or self- 
 denial, or a young girl, or a leaf.' It is always easier for 
 youth to detect faults than virtues. 
 
 And what have people in their teens in the place of 
 Charlotte Yonge ? The natural answer seems to be : ' Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward.' She, too, writes the serious family 
 story, unexceptionable in tone and dealing with religious 
 problems. She, too, depicts the spiritual trials of clergy- 
 men and young women. She paints the earnest priest who 
 goes out of the Church, Miss Yonge the earnest priest who 
 stays in it — each according to her generation ; and Norman 
 May is at least as living as Robert Elsmere. But when we 
 come to women, it is the elder author who bears off the 
 palm. Will Marcella with her humanitarian visions, her 
 beauty, her diamonds, and her influence in society, live as 
 long as dowdy, noble Ethel with her merely Christian 
 scheme ? Or has the fast, brilliant, free-thinking heroine 
 of Helbeck of Bannisdale the vitality of Angela Underwood, 
 half-flirt, half-saint, with her hoyden tricks, her taste for 
 Ritualism, and her hidden capacities for devotion ? In 
 the sum of her work, too, Miss Yonge gains the prize ; her 
 books live for us and remain in our hearts as Mrs. Ward's
 
 150 NEW AND OLD 
 
 hardly will, in spite of the fact that the author of Marcella 
 treats of people and subjects much more congenial to us 
 than those of The Heir of Redclyffe. For when we come to 
 compare the ground that both ladies cover — when we are 
 confronted by Mrs. Ward's vast range of themes temporal 
 and spiritual, the pen halts and the analogy stops. 
 
 The reason why Miss Yonge wears is not far to seek. Her 
 experience is limited, but it is deep, it is first-hand. She 
 has chosen a narrow path, but all that she describes on 
 that path is described from her own observation. She is 
 herself : unconscious, spontaneous and human. The people 
 she evokes are no sudden creations : they have always been 
 in her affections. Nevertheless it is natural that, in spite 
 of her virtues, she should be neglected, while the novels of 
 Mrs. Ward are devoured by an audience whose needs she 
 represents, whose dialect she talks. 
 
 And yet it is a misfortune. Miss Yonge could supply 
 this generation with many of the qualities it lacks. Un- 
 selfishness and reverence are virtues none too common, 
 and the wider the channel they flow in the better are they 
 worth having. Charlotte Yonge appeals to enduring feel- 
 ings, not to fleeting emotions ; and, when all is said, a 
 belief in the possibility of doing good is better than the 
 belief that no good can be done. 
 
 1901.
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 
 
 Last October there passed out from among us one of our 
 few women-poets, Emily Lawless, Irishwoman first, and 
 nil the rest afterwards. All the rest includes a great deal : 
 a writer of novels and of romance, an historian, a naturalist, 
 a lover of science, a bold thinker. And in each of these 
 many parts Emily Lawless won distinction ; in her poems, 
 in her writing of Irish romances, of Hurrish and of Grania, 
 something stronger and more likely to endure. 
 
 If she was first an Irishwoman, it was not of the type 
 usually accepted as representative, at least in England 
 — the vague and mystical Celt, impetuous, unpractical, 
 guided by forces outside reason. The mind of Emily 
 Lawless was a concrete mind with a turn for affairs ; with 
 a man's business outlook, large and lucid, not over- 
 concerned with detail ; still more with a gift for natural 
 science, her ' ruling passion ' from seven years old onwards, 
 and for the methods of minute research. But under this 
 fine and interesting terra firma there ran deeper than can 
 plummet sound the unconscious currents of race — flashing 
 here and there to the surface, when and how she herself 
 knew not — persistent questionings of the unseen, gleams of 
 intuition, a sudden brilliant vision of the past, a wild stirring 
 of the blood, a passionate companionship with Irish earth 
 and sea ; or — more rarely — tranquil pools of inspiration 
 reflecting in their depths the things she brought from afar. 
 Perhaps there are few people in whom the two strains of 
 artist and of woman keep so distinctly alongside — seldom 
 fusing, touching occasionally, yet without causing the 
 
 151
 
 152 NEW AND OLD 
 
 conflict, the clash of emotions which has troubled so many 
 creators. What disturbance she suffered from her gifts 
 was nearly always intellectual, unless it were from the 
 nervous stress of work. Her poetry flowed easily from her, 
 was almost her pastime ; and, until illness overtook her, 
 the writing of her books gave her pleasure. This was the 
 more remarkable because when she began her real career 
 as a writer she was already forty-one, and had no spring 
 of youth to help her. 
 
 Emily Lawless was born in Ireland in 1845. Her father 
 was the third Lord Cloncurry, her mother the beautiful 
 Miss Kirwan of Galway. Her great-grandfather, the first 
 peer, was the famous opponent of the Union, twice imprisoned 
 in the Tower — a born hero of romance, but a good adminis- 
 trator, clear-headed and beneficent, who united in himself 
 some of the gifts that distinguished his great-granddaughter. 
 He is good to read of amidst his picturesque doings with 
 Ministers and patriots, with O'Connell and the rest, as 
 chronicled by his son in his Life and Letters. And it was 
 from his day and through his conversion that his family 
 embraced the Protestant faith. 
 
 Emily Lawless spent the best parts of her childhood in 
 the West of Ireland, in her mother's home and country ; 
 and Castle Hackett and County Galway and the haunted 
 hill of Cruchmaa and the islands of Aran made up her land 
 of enchantment, the country which every child creates for 
 itself, but which this child found ready to her hand. The 
 haunted hill belonged to her own family, it was a treasury 
 of fairy-lore ; and the moody, ever-changing Atlantic, 
 with its strange voices of calm and storm, its wheeling sea- 
 birds, its huge swelling stretches, its dark hiding-places 
 amidst the cliffs and caves, its sounds and gullies rich in 
 silver mackerel — that Atlantic peculiarly her own — was 
 no less a magic playground full of things she could never 
 know, full also of strange things — sea-creatures — which she
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 158 
 
 could know, and early learned to dredge for. Her mother 
 must have made part of all the romance. She; was beautiful 
 with a kind of arresting beauty which lay largely in the 
 harmony of her features, but her charm was not confined to 
 any form, it was conveyed by her whole person. Slender, 
 frail, sparkling, grace itself, full of movement and sympathy, 
 even in old age Lady Cloncurry made many lovers, and 
 in her youth she carried all before her. She and her husband 
 left their eight children full liberty — to the four girls no 
 less than the four boys. As soon as she was past babyhood 
 Emily was allowed the run of the far-stretching grounds 
 by herself, now on foot, now on the back of her pony. Yet 
 even at this moment, when all her best joys were open-air 
 joys, she had one other taste which was prophetic — a 
 dominating love of fine language. Big words had such a 
 fascination for her that when she could not get out she spent 
 hours curled up among the bookshelves in her father's 
 library, turning over heavy old volumes, Elizabethan 
 plays and the like ; getting off by heart long portions in 
 which the sound of the words pleased her, and reciting them 
 to whoever would listen. The meaning did not concern 
 her, and the results were not altogether convenient. On 
 one occasion, when she was eight years old, her father was 
 giving a dinner to a party of sporting squires, jovial port- 
 drinking gentlemen, and, proud of his little girl's achieve- 
 ments, he told her as she sat at dessert to get up and repeat 
 one of her ' pieces.' She obeyed. But unfortunately her 
 last ' piece ' was from an Elizabethan play- — the speech of 
 an outraged husband to a faithless wife — and it had attracted 
 her because of the grand sound of a word which ended each 
 line of the passage. It was a term of insult, the most 
 improper in the English language. She loudly declaimed 
 her blank verse, rolling off her favourite word with gusto 
 to the great bewilderment of the squires, till her father, at 
 first speechless, recovered his presence of mind and with a
 
 154 NEW AND OLD 
 
 ' Thank you, Emily ; very nice, but that is enough,' put 
 an end to her performance. 
 
 For the rest, from the outset, her life was that of a natur- 
 alist, greatly to the inconvenience of the nursery. Stray 
 grasshoppers crawled on beds and carpets ; an ' exception- 
 ally clammy frog . . . carried in a hot little hand till it could 
 be carried no longer, was placed in the widely open neck- 
 frill of a younger brother, which presented itself as a suit- 
 able receptacle, from whence it rapidly travelled downhill 
 over his entire remonstrating person.' But Emily Lawless's 
 aspirations soon assumed more impressive proportions. 
 ' Nine years old,' she says, ' has always seemed to me to be 
 the really culminating moment, the true pinnacle of human 
 ambition.' When she was that blessed age she 
 
 inscribed, in a handwriting of quite incredible shakiness and 
 illegibility, the names of three snail-shells, two butterflies, and 
 four moths — copied out of Lardner's Cabinet Encyclopaedia, with 
 spelling variations of her own — also of a limestone fossil, a piece 
 of feldspar, a fragment of mica, a stone celt . . . and a piece 
 of plum-pudding stone — set down as ' Conglomerate.' After 
 which . . . she inscribed above the rest in a handwriting even 
 more tottering . . . The Union of all the Sciences, by — her own 
 name in full. 
 
 Her ambition soon took a definite shape — the discovery of 
 ' some bird or quadruped " new to science," ' a modest aim by 
 the side of which all schoolroom knowledge, more especially 
 that of the frivolous arts, seemed a mere object of contempt. 
 The new bird or quadruped was gradually transformed into 
 a new butterfly or moth, and in quest of this moth it was 
 that the ten-year-old entomologist had her great adventure. 
 She herself, many years afterwards, recorded the terrors of 
 it : how, mistaking the time, she stole out secretly at 3 a.m. 
 instead of at daybreak, the official moth-pill-box in hand ; 
 and how in the course of her miserable search, chilled and 
 bogy-haunted, she ' struck gold ' in the guise of an hitherto
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 165 
 
 unknown moth; how, still having two hours to wait till 
 I Ik- house should open, she crept into a haystack, and how 
 suddenly she found herself buried in it, unable to get out, 
 half smothered and in very real peril, for no one would 
 pass near till the morning ; how when a workman did at 
 last arrive and heard her scream, he took her for a ghost 
 and fled away, and how she wis at last, extricated and went 
 home. 
 
 It was not until hours after all this that, for the first time 
 since the early morning, she suddenly remembered her capture, 
 which was to make her name famous for ever. Springing from 
 her bed, she ran quickly to where her jacket had been thrown, 
 and plunged her hand with beating heart into its pocket. . . . 
 In her many writhings and wrigglings the chip-box had long 
 since resolved itself into a mere handful of broken chips, while 
 the captive itself — the e Great Unknown' — had resolved itself 
 into a few pinches of vividly green dust at the very bottom of 
 her pocket. 
 
 This moth-hunt was the precursor of many less effective 
 but maturcr raids by lantern-light, under mossy tree-roots. 
 in woods, in the open, wherever knowledge and instinct 
 led her. And she soon extended her field. Those who 
 accompanied her remember the excitement of sailing with 
 her on dredging expeditions, whether among her own rock 
 islands or in more distant waters, and tell how 7 she always 
 knew just where to stop the boat and find the creatures 
 she sought — ' creatures that I never knew were there,' said 
 a Riviera fisherman who once took her out on the Mediter- 
 ranean. Her love of flowers dates no less from early days, 
 especially of the rock-flowers of Clare and the islands of 
 Aran — ' gentian and saxifrage, pimpernel and eyebright.' 
 None could describe their kind better than she could : 
 
 Close among its ledges clusters snowy dryas, 
 Rose-like are the flowers, yet it clutches hard the rock, 
 Claw-like its rootlets, roots like claws of sea-gulls, 
 Scornful of the tempest, and proof 'gainst every shock.
 
 156 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Campions fill the corners, careless little growers, 
 Loved of the roving moth which visits them at night ; 
 Under silvery leaflets round balloon-like blossoms 
 Tumble in a tangled mat mingled green and white. 1 
 
 She loved the struggle of these lowly rock-plants with 
 sea and wind, their laborious radiant victory, their faint 
 scent that had to be pressed out of them, their reserve, their 
 strength, their hidden lives known to so few — loved them 
 as she loved the island people. Anything indeed, shell, 
 flower or creature, belonging to the rocks, gave her a peculiar 
 pleasure — and anything belonging to the sea. It was 
 characteristic of her that it was so. She liked bareness 
 and endurance better than fertility and ease. But she 
 adored colour and movement, swift movement of wind or 
 water, horse or petrel. To cleave the waves, swimming or 
 sailing, to cleave the air on horseback— these were her 
 great joys, greater than art or even poetry. Rather were 
 they the same tiling, for to her they meant self-expression ; 
 to her ' the poetry of earth was never dead ' — that poetry 
 which she so often chose to articulate in terms of science. 
 The strongest remembrance of her kept by an old friend of 
 her youth was that of a girl with ' tossing corn-coloured 
 hair ' galloping about County Clare. Her physical life was 
 at least as strong as her intellectual life, her taste for science 
 as pronounced as her taste for poetry. 
 
 There is little to tell about Miss Lawless's youth. She 
 had the grief of losing her father at fourteen ; to her fasci- 
 nating mother, like the rest of the family, she had a great 
 devotion. Later, two of her sisters died while still in their 
 prime, and, worst grief of all, she lost her younger brother, 
 Denis, her closest companion, who shared so many of her 
 gifts as well as of her tastes, and who was cut off by a cruel 
 illness in the fulness of his brilliant powers. Not long before 
 her mother had passed away — the mother who had been the 
 
 1 ' From the Burren ' ( The Inalienable Heiitage).
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 157 
 
 astonished adorer of her daughter's gifts — who had always 
 seemed to that daughter younger than herself. So runs 
 the sonnet which Emily wrote to her : 
 
 Why reckon thus the years between us twain, 
 For what is Autumn when its leaves are brown, 
 
 And brutal winds lay hare the shivering plain, 
 Nipping all harvests with their deadly frown ? 
 
 Or what is Winter, when no flake of snow- 
 Mas touched the least leaf of one budding spray 
 
 In happy climes where Summers never go, 
 But star-lit night succeeds to laughing day? 
 
 When not one leaf in all the forest fades, 
 
 And dull December breathes of odorous June, 
 
 And flitting birds pipe through the soft green glades, 
 And every streamlet sings its old sweet tune? 
 
 Autumn is Winter when its days are chill, 
 But Winter without frosts is Summer still. 
 
 But these sorrows were scattered over many years. 
 Meanwhile she lived out her youth : she went out into 
 the world, loving good talk, we may be sure, more than 
 dancing, but never so happy as when she got back to her 
 native land of Clare and her rock-strewn Burren. Or else 
 it was to the Cloncurrys' place at Lyons and, later, to 
 Maretimo near Dublin, where her mother made her home, 
 where her second brother, Frederic, now lives. She matured 
 early, she read much, spending hours over books — over 
 history, fiction, science, poetry ; yet, except for a few stray 
 articles concerning natural history, she printed nothing 
 before middle-age. Her first story, A Chelsea Cousin, which 
 appeared anonymously in 1882, met with no success. And 
 it was not till four years later that she published her earliest 
 Irish novel, encouraged by her meeting and quickly ripen- 
 ing intimacy with Mrs. Oliphant, that racy and fertile 
 story-teller, that truest and tenderest of friends and critics. 
 Hurrish was a story of the peasants of Galway. It came
 
 158 NEW AND OLD 
 
 out in 1886, a momentous year for Ireland and one that 
 doubtless helped the reputation which the book would in 
 any case have had. Big politicians and the ordinary public 
 were alike preoccupied with the Irish, wishing to know more 
 of them, sensitive to the dramatic contrasts their country 
 presents. Hurrish had an instantaneous effect. Distin- 
 guished people of all sorts, those concerned with affairs and 
 Lhosc concerned with letters, hailed her as a new light in 
 the literary heaven. She found herself famous. But its 
 success was exceeded by that of her second Irish novel, 
 Grania, a tale of the isles of Aran, which appeared in 1892, 
 when her name as a representative of Ireland had been 
 made not only by Hurrish but by her Essex in Ireland (1890) 
 and her Ireland (' Story of the Nations ' Series, 1S87) ; 
 when, also, the curiosity of England about Ireland had in- 
 creased. Perhaps no woman ever had a quicker or more 
 flattering welcome from great statesmen as well as from 
 fellow-artists. Public men wrote to thank her for enlighten- 
 ment as well as for pleasure ; Gladstone was enchanted ; 
 Morley compared her writing to that of George Sand ; 
 Meredith, Lecky, Lord Bowen and a host of others, great 
 and small, acclaimed her in letters and in talk. But the 
 greatest laurel conferred upon the book was from the hand 
 of Swinburne. The story of the island-folk, primitive, 
 mystic, pagan — unconscious endurers, part of Nature and 
 her storms and struggles — knowing no tongue but the Irish 
 — went straight to the poet's imagination, and his letter is 
 not only a tribute, it is an emblem of the way that a book 
 could act upon him : 
 
 Nothing [he writes] that our friend Lady B can possibly 
 
 have told you can express my admiration of Grania. I hope 
 you will not think it impertinent of me to avail myself of this 
 opportunity of saying to you what I say to others, that I think 
 it just one of the most exquisite and perfect works of genius 
 in the language — unique in pathos, humour, and convincing
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 159 
 
 persuasion of truthfulness, [should like to write a great deal 
 
 more about it, but I spare you the trouble of reading what it 
 would hardly be in good taste (or 'form') to inflict on you. 
 Besides, you must be blasee with praise and thanksgiving. 
 Still, I think if you knew them you would be gratified by the 
 appreciation of the ladies, old and young, of my own family to 
 whom I have given copies. But, of course, it is one of the 
 books about which there can be but one opinion among all 
 readers above the intellectual and moral level of a chimpanzee. 
 
 And again : 
 
 It is I who in common with all your readers out you a debt 
 of inexpressible gratitude. My friend, Mr. Watts, desires me 
 to say how fully he shares my admiration of Grania. But 
 then who doesn't ? I most earnestly hope that the ill-health 
 which alone could possibly account for your feeling disinclined 
 to confer any more benefits on the world of appreciative readers 
 has passed or is passing away. ... 1 should have thought — on 
 my honour — publishers must all be at your feet begging for 
 anything more from the writer of that immortal story. But, as 
 for offering the public what the public does not want to read 
 and declines to buy, that is my normal position, or at least it 
 often has been for years together, and it has never discouraged 
 me from writing to please myself and the few others I ever 
 care about pleasing. 
 
 It was not to Grania but to Essex in Ireland that Miss 
 Lawless owed another illustrious acquaintance, that with 
 Mr. Gladstone. This record of Essex's Irish experience, 
 purporting to be written by one of his followers, was taken 
 by Gladstone to be authentic ; he wrote in excitement at 
 the discovery, and was, perhaps, still more excited at the 
 further discovery of his error. Not long after this, he 
 fulfilled his desire of seeing Miss Lawless. She was staying 
 at Cannes, in a hotel, and happened to be resting on her 
 bed, in her dressing-gown with no shoes on her feet, when 
 she heard a man's footstep and a knock at her bedroom 
 door. Thinking it was the waiter who always brought her
 
 160 NEW AND OLD 
 
 her post and her tea, she took no notice till a deep voice 
 said : ' May I come in ? ' and, turning round hastily, she 
 saw the face of Mr. Gladstone peering round the door. She 
 leaped to her feet, hid the deficiencies in her dress as best 
 she could — a needless precaution, for he never noticed them 
 — and sat down near him to enjoy two hours of his rich, 
 unbroken, mid-stream conversation — for, after he had 
 explained that he was staying with Lord Rendel near by, 
 he wasted no more time in non-essentials. Tour de force 
 though Essex in Ireland is, it required, perhaps, a man of 
 Gladstone's Homeric naivete and immense power of belief 
 to take it for a contemporary document ; its very correct- 
 ness and regularity would have aroused suspicion in minds 
 more critical and more conversant with the luxuriant way- 
 wardness of Elizabethan English. But a wonderful piece 
 of work it remains — ' the only one of my books that gives 
 me any personal satisfaction,' she says, ' partly because I 
 am able to imagine it is not by me.' And there was another 
 reason. ' The true hero, or rather heroine,' she writes else- 
 where, ' is the wretched country itself, groaning under its 
 troubles, yet with that curious fascination which we all 
 feel, though we can hardly tell where it lies.' 
 
 Gladstone's visit Miss Lawless always counted as among 
 the epochs in her existence. Fame brought her, indeed, a 
 full harvest of praise — from Archbishop Manning and from 
 Aubrey de Vere, among others, from women as well as 
 men ; new friendships also, especially those with Lecky, 
 the historian, and Sir Alfred Lyall, the intercourse with 
 whom remained as central interests in her life. To both 
 of these she was an intellectual comrade ; with both she 
 discussed public matters — Ireland and its history with 
 Lecky, India with Sir Alfred, poetry with both, especially 
 with the writer of Theology in Extremis. Sir Alfred and 
 Emily Lawless were equal in their admiration of one another's 
 verse. And Lord Dufferin was another of the fervid corre-
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 161 
 
 spondcnts evoked by her books, and remained as a warm, 
 supporting friend to cheer her with his sympathy. 
 
 Friends, indeed, Miss Lawless never lacked, new or old. 
 And among the oldest of these was one who materially 
 influenced her practical life and thought — her cousin, Sir 
 Horace Plunkett, with whose noble schemes for the agricul- 
 tural and industrial development of Ireland she identified 
 herself, as far as in her lay : 
 
 There are [she wrote to him] few cases of racial peculiarity 
 more fixed than the marked Celtic dislike to the dull routine of 
 husbandry. Your own co-operative work has been so largely a 
 higher development of pastoral industries which are the hope 
 of the Ireland of the future. 
 
 Her pen was ever at the service of The Homestead, the organ 
 of Sir Horace Plunkett's Irish Agricultural Organisation 
 Society, where several of her poems appeared ; and for its 
 leading contributor — its most eloquent voice — ' A. E.' 
 (George Russell) — she had an unbounded admiration. The 
 women's branch of the movement, started within more 
 recent years, had also her warm effectual sympathy. 
 
 I have ' The United Irishwomen' a good deal on my mind 
 [she wrote to Sir Horace in 1911], and should like to help it, 
 though it would be absurd to put my name on any active list of 
 it. I have two short stories which I think might be put 
 together and soltl for its benefit about Xmas-time. They are 
 archaic, but rather interesting. They were part of a series I 
 meant to make a volume of, but, like all my other literary work, 
 it died a natural death from ill-health. I should call the 
 booklet Wolfland, as it belongs to the days when Ireland was 
 the home and hunting-ground of those cheerful animals, and 
 we might give it a white coat and put ' Sold for the benefit of 
 " The United Irishwomen " ' prominently on the corner. 
 
 I had a long and very amiable letter from lately, who 
 
 asserts that I ' helped them ' — i.e. the Gaelic Theatre and 
 circle ! I was not aware of it, but it shows that I 'm not at 
 
 L
 
 162 NEW AND OLD 
 
 least antagonistic. I am not anti-Gaelic at all so long as it is 
 only Gaelic enthuse and does not include politics. 
 
 Like Sir Horace Plunkett, Miss Lawless was Irish first 
 and political afterwards. She was a Unionist ; she would 
 have liked to be able to be a Home Ruler, but she did not 
 regard her countrymen as ripe for self-government. None 
 the less for that did she love her land with a love that was 
 in her bones and being, and she longed to work for Ireland : 
 
 You will see [she said to a friend in 1905] that Yet Wherefore 
 (a poem) has all your suggestions carried out except as to 
 putting Heaven into the chief place instead of Ireland. That 
 it may be the better place of the two I am willing to admit, 
 but the latter has at present more of my affections, so I had to 
 leave it the place of honour. 
 
 It was not only in public matters that Sir Horace Plunkett 
 affected his cousin's mind. They kept up a constant 
 correspondence, and, perhaps more than any one, he lent 
 her the intellectual stimulus and companionship on which, 
 as her health grew weaker, she increasingly depended. In 
 1911 she was working at a new edition of Ireland and brood- 
 ing over her last story, Castlebar, the completion of which 
 had finally to be left to another : 
 
 You would be astonished [she wrote to Sir Horace] at the 
 fresh impetus your last letter has given to my poor, more or less 
 moribund wits. I suppose that is the weak point of being after 
 all a woman, and so dependent on sympathy even in matters 
 intellectual. 
 
 I woke up with a clear vision, not only of those two chapters 
 of the History as I should wish them written, but also of that 
 Castlebar book, which, as you know, I made over nearly two 
 years ago to Mr. Shan Bullock, and I saw all the scenes at 
 Killala, Ballina, etc., with the swarms of all-but-savage yet 
 really harmless natives, and the little scared community of Pro- 
 testants with their splendid old leader, Bishop Stock, and that 
 incongruous but most picturesque addition of the three French
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 163 
 
 officers alone in the crowd, but fresh from their experiences in 
 Italy and elsewhere, under Buonaparte — so feeling it quite 
 natural that they should dominate the situation. 
 
 But this is to antedate our record. Before she began 
 Castlebar, which, finished by Mr. Shan Bullock, can hardly 
 count as hers, she had given us many other volumes. Two 
 years after Grania there appeared her third Irish romance, 
 Maelcho, inferior to its predecessors, both as to matter and 
 success. It had no effect with the public. But she had 
 meanwhile written various tales which had met with a 
 warm reception. Hitherto we have spoken of her Irish 
 stories. But there were others. As early as 1887 Major 
 Lawrence, F.L.S., had first seen the light in Murray's 
 Magazine, and it was printed later as a separate volume. 
 It is a delightful study of a delightful man — a soldier and 
 a naturalist, whose love of moths and sea-creatures is only 
 once forgotten for the love of a woman, the heroine of the 
 history. It was followed two years after by Plain Frances 
 Mowbray, and other Stories, and by her own favourite Traits 
 and Confidences, which carries us again to Ireland — a collec- 
 tion of tales and studies, chief among them ' The Adven- 
 tures of an Entomologist,' already quoted. The Garden 
 Diary (1901) is what it sets out to be, and something more. 
 ' A good deal of it,' she says, ' is an attempt to lift the small 
 natural history problems into a region where all Nature 
 and Life (including our own) becomes, as it were, one.' And 
 her flower-beds and borders made a good peg for Miss 
 Lawless's thoughts. Thoughts, not fancies ; fancy was 
 not a ware Miss Lawless dealt in. She had no small change, 
 but she carried a great deal of gold. Her Life of Maria 
 Edgeworth (' English Men of Letters ' Series, 1904) is almost 
 the last prose that we have from her hand. It is not her 
 best work ; how could it be ? It was written in the teeth 
 of suffering and of sleeplessness. But if it was not a master- 
 piece, it was a victory ; and when the odds are measured
 
 164 NEW AND OLD 
 
 against which it was written, the critic may well be 
 dumb. 
 
 6 Almost the last,' we said. Her last tale (except for 
 Castlebar), The Book ofGilly (1906), little known and worth 
 knowing well, concerns Ireland and Irish nature and its 
 magic. It is the story of a child. It held the echoes of 
 her own childhood, the dreams of later years : 
 
 Of course [she says] the little boy's adventure is only a sort 
 of cloak or screen to a series of small problems — as how 
 impressions strike us while our brains are still malleable, and 
 the contrast between the vast without and the small within is 
 still new, and awakens thoughts which in the great majority of 
 people grow so blunt and dead as they grow older that they 
 practically cease altogether. In this respect the chapter about 
 a modern Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is the gist of the 
 book. One is so afraid to overburden a framework of this sort 
 that one puts complicated ideas, which might be set forth with 
 pomp, in the lightest fashion attainable, with the result that the 
 majority of people overlook them altogether ! That, however, 
 is unavoidable, and if a few people, including yourself, under- 
 stand, that is all that I or any other poor tamperer with the 
 mysteries can look for. 
 
 The prose of The Book of Gilly recalls Emily Lawless's 
 poetry. And when we come to her poetry we come to that part 
 of her which will endure. ' With Hurrish and with Grania ' 
 we might add, but they almost make part of her poetry. 
 In 1902 came out The Wild Geese, with a preface by Stop- 
 ford Brooke ; in 1909, The Point of View (printed privately 
 for the benefit of the Gal way fishermen) ; and, a month 
 ago, her last volume, The Inalienable Heritage — privately 
 printed also — which she was still revising when she died. 
 
 c It is curious how much easier rhyme is to me when I 
 am weak and disabled than prose,' she once wrote. And 
 so it is to her later years, her years of suffering, that we 
 owe most of her verse. Her words sum up both its strength
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 165 
 
 and its weakness. It came naturally to her — by intuition, 
 and sometimes by inspiration. When it did not, she could 
 take no pains with it, and the form remained imperfect, 
 almost rough. When it did, the words and rhythm came 
 with a lilt and an inborn magic that had haunted her, so 
 had power to haunt her readers. She had no pretensions 
 and thought but poorly of her gifts : 
 
 I don't quite know what makes me write the rhymes [she 
 wrote] ; it often seems a foolish waste of time, but they come 
 first as thoughts, mostly, and I think their ghosts tease less if 
 one turns them into a rhyme, hoAvever rough. 
 
 And, except when she was telling a story, or (a large except) 
 when she was drawing Nature from without and from within, 
 her poems are almost exclusively ' thoughts ' ; hardly ever 
 emotional, nearly always profoundly intellectual. Here 
 again lay both her strength and her weakness. The con- 
 centration and the white heat of verse suited the expression 
 of her ideas, but that expression often transcended her 
 artistic faculty and broke up her metre, while she, set upon 
 uttering her mind's conception, forgot too much that the 
 poet must not dare to separate what he has to say from the 
 way in which he says it. Much of her poetry remains prose 
 moulded in the fire of poetry. She takes advantage of the 
 warmth and the consolidating power of rhythm, but the 
 meaning and the music are not fused into one. Equally, 
 therefore, her prose is often poetry ; her two great gifts — 
 that of telling a story, that of loving, knowing, painting 
 Nature — are alike in both. 
 
 For who is the real hero of Grania and Hurrish ? The 
 Atlantic. Who are the dramatis personae ? The winds 
 and the storms — the rocks — the weather. Grania and 
 Hurrish, the peasants and their instincts, are but part of 
 these elemental forces, sharers of their passions, partisans 
 or victims of their conflicts. Of course there are fine human
 
 166 NEW AND OLD 
 
 scenes, like the trial in Hurrish or Honor's deathbed in 
 Grania, inseparable from the author's talent for narrative ; 
 but in the main her characters are types : the primal 
 peasant, the priest, the landlord, the eloquent, flinty, good- 
 for-nothing young fisherman, or his fellow, whose Celtic 
 romance is skin-deep and whose love of commerce and of 
 America are fundamental. Miss Lawless did not deal in 
 fine shades. We can see it in such stories as are not Irish 
 — in Major Lawrence, F.L.S., for instance. Her insight 
 was first-rate, but it was limited ; she understood passion 
 and egoism, intellect and instinct, and these make poetry 
 and dramatic situations ; but she did not much explore 
 the middle region, nor did it interest her greatly. In taste, 
 in courage, in zeal for adventure, in intellectual curiosity, 
 she was of the Elizabethans, and the Elizabethan literature 
 it was that went straightest to her heart. This very absence 
 of analysis and her instinct for romance made her stories 
 particularly welcome to tired public men in search of 
 refreshment. And her instinct for romance delighted 
 because it was united to a fastidious accuracy- — a rare 
 combination, and one, whether in verse or prose, which 
 was the distinction of Emily Lawless. She shows these 
 qualities in her wonderful ballads : in ' Fontenoy ' and the 
 ' Dirge of the Munster Forest ' (from The Wild Geese), and 
 in the fiery, pathetic ' Third Trumpet ' in her last volume. 
 Her ballads are probably the poems by which she will live 
 the longest ; their lilt and their melody were bom with 
 them and carried her over all difficulties of form. No less 
 is her gift for precision and for dramatic effect shown by 
 such lines as those ' To a Woman Spinning ' — a poem as 
 still as a statue, yet fraught with the tragic issues of life : 
 
 How poor thou art, and yet thou art not poor, 
 
 Oh peacetul spinner ! 
 Ragged and barefoot, sitting at thy door, 
 Thou art the winner ! 
 
 Thou art the winner
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 167 
 
 Tliine eyes are placid; as to-day the sea, 
 
 Thrice happy spinner ! 
 Content on her best catea hath nourished thee, 
 
 A royal dinner ! 
 At bed and hoard she serves thee on her knee, 
 
 Oh queenly spinner ! 
 Would that such service she would lend to me, 
 
 Heart-broken sinner I 1 
 
 Or again, what could be more exact than this : 
 
 If He who laid down land and sea 
 
 Still feeds the shrimp and trains the bee. . . . 
 
 Follows the hawk-moth's devious chase, 
 
 The lace-fly's dainty flitting grace. . . . 
 
 Perceives the blue velella frail 
 
 Lift from the brine its glassy sail ; 
 
 Reckons the hydroid's countless bells, 
 
 The coral polyp's myriad cells — 
 
 In one immortal grasp immense 
 
 Gathers all things of life and sense — 
 
 May He not, oh too prudent friend, 
 
 To your and my poor needs attend ? 2 
 
 or than any one of her countless landscapes in ' From the 
 Burren ' ; or than this in ' From a Western Shoreway ' — 
 
 Wild wastes of moorland ; 
 Deep pools of colour ; 
 Grey tarns and tussocks ; 
 Starry blue blossoms ; 
 Sheets of bog-myrtle, 
 Odorous with crushing ; 
 Grey moths uprising, 
 Ghosts of the heather, 
 Others at eventide, 
 Larger, more splendid, 
 Peering mysteriously ; 
 Bats flitting swiftly ; 
 Wild storms at midnight. 3 
 
 1 ' Eighteenth Century Echoes' {The Inalienable Heritage). 
 
 a ' Ignoble Ease ' ( The Point of View). 3 The Inalienable Heritage.
 
 168 NEW AND OLD 
 
 This clear hard grip of fact and of the poetic truth which 
 fact enshrines — this map-like vision of externals as well as 
 of inner meanings — makes Emily Lawless's language pecu- 
 liarly evocative of surroundings, of atmosphere, of weather. 
 Weather, indeed, had an almost dramatic effect upon her, 
 body and soul. 
 
 I wonder [she writes] has your weather been fairly kindly of 
 late ? It seems funny to write about it, yet there is nothing 
 that makes more difference, especially when one is in sorrow 
 and anxiety. A kindly winter sky is one of the most pitiful 
 and tender things in all Nature, and seems for the moment a 
 real ray of comfort. There have been times of late when the 
 
 big grey trunks of and the bracken below must have 
 
 spoken to you of something even larger and more beautiful 
 than themselves. Of course there are others when the gloom 
 outside seems only a part and parcel of that inconvenient gloom 
 which one must try to keep down. 
 
 It was because she felt thus intensely that she could so 
 exactly recall any kind of physical impression. Even a 
 chance phrase in her prose, such as ' October began to 
 sicken towards November,' sets us down in the midst of a 
 region of familiar sensations which can never be produced 
 by vagueness. True poetry, which is the flower of reality, 
 is built upon bed-rock ; it includes matter of fact ; and if 
 it were only for this reason Miss Lawless would stand as a 
 true poet. Perhaps to speak of this fusion of elements in 
 her work is but another way of repeating that she united 
 poetry with science. Together they made her religion. 
 And this brings us to her fundamental thought. 
 
 Emily Lawless set out early in quest of truth : truth at 
 any cost ; truth to be pursued over rocks and thorns, 
 through deep seas and arid deserts, with torn hands and 
 lame feet, in sun and in storm ; truth to be sought first in 
 Nature, out of doors, and indoors through the microscope ; 
 then in the heart of men, past and present ; truth to be
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 10 ( J 
 
 wooed, but never at the price of the least grain of sin- 
 cerity. As she grew older her claims grew smaller, and she 
 prayed to find only one little fragment, but she never gave 
 up the quest. She had endless curiosity, and great power 
 of enterprise. She sought the reconcilement of faith and 
 intellect, of knowledge and belief ; she sought unity with 
 all the zest of a Humanist of the Renaissance. And she 
 did not only seek intellectual unity, but unity with all her 
 kind — beasts and birds and primal savages. ' Woe to us 
 if we are so arrogant as to reject any of our humble rela- 
 tions,' she cries in ' Kinship.' 1 
 
 We must teach ourselves patience and reverence that we may 
 have eyes to see ' the eternal drama wending on its way.' Thus 
 shall we learn the true processes of evolution, without and 
 within. That there is a region where all Nature and Life . . . 
 are one and that it has a natural religion of its own is certain 
 [so she writes], and I cannot hut think that one gains a certain 
 peace by submitting oneself and all those one loves to its laws. 
 It is not an easy doctrine, and sounds perhaps a hard one, but I 
 think there is a distinct submissiveness and a creative Will to 
 be gained for some of us along that path that is not to be found 
 upon any other. It does not interfere with the devotional side, 
 that I can see, but it accepts those broad laws of Nature that 
 we cannot honestly entirely ignore. 
 
 But her thought was kindled by something warmer — by 
 a great and incessant aspiration after belief, and, whether 
 foiled or bewildered, she always returned to it again. There 
 is a poem of hers, hitherto imprinted, which is, as it were, an 
 epitome of this aspiration. It was written by the sea : 
 
 Over sir and — Evening 
 
 June 20, 1904. 
 Thin red bars in the sky, 
 
 And a shore white-barred with foam, 
 
 And a single lark in the gathering dark 
 
 Singing above its home. 
 
 1 The Point of View.
 
 170 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Out through this silent dark, 
 
 Out to yon unseen goal, 
 
 'Twixt those thin red bars, to the far-off stars, 
 
 Fly forth, poor questing soul ! 
 
 Seek for the final Will, 
 
 Seek for the final Good, 
 
 The secret seed of law and creed, 
 
 Mistaught ; misunderstood. 
 
 What saith the Bard ?— Behold, 
 
 In beauty's inmost lair, 
 
 Meshed by her charms, 'neath her milk-white arms, 
 
 Alone man 'scapes despair. 
 
 What saith the sage ? — Explore. 
 
 Track Nature's subtlest vein, 
 
 By care and thought ; through Law long sought, 
 
 Thine answer may'st thou gain. 
 
 What saith the priest ? — Believe. 
 
 All will to sin is bound ; 
 
 No thought or care ; through anguished Prayer 
 
 Alone may grace be found. 
 
 Back, back, poor seeking soul, 
 
 Back from thy bootless quest, 
 
 With wings earth-bound ; with goal unfound, 
 
 Back to thy worn-out nest. 
 
 Thin red bars in the sky, 
 And a shore white-barred with foam, 
 And a single lark in the gathering dark 
 Singing above its home. 
 
 Emily Lawless believed in God, but He was a remote, an 
 intellectual God ; her knowledge of science and of the vast- 
 ness of the universe removed Him far from her and from the 
 crying appeal of man's soul. In that soul, ever seeking, 
 never finding, victorious even in defeat, she also^ — and more 
 fervently — believed. As she grew older and suffered more, 
 as the yoke of the body pressed more bitterly upon her, and 
 with it the necessity to free herself from its dominion, she
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 171 
 
 experienced the want of some closer union with the power 
 outside ourselves : with the Divine. She felt the need of 
 prayer. Not that ill-health had weakened her thinking 
 powers, or made her more emotional ; rather had it widened 
 her range of experience and her vision. She found what she 
 sought in the personality of the Central Figure of Christianity ; 
 by no means from the orthodox point of view, but taking 
 Him as a spiritual ideal. She had for His character an adora- 
 tion which acted as a force in her life, which made Him 
 remain for her a mystery unexplained. This feeling of hers, 
 she says, drew her near to Pascal and to his ' intense affec- 
 tion ' for Christ, ' of which mine, of course, is but a pitiful 
 shadow. Yet a doubt, a doubt through it all, as to whether 
 He was more at the very last than a man, only a man over- 
 topping all other men.' x 
 
 She would have liked to believe more definitely than she 
 did. There is a poem of hers, which, like ' Evening,' has 
 never yet been printed and which would appear almost too 
 intimate for publication, were it not that it is such an en- 
 lightening piece of autobiography that it would seem dis- 
 honest to withhold it ; were it not, also, that it may serve 
 others in like stress, as she herself would have desired, 
 coming as it does from one who had faced most problems — 
 the crushing hugeness of the universe, the impotent insigni- 
 ficance of man. So we subjoin it just as she wrote it — 
 perhaps in one of her nights of pain : 
 
 In the Night 
 
 Who am 1 ? Lord, I know not ; lead me on. 
 
 The night is dark ; no stars are in the skies ; 
 All hint, all outline of the path is gone, 
 
 And fierce and rough the sullen night winds rise. 
 Where only One illumes the night, 
 Do pilgrims question of His right? 
 
 1 Miss Lawless was, of course, only considering Pascal before his con- 
 version and his retirement from the world.
 
 172 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Dost thou believe that I am very God? 
 
 I know not, Lord, I know not ; lead me on. 
 This much I know — that where Thy steps have trod 
 Some Light still shines as it has always shone. 
 Where only One illumes the night, 
 Do pilgrims question of His right ? 
 
 Dost thou believe then that I died for thee? 
 
 I know not, Lord, I know not ; lead me on. 
 This much, no more in all the world I see, 
 Where Thy Light falters every light is gone. 
 Where only One illumes the night, 
 Do pilgrims question of His right? 
 
 Dost thou then love Me, thou that criest so ? 
 I know not, Lord, 1 know not ; lead me on. 
 This much, no more in all the world I know — 
 The darkness grows and I am all alone. 
 Where only One illumes the night, 
 Do pilgrims question of His right? 
 
 And her prose bears out her poetry. There is, in one of 
 her letters, a passage which sums up her whole creed — her 
 faith in Christ and in Love and in their power of inspiration : 
 
 It has grown upon me more and more to feel that though 
 belief, in the doctrinal sense of the word, becomes yearly more 
 impossible, more obviously human in all its innumerable 
 manifestations, on the other hand Love — a clinging to some- 
 thing outside ourselves and not liable to accidents — becomes 
 yearly more possible, and seems to me to be the one supreme 
 truth that will some day emerge clearly above all the fog and 
 the jar and tangle of disputing creeds. I do not know what I 
 should do if I had the sole directing of a young ardent nature 
 in such matters, but I feel that what I should do would be to 
 try and get that capacity for love developed, and then let 
 everything else take its chance. 
 
 At the lowest the Being that she had learnt to love would be 
 the noblest and tenderest in all history, and as for miracles, the 
 miracle of His turning the bitter waters sweet, and pulling 
 wrecked lives straight, and that not by ones and twos, but by
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 173 
 
 millions upon millions, is quite miracle enough for me. Of 
 course the advocatus diaboli will whisper that one is adoring a 
 myth, but one must just Id him whisper, and once the root of 
 love is well grounded 1 do not think such whispers matter. 
 The heart is a far more tenacious organ than the head, and not 
 nearly so much at the mercy of those loud winds of Doubt. 
 
 Emily Lawless increased in the strength that helped her 
 to draw her consolation from far away. To be a rank 
 materialist seemed even more impossible to her than to be 
 a rank dogmatist : 
 
 And yet [she wrote, concerning a woman's character in a 
 novel written by a friend], I ask myself could she, being what 
 she was, have been so wholly without the spiritual impulse ? I 
 feel so drawn to her that I a little resent her being so unable 
 to lift her eyes beyond her own funeral. I do not mean not 
 being what is called ' religious,' but having no sense of even 
 that elemental drawing to the Beyond which comes to all but 
 the absolutely materialised. Did you mean her to have at 
 bottom only the sort of love for her own little graceful self and 
 for those who appreciated her which does make up the ideal 
 side of so many women, and lends a sort of truth to men's 
 assertion that most women are at heart more material than 
 they? 
 
 She was not always able to feel thus ; she had her moods 
 of despair and of negation, generally after bodily distress, 
 and to know her we must look at her in all her moods : 
 
 We have true Good Friday weather [she wrote on Good 
 Friday 1905] — hard, cold, dark, cheerless, as if the world were 
 going back into the Dark Ages and hardly any comfort remained, 
 except that super-mundane one which one has often no courage 
 to cling to and hardly holds with any approach to reality. I 
 ought not to write so, and to you of all people, but I have been 
 waiting for a good hour, and so far it has not yet chosen to 
 come. ... If there was any remedial aim in these degrading 
 miseries all would be well, but mentally I cannot see it any 
 more than in the sufferings of an owl or a rabbit caught in a
 
 174 NEW AND OLD 
 
 trap, though the soul of one cries out instinctively to what lies 
 out in the great Beyond. That there is a mind and even a 
 heart (the same that beat at Galilee) I am convinced ; it is the 
 little personal question that seems so monstrously egotistical and 
 anthropomorphic to mix up with such issues. A gnat loved by 
 the sun would be a feeble simile for such presumption. 
 
 But it was not her usual custom to embody these darker 
 moments in words, and what endures in the memory of 
 those who knew her is her more victorious note — the re- 
 markable triumph of her strong mind over her quivering 
 nerves : 
 
 Judging by myself [she wrote to an invalid friend], I should 
 say that even the very worst ill-health is bearable so long as it 
 does not entail a suffocation and extinction of one's powers of 
 thinking clearly. That to me is the one really intolerable 
 condition of things, and it is one that a complete nerve-break- 
 down brings with it. A partial nerve-collapse can fight against 
 it, and pain seems even sometimes to make the brain clearer in 
 a topsy-turvy sort of fashion. ... If pain and weakness have 
 any use ... it is that they divide true things from untrue 
 and they leave one room to think of the few one loves, and 
 hope (I will not say pray) for them — at any rate to love them 
 still more than before. 
 
 . . . Do not fret for me, as we never have to bear more than 
 we can stand. When that point is really passed (not fancifully) 
 relief comes. . . . The sick souls who fight well make a little 
 private Army Corps of their own, I think ! 
 
 She had won her brevet as Captain in that Corps. Books 
 came to her aid, perhaps increasingly, and one of those 
 which helped her most in the last two years was the Pensees 
 de Pascal : 
 
 I have been re-reading Pascal lately [she said], or rather 
 dipping into him here and there, and am deeply touched and 
 interested by seeing how closely his Greatness was assimilated, 
 on the lower side of course only, to my Littleness, for he too 
 was accable d'un mal de tele perpeluel, and but for the accidental
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 175 
 
 internal colic which mercifully (for him) ended him, would have 
 remained probably to old age, always, always suffering. ... I 
 find myself so close to him on the orthodox or non-orthodox 
 side. . . . His views of the possibilities for the soul in another 
 life are just my own, and therefore, I suppose, of most who 
 think ;it all in these days — that it is a bare chance, one in a 
 hundred, perhaps ; a wager, as he says, or rather a lottery. ' II 
 faut travailler pour I'incertain.' There it is ! And the splendour 
 of that one chance, even for those who, like myself again, long 
 and long for rest, and even for non-consciousness, is so tremen- 
 dous that it is worth all other certainties. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the life of Emily Lawless 
 was all endurance. Even in the last eighteen months, a 
 time of incessant suffering, she had unexpected rallies and 
 delightful hours of distraction. Before that, she enjoyed 
 some leisurely spaces without pain. Nothing gave her more 
 pleasure than the recognition which she received from 
 Ireland when, in 1905, the University of Dublin conferred 
 upon her the honorary degree of Litt.D., and she went in 
 person to accept it. Her life, until 1911, was spent between 
 England and her own land, to which she paid a long yearly 
 visit. While her mother lived, their family plans and 
 Emily's health compelled them to lead a nomadic life, now 
 in hired houses in Windsor or Wimbledon or Surrey, now 
 in hotels abroad, where Miss Lawless was obliged to winter. 
 But after Lady Cloncurry died these conditions came to 
 an end, and Emily at last experienced the joy of a settled 
 home. With her devoted friend, Lady Sarah Spencer, she 
 settled at Hazelhatch, at Gomshall, Surrey, a charming 
 house which they built after their own desires. And here 
 she could indulge in the two pursuits that pleased her most 
 — that of gardening and that of friendship. The garden- 
 ing was no mere pastime. She was not only a born land- 
 scape gardener, but she worked like one. Even when she 
 was ill, she spent hours standing or on her knees, planting,
 
 176 NEW AND OLD 
 
 pruning, weeding, carrying out clearances in shrubberies — 
 on better days inventing little water-works. The labour, 
 however hard, soothed her nerves. Who that knew her 
 cannot see her stooping absorbed, as she handled some 
 delicate plant with her strong, capable, maternal touch ? 
 Her plants were really like her children, each with its 
 separate character and destiny which it was her darling 
 work to study. 
 
 Perhaps she loved the spring-flowers best : ' Scilla and 
 snowdrop, windflower and crocus — Brave little soldier-lads, 
 fearless of the cold.' 1 And though she liked to go to 
 London to see people, she could not bear to miss one of 
 these early blossoms. ' After facing the snow for three 
 mortal weeks, and never seeing the ground all that time, 
 how can I stay away now,' she writes, ' when the scillas are 
 all beginning to peer and there are two buds on your blue 
 primroses ? ' 
 
 And who that knew Emily Lawless cannot also see her 
 as she hurried to welcome an arriving friend : tall, almost 
 angular, in her shady, shapeless gardening hat — a hat which 
 seemed impatient of vanity — and her brown coat and skirt 
 winch fell in thick, rather heavy folds, almost like the carved 
 stone dress of a Crusader's wife on some Cathedral tomb ? 
 There was something stately about her long, firm step, which 
 did not suit with ill-health. Nor did it lead you to expect 
 the Irish warmth of your reception. ' For unto a friend a 
 man . . . tosseth his thoughts,' were the words she chose 
 as the motto for The Point of View ; and tossing her thoughts 
 by the fireside, or in the sunlight, was to her true recreation. 
 It was more, it was food. Her friends were, so to speak, 
 her intellect-escapes ; they removed from her the pressure 
 of thought which often weighed down her solitude. 
 
 Not that she despised a good gossip, or an interest in 
 personal things. They amused her, and she needed to be 
 
 1 ' From the Burren ' ( The Inalienable Herilage).
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 177 
 
 amused — a need which often impelled her to accept invita- 
 tions when bodily case would have kept her at home. Nor 
 was her conversation guiltless of pungent comment and of 
 not infrequent satire. She did not suffer the stupid gladly, 
 and she quickly showed when she was bored. 
 
 Her talk was habitually matter-of-fact and literal ; it 
 hardly ever betrayed the poet. She spoke best either about 
 public affairs or else upon speculative problems. She was not 
 brilliant, but she was sound — with distinction ; sometimes 
 weighty — as in her pronouncement upon the vexed question 
 of Women's Suffrage, and of what she calls the ' wrong and 
 unworthy anti-woman campaign ' : 
 
 When one knows how cruelly hard the lives of women- 
 workers are, and how vast the numbers that are driven to daily 
 work outside their hours (over five millions, larger than the 
 whole population of Ireland, or Scotland, or Australia !), when 
 she knows too how terrible a gulf of temptation yawns for the 
 younger ones if they find the effort to live by their work too 
 hard, it makes me most indignant that anyone should want to 
 perpetuate all the barriers that have come down from a cruel old 
 past. I have no sympathy with Suffragette methods, I need 
 hardly say, and have personally no wish for a vote, but the 
 helplessness of great bodies of women-workers even against 
 admitted wrongs, simply because there is no one whose interest 
 it is to speak for them, is too plain a fact for any fair-minded 
 person, man or woman, to deny. 
 
 Miss Lawless's mind was always open on all sides. Know- 
 ledge attracted her, even when it lay beyond her reach. 
 
 Why do you and I not know Greek ? Is it not outrageous 
 to think of all the young donkeys and all the simpering useless 
 dons who do ? It is the only tongue that it really irks me not 
 to know, though I know none but English and that very super- 
 ficially. I have always realised that one never would really 
 know the force of a few words unless one knew it; those 
 'jewels five words long' upon old Time's forefinger are more 
 
 M
 
 178 NEW AND OLD 
 
 numerous in Greek, I take it, than in any other tongue man 
 ever spoke, though the English have not a few shining ones — 
 cut by a lapidary called Shakespeare amongst others! 
 
 It was not often that in her letters she expressed herself 
 at length upon contemporary literature, but when she did 
 it was with decision : 
 
 If one sets even the very highest book that does smack of 
 reality beside it [she writes of a modern novel by a woman] — 
 say Zola's Germinal — any reader can see the difference in a 
 minute. We may not know, or wish to know, the ways of 
 French miners, and we may decline to accept Zola's special 
 bias in favour of the one never-under-any-circumstances-to-be- 
 omitted-act, but all the same the book is alive — an ugly beast, 
 but a living one ; the other is not, and never was alive, so the 
 fact of its smelling so disagreeably seems the more inexcusable. 
 
 Vitality was her first demand from what she read, and with 
 reason, for to her a book could become a second existence, 
 especially when it was written by a friend. 
 
 It is a book [she wrote to one such] to live beside one and to 
 be opened and read whenever one wants to escape out of one's 
 grey present into an atmosphere of flowing water and quick 
 passing clouds and a glory of light and space. I had all that 
 in an even more intense form in my Burren last summer, but I 
 lay on its rocks like a sick old sheep, or a bunch of dead 
 heather, and never wrote a line ! 
 
 She was a warm admirer of her friends. And what a list 
 of friends she had, English and Irish ; old friends, like Sir 
 Henry and Lady Blake, who travelled with her about the 
 isles of Aran when she was preparing for Grania, and who 
 corresponded with her from all parts of the world ; Lady 
 Blake's sister, the Duchess of St. Albans ; or Lady de Vesci 
 and Mrs. Studd, the true and tried companions of so many 
 years ; or women writers of mark among whom two became 
 her intimates— Mrs. Humphry Ward and Mrs. Fuller-
 
 EMILY LAWLESS 170 
 
 Maitland, the author of Bethia Hardacre's Daybook, Miss 
 Lawless's favourite bedside volume ; or country neighbours, 
 like Mrs. Litchfield, and Miss Byers, and Miss Flora Russell, 
 who lent her their constant companionship ; or her mother's 
 friends, such as Lady Ritchie, the daughter of her admired 
 Thackeray ; or younger people, like her niece, Mrs. Goschen, 
 and Miss Venetia Cooper, who gave her an untiring devo- 
 tion ! Their sheltering care was hers to the end, and it 
 helped her. Nature also, whom she had so loved, did not 
 lose the power to console. Her prayer was granted : 
 
 Oil mighty artist ! 
 Life's benefactor, 
 Earliest and dearest, 
 When shall thy joys fail? 
 Cease to enchant me ? 
 Cease to soothe sorrow ? 
 
 • • • 
 
 Only in Death. 1 
 
 Emily Lawless was that rare being, a religious Stoic. 
 Still rarer is it that the Stoic is an artist, yet all these con- 
 trasts she combined. She was not unlike those plants she 
 loved so well. Her bloom was born of rocks, and nourished 
 by struggle and tempest. Her roots were deep and strong, 
 and she could only live within earshot of the infinite sea. 
 Her spirit loved solitude. It also loved sunlight. And if 
 its colour and its scent did not strike the ordinary passer-by, 
 they were there for those who chose to stoop close to her. 
 The fragrance was crushed out of her, but it endured. 
 
 1 ' From a Western Shoreway ' ( The Inalienable Heritage). 
 1914.
 
 'LOIZA 1 
 
 'Loiza is ' in business,' so she tells you, ' in the jam-line.' 
 She used to be ' in bottle- washing,' but the pay was too 
 poor and she thought she would better herself. Now she 
 gets ten shillings a week by making jam for eight hours a 
 day, besides her earnings for overtime. A lady who be- 
 friends her asked her why she would not go into service, 
 where she would be so much better off. ' I wants my 
 eveninks,' says 'Loiza ; ' besides, servants is no better than 
 slaves ; slaves is what / call 'em. Look at my friend Sarah 
 Bull, the one wot 's in the 'Orspital ; she was a " general," 
 till she went there. They was caretakers of orfices, was 
 her master and missus — very land people too. But they 
 was ten in family, washin' done at 'ome, and large rooms ; 
 she 'ad to do the cookin' beside mindin' the children, and 
 only ten pounds a year, and one day a month. She was 
 never in bed till twelve at night, and no fun. Why, it ain't 
 worth it, it ain't.' 
 
 'Loiza is the fourth of eight children. She was christened 
 Eliza Leonora, as her mother was reading a penny novelette 
 the day before her birth. Their last girl had been called 
 Briseis, after a ship in the Docks which her father was un- 
 loading at the time of her baptism. 'Loiza is very fond of 
 fun — her sort of fun. She went last January to the person 
 she calls her ' loidy-f riend ' to ask for a letter for the London 
 Hospital ; for 'Loiza is not strong, in spite of her fresh 
 colour and bright black eyes, half bold, half kind, that look 
 out from under a heavy fringe. She has had, she says, one 
 
 1 [This article and the three that follow it were contributed to The Pi/o/.] 
 180
 
 XOIZA 181 
 
 of her old heart-attacks. How did she get it ? ' Well, it 
 all cum along of dancin' too much on Roxin' Night. Tt was 
 chap wot treated her.' On Sunday nights slu- walks 
 out with this mysterious person — indifferently called hi c 
 ' chap ' or her ' bloke ' — a small wiry man, much shorter 
 than 'Loiza, who wears a large check suit and a billycock 
 hat on one side of his head. But she is proud to take his 
 arm when they walk in the Mile End Road, the Mall of the 
 East, and she wears her long gold plush ' paletot,' and a 
 black velvet hat with green plumes which she hires for the 
 evening from the shop in Cable Street, St. George's. Her 
 paletot is held in at the back by a tasteful beetle in black 
 jet, and the collar is pinned by a gilt heart and anchor, the 
 gift of her adorer, to match the symbols he has tattooed in 
 blue ink on her arm. 
 
 There are three stages in each of 'Loiza's courtships (and 
 this is her seventh) — walking out, arming (when the lady 
 takes the arm of the gentleman), and keeping company 
 (when the gentleman takes the arm of the lady). 'Loiza 
 was in the second stage. She herself ' had kep' pretty 
 straight ' with her lovers, more from rough instinct than 
 from principle, for 'Loiza thinks little of moral backsliding 
 in her pals. She is a great deal stricter about other things ; 
 would never dream of touching a penny that was not her 
 own ; and would give her last crust to her little brothers 
 and sisters, or renounce a new gew-gaw to buy the baby a 
 pelisse. She lays great stress also on church attendance, 
 which for her embodies a social etiquette necessary to her 
 sense of propriety. Most of her cronies, whatever their 
 conduct, resemble her in this. Emma Finn, for instance, 
 of 209 Fashion Alley, Spitalfields, whose career is by no 
 means what it should be, looks deeply hurt when the ' lady- 
 friend ' asks her if she goes to church. ' / 'm not Church, 
 I 'm Chapel, if you please,' she replies with injured dignity ; 
 and 'Loiza, standing by, seems as outraged as her com-
 
 182 NEW AND OLD 
 
 panion. 'Loiza herself is not Chapel — she is Church. Two 
 years ago she was confirmed : ' And I wore,' she exclaimed, 
 ' a lovely crown of fish-bones wot my sailor-brother brought 
 back from the Brazils.' The laying on of hands must have 
 been, on this occasion, a lacerating discipline for the bishop. 
 'Loiza's serried family life (ten people in two rooms) schools 
 her in the domestic amenities — very like those of other 
 families translated to a lower scale. ' He swears at me, 
 miss, as if 'e was my brother,' she once said of a young man 
 acquaintance, and the phrase epitomises the tender privi- 
 leges of kinship. On the whole she is good-tempered, if 
 you give her sufficient latitude ; but once put her out and 
 she may do anything. Her pleasures are simple enough — 
 a penny ball at Wapping with her ' chap,' an extra meal of 
 periwinkles or sausages (she calls them ' puzzles '), or a 
 cheap excursion to Clacton-on-Sea. ' Hopping,' which 
 accounts for the long disappearance every summer of so 
 many of her circle, is not approved of by 'Loiza, because 
 it keeps her too long from the shops. She describes the 
 country as ' a deadly-come-lively place ' if she has to spend 
 more than a day there. 
 
 'Loiza is a Robin Hood in her way, though she knows 
 no forest save that of Epping on Bank Holidays. Yes, 
 'Loiza is an outlaw ; she is not, by any means, without a 
 code of morals, but the code she has includes very few 
 virtues and excludes very few vices. Kindness is there, 
 and honesty, together with generosity, but truth and 
 social morality are not yet entered on her register. There 
 is no strongly marked line between her and the savage ; 
 but she is an honest savage, frankly insisting on her own 
 enjoyment — a savage with possibilities. Heroism and 
 devotion are not unknown to the aborigines. (1900.)
 
 'SAMUEL 1 : CHRISTMAS EVE 183 
 
 'SAMUEL': CHRISTMAS EVE 
 
 ' Samuel ' was very small and very white ; he held a 
 penny in his mouth, and his coat was tattered. Though 
 he was probably about eight, he seemed to have no age 
 at all. He was, I think, the oldest being I have ever seen. 
 This was not so much because of his wizened little face, 
 but because of the astonishing dignity of his person. He 
 appeared to possess no surname ; at least the ' young 
 lady ' of the toy-shop told me that he had come there ' for 
 years,' and that she and her colleagues had never heard 
 of one. This namelessness, this agelessness, this inherent 
 dignity, invested him with mystery. The power, the 
 majesty, of remoteness was his. He dwelt aloof from 
 others ; he was after the Order of Melchisedec. 
 
 The ' young lady ' informed me that, whenever he had a 
 copper to spend, he gave the toy-shop his custom. No 
 one knew whence he got his pennies. But while the possi- 
 bilities of choice were his, Samuel, for the hour, became a 
 king. Hence the grandeur of his bearing. Time, space, 
 every limitation of mortality was annihilated. ' The world 
 was all before him where to choose.' 
 
 Balzac furnished his empty attic by writing the names 
 of beautiful objects on placards, and hanging them on his 
 walls. They were his possessions. Quite as surely did 
 Samuel make his own the guinea steam-engines, the bears 
 that danced by clockwork, the opulent stables and coach- 
 man at twelve and six. In his mouth was a penny, the 
 symbol of the power to purchase : the shop was his. But 
 when he first entered I had seen his eye dart, bird-like, to 
 the penny stall, and to the exact corner of it where lay the 
 bladder air-balls (with magenta wooden sticks) that blow 
 out with a squeak when you hold them between your lips.
 
 184 NEW AND OLD 
 
 There was his final choice, made long ago in the streets ; 
 there was his predestined fate — the end which now seemed 
 as far off as death. First there came all the fun — all the 
 regal fun — of free-will. 
 
 He took an hour over it, moving with deliberation, and 
 he looked at every toy on the premises. Each nook, each 
 glass cupboard in the place, was known to him, and no one 
 thought of disturbing him. The thing which he con- 
 templated longest was a large Noah's ark, full of excellent 
 beasts and birds — not the common grey wood ones, but 
 decent, highly varnished creatures with outlines. Samuel 
 stood with his tiny red hands in his apertures — I cannot 
 call them pockets — and he dared the Hon with the solemnity 
 and courage of a Nimrod. ' Well, Samuel,' at last said 
 the active ' young lady ' who was serving, ' and what do 
 you want to-day ? ' But she got no answer ; the poor 
 moment for actuality had not yet come ; he taught her a 
 lesson in the fitness of things. 
 
 When the hour was up, he advanced philosophically to 
 the penny stall. There was no sense of a reverse in his 
 deportment, no come-down-in-the-world air about him. 
 Cinderella, who became a kitchen-maid again when the 
 clock struck twelve, was a parvenue beside Samuel. He 
 bore himself like a business man who has allowed himself 
 sixty minutes for recreation and must now return to his 
 accustomed routine. With brisk decision he drew the 
 penny from his mouth, put it down on the stall, and, after 
 comparing imperceptible differences of size in three magenta 
 wooden sticks, he chose what seemed to him the longest. 
 Then he put the air-ball to his lips, slowly blew it out, 
 ascertained that it gave the proper squeak for his money, 
 and departed. All this he had done with a critical sobriety 
 and without any joie de vivre. Joy was over : this was 
 business. 
 
 Samuel had early made the great, the all-important dis-
 
 AN AMATEUR PHILANTHROPIST 185 
 
 > 
 
 covcry that Fact and Truth arc not the same thing. Half 
 the mistakes in life eome from confounding the two. Fact 
 ought to be the child of Truth ; often it is a stepchild or a 
 changeling, unlike Truth, even hostile to her. If we worship 
 Fact, the Truth is not in us and we shall not enjoy ourselves 
 very much. What we call illusion is often Truth ; the 
 poets and Samuel know that this is so. And, in so far, 
 Samuel is a genius. 
 
 When I, too, departed with my parcels, I had got much 
 more than three dozen toys for a Christmas tree. I had 
 had a lesson in the art of living. (1901.) 
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF AN AMATEUR 
 PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 A philosopher of my acquaintance once said that all the 
 confusions of life arose from our taking our own normal to 
 be that of other people. When we come to think of it, this 
 cause is at the bottom of most of our great divisions ; the 
 division between youth and age, the poetic and the matter- 
 of-fact, the rich and the poor. Perhaps it is in our relations 
 with the poor — in our philanthropic experiments — that the 
 mistake has the worst or, at any rate, the most delusive 
 effects. We talk to them as if their moral language were 
 the same as our own, judge them by our standards on 
 a reduced scale, and consequently credit them with the 
 wrong virtues beside the wrong vices. The mischief of 
 this is apparent especially in schools and training- 
 homes. 
 
 Generalising is always dull as well as dangerous, and the 
 only chance of getting at facts is for every man to come 
 down to his personal experience. If we cannot serve as 
 guides, we can at least be useful as preventives. Some
 
 186 NEW AND OLD 
 
 years ago I resolved to start a small country training-home 
 for servant-girls — Whitechapel ' generals ' — especially such 
 as were anaemic ; not an institution, but a cottage home, 
 where their individual needs might be provided for. A 
 long period of East End work had convinced me that 
 anaemia was the besetting fiend of East End girlhood, 
 weakening vitality and undermining moral responsibility ; 
 that if its victims could be tided over its attacks in pure 
 air, bodily and mental, they would have a better chance 
 of becoming decent and practical human beings. As I 
 had come to the conclusion that short changes did more 
 harm than good, I arranged my Surrey Home to take in 
 its inmates for at least six months, and generally for a 
 year, after which time they were, if possible, to be placed 
 in country situations. During their stay in the Home they 
 were to have proper medical treatment, and the stimulus 
 of light but regular occupation, as necessary as the right 
 amount of rest. With this in view, I was advised to start 
 a laundry. Benevolent neighbours promised their custom ; 
 a shed was converted — at considerable expense — into a 
 wash-house ; the season was spring-time ; the ' copper,' the 
 tubs, the hopeful blue starch, looked full of promise ; and 
 the little maids — so I said to myself — seemed all that was 
 now wanting. 
 
 They came. I had resolved never to have more than six 
 at a time ; and I may here parenthetically mention that 
 each girl cost 4s. a week for board and for all household 
 expenses, except rent and matron's wages ; and that a 
 cottage for seven people came to £10 a year, and the doctors' 
 bills added £5 to the annual expenses. They came — I 
 repeat — sufficiently anaemic. So far so good ; but in pro- 
 viding hygienically for their dormant energies I had not 
 reckoned on the sort of energies they would actually possess ; 
 I had merely looked upon them as beings that must be 
 gently roused, and, if possible, exhilarated ; and it was im-
 
 AN AMATEUR PHILANTHROPIST 187 
 
 possible to foresee that when, after endless difficulties, tin y 
 had washed the first batch of linen, the strange powers of 
 anaemia would inspire them to smear the clothes with 
 blacking. This, rather frequently rep< ated, soon made my 
 scheme impracticable. The matron complained that she 
 could not be in six places at a time ; each girl seemed in- 
 capable of ever remembering what she had learned the day 
 before ; kind-hearted ladies were waiting for their table- 
 cloths, and, as six matrons were as impossible as the ubiquity 
 of one, the laundry had to come to an end. Never mind, 
 we said, and we thought of all the axioms suitable to the 
 occasion ; the wrongness of seeking for results ; the analogy 
 of the slow seed in the bosom of the earth ; the need of 
 patience, and what not. I was comforted, and came to 
 the conclusion that cooking and housework would perhaps 
 afford better training than the wash-house. 
 
 These occupations had the extra advantage of allowing 
 more time for a favourite project of mine — the awakening 
 of the Whitechapel mind to country interests ; to the 
 sights and sounds of the woods and meadows in which the 
 girls now went for long daily walks. I discovered also that 
 they had a taste for learning poetry by heart, and good 
 retentive powers — like all people, including children, whose 
 minds contain few impressions. It seemed a good plan 
 to associate what they learned with their new experiences, 
 and I tried to choose simple verses descriptive of Nature, 
 beginning with a little poem of Longfellow's on April. I 
 explained each stanza carefully as I went along, and felt 
 pleased with the comparatively bright expression of their 
 faces. ' The forest-glade is teeming with bright forms ' : 
 so ran one line. ' Now, tell me what are the bright forms 
 you see every day in the woods ? ' I asked, in my most 
 encouraging voice, my heart high with hope, for they had 
 now been three months in the country. Amelia Gibbs put 
 up her hand. ' Worms, if you please, miss,' she replied,
 
 188 NEW AND OLD 
 
 with alacrity. Perhaps it needed this answer to show me 
 that, without special training, Amelia and her fellows in- 
 variably walk with their eyes on the ground, unconscious 
 of the sky and trees, so that, unless there are shops, a walk 
 in Surrey is all one with a walk in St. George's-in-the-East. 
 ' The feathered warblers pipe their tuneful note,' I con- 
 tinued; 'well,' (rather less hopefully), 'what does "feathered 
 warblers " mean ? ' ' Squirrels, miss,' replied Annie de 
 Courcy (whose Norman blood was only proved by her 
 name) ; and though her response was far from the truth, 
 it showed, at all events, that she had once noticed a squirrel. 
 
 However, I saw that it was necessary to begin on a new 
 tack ; that I had been taking my normal for their normal, 
 allowing a margin for their inferior education. I had to 
 conclude that I was dealing with people of deficient imagina- 
 tion ; people who did not wish to be different, and saw no 
 reason why they should be so ; who were wholly lacking 
 in curiosity for anything outside their restricted experi- 
 ence, and understood no words but their own primitive 
 terms. How could they take any interest in a Nature with 
 which they had not the remotest connection ? The only 
 way out of the difficulty seemed to lie in giving them some 
 concrete share in it. With the help of a simple flower- 
 book, I taught them a little botany and offered a prize for 
 the best collection of wild flowers ; a most successful experi- 
 ment ; Annie de Courcy won, and we put poetry on the 
 shelf. 
 
 The confusion of ' normals ' has a more serious effect 
 when we come to spiritual training. It is usually con- 
 sidered sufficient to speak very simply on religious matters 
 to girls of the class in question. The outcome of this in the 
 pupils' heads is a hotch-potch of shibboleths, whose mean- 
 ing they never think of asking. Again I can but refer to 
 personal experience and report verbatim a lesson on the 
 subject of goodness.
 
 AN AMATEUR PHILANTHROPIST 189 
 
 Myself: ' What do you mean by " goodness " ? ' 
 
 Amelia : ' The grace of God, miss.' 
 
 Myself: ' What do you mean by the grace of God ? ' 
 
 Amelia : ' Saying your prayers, miss.' 
 
 Myself : ' Well, what do you pray for ? ' 
 
 Amelia : ' To forgive others their sins, miss.' 
 
 Myself: ' You may not have any sins to forgive. What 
 do you pray for yourself ? ' 
 
 Amelia : ' The grace of God, miss.' 
 
 After which my da capo question was followed by a da 
 capo answer, and so on da capo to ' the grace of God ' once 
 more — a cycle of phrases totally disconnected from exist- 
 ence. I felt some satisfaction when, a month later, I had 
 made them dimly understand that kindness and goodness 
 have something to do with one another. After this, 
 I resolved in spiritual matters to try my botanical plan of 
 making knowledge tangible, teaching them only one thing 
 at a time, and repeating it incessantly till it became, as it 
 were, a mechanical part of their systems. I began by 
 taking the Beatitudes, working about a month at each of 
 them. The result was visible, if somewhat confused. I 
 had been trying to bring home their own share in the bless- 
 ing on the pure in heart, to make them realise that they 
 could gain it by avoiding Whitechapel temptations and 
 Whitechapel behaviour, and I had endeavoured to explain 
 that horseplay and kindness were not in any way identical. 
 They were supposed to write out all that they remembered 
 of my lesson, and I cannot do better than subjoin one of 
 their papers, that of the Norman Annie de Courcy. At 
 the top of her page she had written, ' Blessed are the poor 
 in heart,' and here is the essay which followed : — 
 
 ' This means that we are to turn our eyes away from ugly 
 sights in the streets such as murders and we are to behave 
 very kind to our young men. This is all there is to say.' 
 
 Perhaps nothing can show more clearly the foggy chaos
 
 190 NEW AND OLD 
 
 through which any nascent idea has to grope its way through 
 their minds towards birth. Nelson could not have felt 
 more triumphant than I did when, after many days, Amelia 
 Smith, who was going to be a cook, assured me that ' thirst- 
 ing for righteousness ' meant taking no commission from 
 the tradesmen. 
 
 When all, or a good deal, has been said, we come to the 
 practical upshot. For no one has a right to talk of these 
 matters unless he has some solution, however sorry, to 
 offer. My own conclusion about work of this sort among 
 girls may discourage the optimist, though perhaps it will 
 cheer the pessimist. Results are certainly to be had, but 
 results disproportionate to the labour. Of the forty girls 
 who stayed in my Home, about one in every ten fulfilled 
 the purpose she was there for and settled satisfactorily in 
 a country situation ; two or three more were partially suc- 
 cessful and seemed to be improved creatures when they 
 drifted back to London. ' The rest is silence.' Of course 
 there were other and unseen consequences. An eminent 
 worker once told me that it was enough for us in life could 
 we make one human being happier, and, if this be so, a 
 Home might easily fulfil this ideal. Much more than this 
 — anything, indeed — may be effected if a saint or a genius 
 arises for the task ; one endowed with the spiritual magnet- 
 ism which affects all whom it meets ; or even one who is 
 specially gifted and feels a vocation for the enterprise. 
 Given these faculties, its success might be limitless ; but 
 the saints of to-day are as rare as the saints of old, and their 
 work is bound to die with them. The average person has 
 nothing but average powers with which to fight immense 
 difficulties. He has to be constantly patching — and patch- 
 ing on an unknown stuff. That is the real crux. A girl 
 comes to you, say, at fifteen, after a good deal of experi- 
 ence about which you have no notion ; your patches may 
 not match in colour, the cloth may be too weak to hold
 
 CONVERSATION IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 191 
 
 them, but you have to go on, like one sewing in the dark. 
 Perhaps too (and this may be the reason why so many 
 homely experiments turn into big institutions) spacious and 
 numerous rooms are almost as needful as saintliness in 
 dr.iling with beings of peculiar tempers and uncivilised 
 habits. But when all is faced, there is still a harvest for 
 the reaper ; enough to send him cheerfully on his way, so 
 long as he has courage to know that his reaping cannot tally 
 with his sowing. 
 
 To my humble thinking, it seems better and more prac- 
 tical to turn our attention towards the new material which 
 needs no patching; to take little children, as soon after 
 birth as possible, at any rate before they can talk, and 
 remove them to the country. You are, it is true, con- 
 fronted by the baffling complications and mystery of 
 heredity ; but you know what you are doing for the moment, 
 and you are, at least, giving them their best chance. It 
 may be self-indulgent to devote ourselves to the most 
 hopeful ventures, and yet it is no less true that we do best 
 what we do happily. (1900.) 
 
 THE ART OF CONVERSATION IN 
 ENGLAND AND FRANCE 
 
 The art of conversation is a theme that is never stale. So 
 long as human beings possess the power of speech it must 
 always remain a popular subject. The word ' conversa- 
 tion ' has a score of different meanings to different minds. 
 To some it signifies talking to anybody about anything ; 
 to others, only a patient listener ; to others, again, the 
 outpouring of their feelings or opinions. To the few — the 
 happy unhappy few — good conversation is as necessary 
 as any other luxury without which we do not really live
 
 192 NEW AND OLD 
 
 happily. There are certain countries as well as persons in 
 which this need is especially strong — countries, as well as 
 persons, apparently created to talk. If, as a modern writer 
 has assured us, England is remarkable for the gift of char- 
 acter, and Germany for that of music and of metaphysics, 
 it may be said that France alone can boast a genius for the 
 arts of intercourse. We have of late days learned only too 
 well, at Rennes and elsewhere, that the talent for talk is 
 no less a bane than a blessing to the French people. But 
 the qualities which mar a nation politically may make it 
 socially ; and the faculty for eloquent expression on any 
 subject — for glowing interest, quick perception, and easy 
 digression — can be traced in French revolutions and French 
 law-courts as easily as in the salons of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. 
 
 The fact is that, with a Frenchman, talk — the need for 
 immediate expression of his ideas — is a natural and almost 
 irresistible appetite, and if he cannot satisfy it his mind is 
 ill at ease. He speaks admirably — by grace and not by 
 works— and whether you address a savant or the waiter 
 at your inn, their answers are equally well expressed, and 
 the difference lies only in their topics. The British mind 
 is made otherwise. It moves slowly, with a stately caution 
 — a slowness which, in itself, sufficiently explains the con- 
 trast between our notions of society and those of France. 
 The Englishman is far from seeking, or finding, relief in 
 utterance ; he generally feels conversation to be more or 
 less of an effort. He reserves it for dinner-time, when, if he 
 is at his best, he is rather communicative, and, if at his 
 worst, he knows that talking is wholesome for a man whilst 
 he dines. 
 
 Another quality which distinguishes French society 
 (though in public life it disappears deplorably) is that of 
 gravity. The English are solemn, but the French are more 
 serious than they — more serious and also more amused.
 
 CONVERSATION IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 198 
 
 The power of being amused, never natural to the English, 
 is to the French a part of their normal life, not only an 
 occasional distraction. If you watch a party of ordinary 
 Frenchmen at dinner in any provincial town (Paris is a 
 country apart) you will find that they seldom laugh, yet 
 are always cheerful ; that they talk much with a grave 
 animation, and are too much entertained by what passes 
 around them, or too much absorbed by the subject of their 
 discourse, to feel any need of making points. 
 
 A party of Englishmen, on the other hand, will laugh 
 oftcner, scoring more good stories and making more jokes, 
 as if they needed this to rouse them from a kind of consti- 
 tutional lethargy. They seem to be constantly trembling 
 over an abyss of silence, and try to save themselves by some 
 sort of brilliance or effectiveness ; and this, generally 
 speaking, represents their idea of good conversation. The 
 truth is that an Englishman is permanently afraid of being 
 dull, or of seeming absurd, and consequently is bound to 
 become elaborate ; whilst a Frenchman has no such fears, 
 but lets himself go with the instinctive confidence of the 
 artist, and so is essentially simple. 
 
 Simplicity is a quality which English people too easily 
 confound with commonplaceness, instead of recognising that 
 the one is opposed to the other, and that true simplicity 
 acts as a preventive against the vice of talking for talking's 
 sake. ' Good conversation,' says a charming letter-writer 
 of recent days, ' is the talking of ordinary matters in an 
 extraordinary way ' ; but by ' ordinary ' she does not mean 
 trivial, nor does she mean brilliant by ' extraordinary.' 
 Nobody better understands the manner of saying things 
 than the French people. Their middle-class is proverbial 
 for its feats of housekeeping, for its savoury use of scraps 
 and bones ; and much the same gift shows itself in their 
 conversation. They are always able to make something 
 out of nothing, and to pass gracefully from one subject to 
 
 N
 
 194 NEW AND OLD 
 
 another, with no expense to themselves or any one else. 
 Their reputation has been mainly founded on their wit, and 
 it seems superfluous to say that they can be brilliant when- 
 ever they wish to. Their brilliance, indeed, has been almost 
 too much dwelt on, to the exclusion of their better and, 
 we maintain, more characteristic qualities : naturally 
 enough, as what strikes the most is the most easily under- 
 stood. They are far from underrating brilliance, but 
 they give it its right place — a secondary one — and use it 
 for ornament. 
 
 The general idea of the old French salons is one of in- 
 cessant intellectual coruscation, but this is far from the 
 truth. There certainly were occasions, and even short 
 periods, when wit was demanded before all things, wit for 
 wit's sake, a studied play of mind. The Hotel Ram- 
 bouillet, early in the seventeenth century, indulged in these 
 fencing matches of brains. So, a few years later, did 
 Madame de Lambert's salon, which was called the Bureau 
 of Wit ; or sentimental little Madame d'^pinay's, a hundred 
 years afterwards. But the majority were ' bureaus ' for 
 ideas rather than bons mots ; shabby rooms, very often, 
 where men and women, inspired by intellectual ardour, 
 really made for the truth. They did so nimbly and lightly, 
 almost gaily, bridging over precipices with intuitions, flash- 
 ing forth an epigram here and there, where it could give 
 light, but always cognizant of the depths below them, and 
 caring for their subjects a great deal more than for them- 
 selves. We are all familiar with Madame du Deffand's 
 little room and its faded red curtains, first chosen to suit 
 her complexion, then serving as a background to all the 
 great men of her day — poets, playwrights, philosophers, 
 the whole encyclopaedic world, Fontenelle, Marmontel, 
 and the rest. Or round the corner, at the house of 
 Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, Condorcet is stirring his 
 audience by his views on the progress of Man and the
 
 CONVERSATION IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 196 
 
 perfectibility of Science. Then there is Madame Neekcr's 
 salon a little farther off, where the metaphysics of thought 
 and feeling are freely discussed, and where we again m 
 the Encyclopaedists, and a few nen besides. 
 
 The reasons why the salon has never flourished in England 
 have often been discussed and never determined. We have 
 already glanced at the chief ones, which are patent enough. 
 French people are expansive and seek each other's compa i 
 they have, as we said, endless energy for talking, and it 
 acts as a safety-valve for their mercurial temperaments; 
 the English are hospitable but not sociable, and, apart 
 from their inclination for silence, they think expansiveness 
 gushing. Perhaps this is partly because the French are by 
 nature more purely intellectual, more taken up with ideas. 
 The true Briton does not care so much for ideas as for the 
 working of them ; he is born practical, and, though that 
 is an attribute which tells in good government, it is any- 
 thing but a needful element in society. When we have 
 had salons they have usually existed for some definite 
 purpose : either political, like that at Holland House which 
 was mainly a Whig coterie, or religious, like Lady Hunting- 
 don's. As a rule we cannot manage a conversational circle, 
 and even Dr. Burney, who came near it, had as much music 
 as talk. Miss Berry is almost the only instance of a real 
 salon hostess in the French sense of the word ; but she 
 had been formed by French influences, her traditions were 
 moulded by them, and her favourite guest, Horace Walpole, 
 had also been the favourite guest of Madame du Deffand. 
 
 Perhaps the fittest equivalent to the French salon is 
 the English country-house. Strawberry-hill in both the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Lord Lansdowne's 
 Bowood, and, in more modern days, Lord Houghton's 
 Fryston and Lady Ashburton's Grange, are all instances of 
 the best sort of English Society. In the life of the country- 
 house, sport, outdoor exercise, games of all sorts fill up the
 
 196 NEW AND OLD 
 
 spaces of the day, and intercourse is reserved for meal- 
 times and the evening. Englishmen enjoy doing some- 
 thing together in silence ; and where two Frenchmen would 
 be eagerly conferring on some interesting topic, our country- 
 men would be found side by side, with fishing-rods, guns, 
 golf -sticks, or even books in their hands, wrapped in a 
 sympathetic taciturnity. 
 
 We have had talkers as good as any nation, most of them 
 distinguished by that generous English humour which is 
 our own especial note. There are Lamb and Sydney Smith ; 
 for eloquence, Coleridge ; for superficial brilliance, Horace 
 Walpole ; as well as the wits of Queen Anne, with quaint 
 old Selden before them, and a score of others besides. But 
 they have all been isolated instances, leaving no tradition 
 behind them. Even the Lake poets, who formed them- 
 selves into a circle, were a circle of exceptions — a ring of 
 stars consorting together and ruled by their private laws. 
 In France, Society has been much more like medieval 
 architecture ; the names of the masons who reared the 
 fabric are often unknown : here and there a great master 
 stands forth in person, but it is as the symbol of the com- 
 pany behind him who go on from generation to generation. 
 Every Frenchman and Frenchwoman could, and still can, 
 uphold the tradition of good talk ; the names of the best 
 amongst them remain, but only as representatives of a 
 national gift, shared, in lesser degree, by many obscure 
 contemporaries. 
 
 It may be that we are too moral — we should say too 
 moralising — a nation to graduate in the arts of Society ; 
 an institution for which gracious aesthetic qualities are 
 all-important. Our virtues are those that make for govern- 
 ment and constitutional dignity ; for intimacy also, and 
 for a concentrated family-life, in which silence is an in- 
 valuable element, and the routine of the day furnishes easy 
 subjects of conversation. And yet if there were such
 
 JOSEPH JOACHIM: A REMEMBRANCE 197 
 
 a person as a fairy godmother left in the world, and she would 
 give us three wishes, the first would be that France and Eng- 
 land might for a time exchange their talents, or at any rate 
 some part of them. Magic, however, would probably cause 
 many unforeseen complications — and this maybe the political 
 reason why fairy godmothers were abolished. (1900.) 
 
 JOSEPH JOACHIM: A REMEMBRANCE 1 
 
 ' Coleridge is dead ! ' Charles Lamb would suddenly 
 exclaim in the midst of other conversation, during the weeks 
 that followed the poet's death. And those who have loved 
 Joseph Joachim feel the need of repeating such words to 
 make them realise that he has gone. When men have 
 lived the life of art or goodness belonging more or less to 
 the eternal order of things, it is more difficult to grasp their 
 mortality. For those who care for beauty, for the best in 
 music and in life, a link has snapped never to be replaced. 
 Music is not dead, cannot die ; but the interpreter-genius 
 who revealed it in its purest depths has passed away. 
 
 Those who, but a few years ago, heard him still at lus 
 strongest (at his best he always was) know the utmost 
 limit of human achievement in art. ' Whether in the body, 
 or out of the body, I cannot tell,' was the feeling with which 
 one always came away from hearing him. What was it 
 that made his playing what it was ? Was it his tone, his 
 phrasing, the might and grace of his rhythm ? Was it 
 the wonderful union of passion and restraint ? It was all 
 these, it was something more than these. He had not 
 drunk at the spring of inspiration, he was that spring him- 
 self. It was this fount within him which compelled him, 
 in spite of his vital personality, to become the music that 
 he played ; to be, in turn, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, 
 
 1 [From The Nation, August 24, 1907.]
 
 198 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Schubert, Schumann, Brahms. Perhaps it is the heritage 
 of his race to be the selfless testifier that he was. ' If people 
 would only trust the music,' he once said ; ' they too often 
 put themselves into it.' Once when Brahms heard Joachim 
 play again after an interval, ' I felt,' he wrote, ' that there 
 had been something lacking in life. Oh, how he plays ! ' 
 
 This particular effect of his music was due not only to 
 the musician ; it came from the man. If he stands for art 
 he also stands for goodness : for duty, for loyalty, for 
 obedience. Not for virtue, which affects a man's relation 
 to himself, but for the kinder, sweeter power which means 
 his bond with others ; the ' human charity ' which Beethoven 
 said was ' the only superiority that counted.' Sometimes 
 one was even tempted to wish that Joachim's charity did 
 not suffer so long and be kind. The most social of men, he 
 could not reject anybody. 
 
 Of course, like all interesting people, he liked interesting 
 people best, and men who had made their mark in the world 
 inspired him with respect and curiosity. He was courtly 
 without being a courtier. His feeling for the Emperor, 
 for Royalty, was a sentiment — the sentiment that Goethe 
 had at Weimar. Bismarck was one of the persons for 
 intercourse with whom he had cared most, and for the 
 last sixty years he had known most people worth knowing 
 both in Germany and England. In the fifties he had played 
 to Goethe's Bettina, and in his drawing-room at Berlin 
 there hung a water-colour sketch of him and a quartet of 
 that day, high-collared in swallow-tailed coats, playing to a 
 little old lady, Bettina von Arnim. 
 
 But the great friendships of his life were those for Mendels- 
 sohn, the Schumanns and Brahms. His relations with 
 Schumann began when he was very young. He had been 
 playing Beethoven's Concerto, and he and Schumann came 
 out together from the hot, crowded concert-room into the 
 star-lit open. ' Little Master Joachim,' said Schumann,
 
 JOSEPH JOACHIM: A REMEMBRANCE 199 
 
 looking skywards, ' do you think that star knows that you 
 have just played the Beethoven Concerto and that I am 
 sitting by you here ? ' As he spoke he laid his hand tenderly 
 upon the boy's knee. The incident was always alive to 
 Joachim as if it had been yesterday. Fifty years after- 
 wards he loved to tell the story, in his vivid way, acting the 
 gesture, recalling the tones which the years had not dulled 
 for him. Joachim's friendship for Brahms was one of 
 those rare comings-together which influence the history 
 of art, like the friendship of Goethe and Schiller, of Cole- 
 ridge and Wordsworth. In some ways the meeting of 
 these two meant more than the conjunction of creators, 
 for without Joachim it is difficult to conceive how Brahms 
 would have been adequately revealed to the world. Joachim 
 immediately recognised in him a sovereign of the legitimate 
 dynasty. He himself had no mean place in the company 
 of great composers, but, humbly putting his creative work 
 aside, he devoted himself to the reverent interpretation 
 of the greater masters, more especially of this last one, 
 whom the world as yet did not understand. It was England 
 that he found most responsive, and he reaped his reward. 
 After forty-five years, his last pleasure in this country was 
 to lead a performance of all Brahms's chamber-music and 
 to witness its established success. 
 
 The difference between Joachim and other artists was that 
 intellectual equals such as these did not spoil him for the less 
 effectual myrmidons. But with all his kindness it would 
 be misleading to write of him as if he were a saintly bishop, 
 instead of the most human of human beings. He did not 
 affect tame company ; he loved good looks, he loved quick 
 wits and brilliance. He was himself witty. His humour 
 had a sly malice, an innocent finesse, and he did not object 
 on occasions to point it at particular persons. Some one 
 had been criticising Mr. Z., a fussy man of his acquaint- 
 ance. ' But he is such a kind friend,' he rejoined ; then,
 
 200 NEW AND OLD 
 
 as if by an after-thought, — ' and he always lets me know 
 it.' Another time, at a concert of Bach's music, he was 
 sitting next a lady of high rank ; they were looking over 
 the score together. ' She pointed out the beauties that 
 were there — and some beauties that were not there,' he 
 remarked afterwards. But his vision of their weaknesses 
 did not at all interfere with his liking either for Mr. Z. 
 or the lady. His satire was never discourteous. He was 
 asked if a woman of note — a reputed liar — were untruthful, 
 as was supposed. ' Let us call it romantic,' he answered ; 
 ' she was a very attractive person.' 
 
 The difficulty in defining Joachim, the most unparadoxical 
 of persons, is to bring home to those who did not know him 
 the union in him of simplicity and subtlety, of dignity and 
 spontaneity, of a warmth that thrilled its recipient and a 
 dislike of extravagance and excess ; to make men realise 
 the fulness of his artist's temperament, together with the 
 qualities least supposed to belong to an artist. Joachim's 
 punctiliousness, his self-control, his good manners, his good 
 sense, his distaste for what was not obvious, his still greater 
 distaste for what was lawless, are not the attributes usually 
 pertaining to the popular idea of a genius. 
 
 We have said that he gave up composition. It was not 
 only to interpret the work of others that he did so. It was 
 to fulfil his mission as a teacher. Those who have had the 
 memorable good fortune to watch him among his pupils 
 at his Hochschule, to see him conduct his orchestra, a king 
 whose kingdom was youth ; those who have witnessed his 
 patience with all who did their best, his wrath with what 
 was lazy or slovenly, understand how he spent himself for 
 them. Of his sovereign kindness to young musicians there 
 are many stories to tell. He loved young life ; he exacted 
 nothing from it. ' Am I boring you, children ? ' he asked 
 some girls a little time ago, while he was playing Mozart. 
 Not only among his scholars was Joachim a king. There
 
 JOSEPH JOACHIM : A REMEMBRANCE 201 
 
 is a picture of him fresh before my eyes, when once, after a 
 festival at Bonn, he was returning from a Festfahrt on 
 the Rhine. As he stepped off the boat a crowd received 
 him, and he passed up to the town between two files of 
 cheering people — undergraduates, tradesmen, Herr Doktors, 
 English pilgrims, friends of all sorts. He had not expected 
 an ovation ; he was moved almost to tears as he walked 
 between the ranks with royal simplicity ; and 
 
 Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue 
 
 Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, 
 
 Followed this wondrous potentate. 
 
 Yet the most enduring image of him, the one which lives 
 for ever in our hearts, is the image of Joachim the player, 
 standing by himself, or sitting with his quartet, his Jovian 
 head straight to the audience. The massive hair, the watch- 
 ful eyes, the wonderful square, supple hands, from which 
 virtue went forth, complete the man. He is surrounded 
 by an atmosphere of concentration. His face wears a 
 look of tension, a patient, almost troubled expression. 
 Then the mighty bow is upraised, the Olympian fiddle 
 poised against the shoulder, and the first attack holds us 
 breathless. The tension disappears from his countenance ; 
 it becomes calm with a victorious serenity, with a rare 
 intellectual force. There is no exaltation, no throwing 
 back of the head, no common sigh of emotion or excite- 
 ment. But the eyes are transfigured with a spiritual light ; 
 the face is pervaded by an intense reverence. 
 
 The impression belongs to many places : to the Ducal 
 Schloss at Meiningen amidst the green Thuringian hills ; 
 to the hall in the humble Yorkshire village at whose festival, 
 amongst the moors, he liked to play ; to the grim, smoking 
 towns of the Black Country ; most familiarly to St. James's 
 Hall, where he reigned so long. 
 
 Once, at the rehearsal of a concert in that little York-
 
 202 NEW AND OLD 
 
 shire village, he was sitting deep in talk with a friend. The 
 last singer had finished her performance, but he did not 
 perceive it. He looked up, and discovered that he was 
 waited for. ' It is my turn now ; I must go,' he said, con- 
 cerned, almost as if he were a child hastening to obey his 
 master's call. His turn has come now — the call found him 
 ready.
 
 THE LETTERS OF A SAINT 1 
 
 Saint Catherine of Siena, as seen in her Letters. Translated 
 and edited, with introduction, by Vida D. Scudder. 
 (Dent. 6s. net.) 
 
 Catherine of Siena was that rare creature, a practical 
 mystic. She was the youngest of twenty-five children and 
 never quarrelled with any of her brethren ; she lived in a 
 small house with a fretful old mother, tending her to the 
 last, when no one else in the family would be burdened ; she 
 nursed the most difficult cases in the hospital ; she was a 
 forcible diplomat after a theocratic fashion — more of a 
 diplomat than a stateswoman ; she brought Gregory xi. 
 back from Avignon, and reconciled the differences between 
 the Romans and Urban vi. Perhaps it was her good sense 
 as well as her wisdom that gave her such a hold upon Sir 
 John Hawkwood, the English free-lance in the service of 
 the Pope, and produced in him such tangible results as his 
 efforts to check the massacre at Cesena. She must also 
 have had a personal charm which only her presence could 
 convey. There is no more striking story than the one which 
 she tells herself (in her letter to Era Raimondo of Capua) 
 of her visit to the prison where the young nobleman Niccolo 
 Tuldo lay awaiting execution because he had spoken critically 
 of the Sienese Government. He was among the gayest of 
 worldlings, and was plunged in abject fear at the thought of 
 death. Before Catherine left him he was as one enamoured 
 of it, and he said that ' it would seem to him a thousand 
 years ' before he arrived at the scaffold. He stipulated 
 
 1 [This article and all those that follow it were contributed to the Times 
 Literary Supplement.] 
 
 203
 
 204 NEW AND OLD 
 
 that she should be there, and she knelt with him at the 
 block, putting her head down beside his till he died joyously, 
 saying ' Catherine.' 
 
 No remote hermit saint could have effected this, and 
 Catherine Benincasa, as her present biographer so well 
 indicates, was first and foremost a woman of warm sym- 
 pathies. She is always emphasising the secondary import- 
 ance of penance and of all else beside the power of loving. 
 And she was humble with that humility which makes 
 fellowship. It is a wasteful fact in moral economics that 
 the people who least possess sin are always most convinced 
 of it. Catherine was full of this conviction. She wore the 
 roughest clothes ; she lived on lettuces and water — not, 
 as she is careful to tell us, from any asceticism, but because 
 her fasts in early life had made any other food impossible 
 to her. Yet when she is writing to a fashionable widow, 
 she speaks of herself as if she were the slave of vanity and 
 luxury. And this was all because, when she was twelve 
 years old, her sister had dressed her up in a grand gown 
 and had bleached her hair according to the mode then 
 prevailing. She never quite lost her misery at having 
 allowed this. Such feelings may seem to us overstrained, 
 but they gave her a grip over the morbid and depressed. 
 Already, when she was six years old (in 1353), she aimed at 
 living like the Fathers in the desert. Her father, one Benin- 
 casa, was a poor dyer, and it was a long time before he 
 recognised that his baby was inspired. But when she was 
 sixteen she was allowed to become a Dominican tertiary — 
 that is, a devout woman living in her own home, under 
 religious rule. If she had raptures of contemplation, 
 strange visions, and trances in which some of her letters 
 were written, and if she underwent a fictitious mystical 
 death, she also faithfully performed the lowliest household 
 tasks and ministered to plague-stricken Siena. Eleven 
 grandchildren did old Monna Lapa Benincasa harbour in
 
 THE LETTERS OF A SAINT 205 
 
 her house while the epidemic raged. Eight of them died of 
 the pest, tenderly nursed by Catherine, and over each, as 
 she herself buried it, ' This one at least I shall not lose,' she 
 said. ' Her reputation increased. A group of disciples 
 gathered round her . . . and she became known as a peace- 
 maker. At the same time . . . her unusual mode of life 
 excited criticism and suspicion.' She was, as time went 
 on, inspired by two great ideals : the reform of the Church, 
 and the creation of a great Imperial theocracy, ruled by the 
 Pope, and including not alone Italy but Christendom — an 
 organised brotherhood of all men. To bring these dreams 
 to pass she told scathing truths in high places, for none 
 had a keener eye or deeper regret than she for the ecclesi- 
 astical corruption that surrounded her — the eye and the 
 regret of a Savonarola, as Miss Scudder truly shows. For 
 these ends, too, she went to Avignon, the accredited ambas- 
 sador of the rebel Florentines, charged to make peace with 
 the Pope. She failed, but she brought him back to Rome 
 — to find him alienated by her plain speaking. Tradition 
 even says that upon his deathbed he warned the bystanders 
 against her. But she was not daunted. His successor, 
 Urban vi., who set about the work of reform, but with a 
 most unwise violence, was exhorted, was scolded by her, 
 now roughly, now with feminine grace — as when she tried 
 to teach him tact by symbols, and sent him a present of 
 bitter oranges gilded outside and candied within. And she 
 died in the midst of her vain attempt to heal the great schism 
 which began under his reign when Robert of Geneva became 
 anti-Pope. 
 
 Mystics are not good letter-writers, for mystics are bound 
 to be without humour, and Catherine's are all religious 
 letters full of obscure and jarring medieval imager}'. But 
 they are human documents. She only learned to write 
 by miracle three years before her death, and until then she 
 employed young aristocrats as secretaries. Her correspond-
 
 206 NEW AND OLD 
 
 ence was wonderfully varied. ' She wrote to prisoners and 
 
 outcasts ; to great nobles and plain business men ; to 
 
 physicians, lawyers, soldiers of fortune ; to kings and 
 
 queens, and cardinals and popes ; to recluses . . . and to 
 
 men and women of the world.' To the dilatory and craven 
 
 she could be an awful correspondent, as when she advises 
 
 the sensitive and shrinking Pope Gregory to resign the Holy 
 
 See if he cannot be ' a manly man ' ; or when she shows 
 
 her disappointment in her peace-loving confessor, Fra 
 
 Raimondo, whom she sends forth as a matter of discipline 
 
 on a dangerous errand to the French King, but who turns 
 
 tail when he reaches Genoa, at the first sight of the anti- 
 
 Pope's sails on the sea. To her niece, too, Eugenia, a nun, 
 
 she was rather a formidable aunt. ' Be as savage as a 
 
 hedgehog,' she writes to her ; ' go to confession . . . and 
 
 when thou hast received thy penance, run ! ' — a drastic 
 
 comment on current morals. But to ' Nanna, a little 
 
 maid, her niece, in Florence,' she sends a letter full of 
 
 tenderness. ' A heart ought to be like a lamp,' she says ; 
 
 ' thou seest that a lamp is wide above and narrow below, 
 
 and so the heart is made, to signify that we ought always 
 
 to keep it wide above through holy thoughts and holy 
 
 imaginations.' ' I wish you to have the cell of the heart 
 
 always, and always to carry it with you,' she writes to 
 
 another correspondent, and that is the keynote of her 
 
 teaching. She is very severe upon the hermits who refuse 
 
 to come when summoned to Rome. ' Apparently God is 
 
 an accepter of places, and is found only in woods,' she 
 
 exclaims, with that irony which is a holy form of humour. 
 
 ' There is a tree of love, whose pith is patience and good will 
 
 towards one's neighbour,' is another saying characteristic of 
 
 her. And so is this brief phrase, ' Nothing happens without 
 
 mystery,' with which any account of her might well end. 
 
 Miss Scudder has done her task admirably, both as 
 translator and as editor. Her biographical introduction,
 
 A MKDIEVAL GARNER 207 
 
 containing much in little, full of thoughtful charm and fine 
 perception, makes us wish (or more work from her hand. 
 So do the explanatory notes which preface each letter and 
 exhibit real research and scholarship. Her pages are 
 quickened by occasional touches of a happy humour which 
 makes the people she sketches alive to us. If she s< nui hues 
 sees more in these letters than we do, that is only because 
 she reads Catherine herself into them. She understands 
 goodness — no easy matter. ' Goodness,' she says, ' despite 
 a curious prejudice to the contrary, admits more variety 
 in type than wickedness, and produces more interesting 
 characters.' (1905.) 
 
 A MEDIEVAL GARNER 
 
 A Medieval Garner. Human Documents from the four 
 centuries preceding the Reformation. Selected, translated, 
 and annotated by G. G Coulton. (Constable. 21s. net.) 
 
 We already owe happy memories to Mr. Coulton. Those 
 who read From St. Francis to Dante arc likely to remember 
 him, and perhaps the first thing they remember will be, 
 not only his wide knowledge, but the vivid warmth of his 
 learning. It is characteristic of him that he has got the 
 words ' Human Documents ' into his title-page, for human 
 he is before all else, and that is the quality which distin- 
 guishes his work from that of most other medievalists. 
 ' The records here printed,' his preface tells us, ' represent 
 thirty years' study among all kinds of medieval writings. 
 . . . They treat of clergy and laity, saints and sinners, 
 spiritual experiences, love, battles, pageants, and occa- 
 sionally the small things of everyday life.' Most of them 
 are translated, and for the first time, from often * inacces- 
 sible volumes ' and from six different languages. The 
 result is a living picture of those centuries of strange and
 
 208 NEW AND OLD 
 
 coloured medley which we call the Middle Ages — of the 
 generations which stretched between the day of St. Louis 
 and that of Luther ; and the delightful illustrations here 
 given us make no small part of our enjoyment. At Mr. 
 Coulton's word, the stagnant sea of monkish chronicles gives 
 up its dead, and Jacques de Vitry, Vincent de Beauvais, 
 Godefroid de Bouillon, Caesarius of Heisterbach, Petrus 
 Cantor, Christina von Stommeln, Peter of Sweden, Ulrich 
 von Lichtenstein take their place beside the better-known 
 names of St. Bernard and St. Bonaventura, Froissart, and 
 Walther von der Vogelweide. 
 
 It was a time of strong contrasts : of violent sin and 
 violent goodness ; of ecclesiastical majesty and monastic 
 puerility ; of profound learning and crass stupidity ; of 
 infantine gaiety and sudden tragedy ; of flashing fortunes 
 and swift dooms — crowns and conquest on the one hand, 
 battle and murder and sudden death on the other. And 
 over all, good and bad alike, there shines the light of early 
 morning and the naivete of childhood. ' So it was as 
 though the very world had shaken herself and cast off her 
 old age, and were clothing herself everywhere in a white 
 garment of churches ' — thus wrote the monk Ralph Glaber, 
 who died at Cluny about 1044. There is a kind of innocence 
 about the very sinners of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries, and the angular gaucherie of their woodcuts 
 transmits itself even to their crimes. Many of their problems, 
 indeed, arose from the fact that this same childlike candour 
 was allied to the unworn forces of full manhood ; many 
 others from the terrible intensity of their literalness, from 
 the way in which, if the paradox be allowed us, they applied 
 their imagination to that literalness until they turned it 
 into remorseless cruelty. Logic is an appalling weapon 
 in the hands of crude conscience. Ste. Douceline, who 
 never took off a rough shirt of pig-skin, pressed into her 
 flesh by a coat of mail, and whose life was one long chapter
 
 A MEDIEVAL GARNER 209 
 
 of charity and pious ministration, thought nothing of 
 beating black and bine a little girl of seven who had dared 
 to raise her eyes to a man's face ; and this did not mean 
 that she was mure merciless than we are, but only that she 
 had a clear material vision of damnation and knew that a 
 birch-rod was better than the prongs and pitchforks to 
 come. The strength and the weakness of her contemporaries 
 was that heaven and hell were all about them, and this 
 vivid presence of bliss and torment accounts for many 
 apparent incongruities. If it gave rise to floggings, it also 
 caused unexpected indulgence. When a monk who dis- 
 believed in Transubstantiation confessed his doubts to St. 
 Bernard and remained unconvinced by the saint's argu- 
 ments, instead of applying the rod of discipline, his master 
 only answered : ' What ! a monk of mine go down to hell ? 
 God forbid ! If thou hast no faith of thine own, yet in virtue 
 of thine obedience I bid thee go take the Communion with my 
 faith.' The monk obeyed, and, ' straightway enlightened by 
 the holy Father's merit, he received a faith in the sacra- 
 ments which he kept unspotted even to the day of his death.' 
 St. Bernard's horror of hell, the burning positiveness of his 
 belief, wrought what we should now pronounce to be a cure 
 by suggestion — what in less clinical days men simply called 
 a miracle. 
 
 The Host was often the centre of their wonder-tales, of 
 some of their divinest puerilities. St. Francis himself 
 might have left us Caesarius of Heisterbach's story of the 
 bees : 
 
 It is somewhat pitiful that we men, for whose salvation this 
 sacrament was instituted, should be so lukewarm about it, while 
 brute beasts, worms, and reptiles recognize in it their Creator. 
 ... A certain woman kept many bees, which throve not, but 
 died in great numbers ; and, as she sought everywhere for a 
 remedy, it was told her that if she placed the Lord's Body 
 among them, this plague would soon cease. She therefore went 
 
 o
 
 210 NEW AND OLD 
 
 to church and, making as though she would communicate, took 
 the Lord's Body, which she took from her mouth as soon as the 
 priest had departed, and laid it in one of her hives. Mark the 
 marvellous power of God ! These little worms, recognizing the 
 might of their Creator, built for their sweetest Guest, out of 
 their sweetest honeycombs, a tiny chapel of marvellous work- 
 manship, wherein they set up an altar of the same material and 
 laid thereon this most holy Body ; and God blessed their 
 labours. In process of time the woman opened this hive, and 
 was aware of the aforesaid chapel; whereupon she hastened 
 and confessed to the priest all that she had done and seen. 
 Then he took with him his parishioners and came to the hive, 
 where they drove away the bees that hovered round and buzzed 
 in praise of their Creator ; and, marvelling at the little chapel 
 with its walls and windows, roof and tower, door and altar, they 
 brought back the Lord's Body with praise and glory to the 
 church. 
 
 It seems rather arbitrary after this that another woman — 
 Hartdyfa of Cochem — should have tried the same means 
 to improve her cabbages, and in consequence have been 
 made a demoniac for life, although her cabbages duly grew 
 and flourished. Whatever their reasoning powers, reason 
 was not the strong point of the Middle Ages ; or, rather, 
 again like children, they kept their reason apart from their 
 imagination and let these two powers run on parallel lines 
 which never met. 
 
 The simplicity which solved so many of their mental 
 problems greatly complicated their daily life. It was 
 riddled with superstitions, weighed down by omens and 
 shibboleths. Sometimes they added sweetness to exist- 
 ence ; as when St. Bernard ' rode abroad in the morning.' 
 For when he saw boys keeping their flocks in the fields, he 
 would say to his monks, ' Let us salute these boys, that they 
 may answer to bless us,' and then, ' armed with the prayers 
 of the innocent,' he travelled on, feeling that good luck 
 attended him. Sometimes they added terror. There were
 
 A MEDIEVAL GARNKR 21 1 
 
 savage curses from the pulpit — sickening rumours of the 
 doom that befell such as misused the Host or the Chrism; 
 or ' prepared a table with three knives for the service of 
 the fairies, that they may predestinate good to those born 
 in the house ' ; or ' believed that good or evil came to them 
 from the croak of a jackdaw or raven, or from meeting a 
 priest, or any animal whatsoever.' Unreadable, too, is the 
 fate that overtook the unfortunate villain who once played 
 at hazard in the church porch below the Virgin's statue, 
 and, having lost his game, broke her image. The heavenly 
 powers were not often Christian in their conduct. Yet 
 even the current cruelty, the barbarity of the medieval 
 imagination, had its good side. Men were not stalked by 
 fear in those days, as they are now. Pain and death took 
 their proper place among the common risks of every day, 
 and even torture and punishment accustomed the world 
 to the thought of the great central facts of being. Life, 
 we repeat, was full of contrast, and so it was full of interest 
 and of poetry ; of enchanting detail, too, for the men of 
 those times were fresh in observation and expression, and 
 blessed with a vigorous joy of life. Their existence was 
 not unlike one of the pages of their missals — clear black 
 and white type in the middle, and now and then a splash 
 of red and gold ; with a border of infinite fane}' - , rich in 
 birds and beasts and flowers and goblins ; here a pitcher 
 or a spade, there, next to emblazoned matter-of-fact, an 
 angel's head or mystic emblem. 
 
 We are constantly reminded of St. Francis, of Giotto, of 
 Chaucer, of Boccaccio, as we turn Mr. Coulton's pages ; of 
 the literature of later days, too— the satires of the Renais- 
 sance and the Reformation ; for the stories and jokes 
 against the monks were much the same in the thirteenth 
 century as those of Erasmus and Ulrich von Hutten. And 
 what wonder when, apart from immorality and gluttony, 
 the clergy had to be reproved for such pastimes as dropping
 
 212 NEW AND OLD 
 
 tallow on chose below them during sendee-time ; or when, 
 at a solemn council, the Archbishop of York, who was jealous 
 of the Archbishop of Canterbury, sat down roughly in his 
 lap, then struck him with his elbow, the whole business 
 ending in a violent scuffle ? It was at any rate an effective 
 method of ending an ecclesiastical dispute ; some of us may 
 even prefer it to more modern constitutional methods. 
 Many are the types of clerks and of others contained between 
 these two covers. Thin priests and fat friars, crafty jongleurs 
 and shrewd peasants, green-robed ladies of exquisite fidelity, 
 ladies in red mantles lined with vair, on their way to much- 
 needed confession, visionary nuns emaciated by torments 
 from imaginary devils, knights wasting with love or fed 
 with capon, others pure enough to see the Holy Grail, 
 jostle one another on the road — the high road of the Middle 
 Ages. Sometimes we find an unexpected type, like the 
 Countess Yde, the mother of Godfrey of Bouillon — a mother 
 a la Rousseau. She was so angry when an attendant 
 allowed her hungry child to be nursed by one of her ladies 
 while she herself was absent at Mass that 
 
 All her heart shook ; for the pain that she had, she fell upon 
 a seat. . . . Swiftly she flew, all trembling with rage, and 
 caught her child under the arras : the child of tender flesh, she 
 caught him in her hands, her face was black as a coal with the 
 wrath that seethed within. . . . There on a mighty table she 
 bade them spread out a purple quilt, and hold the child : there 
 she rolled him and caught him by the shoulders, that he delayed 
 not to give up the milk which he had sucked. Yet ever after 
 were his deeds and his renown the less, even to the day of his 
 death. 
 
 Now and again we get a subtler psychology, from the 
 surprising pen, for instance, of Ekkehard Junior (980- 
 1060) in his description of ' The Three Inseparables ' : 
 
 I will tell you now of Notker, Ratpert, and Tutilo, since they 
 were one heart and soul, and formed together a sort of trinity
 
 A MEDIEVAL GARNER 213 
 
 in unity. . . . Yet, though so close in heart, in their natures 
 
 (as it often happens) they were most diverse. Notker was frail 
 
 in body, though not in mind, a stammerer in voice but not in 
 
 spirit; lofty in divine thoughts, patient in adversity, gentle in 
 
 everything, strict in enforcing the discipline of our convent, yet 
 
 somewhat timid in sudden and unexpected alarms, except in 
 
 the assaults of demons, whom he always withstood manfully. 
 
 He was most assiduous in illuminating, reading, and composing. 
 
 . . . But Tutilo was widely different. He was strong and 
 
 supple in arm and limb . . . ready of speech, clear of voice, a 
 
 delicate carver and painter ... a crafty messenger, to run far 
 
 or near ... he had a natural gift of ready and forcible 
 
 expression ... so that the Emperor Charles (the Fat) once 
 
 said, ' Devil take the fellow who made so gifted a man into a 
 
 monk ! ' But with all this he had higher gifts : in choir he 
 
 was mighty, and in secret prayer he had the gift of tears. . . . 
 
 Ratpert, again, was midway between the other two. Master of 
 
 the Schools from his youth, a straightforward and kindly 
 
 teacher, he was somewhat harsh in discipline, more loth than 
 
 all the other Brethren to set foot without the cloister. 
 
 Besides official documents and sermons — the least im- 
 pressive part of the book, for even those of St. Bernardino 
 seem to us of to-day neither very spiritual nor edifying — 
 the extracts before us consist mainly of monkish records 
 of tales of war and tales of love. Of the last-named sort 
 there are many, and one of the most striking is that which 
 chronicles the long hardships endured by a certain Ulrich 
 in the service of his lady — among them, before he had ever 
 spoken to her, an operation for a hare-lip, for she would not 
 look upon him while he had it. 'I will not cut thee before 
 the month of May,' said the surgeon — but when the month 
 of May came, cut him he did. ' Masterlike he cut me, and 
 manlike I bore it all,' said Ulrich. If the accompanying 
 woodcut showing an operation be accurate, then Ulrich 
 had enough to bear ; for the surgeon is jumping in the 
 air, so as to come down with more force upon the patient
 
 214 NEW AND OLD 
 
 meekly sitting with a neat bowl ready upon his knee. Ulrich 
 seems, indeed, to have had a morbid taste for surgery, for 
 later he sent his finger to the lady as a love-token. But she 
 still resisted his blandishments, deceiving his hopes again and 
 again, till, tired of her platonic wiles, he transferred his 
 heart to some one else. 
 
 And if among the stories of war Froissart's pages stand 
 out far beyond the others, so in the region of love Walther 
 von der Vogelweide reigns supreme. He seems to be the 
 only man among the many medieval writers on the subject 
 who gets beyond romance and into poetry. The vision of 
 the ideal love he never found has a touch of Dante, some 
 hundred years before Dante lived ; and, apart from love, 
 his poem on despondency has the lyric touch so rare in his 
 day. ' Hath this life of mine been but a dream, or is it 
 true ? ' so sings Walther von der Vogelweide. It is the 
 question that we ask about the Middle Ages, as we close Mr. 
 Coulton's volume. The best part of them, like all best 
 dreams, is true — their gaiety, their courage, their confidence, 
 their faith. These things are the heritage they have left us. 
 (1910.) 
 
 QUEENS, KNIGHTS, AND PAWNS 
 
 Elizabeth and Mary Stuart. The Beginning of the Feud. 
 By Frank A. Mumbv. (Constable. 10s. 6d. net.) 
 
 The name of frailty is not woman. Or should we say 
 frailty is strength ? The old, new story of Elizabeth and 
 Mary Stuart seems to prove as much. Mary Stuart was 
 frail, but she knew it, and her astute brain used her frailty 
 as a double-edged tool— as the strongest asset she possessed 
 in her game of intrigue. Elizabeth was not frail ; she 
 regretted it, and pretended that she was. And this pre- 
 tended frailty was, likewise, a barbed wire ; it was the
 
 QUEENS, KNIGHTS, AND PAWNS 215 
 
 strongest defensive weapon in her armoury. By dint of 
 it she organised her coquetries — her military manoeuvres 
 of flirtation. By dint of it her right hand could receive 
 regal ermines from Prince Eric of Sweden while her left 
 hand was held out to the Archduke Charles, who ' had a 
 head larger than that of the Earl of Bedford, and was unfit 
 to govern.' By dint of it she sailed, not near, but across 
 the wind, with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and was 
 able to trample underfoot the ugly rumours that blasted 
 her reputation at home and abroad after the backstairs 
 tragedy of Amy Robsart. By dint of it, perhaps, she was 
 able to dominate the qualms of her own strange heart, and 
 turn her inclination for Leicester, compounded of feeling 
 and of vanity, into an inspired move on her chessboard, 
 a means of delaying the vexed question of succession. She 
 behaved as she pleased. 
 
 In the afternoon (wrote the Spanish Bishop of Quadra, then 
 in England, to his master Philip n.) we went on board a vessel 
 . . . and she (the Queen), Robert, and I being alone on the 
 gallery, they began joking, which she likes to do much better 
 than talking about business. They went so far with their jokes 
 that Lord Robert told her that, if she liked, I could be the 
 minister to perform the act of marriage, and she, nothing loath 
 to hear it, said she was not sure whether I knew enough 
 English. 
 
 Elizabeth, like most great players, had herself invented 
 her game, and, like most great women players, had invented 
 it to suit her own character. It was the game of political 
 mystification ; and she could not have played it so well 
 had not her rival, Mary Stuart, lived across the border to 
 stimulate her. It was an age of leading women — Catherine 
 de' Medici ruled in France, and Margaret of Parma in the 
 Netherlands. It is the more remarkable that these two 
 Queens, of England and of Scotland, should have taken up 
 such a large part of the stage, and that they should have
 
 216 NEW AND OLD 
 
 held it for so long. Women were never so powerful as then, 
 when they were most personal ; when conflict meant no 
 civic rights or civic arms, but a duel with the rapier they 
 wielded with such consummate skill — the blade of feminine 
 intuition. And these two have fascinated posterity for 
 more than three hundred years, just because their fight was 
 fought with common instincts upon an uncommon scale. 
 Mary was primitive and emotional ; Elizabeth was primi- 
 tive and intellectual, so intellectual that her natural desires 
 were often hidden. But her vanity was perhaps greater 
 than that of Mary, or else she had more need of it, her charm 
 being less. ' She took M. de Montmorenci with her right 
 hand and M. de Vielleville with the left, and they walked 
 in the private orchard for more than a full hour, her Majesty 
 speaking with them most sweetly and familiarly in French, 
 as readily as she does Italian, Latin, and Greek, all which 
 tongues she uses at pleasure, and in so loud a tone as to 
 be heard by everybody.' Thus writes an eye-witness. 
 Elizabeth wished to be overheard, Mary did not — a signi- 
 ficant point of variance. ' Monsieur l'Ambassador,' said 
 Mary, ' . . . I like not to have so many witnesses of my 
 passions as the Queen your mistress was content to have, 
 when she talked with M. D'Oysel.' Mary lived in an 
 atmosphere of secrecy. Her sleeping eyelids that veil her 
 all-seeing eyes are as the sentinels of mystery. But there 
 arc more important differences between the two protagonists. 
 Of the three Queens then most prominent, Mary Stuart 
 strove for herself and her throne by means of her relations 
 with men ; Catherine de' Medici strove for her dynasty — 
 an enlarged self — by means of plots and policies ; Elizabeth 
 strove for herself in her nation without distinguishing the 
 one from the other, and she did so by means of deliberately 
 choosing the right Ministers and deliberately discarding 
 them. Mary failed, and lost her head, because she could 
 not believe in anything outside personal issues. Catherine
 
 QUEENS, KNIGHTS, AND PAWNS 217 
 
 succeeded for thirty years and then failed for want of a 
 large outlook. Elizabeth succeeded because, almost un- 
 consciously, she gripped main purposes. Yet Mary, who 
 put her faith in her power over men, has not been cheated. 
 She has kept it ; they are still fascinated against their 
 reason ; she can still set them by the ears. And Elizabeth, 
 too, continues to achieve what she made for. She is part, 
 not of men's hearts, but of the Empire — the Imperial 
 votaress who herself has passed on but has left us an endur- 
 ing heritage. 
 
 Mary has one great claim upon posterity which Elizabeth 
 does not possess. The Queen of England did not, it seems 
 she could not, suffer. The Queen of Scotland could and 
 did. She had a heart, even though it was a bad heart ; 
 while Elizabeth seems to have possessed nothing nearer 
 to one than a warm vanity. There was little love in her 
 love-affairs. ' She more resembled Hippoly te than Phaedra,' 
 as Roger Ascham put it, in a style which pedantry urged 
 into impropriety. Her inhumanity to women knew few 
 bounds ; and as for her cruelty towards Catherine Grey, 
 who was guilty of marrying without her knowledge and of 
 owning a title to the Crown, it repels one even more than her 
 conduct towards Mary, especially after reading Catherine's 
 broken-spirited letters in this volume. She cut off people's 
 hearts, if she did not cut off their heads. Mary Stuart's 
 tears were burning tears, at all events when her young 
 French husband died. ' You have comforted by your 
 letters the most afflicted poor woman under heaven,' she 
 wrote sincerely; and, in reading her letters and those of 
 Elizabeth and Elizabeth's envoys, a conviction is thrust 
 upon us that, had Elizabeth been kind, the course of history 
 would have been different. Mary was susceptible, and 
 susceptibility implies an inward chord which answers, 
 whether to good or to evil. When Elizabeth was false, so 
 was Mary. And she understood how to administer her
 
 218 NEW AND OLD 
 
 falsity with all the arts of feline amenity. ' The Queen, 
 your mistress, doth say that I am young, and do lack 
 experience ; indeed I confess, I am younger than she is, 
 and do want experience ; but I have age enough and ex- 
 perience to use myself towards my friends and kinsfolk 
 friendly and uprightly.' And ' If your mistress will use 
 me ... as her natural born sister or daughter,' could 
 have been no soothing phrase in the ears of the elder Queen. 
 Yet, in spite of the claw in the velvet glove, Mary could 
 at times be almost childishly direct, as Elizabeth never 
 could be. ' To say that we may for all that live friends, 
 we may say and promise what we will, but it will pass both 
 our powers,' Mary said of herself and her rival. It is always 
 amazing to realise the odds she fought against, from 
 Elizabeth's inclement refusal to grant her a safe-conduct 
 through England on her way from France to Scotland, 
 onwards through the years of craft and of espionage woven 
 around her like a web, as the letters and journeys of envoys 
 to Cecil and to Leicester testify. And untold harm was 
 wrought upon her ribald, dashing spirit by the grim rigours 
 of John Knox — his ' lenity and dulciness,' as he called them, 
 in his nervousness for his own salvation. ' He knocked so 
 hastily upon her heart that he made her weep,' wrote Sir 
 Thomas Randolph to Cecil ; but ' there be of that sex,' he 
 added cautiously, ' those who will do that as well for anger 
 as for grief.' All these ' knockings ' played a part in Mary's 
 destiny, and pushed her into the excitement of intrigue 
 and of passion. Mr. Mumby is right to dwell upon the fact 
 that in the midst of the immoral French Court there was 
 no breath of scandal upon her name, and that it was her 
 infatuation for Darnley that first woke in her the fire that 
 would not be quenched. That infatuation for the ' long,' 
 arrogant boy, so much her junior, was as bewildering to 
 bystanders as was that of Titania for Bottom. ' She is now 
 so much altered from what she lately was that who now
 
 VINCENT DE PAUL 219 
 
 beholds her doth not think her the same,' wrote Randolph 
 to Leicester. ' Her Majesty is laid aside; her wits not 
 wh it they were- her beauty another than it was. . . . The 
 saying is that surely she is bewitched.' 
 
 Politics, from which Randolph wished to retire with ' a 
 good old widow,' were worth while then, because politics 
 were personal. The Constitution was a growing power 
 and it weighed as a lever and a drag ; but the real vitality 
 of statecraft lay in the interplay of character at a time when 
 life was still fraught with primal risks, and yet men had 
 found complete self-expression in words rich and fresh i 
 the mint. Mr. Mumby has done us a great service. He 
 has found the right way to teach history — when no historian 
 of genius is alive ; he gives it to us in a series of admirably 
 chosen letters from records, archives, books ; he weaves 
 his mass of material with signal skill into a sequent narra- 
 tive, and he connects the letters by lucid paragraphs of his 
 own. This is all we get of himself ; yet, without acting- 
 showman, he provides a clearer sight of his subject than 
 any drum or trumpet could secure us. (1914.) 
 
 VINCENT DE PAUL 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF THE SAINT 
 
 Vincent de Paul, Priest and Philanthropist, 1576-1660. 
 By E. K. Sanders. (Heath, Cranton and Ouseley. l6s. net.) 
 
 This book is not among the throng of nice needless books, 
 half historical, half personal, which daily fill the bookseller's 
 counter. Vincent de Paul — the religious, the practical 
 genius ; the organiser who saw that organisation was fruit- 
 less without charity, and charity helpless without organisa- 
 tion : the evoker of one of the noblest bands of missioners
 
 220 NEW AND OLD 
 
 at home and abroad that the world has ever seen ; the 
 creator of the Sisters of Charity, of homes for deserted babies, 
 of the hospital for the galley-slaves ; the philanthropist 
 who was yet a mystic living in a land of prayer — has long 
 demanded a biographer and, by a rare stroke of luck, has 
 found the right one. This author is not among the many 
 subject-hunters of to-day, the soul-snatchers rifling graves 
 of persons whose gifts might fill a dozen pages, for the sake 
 of gossip best left under the sod. She seems to the casual 
 reader to have long hoarded her subject in her heart, and 
 to have found in herself some secret response to St. Vincent's 
 spirit. Miss Sanders possesses the gift of spiritual insight, 
 and that is the one gift demanded by her theme — demanded, 
 indeed, by the whole seventeenth century, that age of 
 spiritual dissatisfactions and satieties, of conversions, of 
 sinners and the saints whom they call forth. It is this 
 spiritual vitality which renders the seventeenth century 
 far more interesting than the much-exploited eighteenth, 
 which is so fundamentally matter-of-fact in spite of its 
 sensibilities, so easy of general access in its wit and its love 
 affairs (without anything to hide even its scandals), with 
 Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopaedists to guard it 
 instead of Pascal, St. Francois de Sales, Bossuet, Fenelon, 
 St. Vincent de Paul. 
 
 This volume, from first to last, brings us straight up 
 against that most perturbing question, ' What is a saint ? ' 
 — the question which, whatever the inquirer's creed, is 
 bound to make him ill at ease. A saint, it might well be 
 answered, is an enthusiast for goodness. But enthusiasm 
 is generally thought of as something glowing and vague, 
 the greater because it is vague. Not so was it in the eyes 
 of a St. Vincent. To him enthusiasm was a steadily stoked 
 furnace, needing both an altar and a stoker who would 
 never for a moment relax Ins efforts but feed the flames 
 with his own heart. The other kind of enthusiasm
 
 VINCENT DE PAUL 221 
 
 St. Vincent distrusted. ' I desire,' he wrote, ' to make it 
 my practice to undertake nothing and to decide nothing 
 while I am full of . . . enthusiasm. 9 But his life expresses 
 something he never said — that a saint is, above all, one who 
 enjoys ; he enjoys holiness as the artist enjoys beauty. 
 Nothing, after all, is done well, still less transmitted, without 
 enjoyment ; no force is negative. And the saint is no mere 
 renouncer, no ascetic, save as a means to an end. No 
 practice of goodness in him grows stale by becoming a 
 habit. A discipline it may be, but it is touched, often 
 burnt, by fire from heaven. He takes such delight in 
 Love that the blows he suffers in its service are as nothing 
 beside his inward joys. 
 
 My daughters [said St. Vincent to the Sisters of Charity], we 
 are each like a block of stone which is to be transformed into a 
 statue. What must the sculptor do to carry out his design ? 
 First of all he must take the hammer and chip off all that he 
 does not need. For this purpose he strikes the stone so 
 violently that if you were watching him you would say he 
 intended to break it to pieces. Then, when he has got rid of 
 the rougher parts, he takes a smaller hammer, and afterwards a 
 chisel, to begin the face with all the features. When that has 
 taken form he uses other and finer tools to bring it to that 
 perfection which he has intended for his statue. . . . God 
 treats us just in this way. 
 
 And humility, he teaches, is the basis of a good man's 
 life. He must be humble even before he renounces : 
 humility may even oblige him to renounce renunciation. 
 ' Humble yourself before God, recognising that you are 
 nothing save a useless tool who may spoil everything ' — 
 such was his counsel to a ' Superior ' with regard to the 
 priests in his charge. And of himself, ' Tout le mal qui 
 se fait a la Mission,' he said, ' dites que e'est Vincent qui 
 le fait.' None had felt more sharply the piercing thorns 
 of humility or so deeply knew it to be the attitude of man
 
 222 NEW AND OLD 
 
 towards God, not, like modesty, the attitude of man towards 
 man. And none maintained more severely the sincerity 
 that this attitude demanded, sustained, as Miss Sanders 
 writes, ' by no hope for the future, only by the continual 
 withholding of intention, by a most faithful yielding of 
 himself.' Here we come to his own conception of the life 
 spiritual. God's servant must first get rid of personal 
 desires and then he must do nothing — and everything. He 
 must wait for love to flood in ; after that he forswears his 
 heritage if he finds any suffering too crushing for a spirit 
 thus baptized. It was because he believed this with such 
 terrible intensity that he was able to live so many lives, 
 all equally harassed and full of suffering, as gladly as if 
 they were lives of pleasure ; and this it was that gave his 
 tender unrelenting austerity such authority over all ranks, 
 from Queen to criminal ; that left him, storm-beaten in 
 mid-ocean, as tranquil as a big ship in port. 
 
 This truth, Miss Sanders makes one feel, must be grasped 
 before we can understand St. Vincent's work, and in order 
 that we may avoid what is, she tells us, the prevalent idea 
 of him— that of a busy philanthropist absorbed in practical 
 activities. To him his priesthood, his inward being, was 
 paramount ; his deeds were but its fruit. Another fact 
 emerges clearly from her pages, that when St. Vincent 
 became absorbed in the crying needs of the poor he did 
 not stand alone. There was already in France in the middle 
 of the seventeenth century an outburst of philanthropic 
 and religious genius like that of art two hundred years before, 
 or of poetry in Elizabethan England. Names of men and 
 sects fill the stage. There were Berulle, the founder of the 
 Oratorians, and Olier, the initiator of the Seminary of St. 
 Sulpice ; there was the Secret Company of the Blessed 
 Sacrament (the Cabale Devote) ; there were St. Francois 
 de Sales and Mme. de Chantal ; before all there was Port 
 Royal with its St. Cyran and its Mere Angelique, its Arnaulds,
 
 VINCENT DE PAUL 223 
 
 its converted Pascal. But the greatness of these figures — 
 at least of such as were prominently practical — only serves 
 to show off the stature of the man who stood higher than 
 they did. They make his life more, not less, wonderful. 
 
 Vincent de Paul was born in 1576 of peasant proprietors. 
 His father sold a yoke of oxen to keep him at college, and 
 he was brought up to the priesthood. Five years after his 
 ordination business took him to Marseilles, and on his 
 return journey he was taken prisoner by Turkish pirates, 
 carried to Tunis, sold as a slave to an alchemist, and later 
 to a renegade Savoyard, who again turned Christian and 
 liberated him. Vincent went back to France in 1609, and 
 was made Almoner to the widowed and debt-ridden Reine 
 Margot. It was after this that his real religious life began. 
 He lodged with Berulle and the newly founded Oratorians, 
 became cure of Clichy, and a year later was sent, sorely 
 against his will, to be tutor to the children of the aristo- 
 cratic Gondi family. Yet this hated appointment it was 
 which led him to his vocation. Mme. and M. de Gondi 
 were the first people to fall subject to the power of the 
 shabby little priest, ' so uncouth of aspect, yet possessed 
 of such infinite attraction,' who, when his duties were per- 
 formed, retired daily to monastic seclusion. Gradually 
 he grew to be their spiritual guide in all things. The state 
 of the poor throughout that century in a France devastated 
 by war and famine, where the peasant was little more re- 
 garded than the wild beasts in the forests, defies descrip- 
 tion ; and the sights he saw among the peasants of the 
 countryside kindled in him that passion of charity which 
 henceforth consumed him. With the help of the rich and 
 fervent Gondis he began what was to prove the work — 
 the great work — of his lifetime. In 1625, when he was near 
 fifty, was founded the Congregation of Mission Priests, the 
 evangelising guardians of the poor and oppressed ; in 
 Paris to start with, later throughout the provinces, finally
 
 224 NEW AND OLD 
 
 among the slaves of Africa and the negroes of Madagascar, 
 in Poland, in Ireland, in the Hebrides, among the galley- 
 slaves at Marseilles ; wherever they went suffering torments 
 from plague, disease, climate, hunger, cold, and violence, 
 and, inspired by their teacher, shedding their lives like 
 worthless garments. Their training in the House of Saint 
 Lazare in Paris was long and terribly severe, yet most of 
 them looked back to it as the most precious time of their 
 lives. No less stern was the rule of the companion mission 
 which, in 1632, followed that of the priests — the Mission 
 of the Sisters of Charity, daughters of the people, vowed to 
 God, yet not nuns ; like the priests, spreading their net- 
 work over France, and led by an heroic general. This was 
 Mile. Le Gras, who was the St. Clare of St. Vincent's exist- 
 ence, and died only just before him. These Sisters were 
 originally started as a supplement to the ' Ladies of Charity,' 
 the grandes dames who at St. Vincent's call undertook the 
 supervision of the neglected Hotel Dieu, and whose work, 
 ardent though it was, suffered from the ignorance of fashion. 
 Yet they continued, and finally assumed the care of the 
 foundlings — needful care, since hitherto the State had left 
 this charge to nurses, who had deliberately done away 
 with four hundred babies in one year. Results make easy 
 reading for posterity, but on all sides St. Vincent was beset 
 by obstacles as great as those that beset St. Paul. His 
 worst enemies were those of his own household — not sur- 
 prising at a time when in one diocese alone seven thousand 
 priests, drunk or immoral, served at the altar. Gradually, 
 as his gift came to be recognised, he was able to insist 
 on harbouring young priests before their ordination. His 
 seminaries were among the chief agencies of clerical reform. 
 Of public life he had little. Miss Sanders's excellently 
 lucid account of the Fronde, that dustiest and most foolish 
 of civil wars ; of his ascendancy over obstinate, weak- 
 willed, good-natured Anne of Austria, who made him
 
 VINCENT DE PAUL 285 
 
 member of her Council of Conscience ; of his daring in 
 attempting to make her give up Mazarin ; of his failure 
 and of Mazarin's reign, is not the least attractive part of 
 her study. Admirable also are her chapters discussing his 
 persecution of Port Royal, and those last days of endurance 
 and fulfilment. She is a dignified historian, a fine guide, 
 guiltless of the craven modern fear of being dull ; so free 
 of self and so sure of her subject that she is safe always to 
 be interesting, and she is rich in deep research and sound 
 judgment. Here and there her work would gain by focus- 
 ing — in the case, for instance, of her pictures of the misery 
 of France, which give the impression of reiteration, because 
 they recur on scattered pages instead of gaining force by 
 union. And the arresting portrait of Cardinal de Retz has 
 not quite enough relation to St. Vincent to justify its pro- 
 minent place. But she never really loses sight of her 
 central figure, and he alone it is who concerns us. What 
 was it that gave St. Vincent his amazing power over all 
 sorts and conditions, that made a few months with him an 
 abiding force, enabling average men and women to abandon 
 their lives to pain and weariness ? Partly that rare union 
 of an extraordinarily loving understanding with unflinch- 
 ing truth, and with the searching humanity which made 
 him treat criminals as his equals and tend the mad and 
 depraved beneath his roof. There was something more — 
 less explicable. One day Marthe de Vigean, the great 
 Conde's love, the triumphant belle of Paris, was escorting 
 him downstairs. ' Mademoiselle,' he said, looking in her 
 eyes, ' you were not intended for the world.' She seemed to 
 pay no heed to his words. Within three years, without any 
 outward reason, she entered the Convent of the Carmelites. 
 We are brought back to the mystery of the saint. It is 
 in vain we reason with our feeling of discomfort and try to 
 prove that a life which thwarts nature must be a mistake, 
 however glorious ; or explain the matter by telling our- 
 
 ¥
 
 226 NEW AND OLD 
 
 selves that a saint is a moral genius as abnormal as all 
 geniuses. We cannot evade the fact that men like St. 
 Vincent get far beyond other men on the road to heaven, 
 that they need none of our maps to direct them. But we 
 must not confuse issues. They are wrong thinkers, but 
 their conclusions are right because their spirits are right, 
 and the spirit is stronger than the mind. St. Vincent de 
 Paul solved life's problem because he unknowingly trans- 
 cended his own short-sighted notion of personal salva- 
 tion and forgot his safety in the good of others ; because 
 he performed that miracle of love which unites all saintly 
 persons from the holy man by the Indian roadside to the 
 apostles and heroes of Christianity. Yet we must not 
 forget that the saint's ideal — limiting as it does the mind 
 of God, and silencing all but one of the many voices in 
 which He speaks — however noble for the individual, would 
 destroy the life of the race with the very conditions which 
 make it possible for the good to exist. Only when the 
 saint embraces thought, and the thinker dares to be saintly 
 — not with the sentiment of reaction and the ' all or nothing ' 
 faith of the sceptic — will the Kingdom come upon the earth. 
 (1913.) 
 
 A HEROINE OF CORNEILLE 
 
 La Grande Mademoiselle. 16*27-1652. By Arvede Barine ; 
 translated by Helen E. Meyer. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
 12s. 6d.) 
 
 To read a good memoir is to wonder why anybody should 
 ever read a novel. A history such as this one of the Great 
 Mademoiselle is more amusing, less jarring, less bewildering 
 than daily existence. The reader is not troubled by the 
 improbabilities created by a second-rate imagination, and 
 the central figures stand out in the fitting framework of
 
 A HEROINE OF CORNEILLE 227 
 
 time and circumstance. Madame Arv£de Barine has the 
 gift of making the portrait predominate, however alluring 
 the golden frame, and she could have chosen no more 
 masterful a figure than Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orleans. She 
 was the last of the Renaissance women, those singular 
 mixtures of romance and matter-of-fact. She was the 
 first of the women a la Corneille, the women in the Grand 
 Style, so like the buildings of the period with their pseudo- 
 classicism, and their friezes heavily carved with helmets, 
 wreaths, and cupids. Mademoiselle's personality pre- 
 sented strong contrasts. She was grand, she was absurd, 
 she was quixotic, she was prudent ; her heroism and her 
 frivolity touched each other closely, and when most of a 
 hero she could suddenly fall and become the most puerile of 
 women. For moments she belonged to Shakespeare, for 
 hours to Moliere. She was, indeed, fated to be preposterous. 
 The result was natural in the case of a woman who made 
 imaginary lovers out of an emperor, a king, and a prince, 
 not one of whom ever intended to marry her. Her strength 
 and her weakness lay perhaps in the fact that she was that 
 exceptional creature, an ambitious woman — ambitious for 
 her own sake, not for that of another person — an attribute 
 which led her into strange places. 
 
 It is impossible to understand her without, in some 
 measure, understanding her time — a time presenting as 
 many contrasts as the characters of its women. Never was 
 the divine right of kings more unquestioningly recognised 
 than under Louis xiii. and his son. Never had the Court 
 greater power than at this moment, when each peer and 
 princeling had a minor divine right of his own. Nor had 
 there ever stretched a wider gulf between Court and city, 
 King and people. The populace simply did not count. 
 Yet, as Anne of Austria left her palace, the fishwomen were 
 allowed to press round her and ply her with crude comments 
 on her supposed relations with Mazarin. The luxury in
 
 228 NEW AND OLD 
 
 royal trappings was excessive ; nevertheless, when the 
 King invited guests to stay with him he only offered them 
 empty rooms, and they had to bring their own furniture 
 and bedding. Barbarisms were practised in the streets of 
 Paris, but not far off there existed the first of the salons — 
 in the famous Hotel Rambouillet, which was to do so much 
 in shaping modern existence. Of Madame de Rambouillet, 
 its foundress, of the wits and beauties and pedants who 
 gathered there, of the Precieuses whose famous affectations 
 did so much to develop language and to civilise manners, 
 Madame Arvede Barine gives a vivid and delicate picture. 
 Here Comeille read the Cid as the work of an unknown 
 author, and was advised by Voiture to put it away in a 
 drawer. Letters from the absent were discussed as if they 
 were masterpieces, and scholars ' writhed ' in pain when 
 they heard a mistake made in grammar. But the real 
 result of the ' Blue Salon ' was a solid one. It changed 
 the social code ; it enabled authors to meet noblemen on 
 equal terms, and raised the position of literature. More 
 than this, it established the position of women. For it 
 was the Hotel Rambouillet that produced the political 
 lady ; that brought forth the band of practical beauties 
 by whom the second Fronde, the ' Ladies' Fronde,' was 
 organised. The sword-like tongues of Madame de Longue- 
 ville, Madame de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon and 
 their like were potent weapons. So determined were these 
 Frondistes that two of them stationed themselves in the 
 doorway of the Hotel de Ville, till their gallant allies, the 
 councillors inside it, took them in and arranged a luxurious 
 Salon for them there. In the Louvre, also, a woman, or 
 rather the relation between a woman and a man, was decid- 
 ing the national destiny. First Richelieu had a love passage 
 with the Regent, Anne of Austria ; then Mazarin took 
 possession of her heart and ruled her and France. She 
 had a secret corridor made between their rooms, and he
 
 A HEROINE OF CORNEILLE 229 
 
 appeared everywhere with her, remaining with his hat on 
 in her presence. These tyrant cardinals live before us : 
 Richelieu, superb and hard ; Mazarin, the crafty, soft- 
 spoken, stony Italian. By their side move many other 
 figures : that of La Rochefoucauld, gathering the experi- 
 ences from which he wrote his maxims ; of Retz (afterwards 
 a cardinal), the leader of the people's Fronde, ' the trickster 
 of the pulpit and of the slums ' ; of the romantic Cinq- 
 Mars, who lost his head for the sake of a conspiracy ; of 
 Conde, the great Conde in battle, ' the awkward and insig- 
 nificant Conde of civil life,' with his ungoverned nerves 
 and his ' invincible immoderation.' Hard by all this gay 
 society, and more or less the result of it, was growing up 
 the movement for religious reform which developed into 
 Jansenism and found refuge in Port Royal. St. Cyran, the 
 stern father of that fraternity, was already in the field ; 
 Berulle was founding another brotherhood, the Oratorians, 
 who gradually formed a college for the training and sending 
 forth of pious priests ; St. Francois de Sales and St. Vincent 
 de Paul, most practical of saints, were pursuing their 
 heavenly work. 
 
 In surroundings such as these lived and moved the Great 
 Mademoiselle. She was born in 1627. Her mother, a 
 princess of Lorraine, died soon after her birth ; her father 
 was Gaston of Orleans, son of Henry iv. and brother of 
 Louis xiii., a fantastic decadent, who feared his penetrat- 
 ing daughter and by turns scolded and cajoled her. A 
 lonely little girl is, perhaps, the most pathetic thing on 
 earth ; but Mademoiselle could never be pathetic, even at 
 three years old. When she had reached that age she had 
 already developed a full-fledged hatred for Richelieu. At 
 nine (when she was baptized) she rebelled against his sponsor- 
 ship as too plebeian to suit her. At ten she travelled to 
 Tours that her father might ' present his mistress to her. 
 Mademoiselle declared herself satisfied with her father's
 
 230 NEW AND OLD « 
 
 choice.' She had, however, refused to receive her till her 
 governess could assure her that ' Louison ' was ' a very 
 good girl.' From earliest infancy Mademoiselle was upheld 
 by her overweening sense of the importance of the ' younger 
 branch ' ; by her dream that her father or she herself might 
 ascend the throne of France. Her exuberant arrogance 
 only endeared her to the canaille. She did not reckon them 
 as human beings, but she made it a point of honour to 
 conduct herself as their goddess, and thought of herself as 
 such. She wrote pages about her own beauty, and early 
 in the day she set about the real task of her life — the find- 
 ing of a husband suitable to her position. Madame Barine 
 points out how entirely her views about marriage were 
 based upon Corneille's plays. She was his apt pupil, 
 besides being the heroine of his Pulcherie. The sacrifice 
 of individual feeling to the public good was the Corneillian 
 ideal, and this was what she practised with heroic bathos. 
 Sentiment she regarded as a sign of bad breeding, and she 
 resolved to love nothing but the highest rank. De Soissons, 
 her first lover, the only one in her youth who was not 
 purely imaginary, wooed her in early life with sweets, but 
 his family was below her demands. After that, nothing 
 but the Emperor would please her, and him she would have 
 married had she hated him. Three times did she try hard 
 for the recalcitrant potentate, who married twice and lost 
 both wives. Her first attempt was the subject of a quarrel 
 between her and the Regent, and, as she refused to submit, 
 her father shut her into her room for ten days ; but the 
 mob gathered beneath her windows, and she emerged more 
 powerful than ever. Nothing daunted, she soon set her 
 mind on the little king, and only swerved from him at the 
 moment when the imperial situation was vacant ; so that 
 at the same moment she was pursuing a mature widower 
 and a boy of ten years old. Her chances of winning him 
 depended on Mazarin's stratagems, and, when these drove
 
 A HEROIN!-: OF CORNEILLE 231 
 
 her to despondency, she turned her attention to th< gieal 
 Conde. 
 
 The Fronde gave her her opportunity. It was at first 
 the war of the people, then of the nobles and the people, 
 against Mazarin and Anne of Austria. Twice the Court 
 fled to Saint-Germain and was practically cut off from 
 supplies ; but the mob excepted their idolised Mademoiselle, 
 who went in and out of Paris as she pleased. In the second 
 Fronde, the city of Orleans, threatened by the Cardinal's 
 troops, summoned its Duke Gaston to help it ; Gaston 
 refused. Mademoiselle reproached, implored — in vain. She 
 resolved to go in his stead, and arrived in his apartment in 
 military dress, with a staff of feminine field-marshals in 
 helmets. Monsieur allowed her to go and gave her carte 
 blanche ; but he took aside the masculine officers, who were 
 also to accompany her with their soldiers, and told them not 
 to let her do anything important ' without explicit orders 
 from her father.' Mademoiselle arrived at Orleans ; the 
 Governor unheroically sent out bonbons to refresh her, but 
 she rose to the occasion. By her own strategy she suc- 
 ceeded in entering Orleans, and took prompt possession 
 of the town. She remained as long as she enjoyed herself, 
 and then, contrary to her father's commands, she rode back 
 to Paris, triumphantly met on her way by Conde and his 
 army. But this was not her supreme moment. Turenne 
 was Mazarin's general, and Conde was near succumbing to 
 him just outside the closed gates of Paris. He sent in 
 haste to Mademoiselle to bid her get the gates opened. 
 She ran to her father, who said he was ill and refused to 
 act. Again she upbraided him and again took his place. 
 To the Hotel de Ville she marched, forced the pusillanimous 
 officials there to have the gates opened, received Conde, 
 rushed to the Bastille and commanded that its cannon 
 should be turned on the enemy, and, returning to a place 
 near the gates, was in time to learn that she had rescued
 
 232 NEW AND OLD 
 
 her Prince from death. She could really be great on occa- 
 sions, and, with all the impulsiveness of a woman, she had 
 the coolness and resource of a leader. Life was more to 
 blame than herself for her absurdities, since it did not 
 provide her with the opportunities suited to her ever- 
 present forces, and these became grotesque when applied 
 to the small situations of daily existence. Dramatic 
 natures are bound to create a drama round them, and that 
 of the Grande Mademoiselle hovered between comedy and 
 tragedy. Conde knelt to her on that victorious evening, 
 but not for long. Once more she had to give up her matri- 
 monial hopes. Worse than this, there was talk of recalling 
 the banished Mazarin. The Fronde was over, the Fron- 
 distes sent into exile. Mademoiselle's royal blood availed 
 her nothing. She, too, was forced to leave Paris, and 
 drove ignominiously away into the provinces in a common 
 hackney-coach. For the first time she was depressed, 
 and it is at this tantalising point that her chronicler chooses 
 to leave her — in a mouldering house, her property, deep 
 in the country. But Madame Arvede Barine consoles us by 
 the promise of another volume, and we thank her for it 
 prospectively. Her sense of proportion, her vigour, and her 
 gaiety make her a charming biographer. Her translator 
 hardly does her justice. To render ' spirituel ' by ' spiritual,' 
 to say ' blessed water ' for ' holy water,' and ' retired him- 
 self ' for ' withdrew,' are surely mistakes that can be avoided. 
 As we close the book we feel very far from Mademoiselle 
 d'Orleans and her times. And yet, on consideration, we 
 also feel near to her. Dress changes, but woman remains 
 unaltered, and the noble Ridiculous are a race that does 
 not die out. To-day Mademoiselle would be leading some 
 private crusade of her own, half laughable, half sublime ; 
 she would not wear a helmet, but a bonnet, yet the 'panache 
 in both would be the same. (1903.)
 
 Oclibk Siokel
 
 LOUIS XIV 283 
 
 LOUIS XIV 
 
 Memoires sur la Cour de Louis XIV. Par Primi Visconti. 
 Traduits de I'ltalien par Jean Lemoine. (Paris: Calmann- 
 Levy. 7f. 50c.) 
 
 ' In fact, the Court is the best comedy in the world.' Thus 
 writes the Italian, Primi Visconti (himself an actor in the 
 piece), about the Court of Louis xiv. Its improper pro- 
 prieties astonished him. ' The King,' he says, 
 
 lived among his favourites ... as if in the midst of his 
 lawful family ; the Queen received their visits and those of the 
 natural children as if it were a duty she was bound to fulfil. . . . 
 When they came to Mass at Saint-Germain they placed them- 
 selves full in the sight of the King — Madame de Montespan 
 and her children on the left-hand dais, facing the public, and 
 the other one (Mademoiselle de Fontanges) on the right hand ; 
 whereas at Versailles Madame de Montespan was on the Gospel 
 side, and Mademoiselle de Fontanges upon the raised steps on 
 the Epistle side. With their rosaries or missals in their hands 
 they prayed, turning up their eyes in ecstasy, like saints. 
 
 The frank immorality of our Charles n. is almost refresh- 
 ing compared to this. There is, indeed, no time as rotten 
 as that in which vice becomes so normal that it demands 
 its pieties and a rigorous etiquette of its own. France in 
 1680, writes Visconti, was so austerely supervised by the 
 King that its outward semblance was that of a seminary. 
 ' All the world,' he says, * is afraid of the King. He wants 
 men to lead a regular life.' But below the frigid surface 
 there was chaos ; ' every household in a state of revolt ; 
 neither dwelling-place, property, family, nor honours which 
 could be called durable. You rise in the morning without 
 knowing what will have become of you by the evening ; 
 everything is in the hands of Providence.' Perhaps it 
 is not the least significant sign of the day that the last
 
 234 NEW AND OLD 
 
 sentence is written in good faith, without any satirical 
 intention. Providence at Court was a power less able and 
 more arbitrary than the King. 
 
 There were a great many reasons for this dire contrast 
 between seeming and reality, and one of the chief among 
 them was that between the King's precepts and his prac- 
 tice. He was not the first sovereign to combine the morals 
 of mythology with sentimental religious observance, but he 
 was perhaps the first who made immorality so domestic that 
 parents and husbands worked hard to get their daughters 
 and wives accepted in the place of a Montespan or a Fon- 
 tanges ; that all the Court rose when one of his mistresses 
 entered, and this even when the Queen was present — indeed, 
 it was her first intimation that Madame de Ludres was the 
 new favourite. Perhaps, also, he was the first ruler to 
 spend his own life in making love and to condemn others 
 for doing so. Lovers, he said, were ' the slaves of passion,' 
 useless as tools for State business, and he did his best to 
 circumvent their love affairs by his system of secret intel- 
 ligence. In so far he was consistent that he himself was 
 passionless, while avoiding the stigma of slavery by his 
 method of domesticating his gallantries. To light intrigues, 
 so long as no man took them seriously, he had no objection, 
 thus reducing the morals of his day to the last dregs of 
 cynicism. For such intrigues became so much the fashion 
 at Court that men would do anything to establish their 
 position as ' coureurs ftaventures? Visconti describes a 
 gentleman who constantly had letters brought him in public 
 places by messengers dressed in grey. ' I surprised him 
 one day,' he says, ' in the act of reading most intently a 
 letter in the courtyard of Saint-Germain — and then I dis- 
 covered that the letter was really from his wife.' The King 
 at least never grew silly in his devices to escape respecta- 
 bility. But his qualities were by no means negative. 
 To impose himself as he did upon his subjects, and to
 
 LOUIS XIV 285 
 
 regulate his bad life as stringently as if it were a good one, 
 required no common capacities. He must have possessed 
 that baffling gift that we to-day call magnetism, and he 
 must have had a strong head on his shoulders. Paradoxical 
 though it sounds, he must also have exercised great powers 
 of self-control when he wanted to exercise them ; and if so, 
 this might offer some kind of explanation of Visconti's 
 surprising assurance that, outside his State ambition and 
 his love affairs, his Majesty ' was a saint.' No stranger 
 one, surely, ever upset the calendar. 
 
 Visconti's studies of him make by far the most impres- 
 sive part of the book, the more so that, written for a private 
 eye, they are not the work of a flatterer with self-interest 
 to serve. It may be that we have all been rather too much 
 under the spell of Thackeray's immortal picture of him, 
 without remembering that, masterpiece though it be, it is 
 a masterpiece painted by a humorist ; true, indeed, but 
 only partially so — his face seen, as it were, in profile, from 
 a modern point of view. This is not the King whom men 
 saw then, or who exercised such a magic sway upon them. 
 We have too long regarded him as the amazing Roi Soleil 
 who shone chiefly upon the unjust, and we have hardly 
 stopped to wonder at the real effectual warmth that emanated 
 from him. Primi Visconti makes us feel his charm and his 
 force. We realise the dignity of his presence ; his shrewd 
 and cautious cleverness, more solid than brilliant in his 
 judgment of men and of events. After he and his Ministers 
 had sat for hours over some knotty problem of foreign affairs, 
 his Majesty, says Primi, would retire to solitude, and next 
 day appear in council with a lucid solution. Men were his 
 books. He never read, unless it were an occasional account 
 of his campaigns, or some work dedicated to him, of which 
 etiquette demanded a perusal. Literary taste he had none, 
 nor is he the first or the last royal personage without it. 
 When Racine and Boileau were allowed to compete as
 
 236 NEW AND OLD 
 
 writers of a history of his reign, they were summoned to 
 read aloud what they had written to himself and to Madame 
 de Montespan. ' Our historians had better go back to 
 their rhymes,' said the Marechal d'Estrades. ' Ces messieurs 
 read some fragments of their histories yesterday, at Madame 
 de Montespan's, The King shook his head, and every 
 now and then muttered, " Journalism, pure journalism," 
 below his breath to Madame de Montespan.' But if he 
 had no artistic gifts (the blunders in the building of Ver- 
 sailles were his own, the victories belonged to those he 
 employed) he possessed a sense of humour rather rare in a 
 king, and a French king. Surrounding sycophants are 
 part of the conventional portrait of him, but he saw 
 through them and laughed at them in his sleeve. One day 
 at dinner he took a rotten pear, ate a morsel, and passed a 
 slice to the Marechal de Gramont, who was famous for 
 servile adulation. ' What a delicious pear ! ' exclaimed 
 Louis. * Pray taste it, Monsieur le Marechal ! ' ' Exquisite, 
 the fruit is exquisite ! ' said Gramont at once. The King 
 burst out laughing, and pronounced the pear to be 
 ' detestable.' 
 
 Practical he was, rather as Napoleon was practical, with 
 a leader's scorn for middlemen and for most Ministers, 
 except as useful hacks. No petitioner was put off with 
 an official. Each one, however insignificant, saw him face 
 to face. Nor did he waste time on preliminaries. He never 
 considered any public subject until it had been summed up 
 for him in a clear and concise digest. And no man knew 
 what he thought until he had taken his decision. Abilities 
 such as these have great drawbacks. Like Napoleon, he 
 suppressed able men and encouraged obedient mediocrity. 
 The result was universal degeneracy. The splendour of 
 royal robes and fripperies has been part of our conception 
 of Louis — an erroneous part. Here, also, his attitude was 
 practical ; he valued his trappings as a means of impres-
 
 LOUIS XIV 237 
 
 siveness — the stock-in-trade of Divine Right. But he did 
 not care for them in themselves. He took, says Primi, half 
 the time his chaplain took to dress himself ; and in war he 
 liked work-a-day clothes. In this he was a great contrast 
 to his brother, ' Monsieur ' (d'Orleans), who ' dressed 
 himself for battle as if he were going to a ball, and then, 
 painted and indolent, sauntered up to the most dangerous 
 places, and faced the fire just as if he were setting out to call 
 on Mademoiselle de Grancey.' And this man, who ' never 
 wore a hat in the field for fear it should crush his wig,' was 
 a far better soldier than the hardy King, who ' dressed 
 himself mainly for convenience and discarded furbelows.' 
 
 I wish you could see the King [writes Primi] : he has the air 
 of a great dissembler and the eyes of a fox. . . . He is not 
 handsome, but he has regular features and the eyes express 
 what you like. They are majestic, voluptuous, tender, great, 
 in turn. In short, he has a presence . . . and if he were no 
 more than a courtier, he would stand out among the others . . . 
 I have been with him and other courtiers privily in his apart- 
 ment, and more than once I have noticed that if the door 
 happened to open, or he himself went forth, he at once 
 composed his attitude and changed his countenance. . . . He 
 never talks State affairs, excepting with the Ministers in 
 Council. . . . But whenever he speaks, even when he speaks 
 most frivolously, it is an Oracle who pronounces. At table, and 
 wherever he is obliged to talk, he does so gravely and clearly. 
 
 France is the land of common sense, and Louis was the 
 most French of Frenchmen. Common sense lifted him 
 above the superstitions then so prevalent at his Court. 
 There reigned there an absolute furore for prophecy, fortune- 
 telling, every kind of black art that duped credulity. It 
 was entirely to this credulity that Visconti owed his footing 
 at Versailles. For, from the moment he arrived in France, 
 he began to prophesy to any chance stranger with the most 
 astonishing results. It seems as if he must have been
 
 238 NEW AND OLD 
 
 endowed with some uncanny power of second-sight, inten- 
 sified, as he himself owned, by keen faculties of observa- 
 tion and by a retentive memory. Some said that on his 
 coming into France two gentlemen of quality took him with 
 them and initiated him into every detail of Court scandals. 
 That might explain his knowledge of the writer, directly 
 any letter was given into his hand, but it would hardly 
 account for his strange forecastings of that writer's future. 
 Primi became ' the rage ' ; coaches thronged his door, 
 grand ladies blocked his staircase ; the Queen sent for him, 
 and even the Grande Mademoiselle deigned to make a 
 midnight assignation with him at a friend's house, and to 
 receive him there, veiled, anonymous — and obviously her- 
 self. But when, in the midst of all this vogue, the King 
 asked him if his knowledge were really occult, Primi laughed, 
 and frankly admitted that there was no magic in it. His 
 answer gained him the royal favour. Louis remained his 
 friend. He extended his patronage to the histories which 
 Primi took to writing, and when trouble drove him from 
 his own land of Italy the King finally naturalised him as 
 a French subject. And it would have gone ill with Primi 
 in the famous ' Affaire des poisons,' had not Louis protected 
 him. The fashionable craze for magic had ended in frequent 
 deaths by poison, and a drastic inquisition had been organised 
 into the doings of all those who practised wizardry. But 
 the ' Affaire ' was really due to the King's one obsession — 
 his horror of being poisoned himself — and he took care 
 that Primi should not suffer. This fear of death paved the 
 way for Madame de Maintenon. That and his Majesty's 
 growing weariness of Madame de Montespan were at least 
 main factors in his so-called repentance. And to these 
 must be added the growth of his natural taste for clever 
 women and for interesting conversation. It is a pity that 
 Primi should stop short of the secret marriage. It was one 
 that even he would not have dared to foretell. (1908.)
 
 1)1 CHESS SARAH 239 
 
 DUCHESS SARAH 
 
 Duchess Sarah : Heing the Social History of the Times of 
 Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough. Compiled and 
 arranged by One of her Descendants (Mrs. Arthur 
 Colville). (Longmans. 18s. net.) 
 
 Where biography is concerned the dead arc more satis- 
 factory than the living. When we come to the lives of our 
 contemporaries we are either too much stirred or too much 
 disappointed ; we over-value or we under-value ; we are 
 too near, too much influenced by the stories we have recently 
 heard. Such chronicles may be immensely interesting, but 
 they become like a bit of life, and they cannot provide us 
 with that calm and refreshing haven which we reach when 
 we drop anchor in the deeps of memoirs. Nor does it, 
 therefore, matter so much whether these are well or ill 
 written, whereas we cannot but criticise a picture of our 
 own days as a work of art and literature. Any anecdote 
 of the past that throws a fresh sidelight amuses and instructs 
 us, without our making much demand as to the manner of 
 its presentment. 
 
 The present volume is a case in point. It is a book of 
 delightful intentions, fulfilled by an inexperienced but con- 
 scientious hand. The facts, the stories, the letters, follow 
 each other, for the most part, according to their date, 
 without much coherence or power of choice, and with no 
 artistic connexion. But the author, Mrs. Arthur Colville, 
 has the blood of the Duchess in her veins, and she says 
 rightly that ' another w T riter, though abler, might have less 
 sympathy for Sarah's character than one of her own 
 descendants.' As Mrs. Colville writes without the slightest 
 pretension, the result is a living, if confused, portrait of the 
 great Duchess of Marlborough. We can follow her from 
 her birth in 1660, through her youthful days at Charles n.'s
 
 240 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Court — where her sister Frances Jennings played such a 
 part— and on through the reigns of James n. and his followers 
 to her death in the time of George n. Her manners were 
 those of her day. ' I could not make out, sir, who she was,' 
 said a lawyer's clerk to his master, who had been out when 
 she came, ' but she swore so dreadfully that I am sure she 
 must be a lady of quality.' And yet, whatever her manners, 
 and in spite of the corrupt school in which she was brought 
 up, her morals remained free from taint — no small thing 
 in her generation. Her talisman was her heart, as she 
 herself unconsciously tells us. ' I have always thought,' 
 she wrote, ' that the greatest happiness of life was to love 
 and value somebody extremely that returned it, and to 
 see them often. . . . But, alas, though one's natural 
 pleasure is to love people, the generality of the world are 
 something or other so disagreeable that it is impossible to 
 do it.' This was written in her old age, but it flashes her 
 character upon us. Vehemently loving, vehemently vexed 
 with those she loved, and vehemently frank with all men, 
 Sarah Jennings was one of those women who hated nothing 
 so much as a calm. Storms and scenes, whether of temper 
 or affection, were her element, and though she often imagined 
 she loved solitude in Windsor Forest, it was but as a rest 
 from her tantrums. She recruited her forces in those quiet 
 glades and returned, like a giant, to the fray. In spite of 
 all this, however, she was so generous, so warm, and so 
 nobly devoted that her intimates (including her servants) 
 could not help adoring her ; and first among them came 
 her husband. His letters to her were ever those of a lover, 
 and his patience was imperturbable, though, as she loved 
 him most, she plagued him almost past endurance. ' On 
 one occasion when the Duke was ill Sarah pressed him to 
 take some medicine, saying impetuously, " I '11 be hanged 
 if it do not prove serviceable." ' Dr. Garth, who was in 
 the room, exclaimed, * Do take it, my lord duke, for it must
 
 DUCHESS SARAH 241 
 
 be of service one way or the other!' The Duchess only 
 
 laughed, for she enjoyed receiving frankness as much 
 she enjoyed administering it. It was probably this very 
 tempestuousness of hers which kept her heart so young 
 and lent her that power of exciting others which gave 
 freshness to their feelings for her. When she was a widow 
 and the Duke of Somerset proposed to her she proudly 
 refused him. If he were the Emperor of the world, she 
 said, she would ' not permit him to succeed to that heart 
 which had been devoted to John Duke of Marlborough.' 
 As for the Duke, his love is writ clear in his letters. Whether 
 they were sent from his camp in the Netherlands when he 
 was wearying to be with her at home, or written in England 
 about business matters, such as the building of Blenheim, 
 they all alike breathe the true spirit of romance. So did 
 his thoughts and actions. It must have been one of the 
 acutest moments of Sarah's life when, after his death, she 
 opened the cabinet in his room and there found carefully 
 preserved the long golden curl that she had cut off in a 
 pet to spite him. 
 
 Such an impetuous woman was bound to make uncommon 
 friendships. Mrs. Colville does not add any striking fact 
 to what we already know about Sarah's famous friendship 
 with Queen Anne, but she gives that completeness to the 
 picture which makes us see the Duchess in rather a new 
 light. She was more sinned against than sinning, and the 
 faults that spoiled her cause were the faults of a warm heart 
 and an outspoken tongue. Mrs. Masham, her supplanter 
 in the Queen's favour, was her cousin and her debtor in a 
 hundred ways ; indeed, she owed her whole career to Sarah's 
 kind offices ; and the mean backstairs stratagems by which 
 she ousted her, the stories she told the Queen against her, 
 the machinations she indulged in with Harley, fully justified 
 the Duchess's anger. The affair was the sadder because 
 of the trials which the friendship of the two women had,
 
 24£ NEW AND OLD 
 
 in old days, successfully sustained. These were the days 
 of William and Mary, when Anne was in disgrace for 
 keeping Sarah as her lady, yet none the less braved the 
 consequences and clung to her ; the days when they were 
 still ' Mrs. Morley ' and ' Mrs. Freeman,' a name derived 
 from Sarah's freedom of speech. Nor did ' Mrs. Morley ' 
 resent this frankness ; on the contrary, she begged it as a 
 favour and a sign of equality in friendship. But this loyalty 
 to Sarah caused the breach to widen between her and her 
 sister, Queen Mary. Matters grew crucial, and when the 
 Princess Anne lay seriously ill Mary first refused to take 
 notice of the fact, and then paid her a visit which can 
 hardly have soothed the poor invalid. 
 
 The Queen never asked her how she did, nor expressed the 
 least concern for her condition, nor so much as took her by the 
 hand. The salutation was this : — ' I have made the first step 
 by coming to you, and I now expect you should make the next 
 by removing my Lady Marlborough.' The Princess answered 
 ' that she had never in all her life disobeyed her, except in 
 that one particular, which she hoped would some time or other 
 appear as unreasonable to her Majesty as it did to her.' Upon 
 which the Queen rose up and went away. 
 
 Anne did not break her word, and it was only after she came 
 to the throne and put herself into the Tories' power that 
 a change began to show itself. For a long while the open- 
 natured Duchess, who really loved her friend, refused to 
 believe the truth. But facts forced themselves upon her 
 eyes, the Queen grew ever colder, and their altered relations 
 soon became the talk of the town. It was in vain that 
 Sarah sought for an explanation. Once when Mrs. Masham 
 refused to meet her and clear up her strange conduct, the 
 Duchess complained of this to Anne. 
 
 It was the Queen's usual way on any occasion where she was 
 predetermined (and my Lord Marlborough has told me it was her 
 lather's) to repeat over and over some principal words she had
 
 DUCHESS SARAH 243 
 
 resolved to use, and to stick firmly to them. She continued, 
 therefore, to say ' it was very natural, and she (Mrs. Masham) 
 was very much in the right.' 
 
 The whole picture of Anne— generous, stupid, and royally 
 obstinate — is conjured before our eyes. Mrs. Cohille 
 thinks that Duchess Sarah, who was busy about many 
 things — her husband's career, her children's welfare— had 
 not done her best to fulfil Queen Anne's exacting demands ; 
 but, even if this were so, she could hardly have checked the 
 rising sun. The friendship between her and her Sovereign 
 was never re-established ; and when Queen Anne died, worn 
 out by Tory dissensions, both Marlborough and his wife 
 were abroad. 
 
 Duchess Sarah's life under George i. and George n. was 
 never so deeply involved in politics as it had been in the 
 days of Anne. She busied herself largely with the build- 
 ing of Blenheim and the purchase of other houses ; for the 
 laying-out of estates, and the quarrels this implied, were 
 among her favourite occupations. She found time for 
 reading also. Her ungovemed temper has left a kind of 
 vague impression that she was rather an uneducated woman, 
 but this was far from the case ; she had a real love of books 
 and a neat gift for quotation. Cowley and Montaigne 
 both pleased her. She says : 
 
 I used to run from the Court and shut myself up six weeks 
 in one of my country houses quite alone, which makes me now 
 remember Mr. Cowley, who says, ' 'Tis very fantastical and 
 contradictory in human nature that people are generally 
 thought to love themselves better than the rest of the world, 
 and yet never can endure to be with themselves.' 
 
 Montaigne's essays she and Anne had both read in the early 
 days of their intimacy. And there was a certain favourite 
 passage of Anne's in the Essay on Friendship, with which 
 ' Mrs. Freeman ' upbraided 'Mrs. Morley' when the coolness
 
 244 NEW AND OLD 
 
 began between them. Sometimes, too, she liked philoso- 
 phising. She writes : 
 
 As for my dear friend Socrates, I believe we have no such 
 men in this country, and yet I am not perfectly satisfied even 
 with him ; for I think being unconcerned at dying was more 
 reasonable at a great age, and being quite weary of the world, 
 which could give him no pleasure no more than it can me . . . 
 but notwithstanding this, I like him better than any other of 
 the philosophers. As for his showing such spirits as he did in 
 the conversation after he had taken poison, 1 imagine it was an 
 easy death that came by degrees, and he could talk and died 
 much easier than our physicians treat us when they blister us 
 and put frying-pans upon our heads, after it is demonstrated we 
 cannot live. 
 
 She liked extemporising about the soul, now in play, now 
 in earnest. ' I have read lately that there was an opinion 
 the soul never died, that it went into some other man or 
 beast . . . and though the philosophers prove nothing to 
 my understanding certain, yet I have a great mind to believe 
 that Kings' and first Ministers' souls when they die go into 
 chimney-sweepers.' This was written to Lord Marchmont, 
 the friend of Pope, with whom she often corresponded. ' If 
 you talk to Mr. Pope of me,' she says in another place, 
 ' endeavour to keep him my friend, for I do firmly believe 
 in the immortality of the soul as much as he does, though I 
 am not learned enough to have found out what it is.' Pope's 
 letters to her are delightful. ' What can I say to your 
 Grace ? ' runs one of them. ' You think the same things, 
 read the same books, like the same people that I do. . . . 
 Be so good as to like me a little and be assured I shall love 
 you extremely. I won't subscribe my name that I may 
 not be thought a very impudent fellow.' Pope must then 
 have basked in her impetuous wit, which did not grow weaker 
 with her years. Far from that, old age was in some respects 
 her best time. Who would not admire the gallant spirit
 
 DUCHESS SARAH 245 
 
 which, at seventy-one, took her to the Law-courts to bring 
 ' an amicable suit ' against her wild young grandson. Lord 
 Sunderland, and prevent, his parting with Marlborough's 
 sword to money-lenders — the sword she had given the boy 
 herself? 'That sword,' she exclaimed to the Judg<-, 'my 
 Lord would have carried to the gates of Paris.' 
 
 Her fierceness about politics she never lost. At her 
 evening parties she ' occasionally covered her head with 
 her handkerchief, and was then supposed to be asleep. A 
 few years later, being vexed with John Spencer (another 
 grandson) for allowing himself to be influenced by Mr. Fox, 
 his name being mentioned, Sarah exclaimed when in this 
 state, " Is that the Fox that stole my goose ? " ' This 
 goose, ' Jack Spencer,' was her favourite grandson, and 
 Lady Di Spencer, her friend and her secretary, was her 
 favourite granddaughter. They were both the children of 
 her beloved child Lady Sunderland, who died when they 
 were small. So did Lady Bridgewater, another daughter 
 dear to Sarah's heart. With the rest of her family she was 
 on strained terms ; she either quarrelled with them or did 
 not like them, and the fault was not wholly on her side. 
 Perhaps had her only son, the Marquis of Blandford, lived, 
 her end might have been less melancholy ; but her early 
 married life was overshadowed by his death, when still a 
 lad at Cambridge. Her last years were also to be over- 
 shadowed by the death of her dear ' Lady Di,' who closed 
 her brief career at twenty-eight. The Duchess herself 
 died in 1744, at eighty-four years old, surrounded only by 
 devoted servants, for ' Jack Spencer ' arrived too late to 
 bid her farewell. There were few she would have cared to 
 have with her, for she had outlived most of her contem- 
 poraries, and when the end came it came as a release. It 
 is difficult to judge of her beauty, largely due to golden 
 hair and brilliant colouring, from the frontispiece of this 
 volume, taken from Kneller's painting of her. It is of the
 
 246 NEW AND OLD 
 
 conventional order, as are the other pictures, chiefly of 
 Royalties, which illustrate Mrs. Colville's work. But the 
 real portraits — not only of Sarah, but of her lord the Duke, 
 of Anne, and the Georges and their predecessors — are 
 drawn in pen and ink in the pages of this pleasant book. 
 (1904.) 
 
 ROUSSEAU 
 
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau. By Jules Lemaitre. Translated by 
 Jeanne Mairet (Madame Charles Bigot). (Heinemann. 
 12s. 6d. net.) 
 
 Rousseau and the Women He Loved. By Francis Gribble. 
 (Eveleigh Nash. 15s. net.) 
 
 The Humane Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Trans- 
 lated by Freoerika Macdonald. (Dent. 2s. 6d. net.) 
 
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been in turns adored and 
 detested ; he has never been neglected. Nor has he at 
 any time ceased to count — and this although many of his 
 conceptions are now obsolete, much of his intellectual output 
 useless. What is it that makes his power? M. Jules 
 Lemaitre, whose admirable lectures on Rousseau have been 
 translated into rather faulty English by a Frenchwoman, 
 assures us with masterly precision and with his own delicious 
 crispness of mind — perhaps also with almost too much 
 legal skill — that Jean-Jacques' immortality is mainly due 
 to his style, exposing on the way without pity all the twists 
 and the foibles of his philosophy. This might be true if it 
 were a spoken style, the great oratory which appeals to 
 the many. But written style touches the few, a limited 
 number of people who have literary susceptibilities. A 
 larger audience demands something that has relation to 
 themselves ; something that touches daily life and conduct ; 
 and if Rousseau's influence is enduring, it is somewhere in 
 this moral region that his title-deeds to fame will be found.
 
 ROUSSEAU ^47 
 
 Mr. Gribble, however, docs not think so. He, on the con- 
 trary, seems to believe that Rousseau's claim lies in his 
 madness and his illness, in ' the suspicious insanity of ih< 
 gouty,' the ' cardiac trouble ' which made him quarrelsome, 
 
 or tin- ' complaint which may have been only indigestion, 
 but was more probably gastric catarrh.' But then Mr. 
 Gribble is clinical rather than literary, and it is certainly 
 easier to explain insanity than the genius which causes it. 
 After all, Mrs. Macdonald has done more to make us under- 
 stand that genius than either of the other two. She has 
 given us, although in translation, a well-chosen collection 
 of maxims from his works ; she has presented us with 
 Rousseau himself, however shorn of his native eloquence. 
 
 We are, nevertheless, no nearer the secret of his strength, 
 and the only fashion in which we can attempt to reach it 
 is to begin with what it is not. It is hardly his political 
 significance, or his actual contribution to thought. Even 
 if. as a rough generalisation, it be true that he made the 
 French Revolution, it was the worst part of it that he made. 
 But, although he was one of many who worked, unknowing, 
 at the loom where it was woven, it was not he who created it. 
 The ideas that evoked it were, as M. Lemaitre points out, 
 in the air. Rousseau was but the voice of his age — a voice 
 crying in the Hermitage, not far from Madame d'Epinay, 
 and very far from the wilderness. What was it, then, that 
 gave him his hold on the world ? It seems as if it were 
 largely this, that the most personal and self-absorbed of 
 men has in some ways had the most impersonal effect. He 
 has lived on in the realm of ideals, perhaps in more varied 
 forms (many of them opposed in seeming to his own), and 
 among more different kinds of men, than almost any other 
 modern genius. Some of his unconscious offspring, although 
 they may not even have read him, have been his worst 
 foes, have slain their father Parmenides ; but no educa- 
 tionist, from Miss Edgeworth to Goethe, hardly an idealist
 
 248 NEW AND OLD 
 
 or moral reformer, from Ruskin to Tolstoi, can call himself 
 free of Rousseau. Above all — and it is his main achieve- 
 ment — he formed the Romantic school. Victor Hugo, 
 George Sand, Michelet also (and here we but quote M. 
 Lemaitre), would rejoice to acknowledge their debt to him. 
 England, too, showed traces of him. He brought men back 
 to love Nature for her own sake — to love her lyrically. He 
 evoked a new race of poets. Wordsworth himself in his 
 years of fervour for the Revolution must have drunk in the 
 ideas of Rousseau and found that the Frenchman's passion 
 for the country drew out a deeper chord from his own soul. 
 Everywhere Jean-Jacques intensified human insight. He 
 invented, says M. Lemaitre, individualism in literature, 
 that note of intimacy and, often, of morbid introspection, 
 which makes the greatness and the smallness of modem 
 art. He was the initiator of something fresh — something 
 of a strangely alloyed nature, both good and evil, but 
 something which, whether good or evil, is ours now and 
 indispensable. 
 
 And the mixture is not wholly unexplained. Rousseau's 
 position in time was, perhaps, unique. He is generally 
 regarded as the prophet of a vital future, but he had in 
 him as well all the dead roots of the past. No one was 
 more rotten, or more fertile. Decadent, yet vigorous with 
 the sap of youth, he lived in a frontier country, a land, 
 therefore, of vexed issues ; and none can tell clearly even 
 now what was decay, what was promise, in him. The man 
 who could blaze out in noble wrath at cruelty and preach 
 the gospel of loving-kindness at the same time that he was 
 leaving his five babies, one by one, at the door of the Found- 
 lings' Hospital ; who could thunder against rank and its 
 luxuries, yet live in clover at the expense of great lords ; 
 who urged democracy and supported aristocracy ; who wept 
 over the charms of purity and proved them only by being 
 an exception to its rule, was bound to bewilder himself
 
 KOUSSEAU 249 
 
 and us. He is, perhaps, most bewildering in his fcmile. 
 There is nothing so unnatural as a return to Nature, and 
 Jean-Jacques was the least natural of men. A return always 
 implies a divorce, and a divorce for some highly-strung 
 reason — sensitiveness, satiety, discontent, aspiration, no Mr 
 or other ; all, more or less, the fruits of an over-developed 
 society. Every primitive Utopian, whether purely personal, 
 like Shelley and Blake and Thoreau, or a dreamer for the 
 world, or the maker of an eighteenth-century Arcadia, has 
 founded his desire for solitude on some such disgust with 
 reality, forgetting the while that Nature is the greatest 
 reality of all. Rabelais, alone, who turned to Nature from 
 no quarrel with mankind, but because he wanted to fight 
 asceticism — Rabelais alone saw whither natural instinct 
 must lead men. He, only, had the courage to write ' Fais 
 ce que voudras ' over his Abbey of Thelema. Rousseau, 
 afraid of facing fact, preferred to write ' Sensibility ' over his 
 portal, and plunged himself up to the head in a quagmire 
 of untruth. 
 
 It was this determination of his to square instinct with 
 conscience which so misled him. ' Conscience speaks for 
 Nature,' he writes, ignoring the obvious drawback that, 
 except in the case of certain instinctive affections, con- 
 science and Nature are at fisticuffs. Again, ' the passions 
 natural to man are the instruments of his liberty ' is hardly 
 a statement borne out by history. And what of this : 
 ' There exists no evil but that which thou doest, or else 
 sufferest, and both these evils come from thee. Universal 
 evil lies only in disorder, and I see in the system of the world 
 an order which never belies itself ' ? Man left to himself, 
 he constantly avers, is wholly good and kind, and so is 
 Nature, in whose image he is made. His attitude is the 
 reverse of that of Wordsworth. While Wordsworth con- 
 stantly tries to put morality into Nature, Rousseau endea- 
 vours to prove that morality is natural. Like other preachers,
 
 250 NEW AND OLD 
 
 he saw only what he wanted to see. ' Oh Nature ! ' asks 
 M. Lemaitre, ' what then art thou ? We should so like to 
 know. But if thou art all things, as seems likely, we shall 
 never be any the wiser.' Rousseau, however, to do him 
 justice, has left us a professional definition — and a very 
 queer one it is. Nature, he tells us, is the instinct of self- 
 preservation, first only applied to our own welfare and then 
 extended to that of others. It is a definition which, paradox 
 though it be, covers a good deal of ground. It provides, if 
 not an explanation, a way of stating the dual nature of 
 human beings — very like Blake's theory of man's conflict 
 between Nature, the carnal and selfish, and intellect, the 
 self-renouncing and redeeming ; or, indeed, slightly twisted, 
 not far from Christian Science and its formula of mind, and 
 ' mortal mind.' 
 
 M. Lemaitre, however, would only add this to the endless 
 inconsistencies which Jean-Jacques harboured under his 
 ambiguous terminology, and which his critic proceeds to 
 show up remorselessly. They are glaring, sometimes brazen, 
 and they branch out in every direction ; his politics, his 
 faith, his ethical system, his daily fife are full of them. Jesuit 
 and Protestant ; democrat and aristocrat ; a votary of the 
 arts and their denouncer; the defender of property in the 
 Encyclopaedia and, at the same moment, its virulent foe 
 in public speech; a strict moralist, a lax liver — the legal 
 evidence against him is irrefutable. But evidence, after 
 all, is not the same as truth ; it is law, not always moral 
 justice. And M. Lemaitre is not quite fair to the Rousseau 
 at the bar. Inconsistency is not insincerity ; it is a 
 weakness common to all impressionable men, and doubly 
 prominent in Jean-Jacques, who was born abnormally im- 
 pressionable. His exhortations to virtue were no hypocrisy. 
 He wished men to lead a good life ; he would have liked 
 to lead one himself, but he did not want the strain of trying. 
 No one knew his weakness better than he did. ' Floating
 
 KOUSSEATT 25] 
 
 between Nature and reason, T live in a perpetual contra- 
 diction and do nothing that I wish to do,' he wrote to the 
 great doctor, Tronchin. And again, in his Reveries d'ini 
 Promeneur : 'This comes from a versatile temperament 
 
 which a turbulent wind always agitates, but which regains 
 calm the instant that the wind ceases to blow. It is my 
 ardent nature which perturbs me, and my indolent nature 
 which pacifies me.' Such a character could never pursue 
 one idea steadily. It would always be easy to prove that 
 he had no convictions. Besides, in spite of his deeper 
 qualities, he was essentially a writer. He could write on 
 any subject, take any side. Pen in hand, his opinions 
 came to him as he wrote, and he believed that he had 
 always held them. When he was discussing with Diderot 
 the essay that made his fame, about the influence of the 
 arts upon the world's progress, he announced himself as 
 their champion. But when Diderot urged him to take 
 the opposite view, as more interesting, he consented, and 
 wrote a burning indictment of art and science as the cor- 
 rupters of humanity. M. Lemaitre would have us think 
 that his whole career was thus based upon an insincerity ; 
 but, sooner or later, Rousseau was bound to turn into a 
 foe of civilisation, and his false arguments probably first 
 set him imagining the evils it had brought upon men, 
 and helped him to formulate his message. The essay was 
 a pure piece of journalism, and of journalism Rousseau was 
 the genius. It was this brilliant faculty which enabled 
 him to furnish eloquent tags, such as became the trumpet- 
 calls of the Terror — such as made Robespierre and Saint- 
 Just and Madame Roland quote him, and Marat read him 
 aloud to an acclaiming audience. 
 
 But there is one consistency which even M. Lemaitre 
 would allow to Rousseau — his amazing, his colossal egoism. 1 
 
 1 [The reader of these papers may be warned that the writer seems to have 
 used this word to cover the meanings both of 'egoism 5 and of 'egotism.']
 
 252 NEW AND OLD 
 
 If egoism is only vast enough, it can work wonders as 
 great, though not as moral, as does self-sacrifice. And 
 through egoism it was that Rousseau produced much of 
 his effect. In him it turned to unlimited sentimentalism, 
 the most heartless of all ' isms.' It is easy enough to be 
 the Friend of Humanity, which one does not see, but harder 
 to live at peace with one individual ; and this inhumanly 
 quarrelsome professor of human feelings had no love in 
 him — did not know what, let alone devotion, the commonest 
 forbearance meant. He belonged, like his literary descen- 
 dant, George Sand, to the perilous and self-righteous race 
 of aspirers ; persons so wrapped up in the nobility of their 
 aims that they forget about their deeds, and think that 
 they cannot do wrong. ' I am intimately persuaded that 
 of all the men whom I have known in my life none was 
 ever better than I,' he wrote. And again, in the Reveries 
 aVun Promeneur, ' My vanity was set at ease when I grew 
 kind to myself, and thus, turning into self-love, it once 
 more became part of the order of Nature. . . . The love 
 of oneself is always good and in harmony with order. We 
 must, indeed, love ourselves better than anything else.' 
 And his measureless vanity told ; the world took him at 
 his own valuation. For fifteen mortal hours, with a short, 
 begrudged interval of rest, did an audience of adoring men 
 and women listen to his reading aloud of the Confessions. 
 They wept over him ; he wept over himself — often ; upon 
 his waistcoat (as he tells us), anywhere so long as he shed 
 tears. And if Mrs. Cockburn, of Edinburgh, is typical of 
 his ordinary hostess, who can wonder that he expected a 
 good deal ? ' Lord bless you,' she writes, ' bring Rousseau 
 here. . . . Sweet old man, he shall sit beneath an oak, 
 and hear the Druids' songs. ... I will have him ! I 
 cannot speak to him, but I know his heart.' As for parents, 
 they flocked to ask his counsel about the training of their 
 children, and he died at the house of a Marquis who sent
 
 KOUSSEAU 253 
 
 his unhappy progeny every morning up ;i masl to fetch their 
 breakfast, a hardening discipline to which even the dreadful 
 little Emile was not subjected. Rousseau figured, indeed, 
 as a high priest of education, and led the double life of a 
 priest, the life of the pulpit and his private life. 
 
 Perhaps it was the priest in him that increased his power 
 with women. He possessed all the qualities that fascinate 
 them. He was expressive, he needed a confidante, he 
 suffered, they saved him from the stake. He had lofty 
 views and no sense of honour. In vain we seek a word to 
 define him. The dictionary, unfortunately, provides us 
 with no such name ; and, against our will, we find ourselves 
 constrained to take refuge in the objectionable term ' cad.' 
 A cad he was — a cad of genius, of the same dazzling family 
 as Byron and Chateaubriand, who, like him, were always 
 adored by women. It is regrettable that it is this side of 
 him which Mr. Gribble chooses chiefly to handle ; but his 
 slightly servants'-hall standards of love do not suit the 
 psychology of great ladies, and he does not understand the 
 Duchesse de Luxembourg, or even the less refined Madame 
 d'Epinay. His best portrait is that of Therese ; but here, 
 too, taste is not his strong point. We have heard of open 
 sin, but Mr. Gribble prefers a more homely idiom. He calls 
 it ' quiet concubinage.' Wordsworth could never have 
 imagined so improper a theme, but had he done so, ' John 
 James and Theresa, or Quiet Concubinage,' would have 
 been no unlikely title for one of his Poems of the Domestic 
 Affections. And what light in the end does Mr. Gribble 
 throw upon anything significant in Rousseau ? He proves, 
 indeed, that Madame de Warens was not separated from her 
 husband on account of a love affair, but because she was a 
 swindler, and ran away with all his plate ; on hearing which, 
 says M. de Warens, ' I swallowed a basin of soup,' a 
 bracing and sensible course, but not one which affected 
 Jean-Jacques. And then Mr. Gribble demonstrates that,
 
 254 NEW AND OLD 
 
 owing to an error in dates, Jean-Jacques' joint occupation 
 of Les Charmettes with Madame de Warens, supposed to be 
 such an idyll, only took place after the appearance of the 
 rival lover, not before, so that all romance is now destroyed. 
 But this fact has no importance, except in the region of 
 gossip, and had little effect upon the mind or life of Rousseau. 
 Mr. Gribble is so clever in his statements, and has such 
 shrewd flashes of perception, that it is a pity he cannot 
 oftener be more weighty about his subject. 
 
 For it is to Rousseau that we come back. In his own 
 time he could but produce chaos, such a classic of confusion 
 as La nouvellc Ilclo'ise, that novel ' serious and false,' as 
 M. Lemaitre calls it ; such topsy-turvy reforms as induced 
 grand ladies to have their babies brought to the opera that 
 they might nurse them in their boxes. But what is his final 
 worth ? It is emotional, not intellectual — a contribution to 
 art, not to thought. He initiated something greater than 
 the Romantic Movement. He introduced into art the idea 
 that motive is more than deed. The Quietists had already 
 translated it into practice and had done a good deal of harm 
 by it. In the hands of Rousseau, the artist, it was equally 
 dangerous. ' I was a slave in my vices,' he said, ' in my 
 remorse I am free.' But though the conception brings its 
 perils, it is also one of the grandest, and it has done big 
 things in literature ; nor could we of to-day do without it. 
 And, pace M. Lemaitre, there is something to be added. 
 Beneath self-deceptions and discrepancies, Rousseau has 
 a final consistency. He has only mistaken the name of 
 the end that he made for. It was not Nature he sought, 
 but moral simplification, the object of all social reformers, 
 ancient and modern, from the days of primitive Christianity 
 to those of Socialism, of Ruskin, Morris, Tolstoi. In all his 
 writings this one aim, this one taste, stands out visibly 
 interwoven with contradictions and tangled webs of words. 
 It lends force and cohesion to what would otherwise be
 
 THE UNSELFISH EGOIST 255 
 
 inchoate emotion. Rousseau's falsity could not destroy 
 his own truth. ' The holy truth which his heart adores,' 
 he says of the Vicaire Savoyard, ' dots not consist of in- 
 different facts and futile names, but in giving unto each 
 man faithfully that which is his due of the things which 
 are veritably his.' This is the real Rousseau. An old 
 farmer who saw him in Derbyshire, and tried in later years 
 to describe him, was not far wrong in his summary. ' It 
 was thought,' he said, ' he was some King who had bi < n 
 driven from his dominions.' And so he was — driven, per- 
 chance, by madness. But death came to redeem him, and 
 his dominions are regained. (1908.) 
 
 THE UNSELFISH EGOIST 
 
 The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope 
 Pennington, 1788-1822. Edited by Oswald G. Knapi-. 
 (Lane. l6s. net.) 
 
 It is sometimes difficult to remember that Mrs. Piozzi 
 was once Mrs. Thrale ; that the object of Johnson's devotion 
 is the same woman as the idol of Piozzi. The person adored 
 partakes, indeed, of the nature of the adorer. Samuel 
 Johnson was first-rate and Gabriel Piozzi was not. Besides, 
 Johnson's love was no sinecure : and when from the strenu- 
 ous industry of serving him body and mind — a mind held 
 forcibly to his level — Hester Thrale passed into the slippered 
 ease of reigning as Queen over inferiors, the relaxation was 
 too great for her calibre. It is generally only the finest 
 natures that are at their best when they are comfortable, 
 and Mrs. Thrale sober is better than Mrs. Thrale drunk — 
 as she was under the spell of her infatuation for the Italian 
 singer, the 4 Papist,' the ' foreigner,' whom she married in 
 the teeth of a hostility which was almost persecution.
 
 256 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi it is, not Mrs. Thrale, who is set before us in 
 this newly published correspondence with Penelope Penning- 
 ton (born Penelope Weston), ably furnished by Mr. Knapp 
 with introduction, notes, and portraits of distinction. The 
 correspondence began in 1788, not long after the ladies 
 made acquaintance and about four years later than the 
 marriage with Piozzi ; except for one long break, it con- 
 tinued with increasing intimacy until Mrs. Piozzi's death 
 in 1821. 
 
 It is not, therefore, the Mrs. Thrale of Boswell, or of John- 
 son's letters, or of her own sparkling letters to him, or Mrs. 
 Thrale as she saw herself in her Autobiography, that we 
 are now regarding, but a later edition ; a celebrity no longer 
 making her intellectual livelihood, but living upon a bequest ; 
 a confident success ; the lady of Mr. Mangin's Piozziana ; the 
 heroine of Bath and its literati. Bath was the deceptive 
 stage of all big things in miniature, where the audience most 
 easily confounded measurements and held little concerns 
 — themselves included — for big ones, and minnows for 
 Tritons ; the seat of learned frivolity and frivolous learning, 
 where it was easy for people to take themselves seriously 
 and to take that for seriousness. And with Bath, though 
 she did not live there altogether until after Piozzi's death, 
 his wife's fortunes were bound up. Her prestige there was 
 of no common sort, for, unlike that of so many of its stars, 
 it was not a local glory. She was a fixed planet in the 
 heaven of literature — acclaimed for her ' elegant genius,' 
 her wit and learning, by the choice spirits of her day. ' Her 
 conversation,' says Miss Seward, ' is indeed that bright 
 wine of the intellect which has no lees.' And nine hours 
 of that wine did ' the Swan ' enjoy in one day when the 
 Piozzis visited Lichfield. The Pope of literary ladies, 
 Hannah More, with her talent for success in this world and
 
 THE UNSELFISH EGOIST 257 
 
 the next, was Mrs. Piozzi's admirer; so was Mrs. Carter, 
 that solid store-cupboard full of scholarship and piety. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons gave her something like worship; Mrs. Montagu, 
 Miss Burney, Mrs. Garriek, the second marriage once an 
 established fact, hastened to acclaim her. In the cas< i f 
 men, the motives of adulation were more complicated ; 
 but every accessible author brought her incense — and his 
 manuscripts. ' We want,' she wrote, ' no flash, no flattery. 
 I never had more of either in my life, nor ever lived half so 
 happily.' And there was solid foundation for her popularity. 
 She answered the often tiring demands of friends and scrib- 
 blers ; she was as fond of women as of men ; she was loyal 
 and generous to them ; she was kind, she was disinterested. 
 Added to these moral qualities, she had an independent 
 mind, a real impersonal love and a remarkable knowledge 
 of literature, as her frequent apt quotations from Shake- 
 speare would suffice to attest. Her wit, acutest in her letters 
 to Johnson, remained alive in the notes to her autobio- 
 graphy, and in many of her pages to Mrs. Pennington, 
 though that copious correspondent, a clever goose who 
 pulled her fluent quills from her own breast, never drew 
 out the best from Mrs. Piozzi. And her life showed no 
 eye-opening discrepancy between precept and practice. 
 Hester Salusbury began her career as a spoilt child in the 
 house of her uncle, Sir Robert Cotton, and developed into 
 a youthful prodigy, trained in Latin and logic by her captive 
 tutor, Dr. Collier. Her mother persuaded her to accept 
 the wealthy brewer Mr. Thrale, whom she did not love and 
 who did not love her ; he married her, she said, because she 
 was the only woman of his choice who consented to live at 
 Southwark. He gave her literary society and Dr. Johnson, 
 but he gave her nothing of himself. He allowed her no 
 power, not even that of ordering dinner ; he never spoke 
 to her of his affairs, or drew closer to her through the care 
 of their twelve children, eight of whom, including both their 
 
 E
 
 258 NEW AND OLD 
 
 sons, died early. Yet when ruin threatened him she raised 
 the needful money to save the business ; she was an excellent 
 mother, an excellent wife. To Johnson she sacrificed her 
 time, her health, her habits. When the world libelled her 
 for her marriage with Piozzi, and her disagreeable daughters 
 made false accusations and turned their backs upon her, 
 she bore them no ill-will, and was reconciled directly they 
 desired it. And when ' Miss Thrale,' as she always called 
 the eldest — the ' Queenie ' of Johnson's affection — tried to 
 go to law to rob her of her inheritance, her only vengeance 
 was to present her with large sums of money. To Piozzi 
 she was a perfect companion, to his gout a faithful nurse, 
 and to the tenants on her Welsh estate the kindest of 
 patronesses. After his death she lavished a fortune on his 
 ungrateful nephew, was constant in beneficence and courage- 
 ous in difficulties. She died with dignity, surrounded at 
 the last by her money-seeking children. And her energy 
 was amazing : 
 
 Farewell, dear Friend [she wrote from Wales when nearly 
 sixty] . . • 'tis five in the morning, I was up at four, shall call 
 the men and maids at six, send away this scrawl at seven, jump 
 into the bath at eight, breakfast at nine, work at the book till 
 one, walk till three, have dined by four, fret over Gillon's dis- 
 patches and Piozzi's misery all the rest of the day ; a pretty 
 biographical sketch of your literally poor H. L. P. 
 
 Could there be a greater contrast to the letter Mrs. Carlyle 
 would have written in like domestic circumstances ? And 
 yet Jane Welsh's grumbles leave us inside — her sprightly 
 predecessor's letters outside — herself. Why does Mrs. 
 Piozzi's presence fail to inspire us with the sympathy that 
 her qualities seem to warrant ? 
 
 n 
 
 Does the answer he in the difference of century ? The 
 readers of Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett must feel leagues
 
 THE UNSELFISH EGOIST 259 
 
 away from the fashionable volume of 1786 so much vaunted 
 by Mrs. Pioz/i to Mrs. Pennington, Dr. Moore's Zeluco, the 
 aim of which was ' to trace the windings of \ ice, and delineate 
 the disgusting features of villany.' A day when tea — to 
 quote Mrs. Pennington — was called ' a fragrant libation,' 
 when ' professed infidels ' figured as the solid bogy of respect- 
 ability, when Miss Seward's suitor was mentioned as ' the 
 gentle Wickens,' and Mrs. Piozzi dwelt on ' the elegant 
 Eclipse of the Moon,' and seldom spoke of the sea but as 
 ' Old Neptune,' is not our day, — though perhaps gentility 
 and crudity, the love of dressing up and the cult of no 
 clothes, are nearer of kin than it might seem. Nor is the 
 hyperbole of the past much more exaggerative than the 
 bareness of the present. ' Glorious creature ! How she 
 writes ! ' Mrs. Piozzi exclaims about Hannah More ; and 
 ' Hannah More, Europe,' she says elsewhere, is sufficient 
 address. 
 
 It appears [she also writes to Mrs. Pennington] so strange 
 and so shocking to put up my letter without speaking of Miss 
 Seward that I can't bear it. . . . Her Mental and indeed her 
 Personal Charms, when I last saw them, united the three grand 
 Characteristics of Female Excellence to a very great Perfection : 
 I mean Majesty, Vivacity, and Sweetness. 
 
 But mutual admiration societies are not confined to the 
 eighteenth century. There is, said Dr. Johnson, ' a little 
 silkworm world round every individual ' ; and that silk- 
 worm world, if rather relaxing, provided these ladies with 
 the kind of excitement that gave life a motive-power and 
 kept them sweet. Their very follies served them. The 
 octogenarian Mrs. Piozzi fell maternally in love with a 
 young and third-rate actor, whom she took for a genius 
 and who made her the confidante of his love-affairs. The 
 imitative Mrs. Pennington followed suit, and at seventy 
 gave him a kiss ' as chaste as Dian ever gave,' which she
 
 260 NEW AND OLD 
 
 duly reports to her senior rival. The young man sensibly 
 escaped them, but he no more quarrelled with them than 
 we do. Their sentiment was an innocent extravagance put 
 on, as it were, from the outside, and innocuous to anything 
 deeper than their dignity. Yet two or three of Mrs. Piozzi's 
 letters concerning him bring us close to the real cause of 
 our coldness towards her. A phrase here and there reveals 
 that there was about her the Puss Victrix, who frisked after 
 reels of cotton long after the age of reels was past, and 
 even in the midst of those benevolent activities which gave 
 her more suitable occupation. 
 
 The fact is that Mrs. Piozzi was that baffling being, an 
 unselfish egoist, always doing for others, always thinking 
 of herself. And with emotion. She was in love with her- 
 self, and, like other lovers, saw the beloved as she desired 
 her to be. Human beings she viewed exclusively in their 
 relation to her ; she needed adoration, she was subject to 
 her adorers, whether to Dr. Johnson or to Piozzi ; but, given 
 the incense, she did not know the difference between them, 
 and when they did not offer it, she had no further use for 
 them — a fact which may account for her cold though generous 
 attitude towards her children after they outgrew her sway 
 and became, we cannot but surmise, irritated at her success 
 out of due season. This it was, also, which no doubt made 
 her unconsciously prefer a wide social career, touching many 
 people at surface points, to a more searching intimacy. 
 ' She always seemed to me kind and warm-hearted, but 
 with no deep sensibilities,' wrote Helen Williams, the Diarist 
 of the French Revolution. 
 
 Her delight in herself was certainly apt to make her rather 
 dense about humbler people — her dependants, or those 
 whom she conveniently dismissed as ' Rustics,' whose 
 admiration did not interest her. When she and Piozzi 
 restored the church on her Welsh estate and opened 
 ' our tiny temple,' she wrote a rather tactless hymn for
 
 THE UNSELFISH EGOIST 261 
 
 the occasion, which ' dear Piozzi set enchantingly to 
 
 music ' : 
 
 To unambitious efforts kind, 
 
 Pleased lie permits our rustic lays; 
 
 Our simple voices, unrefined, 
 
 Have leave to sing their Sariour's praise. 
 
 So it runs ; and the predestination of their voices must have 
 been rather depressing to the choir. 
 
 in 
 
 In one of her letters Mrs. Pennington ventures so far as 
 to compare herself — with strict reservations — to Ninon 
 de l'Enclos ; but neither she nor Mrs. Piozzi could have been 
 anything but English, far removed from their sisters of 
 France. It is just because they were so disinterested in 
 conversation that Frenchwomen achieved their social 
 supremacy. When Madame de Sevigne talked of herself, as 
 she did freely, it was because she had something she enjoyed 
 telling, and she spoke externally, as she would of another 
 person. And if we come to Mrs. Piozzi's contemporaries, 
 Madame du Deffand was athirst for love rather than for 
 admiration ; her vanity took the form of self-disgust, a form 
 which only sharpened her self-criticism ; while the vanity 
 which inspired women like Madame d'Epinay turned into the 
 fashionable sensibilite, a quality absurd enough, but not one 
 which ate deep into the soul like self-satisfaction. As for 
 Madame de Stael, she was frankly selfish and despotic, with 
 the ' noble air,' and yet immersed in subjects for their own 
 sake. There were other differences. Mrs. Piozzi had in- 
 fatuations rather than passions ; she was not, like so many 
 of these Frenchwomen, cleansed by fire. Nor was she 
 redeemed by failure. All her powers were available ; there 
 was nothing she could not get at ; no reserve, no shadow 
 of mystery to temper the daylight. Her waters ran wide,
 
 262 NEW AND OLD 
 
 not deep, and they were so lucid that every pebble was 
 visible. This kind of fluency robs her amusing utterances 
 on politics — and these letters are full of them — of any arrest- 
 ing force ; they make a pleasant trickle, but no more. 
 ' Piety and business,' she writes, concerning grief, ' will 
 effect in a month what the other two (talents and literature) 
 could not perform in a year.' The sentence only shows 
 that its author could not have been as literary as she seems. 
 No Frenchwoman would have been so little of an artist as 
 to write it. True Briton that she was, Mrs. Piozzi judged 
 literature by its usefulness — by the moral dividends that 
 it brought her. The moralising busy bee is, for good or 
 ill, confined to this island, unless we except Madame de 
 Genlis, whose precepts were so much ever-seasoned by her 
 practice. 
 
 But it was no doubt the buzz and the carefully manu- 
 factured honey that gained Mrs. Piozzi such prestige in her 
 generation. Neither as Mrs. Thrale nor later had she the 
 foibles easily found out — at least by men. Her vices 
 blossomed. Boswell lost his chance and proved his stupidity. 
 He never blamed her rightly ; only for such unimportant 
 things as Johnson condemned — her inaccuracies, her 
 exaggerations, and the like. Boswell's eyes were too much 
 coloured by jealousy to see the truth. Yet it could not 
 have been merely for her sprightliness and kind attentions 
 that Johnson loved her. His heart was too deep to live 
 closely for twenty years on such thin nourishment. His 
 need of love and of family life told for much. And he 
 depended on her tact, which smoothed his spirit. If she 
 had been there, he once told her, Richardson would not 
 have died : ' that fellow died merely for want of change 
 among his flatterers.' Her flattery was that of discern- 
 ment, which drew out what it flattered. And then, what- 
 ever her sentiments, she was evidently natural in her manners, 
 even to impulsiveness ; and Johnson prized naturalness —
 
 HANNAH MORE 
 
 it put him at his ease. The truth seems to be that while 
 he was with her he made her better than she was. 
 
 Never [she says of Dr. Collier, her tutor] have I failed 
 remembering him with a preference as completely distinct from 
 the venerating solicitude which hung heavily over my whole 
 soul whilst connected with Dr. Johnson, as it was from the 
 strong connubial duty that tied my every thought to Mr. 
 Thrale's interest, or from the fervid and attractive passion 
 which made twenty years passed in Piozzi's enchanting society 
 seem like a happy dream of twenty hours. 
 
 It was the venerating solicitude which did her good, because 
 it was ' venerating.' It produced her best, and the ' twenty 
 hours ' of enchantment probably produced her worst. (1913.) 
 
 HANNAH MORE 
 
 Hannah More. A Biographical Study. By Annette M. B. 
 Meakin. (Smith, Elder. 14s. net.) 
 
 When Hannah More was a little child, her favourite game 
 was to sit on a chair and pretend that she was riding in 
 her carriage to London to ' see Bishops and booksellers.' 
 She could not have invented a better epitome of her life. 
 Bishops adored her — she incited them to verse. Bishop 
 Lowth addressed lines Hanae Morae — Virgini piae, eleganti 
 ingenio, facundia el sapientia pariter illustri . . . ' Blow, 
 blow, my summer rose, for Hannah More will soon be here,' 
 so another sanguine divine urged on his rose-bush ; while 
 to Bishop Porteus of London she was a kind of Evangelical 
 Egeria, haunting the groves of Fulham Palace. It was the 
 same with her adversaries. The Vicar-General of the Pope 
 wrote at length to her, deploring her injustice towards the 
 Church of Rome. She replied at greater length, and, lo ! 
 he was a captive at her chariot wheels. ' Beyond every-
 
 264 NEW AND OLD 
 
 thing ' was the mildest phrase that any of them applied to 
 the least of her tracts or poems. And certainly her books 
 sold wonderfully. That brings us from the Bishops to the 
 booksellers. They adored her too — for financial reasons. 
 Her success in England and America was bewildering ; the 
 Rajah of Tan j ore said her tracts were the finest works he 
 had ever read ; the Cingalese natives acted her Sacred 
 Dramas in Cingalese ; Coelebs in Search of a Wife was 
 found in Iceland — and even there it must have made cold 
 reading ; while, as for the works of her mundane days, they 
 were almost treated like those of Shakespeare. When her 
 play of Percy was produced, Fox was in tears ; Lord Lyttel- 
 ton came to see it every night ; a certain great lady of 
 fashion would accept no invitations excepting on condi- 
 tion that she might break them to attend performances of 
 it ; Garrick also wept when he read it aloud, and so did 
 Hannah More when she heard him ; later Mrs. Siddons 
 played in it ; and, to crown all, ' the blood of the Percys,' 
 as she tells us, called in the name of the family to thank 
 her. The heroine was called Elwina, and she went mad : 
 not only in the English tongue was it known ; the drama 
 was acted at Vienna, it was translated into French, it 
 brought her the honour of becoming a member of the 
 Academie Francaise. 
 
 No less effective were her long romantic poems, ' Sir 
 Eldred of the Bower' and 'The Bleeding Rock.' They 
 caused many hearts to beat faster. Dr. Johnson was fond 
 of reading aloud ' Sir Eldred ' — after tea ; so was Garrick, 
 who was strongly affected by it. ' The Bleeding Rock ' was 
 compared to Parnassus by Mrs. Montagu, and exclaimed 
 over by Wits and Bluestockings. The same worldly success 
 followed her when she renounced the world. From the 
 days when Wesley reverenced her and Wilberforce chose 
 her as his helpmate, to those when she spurred on Macaulay 
 and presented Mr. Gladstone, aged six, with a copy of her
 
 HANNAH MORE 265 
 
 Sacred Dramas, she sat in the first place and no man could 
 have bidden her go up higher. Windsor was always en- 
 raptured by her, and, indeed, there was reason for enthu- 
 siasm. She did magnificent work, and she did it in spite 
 of bad health. Together with Raikcs she invented Sunday 
 schools ; she also (says Miss Meakin) invented tracts as a 
 form of literature ; she reformed Cheddar, which when she 
 came to it was little more than a den of vice and poverty 
 unspeakable. This was no easy task to achieve from Bristol, 
 especially when it involved tramps of ten miles round 
 Cheddar, from hostile squire to hostile farmer, to conquer 
 their pig-headed conviction that ' religion was bad for the 
 poor.' Not only here did she succeed, but also in her own 
 neighbourhood, where a district notorious for the many 
 criminals' it provided at the Assizes failed, after a few 
 years of her teaching, to produce one prisoner at the bar. 
 
 And yet, in spite of all, we never love her, we seldom like 
 her. Lifelong success, it is true, is not an endearing fact ; 
 but this in itself is not enough to account for our feeling. 
 It is distressing to have such admiration for the life and 
 such distaste for the liver. Yet we do not set out with this 
 sentiment. Few could help enjoying Hannah in her brilliant 
 youth — the witty Hannah who lived with the Garricks, and 
 rallied Horace Walpole, and delighted in reading Madame 
 de Sevigne, and herself wrote such shrewd and sparkling 
 letters and talked with so much pith and force. There must 
 have been something magnetic about the woman who was 
 Garrick's close friend, his ' dearest Nine,' and was no less 
 the favourite companion of his wife ; to whom Walpole 
 showed his finer side ; who was — chief of all her honours 
 — beloved of Samuel Johnson. For despite his reproof of 
 her flattery, of which too much has been made, Johnson 
 loved her and sought her companionship. He approved of 
 her. Her taste for piety had been known to bring the tears 
 to his eyes (it was when he found her reading Pascal, and
 
 266 NEW AND OLD 
 
 the tears, it must be owned, followed upon a scolding for 
 studying a Roman Catholic author) ; the shrewd sense that 
 she showed and the absence of all ' whining over meta- 
 physical distresses ' were to his liking. Perhaps he did 
 not admire her Muse quite as much as she thought, and 
 when he ' lamented that I had not married Chatterton, that 
 posterity might have seen a propagation of poets,' or said 
 to one who uttered the word poetry in her presence, ' Hush, 
 hush ; it is dangerous to say a word of poetry before her ; 
 it is talking of the art of war before Hannibal,' he knew 
 that she was impervious to irony. But these things were 
 after ' Sir Eldred.' Perhaps he had read it once too 
 often. 
 
 The speedy lapse of her literary reputation is most com- 
 prehensible. Such a fame could only have existed in an 
 age when people talked of geniuses and took eloquent 
 commonplaces for Jove's thunderbolts. ' How unequally 
 are talents distributed in this world,' wrote one of her 
 correspondents, ' that you should be able to write such 
 verses, knit such stockings, and make such aprons ! ' Not 
 only the verses but all the nineteen volumes of her works 
 are dead and buried — deeper than those possessed by Mr. 
 Birrell, who tells us that he dug a grave for them on the 
 East Coast — a funereal act for which, by the bye, Miss 
 Meakin bitterly reproaches him. She would have liked the 
 nineteen for the London Library, which does not own, it 
 appears, a complete set. The fact is that Miss More's success 
 was not really literary — it was social. It was her vigorous, 
 effectual, gifted nature, her easy efficiency in all she under- 
 took, her direct and epigrammatic tongue, her Reason and 
 Affability— all the brilliant outfit of a power-loving nature 
 bent upon pleasing — that gained her such a name among 
 men of books. Her qualities were just those to make good 
 letters — and she wrote them. By these letters, whether de- 
 scribing the world in which she lived, or Madame de Sevigne
 
 HANNAH MORE 267 
 
 and the art of letter- writing, or Garrick's funeral, or John- 
 son's last years with their ' mild radiancy of the setting 
 sun,' she should and will be remembered. She was also a 
 keen and omnivorous reader ; but she could not read for 
 the sake of reading— it had to be for a moral purpose, and 
 she condemned the author if she did not get what she wanted 
 from him. Gibbon's History was to her ' a fine but insidious 
 narrative of a dull period ' ; she attempted to make Boswcll 
 pare down Johnson into an example of Christian amenity, 
 which drew forth from Boswell a retort as rude as any from 
 his master. Her talent for morals kept her busy and 
 applauded in all departments of life. 
 
 It is the applause which brings us back to our problem. 
 Hannah More never could give up success, and that is one 
 of the reasons why we cannot w r hole-heartedly admire her. 
 What was called her conversion was a passing from one 
 sphere of success to another. There are tw r o kinds of con- 
 version, that which comes from conviction of sin and that 
 which comes from a love of influence. Hannah More's 
 conversion belonged to the second sort. She did not really 
 enjoy herself unless she was reforming somebody, nor did 
 she ever enjoy herself as thoroughly as when she had a 
 fashionable rake in hand. This thirst to regenerate was 
 the secret of her excitement over Horace Walpole ; it 
 was really a form of flirtation in Sunday dress, and safe 
 to pursue alike with rich and poor, with those in the cloth 
 and those out of it. Her renunciation of her dramatic 
 success at its height was certainly a fine action ; but it 
 must at the same time be remembered that she was forty 
 or more when she made it, that she knew her success must 
 wane, that she transferred her gifts to a region better suited 
 to middle age, that she made her sacrifices full in the market- 
 place, and continued to live in comfort. She could not 
 always afford to be sincere with herself. Ever} 7 party, for 
 instance, to which she w r ent in middle life was denounced
 
 268 NEW AND OLD 
 
 by her for its banality, its rouge, its lack of real conversa- 
 tion ; each one was to be her last. But as long as oppor- 
 tunity offered she never gave up attending them, becomingly 
 attired, with fresh denunciations upon her lips. She was, 
 to say truth, generally dull when she found no sin to observe ; 
 and it is difficult to think of her as happy in heaven with 
 her occupation gone. No one can contradict Mr. Birrell 
 when he says she was self-satisfied ; she was only technically 
 humble, and perhaps no one has forgiven her enemies with 
 louder noise of artillery. What salvos of pardon were let 
 off over the head of that spoilt child of the Bluestockings, 
 ' the Poetic Milkwoman,' who, drawn from her right sphere 
 by Hannah, became demoralised and turned upon her 
 benefactress ! But the benefactress merely retorted with 
 a renewal of good deeds, taking care to mention them in 
 her letters to Walpole. In all this Pharisaism we cannot 
 help suspecting that Hannah More had only benevolence 
 where she should have had a heart. She was the feminine 
 of Godwin — a Low Church Godwin. Could she otherwise 
 have invented the cold-blooded search of Coelebs for a 
 wife ? And had she really felt, could she have written as 
 she did when Horace Walpole died ? ' Twenty years' 
 unclouded kindness and pleasant correspondence,' she says, 
 ' cannot be given up without emotion. I am not sorry now 
 that I never flinched from any of his ridicule or attacks, 
 or suffered them to pass without rebuke.' 
 
 Hannah More's piety was eighteenth-century rationalistic 
 piety. Dr. Warburton could not have said of it, as he did 
 of Bohmen's works, that they ' would disgrace Bedlam at 
 full moon.' Mysticism was double Dutch to Hannah. 
 Her present biographer, however, would not agree with 
 this. She makes her one of a trio together with St. Augus- 
 tine and Tolstoi. Yet we cannot picture either of these 
 two great men as quite at his ease at Cowslip Green. 
 Miss Meakin is a hero-worshipper. It is perhaps the best
 
 THE AGE OF LOUIS XV 2fi9 
 
 compliment to her that she makes us think so much of her 
 subject as to forget her own part in it. She has read and 
 chosen so well, put together so good a picture of the times, 
 and so wisely let her actors speak for themselves that we 
 should like to add that she is a good writer. Only she is 
 not. What we want is ease of style, not familiarity. She 
 should not call Cowper ' poor fellow,' or imagine what 
 Macaulay and Hannah would have been like as man and 
 wife. Nor should she allude to Lady Knutsford as the 
 great-granddaughter of Zachary Macaulay, when she was 
 his granddaughter. That lady's father was Sir Charles, 
 not Sir George, Trevelyan ; and Bentley should not be 
 substituted for Bentham on page 288. And she should 
 not write a sentence such as this one : ' Hannah More was 
 of the opinion that it was a very good thing for young 
 girls to read Shakspeare (selected).' We doubt whether 
 Shakespeare would have recommended young girls to read 
 the works of Hannah More (even selected). (1911.) 
 
 THE AGE OF LOUIS XV 
 
 Journals and Memoirs of the Marquis d'Argenson. Pub- 
 lished from the autograph MSS. in the Library of the 
 Louvre, by E. J. B. Ratherv, with an introduction by 
 C. A. Sainte-Beuve. Translated by Katharine Prescott 
 Wormeley. (Heinemann. £2, 2s. net.) 
 
 ' Heart excellent, mind less good than the heart ; the tongue 
 worst of all ; but, as for the latter, it is only a habit. My 
 sister, more than my brother or myself, is made in that 
 way.' Such is the Marquis d'Argenson's account of his 
 family. His sister's journals would have been spicy read- 
 ing, but, in their absence, his own give us food enough for 
 meditation. They are the story of the first three-quarters 
 of Louis xv.'s reign, and French history can hardly show a
 
 270 NEW AND OLD 
 
 more shameless period. Those years are practically the 
 first chapter — the childhood, as it were — of the monstrous 
 French Revolution, and d'Argenson was always predict- 
 ing it. He records the fierce struggle between Crown and 
 Law about the power of the Clergy; the twelve months' 
 strike of Parliament, during which time it refused to register 
 the Royal decrees ; the dignified behaviour of its members, 
 who abstained all that year from appearing in the theatres, 
 as a sign of public mourning ; the almost equally long strike 
 of the Courts of Justice, so that the overcrowded prisons 
 engendered an epidemic of the plague ; the final victory 
 and reinstatement of Parliament ; the inarticulate groans 
 of the half-conscious country-people and of the more wide- 
 awake Faubourg Saint-Antoine, even then a dangerous 
 district, because it was the resort of ' small workmen ' who 
 ' belonged to no association.' Or there was the combat 
 between the Jesuits, backed by the Court, and the Jansenists, 
 backed by the nation ; not a sincere religious quarrel, as it 
 was in the earnest days of Port Royal, but a venomous per- 
 sonal cabal full of clerical animosity. The Jesuits played 
 the worst part ; but Pascal and the great Arnauld would 
 have shuddered at the Jansenists of Louis xv.'s reign. The 
 Grand Style had disappeared from religion as well as from 
 manners. 
 
 It was necessary for the indolent King to give himself 
 over to the influence of some one who would govern for him. 
 The State was ruled first by the shifty Cardinal de Fleury, 
 who played the tyrant for seventeen years ; then by Madame 
 de Pompadour, who killed political life by her intrigues, 
 and commerce by her demand for luxury. There was no 
 more wheat in the country ; foreign grain was exorbitant 
 in price ; the peasants were eating grass — and the fact, 
 so well known through Carlyle, gets new force when we 
 read it as the news of the day fresh from M. d'Argenson's 
 observation. The peasants refused to marry because they
 
 THE AGE OF LOUIS XV 271 
 
 would not bring into being creatures as miserable as them- 
 selves. Trade had stopped and silk-weavers had to be 
 kept in the kingdom by force. The vintage was ruined by 
 devouring hares — the result of the extension of the nobles' 
 game-preserves. ' The distance,' says d'Argenson, ' between 
 the capital and the provinces seems to increase daily ; all 
 goes to the first, nothing returns to the second.' There was 
 no money but in Paris, and there, when the King drove 
 through the streets, the people pressed round the carriage 
 and cried, ' Misery ! misery ! Bread ! bread ! ' instead 
 of ' Vive le Roi ! ' The wages of the royal servants had not 
 been paid for three years, the grooms went out a-begging, 
 and there came a moment when the coachman would not 
 drive his monarch. Yet when there was an attempt upon 
 his life all that the Bien-Aime asked was what harm he 
 had done his subjects. The handwriting was clear upon 
 the wall, but the King could not read it. He spent 
 £2,720,000 in pocket-money, and one of Madame de Pompa- 
 dour's dresses cost £900. 
 
 The Marquis d'Argenson came of a political family. His 
 father was a high official, his brother, the Count d'Argenson, 
 one of the most important of the Court Ministers and one 
 of its most successful worldlings. His son was as prominent 
 and more knavish. He himself remained consistently 
 honest, as Intendant, as Councillor, as Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs ; and the consequence was that he was quickly dis- 
 missed after two years of office. On every public question 
 he showed himself a constitutional aristocrat. He would 
 have called himself a democrat, for he advocated a limited 
 democracy. Lafayette would have loved him ; de Tocque- 
 ville would have found much to say to him. The Due de 
 Richelieu called him ' the Secretary of State of the Republic 
 of Plato.' But, for all that, he was an aristocrate malgre lui, 
 and he clung to the romance of a Monarchy in France. 
 For Italy he wanted a Federal Republic ; he was ever an
 
 272 NEW AND OLD 
 
 enthusiast for tolerance and enlightenment ; he hated the 
 English and admired their methods. On all points he had 
 that inspired common sense which often distinguishes 
 Frenchmen and makes them see far, if not always deep, into 
 things. He knew that politics, to be fine, must be based 
 on regulated enthusiasm, and that when they are founded 
 on animosity they are bound to grow rotten at the core. 
 He knew, also, that France has too often blundered through 
 confounding government and administration. The French 
 are excellent administrators — connoisseurs of detail — but 
 bad governors, and incapable of measuring big issues. It is 
 this absence of large ideas on which d'Argenson constantly 
 dwells as a main cause of the evils that he witnessed, and 
 he thought that they might have been remedied by the 
 creation of a Prime Minister who would have overruled 
 the Court factions. He had the greatest admiration for 
 Sir Robert Walpole, who ' has to manage the smallest little 
 King's mind that ever was known.' He ' never seems busy 
 yet he guides all . . . knowing well the middle course 
 between authority and persuasion.' 
 
 Meanwhile, in default of a French Walpole, Madame de 
 Pompadour acted as Prime Minister. She was called ' the 
 second Cardinal,' and she was hated even more than the 
 Cardinal had been. The only one of Louis xv.'s mistresses 
 who had political importance, she kept her power over him 
 for a surprising length of time. Like all lazy people he 
 was the creature of habit, and long after love was over 
 between them she continued to play the part of his plebeian 
 Egeria and welcomed all things, even the presence of her 
 supplanters at Court, in order to keep the reins in her hands. 
 She was as ambitious as Madame de Maintenon and better 
 tempered than the Montespan ; but she was cruel and 
 ignorant, with the cruelty and ignorance of the parvenue 
 who shuts her ears against the misery of the class from which 
 she has risen. Sometimes she did good by accident, as
 
 THE AGE OF LOUIS XV 278 
 
 when she espoused the cause of Jansenism because the 
 Queen loved the Jesuits. D'Argenson compares her to 
 Anne Boleyn, the Protestant influence in Henry viii.'s 
 Court, but the Englishwoman's religion was less of a cabal 
 than the Frenchwoman's. We may trust d'Argenson's 
 portrait of her, for in all his character-studies — and he gives 
 us many — we find the same subtle penetration and impartial 
 shrewdness. Of the Queen, Marie Leczinska, he gives us a 
 curious impression, very different from that of the pathetic 
 little saint to which the sentimental Saint-Amand has 
 accustomed us. D'Argenson's Queen is a sour, bigoted 
 Spanish woman, who thought it behoved her to assume a 
 haughty air with the King, and never tried to attract him. 
 Mesdames, her daughters, were more interesting. There 
 was the sweet Princess Henriette, who fell in love with 
 the Due de Chartres and died of a broken heart because, 
 separated from her, he made an unhappy marriage ; and the 
 eccentric Madame Adelaide, who behaved like a despotic 
 man, but, for all that, sent little letters to one of her father's 
 guards ; and the timid Madame Sophie, who could only be 
 polite in a thunderstorm — from terror ; and Mesdames 
 Victoire and Louise, of whom there is less to say. These 
 poor ladies and the Dauphin fell into a morbid melancholy, 
 caused by the state of things at Court. 'They dislike seeing 
 any one,' writes d'Argenson, ' and never speak to others ; 
 their talk is of death and catafalques ; they amuse them- 
 selves by playing quadrille in their dark ante-chamber by 
 the light of one yellow wax candle and saying to one another 
 with delight, " We are dead." ' As for the Queen, she went 
 • at all hours to see " la Belle Mignonne," ' that is to say, a 
 death's-head. ' She declares that it is that of Mademoiselle 
 Ninon de l'Enclos. Several of the Court ladies who affect 
 devotion . . . decorate skulls with ribbons and head-dresses ; 
 they illuminate them with little lamps and meditate before 
 them.' The decadent are much alike in all ages. It is far 
 
 s
 
 274 NEW AND OLD 
 
 more pleasing to turn to the portrait of the Young Pretender, 
 the brilliant, erratic gallant, who loved Paris so dearly that 
 Louis xv. had to arrest and deport him in order to make 
 him leave it in accordance with the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 which forbade France to harbour him. Even then he fell 
 ill at Fontainebleau and returned to consciousness with 
 ' Paris or Paradise ! ' on his lips. 
 
 D'Argenson, as the translator of these memoirs points 
 out, had no feeling for art, nor was he a man of letters. 
 He read books to get ideas ; his criticism is generally moral 
 criticism, and he had little sense of literature. Perhaps 
 this accounts for his meagre allusions to his great contem- 
 poraries. 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau, of Geneva, an agree- 
 able author, but piquing himself on philosophy,' does not 
 seem to posterity an adequate description of Jean-Jacques. 
 Diderot he regarded as a dangerous little pamphleteer. 
 Voltaire he admired, but rather as a thinker than an author. 
 Voltaire, on the other hand, told him that he wrote like 
 Madame de Sevigne and ended his note with ' I adore you.' 
 D'Argenson's style is grave and intellectual, not brilliant. 
 His occasional witticisms and good stories flash forth the 
 more clearly for their sober background. Miss Wormeley 
 has entered into his mind and knows well how to render his 
 language. But why, may we ask, does so good a trans- 
 lator make such obvious mistakes in English as to write 
 ' relay him,' ' inspired into,' ' medium ' for ' moderate,' and 
 ' buckle down ' for ' knuckle under ' ? These little faults 
 are worth correcting. Sainte-Beuve's introduction to the 
 memoirs, here given us in English, needs no further comment 
 than that it is his ; while the many portraits in the book 
 add charm to its store of information. (1902.)
 
 MADAME DUDEFF AND: HORACE WALPOLE 275 
 
 MADAME DU DEFFAND AND HORACE 
 
 WALPOLE 
 
 Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand a Horace Walpole. 
 Mrs. Paget Tovnbee. Three volumes. (Methuen. 63s. net.) 
 
 The appearance of these letters from Madame du Deffand to 
 Horace Walpole is an event ; for instead of the 353 letters 
 which have hitherto stood as the sum-.total left — and only 
 52 of them complete — we have before us three thick 
 volumes, containing 838 letters, and all but six of them are 
 perfect. Of these, 485 have never seen light, besides ten 
 more from Madame du Deffand's secretary, Wiart, written 
 during her last illness and afterwards. Their discovery 
 was a thrilling adventure, which for once fell to the right 
 person. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, whose death has left a sad 
 blank in the world of literary scholarship, was making 
 researches for her recent edition of Horace Walpole's 
 correspondence among the manuscripts in Mr. Parker 
 Jervis's collection in Staffordshire, when she came upon 
 these precious bundles, unknown to their owner, tied together 
 anyhow, and long forgotten. Yet there is no mystery 
 about the story of the letters. Miss Berry, Walpole's 
 literary executrix, first published 52 in entirety and 296 
 in part in her edition of 1810. Prudence, she thought, 
 forbade her to print more. It was followed by French 
 editions, based upon it, but sadly garbled, in 1811, 1812, 
 1S24, and 1827. After that there was no fresh edition till, 
 in 1859, the Marquis de St. Aulaire produced one with five 
 new letters, given him by Miss Berry, who, he said, had 
 assured him that all the rest were destroyed. But he must 
 have blundered, for Miss Berry tells us in her journal that 
 they were safely stowed in their original box at Strawberry
 
 276 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Hill. And there they remained till the seventh Count 
 Waldegrave sold them to Mr. Dyce Sombre. It was at 
 his death, in 1851, that they passed to Mr. Parker Jervis. 
 A peculiarly discreet providence hid them till Mrs. Toynbee 
 found them. Her notes and prefaces alone make a portrait 
 gallery of eighteenth-century Paris, and, fortunately, she 
 lived to finish the edition, or nearly so. The little which 
 remained to do has been done as she would have had it 
 done by her husband. 
 
 We most of us know that Madame du Deff and was blind and 
 bitter ; that she wrote to Voltaire and entertained Gibbon ; 
 that she turned Mile, de Lespinasse, her ' companion,' out 
 of doors for stealing her salon behind her back ; that, at 
 sixty-eight, she met Horace Walpole, fell in love with him 
 with a kind of amour de la tete, and, though she saw him only 
 at intervals of several years, continued to write to him till 
 her death in 1780. But it is her self and not her story which 
 is the interesting part of her, and her self stands revealed 
 in these letters of an old woman who could not feel old and 
 spent her age in all the discomfort of rowing against the 
 tide. Apart from her wit, this self-will always keeps her 
 letters fresh, in spite of the established place that they fill 
 on the shelf of eighteenth-century classics. They are almost 
 as well known, though not as well loved, as the letters of 
 Madame de Sevigne, that dead rival in the art of correspond- 
 ence and in the literary affections of Horace Walpole of whom 
 Madame du Deff and was so consistently jealous. Superficially 
 the two great ladies were the exact opposite of one another, 
 but deeper down Madame du Deffand had many points 
 in common with the ' Sainte de Livry,' as she called her, in 
 genuine admiration, but without much honey on her lips. 
 Both were Frenchwomen first and women afterwards ; 
 sincere, terre a terre, sceptical philosophers, with vivid per- 
 ceptions instead of imaginations, and wits delicately 
 sharpened — mother- wits, not wits cleverly cultivated ;
 
 MADAME DU DEFFAND: HORACE WALPOLE 277 
 
 with incredible quickness and powers of expression — the 
 complete equipment of the true critic, in whom appreciation 
 comes first. To both it was natural to live in the moment, 
 Madame de Sevigne with enjoyment, Madame du Deffand 
 with endurance, and the word k beyond ' hardly existed for 
 them. Both, too, were cynics of the most impregnable 
 kind — born, not made ; seeing things as they are, not as 
 they might be ; only Madame de Sevigne was a sunny cynic, 
 and Madame du Deffand a complaining one. Ideas and 
 poetry existed for neither, except as matter for criticism. 
 When Madame de Sevigne wished to swallow Nicole's theo- 
 logical work in one concentrated bouillon and glowed over 
 contemporary sermons, we suspect it was more for their style 
 than, as she thought, for their religion ; while the more low- 
 spirited Madame du Deffand made no such confusion, and, 
 belonging to an age which was frankly irreligious, she found 
 no difficulty in proclaiming that style it was which always 
 attracted her. And both were epitomes of their centuries — 
 Madame de Sevigne of the great age of Louis xiv., built on a 
 generous scale, rich in experience, warm-blooded, dramatic, 
 full of contrasts ; an age which was officially licentious and 
 rigidly formal, which could at any moment produce a 
 splendid saint from a splendid sinner. Literature, the 
 Church, crime, everything, even the basest Court intrigue, 
 was full of life. No one was tired, and the least tired person 
 in the world was Madame de Sevigne. It was her glory that 
 she happened herself to be an honndte femme ; her moral 
 judgments were as lax and gay as her generation. As for 
 her faults, they were of her temperament — summer faults, 
 born and bred of the sun. Madame du Deffand, for her part, 
 was born cold and tired, of a cold and tired time, with gaps 
 in her nature which were less human than sins. Louis xv. 
 was no Roi Soleil, and there was little fertilising power in 
 the atmosphere which surrounded her youth — no big, living 
 tradition of art, religion, goodness, or badness. There were
 
 278 NEW AND OLD 
 
 immense wealth, corruption, vulgarity, cabal unredeemed 
 by excitement, and gallantry without passion ; there was 
 pleasure grown mortally old ; in short, satiety, with all 
 its devices to fillip jaded appetites. And if there was no 
 great art or literature, there was society ; there were over- 
 sharpened intelligence and susceptibility, unflagging good 
 talk ; while, instead of the philosophy of thought, there was 
 the other lower 'philosophy,' which made a system of natural 
 instinct and took the dry light of concrete knowledge for 
 the dayspring. The fine flower of this decadence was the 
 Encyclopedic ; the issue was the French Revolution. 
 
 Into this sphere of satiety and brilliance stepped, born 
 in 1697, Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, born too clever to take 
 herself or others seriously, too clever not to see through her 
 clever world ; too deficient in kindness to forgive it, or do 
 more than despise it ; too much of it to do without it ; too 
 spiritually blind to find refuge or rudder ; incapable of 
 living alone ; too sensitive to bear close companionship. 
 This lonely, dependent woman believed that she lived by 
 the heart, and spent her whole life searching for one — for 
 really it was intellectual stimulus she sought to cheer her ; 
 and this was especially so later on, when she lived in that 
 famous tonneau of hers, the armchair in which, a rebel 
 Diogene, she sat, year in, year out, increasingly blind and 
 helpless, unpicking old materials which could be made into 
 suits for her friends. A rebel she always was. When she 
 was a little girl at school in a convent, she proclaimed such 
 obstinate heresies that her aunt, the Duchesse de Luynes, 
 sent Massillon himself to bring her back to the fold. The 
 black lambkin owned herself to have been impressed, not 
 by his arguments, but ' by the importance of the arguer ' ; 
 and Massillon was in much the same case. All he said when 
 he came away defeated was, ' Mais qu'elle est jolie ! ' For 
 her the season of youth was soon over. At twenty she 
 made the usual manage de convenance with the Marquis du
 
 MADAME DU DEFFAND: HORACE WALPOLE 279 
 
 Deffand, but he bored her at once and she left him as soon 
 as she could. Her fortnight of intimacy with the Regent 
 was probably the pretext of her separation from her husband. 
 It was followed by other transitory gallantries, and then she 
 got weary of them. The dust remained in her mouth ; but, 
 though she was never honnctefemme, she developed her own 
 sort of honour and settled into a kind of immoral respecta- 
 bility. Her connection with the President Henault, which 
 began when she was thirty-three, lasted for forty years ; and 
 however cold-blooded her manner of writing of his decrepi- 
 tude, her conduct showed disinterested devotion and, if not 
 loyalty, at least fidelity. She hated suffering, yet she sat 
 daily by the doting old man's bedside ; nor did she grow 
 impatient with the gradually deepening melancholy of her 
 other old habitue, Pont de Veylc. ' Pont de Vcyle,' she 
 said to him one day towards the close of: his life, ' . . . where 
 are you ? ' ' Madame, in your chimney-corner.' ' Your 
 feet on the fender, as you should have them in an old friend's 
 house ? ' ' Yes, Madame.' ' It must be owned that there 
 are few connections as long as ours ; . . . fifty years, isn't 
 it ? ' ' Fifty years and more.' ' And not one little cloud 
 the whole time, not the semblance of a huff ? ' ' That has 
 always been my pride.' ' But, Pont de Veyle, don't you 
 think that may be because at bottom we have always been 
 very indifferent to one another ? ' ' That is very likely, 
 Madame.' And yet this was the woman who wrote 
 ' J'aime l'amitie a la folic.' One cannot but wonder whether 
 it is permissible to lead a purely personal life without a 
 heart, or to regard friendship as an investment which should 
 bring you in regular dividends of intellectual or emotional 
 distraction. If life were moral and one wanted a proof of 
 the folly of confounding pleasure and happiness, one would 
 find it in this unhappy old lady. Pleasure was needful to 
 her ; but it is those to whom the world is necessary who 
 find it most hollow ; and it was just when she was perish-
 
 280 NEW AND OLD 
 
 ing of ennui, when Pont de Veyle had died and Henault 
 was in his second childhood, that Horace Walpole appeared 
 on the scene. 
 
 She was sixty-eight and he was fifty-two. It is difficult 
 to account for the excessive fascination that he had for her, 
 or to gauge the secret of his influence. There is a partial 
 explanation in the fact that, strange though it may seem, 
 no first-rate man had ever been her friend or even dominated 
 her salon. Madame Geoffrin had had Fontenelle and Montes- 
 quieu ; Madame d'Epinay, Rousseau ; Madame Necker, 
 Gibbon. Madame du Deffand received all the stars, but had 
 only second-rate men for devotees. It may have been her 
 self-centred view of life and her bitter tongue which kept 
 sensitive authors and the best talkers from intimacy. And 
 then Horace Walpole, though not first-rate or weighty, was 
 effective. He had a good deal of French elegance and 
 quickness, of English phlegm and reserve. To the French 
 he figured as the Englishman, to the English as a French- 
 man. And the Englishman and the Frenchwoman had the 
 same kind of worldliness. Like her, Walpole would have 
 said, ' Les gens du monde, quelque peu estimables qu'ils 
 soient, sont toujours plus amusants que d'autres.' Like 
 her, too, he could have written, ' Je crains tout ce qui 
 m'attriste.' Their attachment grew 7 rapidly and unequally. 
 He wanted amusement and got it ; she wanted emotion 
 and did not get it. Already in the first year of their acquaint- 
 ance, ' Je dirai sans fatuite,' she wrote, ' que si Ton avait 
 autant de discernement que moi, vous seriez le premier 
 homme, non seulement de FAngleterre, mais de l'univers.' 
 And later : ' J'ai une sorte de crainte et de respect pour 
 vous qui produit de tres-bons effets, et vous rendez mon 
 couchant bien plus beau et plus heureux que n'a ete mon 
 midi et mon levant.' The sunset was not fine for long. He 
 had more than the average Englishman's horror of being 
 absurd. His answers become a tissue first of cautious and
 
 AT A DAME DU DEFFAND: HORACE WALPOLE 281 
 
 then of insulting scoldings ; she is not to call him ' my 
 guardian,' or to say that she loves him, or to mention the 
 word ' friendship,' or to press him to write oftener. If 
 she does, he will break off their intercourse. Their letters 
 will be opened in the post — he is stalked by fear. And she 
 repents abjectly, implores him not to call her ' Madame,' 
 rejoices when he calls her ' ma petite.' Her occasional 
 flashes of temper die down in submission ; and for tins we 
 may be thankful, for he compels her to drop emotion and 
 write him letters on other topics than themselves ; and 
 gradually, especially towards her end, the storms subside. 
 For the most part, we can judge of his letters only by her 
 answers, as, at his urgent request, she burned those written 
 up to the year 1778. After her death the rest were sent 
 to him — indeed, his determination to get them back seemed 
 his chief thought while she lay dying. He kept them during 
 his lifetime — they were extant in 1S70 — and it was evidently 
 Miss Berry who destroyed them. By a lucky accident a 
 few escaped, eighteen in all (some incomplete) : and of 
 these nine whole ones and two fragments are here published 
 for the first time. Fear generally falls over its own feet. 
 In spite of his precautions, one of the number, a drastic 
 scolding for her excessive friendship, throws more light upon 
 their relationship than any word of hers. But he was so 
 nervous of her eloquence that though, as a literary con- 
 noisseur, he kept her letters and probably had meant to 
 publish a chosen few, he freely used penknife and scissors 
 and mutilated them as he pleased. His own, in spite of 
 her enthusiasm, are not good samples of his style. Even 
 she rallies him on his bad French ; he is hampered by a 
 language not his own and by his resolution to shine in it. 
 He is always rather apt to think more of the way in which 
 he says a thing than of the thing he has to say, and to make 
 copy out of life ; but this is what rendered his company 
 easy for exhausted nerves, and it must be owned, too, that
 
 282 NEW AND OLD 
 
 many a diamond, spiritually speaking, shines among his 
 eighteenth-century shirt-frills. 
 
 It is curious to find how one's own feeling changes as one 
 reads on in these volumes. At the outset our sympathy is 
 with the pursued, the pursuer seems absurd and undignified ; 
 but in the end the balance of dignity lies with her and it 
 is the pursued who seems ridiculous. She gave her best, 
 not caring what men said of her, while he spent his time 
 starting at shadows and trembling before public opinion. 
 She must have been terribly trying and hyper-sensitive, 
 but he should have found some more generous way of 
 rejecting her, and it was hardly fair to live on her mind and 
 to refuse all costs. Then, too, our sympathies are naturally 
 with the person who suffers most. Madame du Deffand's 
 moments were agreeable, her days were miserable ; her 
 indifference made her unhappy. Horace Walpole knew 
 nothing but the moment, and enjoyed his indifference ; he 
 was the typical dilettante of his period. Their real bond 
 was their good taste, and it probably impoverished their 
 relationship more than any of their differences. They 
 were tied together by their dislikes — a corrosive kind of 
 harmony ; but her unkindness bites deeper into life than 
 his nibbling ill-nature ; and, though hers is not a cri du cceur, 
 it is at least a cri de la ttte. The letters are, however, not 
 all bitter or quarrelsome. He is sometimes laudatory and 
 benevolent, and constantly considerate ; he watches over 
 her symptoms, directs her diet ; in spite of her dislike of 
 presents, they exchange books and exquisite bibelots. And 
 her accounts of her swirling, sparkling world, with its 
 tangle of suppers and politics, Boufflers, Luxembourgs, and 
 Mirepoix, often amuse without stinging, especially when 
 she touches upon the young Duehesse de Choiseul, her 
 grand? maman, the only person besides Walpole she really 
 cared for. Like all true cynics, she loved her dog, and her 
 pictures of ' Toutou ' have the fragile charm of a Fragonard.
 
 MADAME DU DEEFAND: HORACE WALPOLE 283 
 
 So has her description of the dressing of a doll for a gruid 
 little Mademoiselle in a convent. ' Son trousseau est immerse ' 
 (it was bought by Madame de Narbonne, and Choiseul, the 
 First Minister, gave it a gold and enamel watch) — ' cela 
 sera etale lundi sur une grande table, la poupee au milieu 
 assise dans son fautcuil.' 
 
 The woman to whom ' it seemed impossible not to doubt 
 of everything ' took to dolls in her most jaded hours : at 
 better moments, to books and conversation. To conversa- 
 tion rather than to books ; books, she said, ' forced you to 
 listen to them,' and in conversation ' you could be absent- 
 minded, nor need you talk long on the same subject.' She 
 grew disgusted with books, she tells us, yet she ' never left 
 off reading.' Her tastes in literature were as personal as 
 her views of life. She was, she writes, like the gentleman 
 who said, ' Je ne m'interesse qu'aux choses qui me regardent.' 
 She hated histories in which one ' only saw kings and generals 
 at the head of their armies,' by authors who ' spoke from 
 the pulpit ' and ' were delighted with the beauty of their 
 own style ' ; she could not bear to hear the crusades or 
 ' anything like them ' mentioned ; she disliked any wonder 
 which was given out as true or admirable ; she ' loved the 
 Arabian Nights and fairy stories and some novels — chiefly 
 English novels.' ' J'y trouve des longueurs et des choses 
 degoutantes, mais une verite dans les caracteres . . . qui 
 me fait demeler dans moi-meme mille nuances que 
 je ne connais pas. Pourquoi les sentiments naturels ne 
 seraient-ils pas vulgaires ? ' She found Tom Jones ' d'une 
 verite infinie,' and she liked the fine shades of common 
 feelings in Richardson. She could read Gil Bias for ever, 
 because ' la facilite du style est ce qui fait le charme de 
 tout ouvrage et le fait passer a la posterite ; il n'y a que les 
 livres facilement ecrits qu'on peut relire plus d'une fois. 
 Temoin les lettres de Madame de Sevigne.' ' J'aime tous les 
 details domestiques — j'aime les lettres de Racine par ce
 
 284 NEW AND OLD 
 
 qu'elles en sont pleines. . . . Dans les lettres de Madame de 
 Sevigne c'est un des articles qui me plait le plus.' Madame du 
 Deffand was haunted by Madame de Sevigne. She compares 
 that lady's love for her daughter to her own love for Walpole ; 
 she rather acidly proclaims her own inferiority in tender- 
 ness, and by ' cent mille lieues ' in grace and wit. ' Son 
 esprit n'etait que passion, imagination et sentiment ; elle 
 ne voyait rien avec indifference et peignait les amours de 
 sa jardiniere avec la meme chaleur qu'elle aurait peint celles 
 de Cleopatre.' Her comparison of Madame de Sevigne with 
 Madame de Maintenon is a masterpiece of quickness and sim- 
 plicity : ' Je persiste a trouver que cette femme n'etait 
 point fausse, mais elle etait seche, austere, insensible, sans 
 passion. . . . Ses lettres reflechies . . . d'un style fort simple ' ; 
 while in those of Madame de Sevigne, ' Tout est passion, 
 tout est en action . . . elle prend part a tout, tout l'affecte, 
 tout l'interesse : Madame de Maintenon, tout au contraire, 
 raconte les plus grands evenements, oil elle jouait un role, 
 avec le plus parfait sang-froid. On voit qu'elle n'aimait 
 ni le Roi, ni ses amis, ni ses parents, ni meme sa place. 
 Sans sentiment, sans imagination, elle connait la valeur 
 intrinsique de toutes choses, elle s'ennuie de la vie.' 
 
 The sins that Madame du Deffand never forgave were sins 
 of taste. She liked modesty as much as she despised humility. 
 ' Son esprit,' she wrote of a friend, ' est un grand instru- 
 ment qu'elle accorde toujours et dont elle ne joue jamais.' 
 As for false modesty, ' c'est de tous les genres de gloriole 
 celle qui me choque le plus ; j'aime mieux l'orgueil a decou- 
 vert que celui qui a le masque de la modestie.' The moral 
 efforts of others fatigued her. ' Nous croyons toujours plus 
 valoir par les qualites que nous acquerons que par celles 
 qui nous sont naturelles, et nous leur donnons du prix a 
 proportion de ce qu'elles nous coutent.' Yet often she 
 wearied of her own cleverness and would have been glad 
 to see less clearly. ' Trop de penetration nuit quelquefois ;
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE 285 
 
 il y a du danger a trop approfondir ; il faut le plus souvent 
 s'en tenir aux surfaces, et se contentcr d'y conformer les 
 siennes.' Unfortunately, she had no means of knowing that 
 it was more insight and not less that she needed. Madame 
 du Deffand's chief consolation in her unhappiness was to 
 remind herself that she was not married to M. de Jonzac. 
 It was a negative consolation, and we feel that, except her 
 wit, all the good points in her life were negative. Her best 
 quality, perhaps, was her inability to be glib. When we 
 put down her Letters we feel that they are rather inhuman, 
 and full of intimations of mortality. But they are not the 
 first proof the world has had of the gulf that lies between 
 the word ' mortal ' and the word ' human.' Madame du 
 Deffand's correspondence will always be read as wit, litera- 
 ture, character-study ; but the best letters — those of Swift, 
 Cowper, Lamb, Byron, Scott, Joubert, Madame de Sevigne 
 herself — were all human first and clever afterwards. That 
 is the reason of their immortal hold upon us. (1912.) 
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE 
 
 Letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. With notes on her 
 life and character, and an introduction by C. A. Sainte- 
 Beuve. Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. 
 (Heinemann. 2 Is. net.) 
 
 One day in 1809 a carriage started from Chambery to Aix. 
 It contained Madame de Stael, Benjamin Constant, and 
 two friends. A thunderstorm broke, the horses stuck, the 
 travellers were endlessly delayed, but not one of them was 
 aware of the fact. For, all the time, Madame de Stael was 
 talking about the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse to 
 M. de Guibert. The subject was worthy of Corinne. That 
 same M. de Guibert, long after Mademoiselle had died, had 
 been her own first lover. And a less fiery party than this was
 
 286 NEW AND OLD 
 
 might well have been carried away by the topic in question. 
 A real love-letter is not easily to be seen. We have had 
 enough and to spare of fictitious love-letters. Of such as 
 are written with an eye round the corner there is still no 
 dearth, nor are examples wanting of the literary kind, in 
 which love is subservient to intellect. But real love-letters 
 are seldom literature, and it is, indeed, a merciful dispensa- 
 tion that they are so difficult of access. It is the more 
 surprising, therefore, that the letters of Mademoiselle de 
 Lespinasse should be both literary and sincere, that they 
 should convince our hearts while they satisfy our taste, 
 and this although they fill a whole volume. No one would 
 have been more shocked than their writer at the notion 
 of seeing them in print, or in any hands but those of the 
 lover whom she had so often begged in vain to return them. 
 We can but be thankful that he disobeyed her. For her 
 letters remain as a classic of passion — rather monotonous, 
 perhaps, as passion is apt to be, but instinct with life and 
 eloquence and a kind of reckless self-abandonment, which 
 has its own royalty about it. 
 
 To understand them, however, we must recall her strange 
 story. From her girlhood upwards she had been appren- 
 ticed to suffering. Born in 1732, she was the illegitimate 
 child of the Comtesse d'Albon, but early in her existence 
 she lost this most tender mother, who had not even time 
 to legitimise her birth. The little girl found herself a 
 dependent in the household of her cruel half-sister, the 
 Countess's legitimate daughter, who treated her young 
 charge like Cinderella and made her life a burden to her. 
 This state of things lasted till she was twenty-two, and 
 then everything changed for her. Her sister's husband 
 was the brother of the Marquise du Deffand, queen of the 
 salons of Paris, who paid his house occasional visits. She 
 discovered Mademoiselle de Lespinasse ; she fell in love, 
 she eloped with her. Cinderella was transformed into a
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE 287 
 
 great lady's companion and fellow-hostess. Madame du 
 Dcffand, one of the most perplexing characters in French 
 memoirs, was at this time fifty-seven. She was almost 
 blind ; she was suspicious, unhappy, successful, preter- 
 naturally clever. With all the appearance of a heart she 
 did not possess one, and though she had many susceptibilities 
 she had no feelings. Almost as keen a literary critic as 
 Voltaire, she lived as a wit among wits, and she found her 
 companion an apt and fastidious pupil. But Mademoiselle 
 de Lespinasse was all heart, and only deficient in control 
 over it. For ten years all went well, till Madame du Dcffand 
 found out that her subordinate had eclipsed her, that all 
 the frequenters of her salon and her oldest friends — the 
 President Renault, M. d'Alembert, the whole Encyclo- 
 paedia and Academie, together with several of their Egerias 
 — had gone over to the younger woman, and that she was 
 even receiving them secretly in her own apartment. Madame 
 fulminated ; she practically turned out her broken idol ; 
 but the idol only removed to a new little salon round the 
 corner, and her congregation followed her, d'Alembert in 
 good earnest, for he soon after took up his abode there. As 
 for the forsaken goddess, she never forgave the offender. 
 
 One asks oneself what was the charm that drew all these 
 personages — women as much as men — to Mademoiselle de 
 Lespinasse, and kept them by her side, for no one of them 
 seems to have deserted her. It was not beauty. ' Her face 
 was never young,' says Grimm ; and Guibert himself, who 
 did not know her till she was thirty-eight, tells us that ' she 
 was far from beautiful, and her features were still further 
 marred by the smallpox ; but her plainness had nothing 
 repulsive at the first glance ; at the second the eye grew 
 accvistomed to it, and as soon as she spoke it was forgotten. 
 She was tall and well made . . . and her figure was still 
 noble and full of grace.' Her charm lay wholly in the heart 
 and in the mind, and in her power of expressing them.
 
 288 NEW AND OLD 
 
 ' What distinguishes you above all in society is the art of 
 saying to each one that which suits him ; and this art, 
 though little common, is very simple in you ; it consists of 
 never speaking of yourself to others, but much of them.' 
 So wrote d'Alembert, and Guibert was not behind him : — 
 ' She forgot herself perpetually. She was the soul of a 
 conversation. He;- great art lay in showing the minds of 
 others to advantage.' Her wit was rather sober than 
 brilliant — the kind of wit which is in itself an act of hospi- 
 tality. ' Her circle met daily from 5 o'clock until 9 in 
 the evening.' Every person of distinction went to her 
 house, and it is no exaggeration to say that the affairs of 
 the Academie were settled there. Her company was so 
 well assorted that, ' once there [says Marmontel], they 
 fell into harmony like the strings of an instrument touched 
 by an able hand. . . . She seemed to know what tone each 
 string would yield before she touched it. . . . It was a 
 rare phenomenon . . . the degree of tempered, equable 
 heat which she knew so well how to maintain.' Had she 
 depended on those who adored her, she would have been a 
 happy woman. 
 
 It was between 1760 and 1776 that the drama of her life 
 was played. There were three chief actors besides herself — 
 d'Alembert, who loved her only and whom she never loved, 
 though, for sixteen years, he lived with her on terms of friend- 
 ship; M. de Mora, her passionate lover, who died of consump- 
 tion away from her, seven years after they first met ; and 
 M. de Guibert, who never loved her, but who swept her off her 
 feet with an overmastering passion for him from the day 
 she first met him in 1772, a year before M. de Mora's death, 
 to the day, in 1776, when she died of a broken heart. For a 
 short space she was M. de Guibert's mistress, but for the 
 most part her letters are but cries of mortally wounded 
 passion, or answers to others from him telling her he did 
 not love her. When he married she sympathised and went
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE 289 
 
 on as before, because she thought he had made a mere 
 mariage de convenance ; and when she found out the truth — 
 that he had loved his wife for a year before he had married 
 hei — she died of it. If we took the bare outline of hi c 
 history, she would merely figure as an absolute, a classical, 
 jilt ; but this is far from being the case. It must first be 
 remembered that her birth barred her marriage with any 
 man at all her equal ; next (and this is more to the poinl ) 
 that she was always governed by an insatiable besoin de 
 plaire. Her adoring d'Alembert told her so in the frank 
 ' character ' which he wrote of her, and none knew better 
 than he that this vanity of sentiment led her any length. 
 She even told him that ' she hardly dared think of the 
 happiness it was to be with him,' at a moment when she 
 was dying of her passion for another man, and crying out 
 every day, with unmistakable sincerity, that she prayed to 
 be delivered from ' the slow and painful malady called life.' 
 The fact was that she could not keep her heart off any- 
 body who came within measurable distance of her, and she 
 would take any trouble for each one of them. It was 
 nothing but tins need to please that had made her seem 
 untrue to Madame du Deffand ; no one was in reality so 
 free from calculation, from coquetry, from all the colder 
 qualities ; and what looked like falsehood in her was only 
 her power of loving many people in different ways. ' I 
 am merely a good creature,' she writes, ' very stupid, very 
 simple, who loves the happiness and pleasure of those I 
 love better than what is mine or for me. ... I have even 
 less indifference than vanity. But I have a strength or a 
 faculty which renders me able for all ; it is that of knowing 
 how to suffer.' What people write of themselves is seldom 
 quite true, and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse knew that she 
 never was stupid and very seldom simple. But she was 
 right about the rest, and her ' faculty ' made the unhappi- 
 ness of three people, to all of whom she really was sincere. 
 
 T
 
 290 NEW AND OLD 
 
 For M. de Mora her flame was purely emotional, drawn forth 
 by this child of the south, and fed by its own poetic force. 
 But for M. de Guibert her passion was both more primitive 
 and more complicated. Her fastidious mind, her intel- 
 lectual ambitions were in it. Guibert was one of those men 
 of whom his contemporaries expect everything — a meteor 
 that flashes across its age and then falls forgotten to the 
 earth. He was a distinguished soldier, a dramatist, a 
 striking writer on tactics. Besides that, he had a magnetic 
 personality. There is something disagreeably mesmeric 
 in her whole relation to him. She felt that he was her fate ; 
 she loved him against her will. At times she hated him 
 bitterly, and she struggled against his ice-cold power. 
 4 Why did you not leave me in repose ? ' she cried. . . . 
 ' Either fill my soul or torture it no longer. . . . You have 
 made me feel the tortures of the damned, repentance, 
 hatred, jealousy, remorse, contempt of myself and some- 
 times of you.' These accesses of remorse began before the 
 death of Mora, whom she told of her new friendship, though 
 he died unconscious of its extent. But after his death her 
 moral torment grew incessant. She was too good to feel 
 otherwise. There were, she said, but three anodynes for 
 her pain — the first was M. de Guibert ; the second was 
 opium ; the third was music ; and this meant the music of 
 Gluck's Orfeo, which turned her sorrow into ecstasy. But, 
 unfortunately, it was only the opium which took effect. 
 
 Her letters run through the whole gamut of feeling. 
 Brevity is the soul of passion as well as of wit, and no one 
 is terser than she can be. ' A soul that has loved him best,' 
 she writes, ' has the greatest need of extinction for ever.' 
 Or take this, one of her daily notes to him : 
 
 At all the instants of my life, 1774. 
 Mon ami — I suifer, I love you, and I await you. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve (who also quotes these words in his admirable 
 Introduction to her letters) says that her existence was
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE 291 
 
 ' passed in loving, hating, fainting, reviving — that is to say, 
 in ever loving.' It is impossible here to chronicle the ebb 
 and flow of her feelings — we must restrict ourselves to their 
 effect upon her character. This was, in some ways, ennob- 
 ling. ' Nearly all who exist love only because they are 
 loved. Ah, mon Dieu ! What a poor way ! How small 
 and feeble it leaves the soul ! ' she writes. She was fervent 
 by conviction, not by impulse, and she hated reason — ' the 
 temperate zone in which live all the fools and the automa- 
 tons.' But though she called self-restraint ' dull courage,' she 
 practised her own sort of renunciation. For true passion is 
 austere — a cloistral discipline as well as a self-indulgence. 
 No form of asceticism could more rigorously reject the 
 common pleasures of life ; it is the most unworldly and the 
 least conventional of influences. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 
 hated distractions. To be with M. de Guibert, or alone, ' but 
 alone without books, without lights, without noise,' these were 
 the only two modes of life possible to her. The narrower 
 the bed the more vehement the stream, and she grew very 
 narrow. ' It is dreadful to live to one point,' she owned, and, 
 indeed, her love became a fixed idea. The result for her mind 
 was a bad one. Her fastidious taste naturally inclined her to 
 scorn, and isolation increased this tendency. Yet she was 
 born a woman of many interests, a wide reader, a delicate 
 critic. She knew alike her Montaigne and her Marivaux ; 
 she relished Richardson and Sterne. It was she who made 
 the reputation of the Sentimental Journey in France, and 
 she liked Lord Shelburne because he ' adored ' Yorick. 
 She nearly went to stay with him in England on this account, 
 and also because he was a leader of the Opposition. She 
 is fond of dwelling on her contempt for French methods of 
 government. ' Nothing but Voltaire's fame could have 
 consoled me for not having been born an Englishman,' she 
 cries. Her power of penetration is like a light sword, flash- 
 ing, piercing, wounding, and, in a breath, back again in the
 
 292 NEW AND OLD 
 
 scabbard ; and she exercises her skill on everybody, not 
 excepting herself and M. de Guibert. ' I am loved because 
 others believe and see that they are making an effect on 
 me,' she says, ' and not because of the effect I make on them.' 
 And, as for Guibert, ' you are made expressly to enjoy much 
 and suffer little,' she writes. ' You have tastes and no 
 passions ; you have soul and no character. . . . The differ- 
 ence in our affections is this — you are calm enough to enjoy 
 everything ; while I am in Paris, I suffer and I enjoy nothing ; 
 " that is all," as Marivaux says.' 
 
 It is a matter for regret that her passion did not oftener 
 allow her to vary her themes. Her criticisms of books and 
 business are direct and subtle ; even her haphazard remarks 
 show a kind of inspired shrewdness and indicate the hand 
 of the intaglio-cutter which carves common sense into 
 aphorisms. If you turn over her letters at random it is 
 not difficult to find a dozen such happy phrases. ' Paris ' 
 (she says in one note) ' is the place in the world where one 
 can be poor with the least privations ; none but fools and 
 tiresome people need to be rich.' And, in another, ' Marriage 
 is a veritable extinguisher of all that is great and may be 
 dazzling. . . . There are men destined by Nature to be 
 great and not happy.' Habit, as a tie, she despises ; ' it 
 is,' she says, ' the sentiment of those who have none,' the 
 ' souls of papier-mache,' as she elsewhere calls them. The 
 ' public of the moment ' she despises even more, since it 
 ' never has the taste nor the intelligence which sets the seal 
 on what should go down to posterity.' Sometimes she 
 indulges in a bitter grace of her own — in ironical little 
 pirouettes of tongue that none but a woman could make. 
 ' She has nothing to do with loving — she is too charming,' 
 such was her verdict on Madame de Boufflers. And she 
 enjoys mocking M. de Guibert, who is always persuading 
 her to be calm. ' Mon ami,'' she writes, ' except in one 
 point, let us always be reasonable and moderate.' But
 
 A KEEPER OF ROYAL SECRETS 29:5 
 
 Iiumour and passion are mortal foes, and Mademoiselle dc 
 Lespinasse's epigrams are oftener pathetic than playful. 
 ' In approaching those who suffer, those who are unhappy, 
 the first question asked should be, " Do you sleep ? ' The 
 second, " How old are you ? " ' — this contains a world of 
 experience. 
 
 There was one quality nothing could take from lliis 
 tragic lady, and that was her practical kindliness. ' The 
 human species is not wicked, it is only silly,' was her not 
 too respectful summary of her fellows, but her deeds were 
 more charitable than her speech. No promised visit from 
 Guibert would ever prevent her from keeping a promise to 
 sit with a sick friend, and she helped with both hands if any 
 distress came her way. We in England have no women to 
 compare her with, unless it be Esther Vanhomrigh ; but 
 Swift's victim left no letters behind her, and, even if she 
 had, she would not have expressed herself like the French- 
 woman. Passion makes the strongest people weak and 
 the weakest people strong ; but those who have it ' are 
 endowed with the sixth sense, soul.' The words are the 
 words of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, and they might stand 
 in her epitaph. (1902.) 
 
 A KEEPER OF ROYAL SECRETS 
 
 A Keeper of Royal Secrets, being the Private and Political 
 Life of Madame de Genlis. By Jean Harmand. With a 
 Preface by Emile Faguet. (Nash. 15s. net.) 
 
 Felicite Stephanie de Genlis, comtesse, adventuress, 
 governess, copious writer of novels, plays, and homilies, 
 needed a biographer, and M. Jean Harmand has adequately 
 supplied the want. We imagine from the rather faulty 
 English that he has been his own translator, but the occa- 
 sional mistakes and stiff sentences help far more than a
 
 294 NEW AND OLD 
 
 better translation to give us the atmosphere of France. 
 M. Harmand's biography is of the judicial kind ; he neither 
 loves nor hates, and so his record lacks the warmth which 
 makes the reader one with the subject. We stand outside 
 and are amused. What manner of woman does he paint 
 for us ? 
 
 If we could imagine Harriet Martineau improper, Becky 
 Sharp literary, Miss Edge worth intriguing, we should get 
 something like a true impression of Madame de Genlis. When 
 we think of her as the adventuress, we are pulled up by the 
 governess ; while we contemplate her immorality, we are 
 baffled by her virtue ; and as we shrink from her worldli- 
 ness, we are confronted by her disinterested actions. Yet 
 to all these seeming paradoxes there is one clue which 
 explains them — the key to her character, and that clue is 
 her boundless love of influence. To this love all her faculties 
 were subservient. She had no natural taste for impro- 
 priety. Her irregularities were but assets on the road to 
 power, and directly she could afford to be moral she sank 
 into the respectability that was natural to her prudent 
 temperament. Her virtue, her money, her generosity, she 
 used in the same fashion; they had no intrinsic value for 
 her, they were but means to an end. Thus it was that in 
 spite of dreadful poverty she had no real love of money and 
 was never purely mercenary ; nor was it more than an 
 accident that, while investing virtue at a pretty high per- 
 centage, she grew to like it and ended by identifying herself 
 with the cause of religion and domesticity. In making 
 for moral effects and posing as the adversary of the Ency- 
 clopaedists, she acquired the principles she professed and 
 preached them sincerely. And her very endowments blended 
 with her appetite for power. Her piquant beauty, her quick 
 grace, the insatiable appetite for knowledge which pos- 
 sessed her from youth onwards, even in the most tawdry 
 phases of her existence, her facility in writing, her accom-
 
 A KEEPER OF ROYAL SECRETS 295 
 
 plishments, her genius for private theatricals — on the stage 
 and off it — all helped her to dominate as she desired. But 
 these were minor talents. Her greatest, most original, 
 faculty — that which gives permanence to her name — her 
 remarkable gift for education, was only part of her deter- 
 mination to rule. When she became the governess of the 
 Orleans princesses she found her vocation ; and when their 
 father, Philippe Egalite, discarded all precedent and ap* 
 pointed her as Gouverneur of his sons, she found her throne 
 — and revealed her weakness. The benevolent tyranny 
 which divorced the children from their mother (her own 
 great benefactress) and kept them wholly for herself, was 
 a crime far worse than her connection of twenty years with 
 Egalite : a beautiful pedagogue's connection, a training of 
 her lover for the State, rather like the relationship of Diane 
 de Poitiers to Henri n. But Diane was more generous, or 
 less potent, than Madame de Genlis, for after early childhood 
 Henri's children returned to his wife. It was unfortunate for 
 the more modern despot that Diane de Poitiers and Madame 
 de Maintenon — the great bad examples for governesses- 
 should have existed before her. In her case no rivalry 
 of any sort was allowed, and Bellechasse, where she lived 
 with her pupils, was soon made too uncomfortable to hold 
 other teachers of any importance. 
 
 Yet with this greed was mingled the genuine devotion of 
 the educationist, and something more, perhaps inseparable 
 from it, a rare love of children and a need of them about 
 her. Long after she had ceased to be a governess she 
 adopted plebeian waifs and strays — contracted, indeed, an 
 almost pernicious habit of adoption ; pinched, struggled, 
 suffered for them, idealised them, founded their fortunes, 
 and got scant returns. For the sad thing is that, while in 
 children she inspired an almost morbid cult, in later life 
 hardly one of her charges seemed to care for her. Made- 
 moiselle Adelaide, who as a girl grew ill at the thought of
 
 296 NEW AND OLD 
 
 separation, never really renewed their companionship, 
 although for a time, on her return to Paris, she again fell 
 under her sway. Pamela, the mysterious little girl from 
 England, brought up with the Orleans nurslings, after- 
 wards refused to live with her ; yet Pamela was generally 
 believed to be her own child and to own Philippe Egalite 
 as father ; and the same was reported of Hermine, who 
 came with Pamela and also inhabited the Bellechasse school- 
 room. As for the Due de Chartres, after his father's death, 
 when he learned Madame de Genlis's true relation to Egalite, 
 he definitely broke with her, and their intercourse under 
 the Bourbons, renewed at her instigation, was due to his 
 fidelity rather than to his affection. This was not, it must 
 in justice be added, because, as was formerly alleged, she 
 had ever taken unfair advantage of his early sentiment. 
 She was frankly bored by the heavy strenuous boy, who 
 would not, she complained, leave her pocket. Long after, 
 Louis Philippe told Victor Hugo that he had only once been 
 in love, and that was with Madame de Genii s. ' I was a 
 weak, idle, timid boy,' he added ; ' she made of me a fairly 
 courageous man with a heart. As I grew up I began to see 
 that she was very pretty. I did not know what my feelings 
 in her presence meant. She noticed it . . . and saw her way. 
 . . . She treated me very harshly.' Louis Philippe was 
 scarcely passionate. ' What I love best in the world is the 
 new Constitution and you,' was his idea of a love-letter. 
 He was better suited to Marie-Amelie than to Felicite de 
 Genii s. 
 
 Apart from her moral influence, what, technically, did 
 her educational schemes amount to ? Louis Philippe re- 
 corded that he had received ' a ferocious education.' She 
 left her pupils no peace from 6 a.m. till 10 at night. They 
 slept on hard beds, they learned every sort of manual trade, 
 they endured physical hardships, they were tormented by 
 history and geography, their very walls were hung with
 
 A KEEPER OF ROYAL SECRETS 297 
 
 scenes from mythology, and they never had holidays of 
 any kind. One of the Encyclopaedists called her Madame 
 Livre, another a ' Hen-Rousseau.' M. Harmand truly says 
 that she is a mixture of Rousseau and Madame de Main- 
 tenon. But she was much more than a pedant or a theoriser. 
 She was a pioneer, almost a genius. She foreshadowed our 
 system of hygiene, she enforced air and exercise, she imposed 
 gymnastics upon girls as well as boys. Girls had also to 
 study national law and the management and farming of 
 land. In other ways she was before her time. She decried 
 the classics and laid great stress on modern languages ; she 
 taught history by dramatic representation. But, while 
 she used the means, she characteristically missed the end 
 of education — self-dependence. Her pupils were never 
 left alone for a moment. It remained for Miss Edge worth, 
 who imitated all her methods, to apply them to the right 
 purpose. And her plans had another flaw, this time a 
 modern flaw — they were wholly utilitarian. She had no 
 notion of disinterested knowledge ; there was always an 
 axe to grind, even where the arts were concerned. It was 
 the same with regard to religion. She instilled piety, she 
 did not know how to be spiritual. If, as M. Harmand says, 
 she created a model bourgeois King, she also created his 
 religious indifference. The power to risk and to succeed 
 was her heritage. Her adventurous mother and her im- 
 pecunious father, Pierre Cesar du Crest, were well provided 
 with both talents. When the girl was thirteen (1759) she 
 and the mother set forth on a sordid little Odyssey of 
 intrigue. No Minister, no Farmer-general, was too old 
 for long exploiting visits from them. Wherever they went 
 they took her harp, which showed off her white arms to 
 perfection. She had trained hard to be a Siren, and had 
 practised her instrument almost too much to attract any 
 sailor of distinction. At last she caught the Comte de 
 Genlis. Some mystery hangs over their casual but by no
 
 298 NEW AND OLD 
 
 means unhappy union ; one thing, however, is clear — that 
 her husband's grand relations would not receive her, The 
 couple retired to the Comte's terres at Genlis, and there 
 Felicite set earnestly to work to achieve notoriety and thus 
 effect an entry into society. She ran about the country- 
 side with a barber, bleeding the reluctant peasants ; she 
 rouged the nuns in a convent ; she had milk baths. It 
 took her two years to accomplish her end, and she finally 
 reached it through private theatricals. Arriving unex- 
 pectedly in Paris, in a peasant's cart, she began business. 
 She made herself indispensable to a few houses through 
 her acting, her harp, her serviceable ways ; ignored aristo- 
 cratic snubs with a smile ; picked up en route the grand 
 manner that she lacked ; began to be talked about, invited ; 
 achieved her master-stroke by contriving to charm the old 
 Duke of Orleans and becoming his guest at Villers-Cotterets, 
 a house rather tabooed by virtuous ladies ; negotiated his 
 marriage with her step-aunt, Madame de Montesson, and was 
 appointed as lady-in-waiting to the wife of his son, Philippe 
 Egalite. 
 
 Thus she found herself in the Palais Royal, and her real 
 life began. Ere this her husband's family had relented ; 
 she was feted and adulated everywhere. Over her new 
 mistress she soon acquired the same hypnotic influence that 
 she exercised later upon the Orleans children. The poor 
 Princess adored her, would listen to no other counsellor, 
 and, remaining quite unconscious that her Genlis had already 
 stolen her husband, was enraptured when she became her 
 daughter's governess. Then began the cruel and unequal 
 duel between one of the cleverest and one of the stupidest 
 of ladies. For the wife of Philippe Egalite (who had by 
 this time succeeded to the dukedom), although affectionate 
 and high-souled, had the most hidebound of Royal minds. 
 She hated her husband's politics, and treated her son's 
 nobler liberalism as a shocking form of madness ; she had,
 
 A KEEPER OF ROY AT. SECRETS 299 
 
 he said, all the prejudices of ' a disgusting aristocracy.' It 
 is doubtful whether she could ever have understood any 
 intelligent child — she was too well-bred and inert. When 
 the crisis came and she felt she could no longer endure the 
 governess, she would not trust her timid speech, but came 
 to Bellechasse and imperiously read aloud her accusations 
 and Madamc's dismissal. Madame went, but was at once 
 summoned back to save the life of Mademoiselle, who had 
 nearly died of sorrow. Egeria Victrix returned to reign 
 triumphant. Even her public enemies, such as La Harpe, 
 capitulated in private. Her salon was frequented by every 
 star of the day. Rousseau had already adored her and 
 discharged her as corrupt, because she had sent him a 
 present of some wine ; Cramer, David, most artists and 
 musicians, were her friends ; so were Brissot and Petion ; 
 so at all times was Talleyrand. The pair had made acquaint- 
 ance in the early days of her marriage, when he was still 
 an unknown abbe. Throughout their lives, with every 
 change of government, they met — generally crossing the 
 road to the sunny side together. It was rumoured that 
 he once wished for closer relations, and it is curious to think 
 what would have happened had these two skilled foxes 
 formed a co-operative alliance. But it did not suit Felicite's 
 game. She was the most phylacteried of pretty Pharisees. 
 In 1779 she published her Thecltre a V usage des jeunes per- 
 sonnes, in 1782 her manifesto of education, Adele et Theodore. 
 She now turned her attention to the Revolution, as a fresh 
 asset in her fortunes. For was not Philippe Egalite near 
 the Regency, perhaps the throne ? She became an enthu- 
 siastic ' Red.' The night after the taking of the Bastille 
 she danced — and she made Chartres dance — with the 
 ' Maenads ' in the Palais Royal garden. Attired in a tri- 
 colour dress, she gave a ball for the Orleans children, where 
 they danced to the tune of ' ^a ira.' She had the Due 
 de Chartres made a member of the Jacobin Club and a
 
 300 NEW AND OLD 
 
 contributor to Marat's newspaper, and meanwhile she lent her 
 views the glamour of novelty by continuing to be pious and 
 to fight the Encyclopedic But no strategy could stem the 
 coining danger, and the security of her charges necessi- 
 tated absence from France. In 1791 she took Mademoiselle 
 and the lovely Pamela to England, where for a year they 
 lived and saw the best society. They lodged at Bath, they 
 lodged at Bury ; they went to stay with Sheridan, and he 
 became engaged to Pamela. Orleans, however, suddenly 
 summoned the party back that they might not be branded 
 as emigrees. Madame dallied; they arrived too late for safety, 
 and were compelled to set forth again at once. Madame de 
 Genlis and Philippe Egalite parted for the last time. The 
 fugitives went to Tournai, which was close to the quarters 
 of General Dumouriez and to those of Chartres, who was 
 serving under him. They were accompanied by a new 
 friend, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who quickly eclipsed 
 Sheridan and married Pamela off-hand. Madame, mean- 
 while, was active, conspiring with Dumouriez. She became 
 involved in his peril and was forced to fly for her life. It 
 seemed to her that the delicate Mademoiselle would increase 
 her own dangers, so she resolved to leave her ' daughter ' 
 behind — ' with all a mother's affection and blessings.' 
 Stealing away from the sleeping girl, she got into the carriage ; 
 but Chartres was too quick for her. He ran upstairs, caught 
 his sister in his arms, and threw her, shivering, into the 
 chaise. The inevitable harp was sent after her — her clothes 
 were not. Dire adventures beset them. At one moment 
 they only escaped the Austrians because the General mis- 
 took the governess for his lady-love. At another, Made- 
 moiselle developed scarlatina. But at last they reached 
 Switzerland alive, and there Chartres joined them. There, 
 too, the news reached Madame de Genlis, first of her hus- 
 band's, then of Philippe Egalite's execution. Chartres had 
 already departed to pursue his own way, and, some six
 
 A KEEPER OF ROYAL SECRETS 301 
 
 months later, Mademoiselle went to live with her aunt, 
 Madame de Conti, at Fribourg. 
 
 There began for Madame de Genlis a life of fresh intrigue, 
 of persecution, debt, incessant wanderings : through Switzer- 
 land to Altona and Hamburg, where she came across Talley- 
 rand ; to Berlin, whence she was chased at two hours' 
 notice; it was said that she was conspiring, manoeuvring, 
 endeavouring to pervert the musical Frederick by means of 
 her redoubted harp. Back she travelled to the north of 
 Germany ; then, on Frederick's death, back to Berlin — 
 always in deepest poverty, making a bare livelihood by her 
 indefatigable pen, by lectures, by giving lessons. She 
 shared her last penny with her secretary ; she taught the 
 harp to orphans, and adopted them ; finally she engineered 
 her way into Berlin society. ' Society ' there meant the 
 Jewish salons, which were crowded with French nobles. 
 Madame de Genlis made herself invaluable to Madame 
 Cohen, Madame Hera, Rachel Levin (later Rachel Varnhagen). 
 When Paris was once more open to her, Madame Cohen came 
 to offer her all her diamonds on condition she should stay on 
 in Berlin. But Paris was irresistible. She returned there, 
 and, fixing her hopes upon Napoleon, she imported a new 
 set of principles. She believed she could convert him to 
 religion. Impervious to the harp, he was susceptible to 
 manners. He took her for the representative of the ancien 
 regime ; he allowed her to write him a weekly letter on 
 morals and literature ; he wept over her novel La Duchesse 
 de la Valliere ; he granted her apartments in the Arsenal. 
 But she changed lodgings as often as she changed politics ; 
 the only tilings that did not alter were her debts. The 
 Orleans were kind, but she got few favours, and she grumbled 
 at the meagreness of the pension that Louis xviii. eventually 
 allowed her. Yet it saved her from destitution in her last 
 years. She died in 1830 at the age of eighty-four, and 
 Louis Philippe gave her a handsome funeral. She came to
 
 302 NEW AND OLD 
 
 regard herself as an Archbishop. ' M. de Valence,' she 
 said, ' has taken that strong liking for me that all people 
 have had when seriously ill.' The art of literature was 
 to her first and foremost a pulpit, and a facile pulpit. She 
 published eighty-six works, and she made ' copy ' out of 
 life from the day when, her new-born baby by her side, 
 she wrote her Reflexions oVune mere de vingt ans. Emile 
 Faguet, in his charming preface, says that ' her place is in 
 the front row of women of letters of the second class.' But 
 the teacher was stronger than the author, and her precepts 
 were stronger than her practice. (1913.) 
 
 ALWAYS A BOURBON 
 
 La Duchesse d'Orleans, Mere du Roi Louis Philippe. By 
 Baron Andre de Maricourt. (Paris : Emile-Paul Freres. 
 5 francs.) 
 
 When we lay down this most absorbing book, admirably 
 written, and based on documents private and printed, we 
 find the prevailing sensation to be one of wonder that so 
 much goodness and so much silliness could be found united 
 in a single person. That person had to be a woman ; a 
 man could not contain so much of either element and yet 
 have both. And that woman had to be of Royal blood to 
 ensure her being so noble, so pious, so uncomplaining in 
 martyrdom, of such incorrigibly bad judgment, and so 
 desperately unteachable. 
 
 C'est vrai, et je le re'pete : 
 
 On n'est pas bon quand on est bete. 
 
 Whoever said that — was it not Diderot? — showed a thorough 
 acquaintance with the Ancien Regime. And perhaps it is 
 not too much to aver that a truly good man is one who
 
 ALWAYS A BOURBON 303 
 
 reaps use from experience — whatever, moral or immoral, 
 that experience may be — while a bad man is barren, one 
 who has the experience and gets nothing from it. The 
 Bourbons could all of them dip seven times in reality and 
 come out as unreal as before. In so far as Marie-Adelaide 
 de Bourbon Penthievre, Duchesse d'Orleans, great-grand- 
 daughter of Louis xiv., passed through the red waves of 
 the Revolution and proved herself afterwards more indul- 
 gent, more saintly in facing hardship and in understanding 
 human distress — in so far she stands out as a good woman. 
 When the Revolution broke down barriers for her, she was 
 free. But she could not clear the main wall. A hundred 
 Revolutions would not have shaken her belief in the divine 
 right of the aristocracy to everything, a code for conduct 
 that ran alongside of the greatest personal unselfishness. 
 Indeed, her very goodness was in part of the noblesse oblige 
 kind, a payment to Heaven for the privileges it conferred 
 upon the Bourbons. She lost most of those she loved by 
 the guillotine ; two of her children died of the results of 
 their imprisonment ; she herself knew incarceration, exile, 
 destitution, mortal illness ; she had been face to face with 
 violent death. But nothing could give her a grasp of facts. 
 What is chiefly known about her is her miserable marriage 
 with Philippe Egalite, her passionate love for him, his 
 infidelities, his final capture by that remorseless feminine 
 bandit, Madame de Genlis, and her second capture of the 
 Duchess's children, a theft which left the poor lady in much 
 bitterer bereavement than death could have brought her. 
 That Philippe Egalite was a wretch, though too light even 
 to be weighed, that his conduct towards the Duchess was 
 abominable, nobody could deny ; yet she alone it is who 
 produces in us some kind of sympathy for him. For all 
 her high soul and her generosity, she must have been a 
 provoking wife. More than one witness records how she 
 never ceased to cry ; her eyes were chronically red from
 
 304 NEW AND OLD 
 
 weeping ; and her aggrieved caressing letters to her children 
 were much more about herself than about them. Madame 
 de Genlis ruined her life. Some one else would have done 
 that as far as her husband was concerned, but none except 
 that born teacher, that ' agreeable little rascal,' could have 
 robbed her of her sons and her daughter. There were, 
 however, other reasons to cause the separation. The 
 Duchess's dispute with her husband was ostensibly a reli- 
 gious one and regarded the training of their children. 
 Madame de Genlis and Egalite had recourse to the new 
 priests who had taken the oath of fealty to the Nation. 
 To the Duchess this was as great a sacrilege as a confession 
 of atheism ; and her heart was almost broken when her 
 eldest son, the Due de Chartres (Louis Philippe), answered 
 her letter of exhortation and command with, ' Not only 
 have I no scruple in going to one of the new parish priests, 
 but I regard this step as an indispensable duty, for I firmly 
 believe that the decrees have not made any sort of attack 
 upon the dogmas of religion.' Nothing could have so well 
 measured the victory of Madame de Genlis, the gulf between 
 the Duchess and her family, or her utter solitude, as this 
 passage. Strange mixture as she was of the monumental- 
 marble weeping aristocrat, the drooping lady of urns and 
 broken columns, and of the feudal heroine who could well 
 have held her husband's castle against an army ; of the 
 Lady Byron who longed to reform a husband, and the 
 passionate woman crying out for his love at any price ; 
 she could on occasion act with surprising force and matter- 
 of-factness. To the shocked surprise of everybody, most 
 of all to that of Egalite (for aristocrats did not usually act 
 thus), she instituted legal proceedings against him in order 
 to secure her large fortune for her children, and firmly 
 pursued her course. 
 
 She had gone home to live with her father in Normandy 
 at Eu, and at other of his numerous country places. It was
 
 ALWAYS A HoniUiON 805 
 
 here that the Revolution found them. Nothing in this 
 record is more acute or more significant of the prevailing 
 terror than the way they received the news of the death of 
 the Princesse de Lamballe, the Prince's chere belle-fille. The 
 tidings reached the house at midnight by a special courier 
 from Paris. M. dc Miromesnil, the Prince's guest and 
 faithful friend, undertook to break the news to the Duchess, 
 still in bed. In the early morning he walked into her room, 
 solemn horror stamped upon his countenance, the letters 
 the post had brought her in his hand. Directly she saw 
 him, anguish seized her ; she asked breathless questions ; 
 ' the No's and Yes's, Madame, follow one another till the 
 cruel word, the glacial word, the word " dead " is uttered.' 
 In silence the two, with their pale attendants, enter the 
 bedroom of the sleeping Prince, already in the clutch of 
 fatal illness. He wakes to find the group there with faces 
 turned to stone, the Duchess covering hers with her hands. 
 There was a pause ; then ' the old Prince . . . averted 
 his eyes. . . . He had understood.' Happily for him, he 
 died naturally, before the guillotine could take him, and 
 so much beloved of his vassals that his coffin, attended by 
 proscribed priests, was allowed to proceed unmolested. 
 
 His death began a series of tragic adventures for his 
 unprotected daughter, ending by her transference, in a 
 moribund condition, to Paris and the Prison of the Luxem- 
 bourg. She was one of those women who are always dying 
 and never dead. Unable to walk, excepting with two 
 people to help her, ashen- coloured and grey-lipped, suffering 
 torments, she yet survived till 1821. In the prison she 
 found her old society ; its members met daily, and daily 
 they decreased ; they talked and talked ' with some light- 
 ness and much heroism ' ; and every hour the Duchess 
 listened for the echoing footsteps to stop at her door and 
 presage the end. But though she did every tactless thing, 
 writing explanatory reams of protest to the Republic instead 
 
 u
 
 306 NEW AND OLD 
 
 of alloAving herself to be forgotten, nothing happened ; and 
 on the plea of her health she was eventually removed to 
 the less rigid confinement of a maison de sante, one of those 
 lunatic asylums used by the Terror for such prisoners as 
 had influence enough to loose the bolts, and organised — at 
 least in this case — by exploiting scoundrels who charged 
 their captives exorbitant prices for bare garrets and for 
 food worse than that of the prisons. It is interesting to 
 realise that, these abuses once discovered, the Republic 
 investigated the matter like the most orderly Government 
 in the world, and shipped off the guilty proprietor to the 
 galleys. 
 
 In spite of all, the Duchess slowly recovered, as much as 
 she ever recovered, thanks partly to the open air, but much 
 more to another cause ; for here it was, in this misused 
 lunatic asylum, that, in 1794-95, she met her fate — the 
 man who ruled the rest of her life. And to add to the 
 strangeness, this Rouzet was the son of a tailor and a member 
 of the Convention, a partisan of those who had murdered 
 her family and desecrated all she held most sacred. It is 
 true that he had the courage to oppose the execution of 
 Louis xvi. and to try to save the lives of the condemned ; 
 that in after days, under the aegis of the Duchess, he became 
 a fervent Royalist. But none the less surprising was this 
 relationship — as it would seem, erratically platonic — which 
 lasted, without a break, for twenty-six years or more. 
 Almost from the first, he gained a complete and, on the 
 whole, a beneficial ascendancy over her. Twice he saved 
 her life ; he did much to help in the deliverance of her two 
 younger sons, so cruelly imprisoned at Marseilles ; he worked 
 away to rescue her fortune and to get her compensation. 
 He gave her money ; he was her servant and her sovereign. 
 Only a high-flown Princess and a Gascon could have brought 
 this friendship off. When the Duchess was granted her 
 freedom, in spite of all her projects, she stayed on in the
 
 ALWAYS A BOURBON 307 
 
 asylum with Rouzet ; and when she was sent, an exile, into 
 Spain with the old Prince de Conti, and the berline was 
 searched at the frontier, there, beneath a pile of rugs, the 
 discomfited devotee was found hidden. 
 
 It was an awkward position for a member of Parliament ; 
 and the Government sat solemnly upon the question, but 
 decided in favour of love. So Rouzet was allowed to 
 accompany his lady into Spain, where her cousin, the 
 Bourbon King Charles vn., soon turned him into Joseph 
 Rozet, Chevalier de l'Ordre de Malte and Comte de Folrnon. 
 In spite of the long letters she sent his Majesty about her 
 destitution, this was all he did for his poverty-stricken 
 relation, except to give her a worn-out leather chair for 
 her vermin-infested castle. Here she kept a crazy Court 
 on nothing a year, with Rouzet as her Chancellor and 
 housekeeper ; and a shocking one he was, starving his lady 
 and her guests, jealous, devoted, honest, feckless. Some- 
 times his wife, who had appeared suddenly in France from 
 the provinces, arrived to make a contented third on this 
 uncomfortable hearth, and disappeared again as calmly as 
 she came. The two friends were absorbed in one another, 
 and Rouzet gradually sapped all the rest of the Duchess, 
 till she ceased even to try to see her children and let the 
 two young Princes, Montpensier and her once much-loved 
 Beaujolais, die far away from her. When her daughter at 
 last joined her after years of separation, Mademoiselle 
 found the position insupportable and finally left her. Nor 
 did Chartres, the best of sons, fare much better. At Naples, 
 whither his mother went to promote his marriage with the 
 Princess Marie-Amelie, she quarrelled violently with the 
 affable couple because she said that they had slighted her 
 Count. That gentleman allowed her no margin for any 
 one but himself, unless it were for the convenient poor, who 
 did not hurt his vanity and to whom she never ceased to 
 give every penny that she did not give to him.
 
 308 NEW AND OLD 
 
 The writer of this volume ascribes her grande passion to 
 middle-aged sentiment and to a hungry heart. But that 
 hardly accounts for her choice, or for her fidelity. To those 
 victims of the Revolution who had lost all — their loved 
 ones, their every landmark — it must have seemed that the 
 only possible condition of living on was to make a com- 
 pletely new life, divorced from what went before, a life 
 that would drug memory and blot out old associations. 
 And this was what the Duchess, doubly embittered by 
 hopeless separation from her children, succeeded in doing. 
 By the time she could once more see them, it was too late. 
 The result was inevitable. When the Restoration brought 
 her back to Paris, prompted probably by Rouzet, she 
 engaged in fierce money disputes with her family, and 
 Louis xviii. had to interpose. But by whom was the 
 reconciliation between mother and children effected ? 
 By Madame de Genlis. And by the intervention of what 
 ambassador ? None other than the Comte de Folmon. 
 Strange cotillon, strange chasse-croise of partners. Madame 
 was charmed with the Count ; she had a private interview 
 with the Duchess ; she lavished eulogies and affection. 
 Once more she won the game and joined what she had put 
 asunder. 
 
 The remainder of Marie-Adelaide's life was spent between 
 Paris and Ivry in trying to revive a past that was gone 
 for ever. ' We give one another little presents, little foolish 
 things that charm us,' wrote a friend of the Ancien Regime 
 who still made one of her small circle ; ' I find again in her 
 that old manner of arranging and of loving comfortable 
 things which causes me such pleasure.' Such things also 
 pleased the ruling deity. If any guest took the seat at 
 table that was sheltered from the draught, he was summarily 
 removed. It was the chair of Monsieur le Comte de Folmon. 
 There was in these last years but one poignant recall to 
 bygone misery. It was when the widow of Egalite had an
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY 309 
 
 audience with Louis xvi.'s daughter, the deep and narrow, 
 the unforgiving Duchesse d'Angouleme. Trembling, the 
 Duchess prostrated herself. ' Grace, Madame, grace ! ' she 
 cried. Madame let her drag herself two or three times along 
 the ground. ' Relevez-vous, Madame,'' was all she said ; 
 and, after a few stiff words, the interview ended. 
 
 The Duchess died in 1821, of an agonising illness borne 
 with unmurmuring fortitude. The Republican Due de 
 Chartres found himself at sea as to the etiquette proper for 
 the funeral. There was one person he knew who could 
 inform him. Again it was Madame de Genlis. In death, 
 as in life, she dominated her victim, and she said that the 
 funeral was as well arranged as possible for the honour of 
 the Duchesse d'Orleans. (1914.) 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY 
 
 Letters of Robert Southev. A Selection edited by Maurice 
 H. FitzcxERald. The World's Classics. (London: Frowde. 
 Oxford : The University Press.) Is. net. 
 
 Of Robert Southey it might without exaggeration be said, 
 ' of such is the Kingdom of Heaven ' — not the highest 
 zone in the kingdom, but the part reserved for the useful 
 angels, the angels without wings, for its generous banks and 
 benevolent societies. He was a born administrator ; had 
 he taken office in the New Jerusalem it would have been on 
 its Local Government Board. And — a good test- — he was 
 an angel to fallen angels ; one who would always cross the 
 road to bind up their wounds, although he lectured while 
 he doctored ; one who was wont to leave more than twopence 
 for their entertainment. Short of what he needed for his 
 family, the whole of his purse was at the disposal of his 
 friends, especially of those who trod the narrow way. Any
 
 310 NEW AND OLD 
 
 reader of his correspondence who will take the trouble to 
 keep count of the contributions he gives to needy acquaint- 
 ance, and to compare them with his hardly earned income, 
 will come away humbled and surprised. Such a letter as 
 that in which he starts a scheme to collect enough to buy 
 an annuity for poor, depressed John Taylor of Norwich, 
 who had fallen upon evil days, acts like a cordial on the 
 heart ; and so does his eloquent appeal to the friends of 
 Coleridge — who was, as usual, missing — to send his son 
 Hartley to Oxford. He gave what is better worth than 
 money — he gave himself, without stint, without weariness ; 
 and in the midst of a strenuous, over-worked existence 
 spared no pains to be of service to whoever made a call 
 upon him, whether it were to solicit a post, to read manu- 
 scripts, or to give advice. No obscure poet wrote to him 
 without getting a full answer, no despondent man came 
 away without practical comfort, comfort bestowed by one 
 who had gone into the case like a doctor and had a doctor's 
 faith in his prescriptions. ' In my moments of reverie,' he 
 wrote in 1800, ' I have sometimes imagined myself such a 
 character [a confessor] — the obscure instrument in pro- 
 moting virtue and happiness.' And, like a confessor or a 
 doctor, it was his business — and his weakness — not to be 
 mystified by any form of human suffering. He had a 
 ready medicine for every ill : for tormented poets clear 
 lessons in construction ; for religious doubters clear spy- 
 glasses to show the moral reefs ahead ; for those in sorrow 
 Epictetus. 
 
 I have heard of men [he says] who, when their wives have 
 died, have suffered everything belonging to the dead to remain 
 precisely as they left it for years and years — the music-book 
 open, the shawl thrown across the chair, the fan or parasol on 
 the table — and this till they died themselves. This is insanity ; 
 but one can understand its nature and growth. If ever I 
 become insane it will not be in this way. There is the same
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY 311 
 
 excuse for drunkenness and debauchery as for over-sensibility. 
 Twelve years ago I carried Epictetus in my pocket, till my verj 
 heart was ingrained with it, as a pig's bones become red by 
 feeding him upon madder. 
 
 And Southey practised his precepts ; nowhere is he braver 
 or more lovable than in the letters he writes in grief. In his 
 youth the loss of his great friend at Oxford, Edmund Seward, 
 gave his soul a shock which early inured him to death ; and 
 his strength did not fail him when there fell the blow which 
 changed the world for him — the death, at ten years, of his 
 idolised boy, Herbert, the centre of his hopes and happi- 
 ness. It broke his heart, but not his faith. 
 
 Wherefore do I write to you [he asks a friend] ? Alas ! 
 because I know not what to do. To-morrow, perhaps, may 
 bring with it something like the beginning of relief. To-day I 
 hope I shall support myself, or rather that God will support me, 
 for I am weak as a child, in body even more than in mind. 
 ... I am wanting in no effort to appear calm and to console 
 others. . . . Many blessings are left me— abundant blessings, 
 more than I have deserved. ... I have strong ties to life and 
 many duties yet to perform. . . . Reason will do something. 
 Time more, Religion most of all. The loss is but for this world ; 
 but as long as I remain in this world I shall feel it. 
 
 Skiddaw and Helvellyn were stern masters to him, as 
 they were to his neighbour Wordsworth. Not that the 
 poets got on too well ; perhaps both had too much self- 
 control and self-esteem to suit one another ; each needed a 
 weaker man to influence and to guide. ' It seemed to me,' 
 says De Quincey, ' as if both had silently said, " W T e are 
 neighbours, or what passes for such in the country. Let us 
 show each other the courtesies which are becoming to men 
 of letters ; and, for any closer connexion, our distance of 
 thirteen miles may be always sufficient to keep us from that." 
 Indeed, Southey had no time for visits. His work was his 
 armour, his staff, the only power, excepting his faith, which
 
 312 NEW AND OLD 
 
 helped him through the darkness of loss and reconciled him 
 to life. Pen-driving was such a habit with him that he 
 could return to it at once, almost before death was out of 
 the house. Perhaps no man of letters ever worked so hard. 
 The books by which his name is known are as nothing to 
 the complete list. From the day in 1796 when Joseph 
 Cottle, that kind godfather of so many heavy infants of 
 the Muse, printed Joan of Arc, he never ceased to pro- 
 duce. Besides his endless prefacings and editings, antho- 
 logies, annual registers, and copious articles, he published 
 some thirty- three original works, three-quarters of which 
 he believed to be immortal. Several of them were long his- 
 tories needing years of arduous labour, many others conscien- 
 tious biographies. Haunted by the need of providing 
 for his family after his lifetime, he even made an inventory 
 of the friends his letters to whom he wished to be published 
 at his death, and asked one of them to mark at once 
 such passages as he thought suitable for print. He always 
 kept five or six of his tasks upon the stocks, some poetic, 
 some in prose, and wrote at each in turn, the sole condi- 
 tion on which he could keep his mind going without a 
 breakdown. The result was inevitable. Quantity and 
 quality were too often confounded. And in the end 
 Southey's worst fears were realised. When the last blow 
 fell upon his spirit, worn by grief and toil, and his wife went 
 mad, he worked on for five years and then, at sixty-five, 
 his over-burdened brain gave way. But till that time, 
 even after his boy's death, his life kept a pleasant tenor. 
 ' I have taken again to my old coat and old shoes,' he writes 
 in 1824, ' dine at the reasonable hour of four, enjoy as I 
 used to do the wholesome indulgence of a nap after dinner, 
 drink tea at six, sup at half-past nine, spend an hour over 
 a sober folio and a glass of black-currant rum with warm 
 water and sugar, and then to bed.' His great excitement 
 was the arrival of books by coach or wagon — wagon was
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY 818 
 
 cheapest. Those were the days of the romance of parcels, 
 when a horn announced them and they might cost a guinea 
 to receive (as did Southey's parcel from Miss Barker) if 
 they were sent by the wrong conveyance. Scott's and 
 Landor's poems travelled to him in this fashion ; London 
 friends took such opportunity as offered to send him collec- 
 tive packets and add to the provision of his library, that 
 library which was to him an empire. And then, not infre- 
 quently, came guests; old friends who arrived to stay and 
 shared his long daily walks over hill and dale, like Coleridge, 
 who took up his abode with him ('Colridge's Room' still 
 stands large upon the door of the best apartment in the 
 house) and ended by depositing his family permanently 
 beneath Southey's wing ; or casual visitors, like Shelley, 
 at nineteen, living near by, in lodgings with Harriet — Shelley 
 who appeared at tea-time and, in the abstraction of dis- 
 cussion, ate, one by one, the dish of buttered crumpets on 
 which Southey had counted ; many others, too, less known 
 to fame. And here we come to what was, next to literature, 
 the serious business of Southey's life — to friendship. It is 
 seldom that an author occupied in creating has been so 
 steady and unselfish a friend to many — and a friend, it 
 must be added, so unexciting. ' The tone of Southey's 
 animal spirits,' writes De Quincey, ' was never at any time 
 raised beyond the standard of an ordinary sympathy ; there 
 was in him no tumult, no agitation of passion. . . . Cheer- 
 ful he was, and animated at all times, but he levied no 
 tribute on the spirits or the feelings beyond what all people 
 could furnish.' This was both his strength and his limita- 
 tion, and in either respect he misread his powers. 
 
 For Southey never knew what he was like. The strange 
 thing about him is that a useful angel was the last thing 
 he wished to be. He believed in himself as a genius and 
 as the friend of genius. Never did such a reasonable man 
 build such a reasonable structure upon such an unsound
 
 314 NEW AND OLD 
 
 basis. ' There is an evil,' he writes, ' in seeing all things 
 like a poet ; circumstances which would glide over a healthier 
 mind sink into mine ; everything comes to me with its whole 
 force — the full meaning of a look, a gesture, a child's im- 
 perfect speech, I can perceive, and cannot help perceiving.' 
 This was his view of himself. But he never knew that 
 genius was inaccessible ; and he thought that it could be 
 acquired by perseverance and right habits. He prided 
 himself upon writing Thalaba and the Curse of Kehama 
 before breakfast ; he begged Bernard Barton never to 
 write at night, lest he should make his Quaker connections 
 think the poet's profession not respectable ; his chief aim, 
 he said, was to trace the progress of morality in history ; he 
 used, as we know, to write half a dozen works of genius at 
 once — and yet he believed himself to be like the youthful 
 Shelley. 
 
 Here [he wrote] is a man at Keswick, who acts upon me as 
 my own ghost would do. He is just what I was in 1794. His 
 name is Shelley. . . . He is come to the fittest physician in the 
 world. ... It has surprised him a good deal to meet, for the 
 first time in his life, with a man who perfectly understands 
 him. ... I tell him that all the difference between us is that 
 he is nineteen and I am thirty-seven ; and I daresay it will not 
 be very long before I shall succeed in convincing him that he 
 may be a true philosopher, and do a great deal of good, with 
 £6000 a year. 
 
 This was a droll sort of ' perfect ' understanding. Eight 
 years afterwards Southey was writing to tell his ' ghost ' 
 that he was a propagandist of monstrous depravity. He 
 had not the eye to see that Shelley's failures came from 
 aiming too high, not too low — from too many principles 
 instead of too few. While Southey took fact for truth, 
 Shelley took truth for fact and acted on the assumption. 
 Southey's error was the deeper of the two, but, unaware of 
 it, he lost his chance of modifying the impressionable poet.
 
 ROBERT SOUTH KY :515 
 
 Byron he regarded as Satan ; and Murray, he says, is 
 ' implicated with him in the disgrace which must attach to 
 every person concerned in bringing forth Don Juan.' Upon 
 Elia he pronounces that ' there are some things in it 
 which will offend,' and, truly though he loved Lamb, he 
 wrote of him almost as of a reprobate ; of Coleridge he 
 came to talk as of the person whose bad example had first 
 taught him the use of self-restraint in conversation. A 
 man may be bewildered by genius, or he may reverence it, 
 but he may not sit and disapprove or be cocksure about 
 it. A genius puts the whole of his being and all his powers 
 of restraint into his art, he has little left over for daily life ; 
 while a man of talent invests but a part of himself in his 
 work, he makes spiritual economies enough to live on. 
 
 But Southcy did not think himself a man of talent. His 
 disapproval was all part of his fundamental mistake. As 
 he believed himself to be a genius, and knew that he could 
 behave and control himself, he felt convinced that all geniuses 
 were capable of self-government if they would but try to 
 be regular. The error induced the strange sort of Pharisaism 
 which has alienated so many from him. He admired him- 
 self, but then he was admirable. And we love him through 
 it all because he was so simple and sincere. There is 
 morning dew upon his self-esteem ; and, if he was the hero- 
 worshipper of himself, he certainly lived up to his ideal. 
 That is why the greater men he reproved — greater than 
 himself — continued to love and trust him ; why Lamb and 
 Shelley wrote him answers of such large and gentle charity 
 that only goodness could have called them forth ; why 
 even Byron behaved nicely to him when he met him. 
 
 The same almost childlike delusion permeated his view 
 of his writings. Southey was essentially the man of letters. 
 His Muse was his wife, not his mistress : his wife who during 
 his short absences awaited his return upon the doorstep, 
 and was ready to make tea for him — too much tea. But
 
 316 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Southey thought otherwise. He knows of no poem 
 equal in originality to Thalaba except the Faerie Queen. 
 ' With Tasso, with Virgil, with Homer,' he says, ' there 
 may be fair grounds of comparison, but my mind is wholly 
 unlike Milton's.' His article on education was to ' set the 
 question at rest for ever ' ; and ' there can be no doubt,' 
 he writes, ' I shall be sufficiently talked of when I am gone.' 
 As for his History of Brazil, ' ages hence it will be found 
 among those works which are not destined to perish . . . 
 it will be read in the heart of South America . . . and be 
 to the Brazilians what the work of Herodotus is to Europe.' 
 The History of Brazil seems to have been the favourite 
 nursling of his brain. ' English books,' he writes from 
 Holland, ' are so scarce here that they have never seen any 
 work of mine except Roderick. Of course I have ordered 
 over a complete set of my poems and the History of 
 Brazil.' Rather a heavy p.p.c. card for his Dutch hosts, 
 the Bilderdijks. 
 
 All this is, perhaps, a unique instance of megalomania in 
 a sane man, but it is so naive as to be disarming. Hannah 
 More, the rival moralist and benefactor — in many ways his 
 feminine counterpart — thought much the same as he did, 
 but was far too wary to say so. Southey was humble before 
 God, humbler than Hannah ; and to understand them both 
 we must remember their amazing contemporary reputation. 
 There is a vanity so childish that it is not incompatible with 
 heaven, and Southey's vanity was coupled with a nobility 
 which made him behave as well when he suffered worldly 
 disappointment as he did when on the crest of the wave. 
 He had, too, the purging grace of the power to admire others 
 as heartily as he admired himself. His fervent feeling for 
 Landor is a beautiful thing, and so is his affection for Walter 
 Scott. And there can be but little harm in a quality which 
 he himself so frankly exposes in his letters to his friends. 
 No one who has not read those letters can know what good
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY 517 
 
 company Southey must have been. They are racy, stringent, 
 and sincere, full of limited insight and of prejudice — a 
 seasoning flavour in correspondence. His wit ran narrow, 
 but it ran deep, especially in the early years of his man- 
 hood, when the letters are best and full of sound and pungent 
 criticisms. As he grew older his natural perspicacity was 
 rather dimmed by his high Toryism, and his pen grows 
 heavier. But he seldom fails in vivid, one-sided portraiture — 
 whether of Hartley Coleridge,' the oddest of all God's creatures 
 . . . totally destitute of anything like modesty, yet without 
 the slightest tinge of impudence in his nature ' ; or of ' little 
 Mr. Quincey ' (' I wish,' he says, ' he were not so little, and 
 I wish he would not leave his great-coat always behind upon 
 the road ') ; or of Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh — the 
 ' homunculus of five foot one, with a face which upon a 
 larger scale would be handsome . . . ^enunciating his 
 words as if he had studied elocution under John Thelwall, 
 of whom indeed he is an Elzevir edition in better 
 binding.' 
 
 But the best portrait that he gives us in his letters is, 
 after all, the portrait of himself. We see him innocently 
 revealed here as he was : a soul without guile, unspotted 
 by the world ; a man of talent, the perfect friend of men of 
 talent ; a poet, whose best poem, an unwritten one, was 
 his love for his boy — a love which, he tells us, ' passed the 
 love of women,' and was ' more lightly alarmed than the 
 wakefullest jealousy.' It is by what men are unconscious 
 of in themselves, by their being, not their doing, that they 
 achieve the most. And it is not by his deeds, or his works, 
 not even by his Life of Nelson or his Life of Wesley, that 
 Robert Southey will live, as he believed he would. His 
 enduring monument is his goodness. (1912.)
 
 318 NEW AND OLD 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 
 
 A century — and perhaps no less — gives the needful per- 
 spective to a poet, and enables us to assign him his place 
 on the roll of the immortals. Still more is this true of a 
 poetess, perhaps because there are few of her kind, perhaps 
 also because women's personal histories are more inextric- 
 ably bound up with their work than is the case with men. 
 And now that a hundred years have passed since Elizabeth 
 Barrett Browning's birth, it is easier than before to appraise 
 her for what she was. There are few of those born in the 
 fifties and the sixties who did not feel the glamour of her 
 song while their day was still at the spring. To them she 
 represented youth in its strength and in its weakness ; 
 youth with its confident flights towards the sun, its humbled 
 and heavy falls to earth, with its optimism and its morbid- 
 ness, its scorn of seemings, its power to live by illusion. 
 And when we re-read her poetry by the light brought by time, 
 it is the person, not the poet, who lives most. Her poetry 
 as poetry is imperfect. She is an incomplete artist, but a 
 complete woman ; and it is as a complete woman that she 
 will stand and endure. When we use the word ' poet ' we 
 mean, of course, a professional poet. Every woman is a 
 poet, and she, who was more intensely woman than other 
 women, was, in this way, a past-mistress of poetry. 
 
 The Sonnets from the Portuguese remain her master- 
 piece — a real work of art, because they are the fullest expres- 
 sion of the woman in her ; and, better than these, the best 
 poem that she created, was her own life with her husband. 
 This is perhaps the reason why she is comparatively little 
 read by the present generation ; the woman of one age 
 seldom speaks to the ' business and bosoms ' of her followers 
 fifty years later ; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her 
 rebellions as much as in her sentiments, was Early Victorian
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 319 
 
 in seeming, although new and untried forces lay below. 
 The lyre is no longer in vogue ; it has given place to 
 other instruments more scientific than musical. Authors 
 are not now photographed as they were in the time of long 
 ringlets — as she was — pensive, unassuming, intense, with 
 the Coliseum behind her ; for great backgrounds have also 
 gone out of fashion. 'E. B. B.' lived in the days of great 
 backgrounds ; of great causes and great awakenings ; 
 the days of Victor Hugo and Garibaldi ; of Kingsley and 
 Carlyle and the Chartists ; of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother- 
 hood ; and of fermenting ideas, both in politics and in 
 art. The walls which then fell before trumpets were the 
 walls of respectability — a city which, though rebuilt, has 
 never again occupied the same dominant position. Un- 
 convcntionality has even become conventional, so that 
 many of the barriers that Elizabeth Barrett Browning made 
 against it have ceased to interest her less struggling suc- 
 cessors. Her attitude to moral questions, to women and 
 to the poor, to art and its relation to Nature, has grown to 
 be the general attitude of cultivated people — so general, 
 indeed, that we are apt to undervalue her as an innovator. 
 
 O Magi of the east and of the west, 
 Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent ! — 
 
 What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest ? 
 Your hands have worked well : is your courage spent 
 
 In handwork only ? Have you nothing best, 
 Which generous souls may perfect and present, 
 
 And He shall thank the givers for ? no light 
 Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor 
 
 Who sit in darkness when it is not night ? 
 No cure for wicked children ? Christ — no cure ! 
 
 No help for women sobbing out of sight 
 Because men made the laws ? No brothel-lure 
 
 Burnt out by popular lightnings ? 
 
 Thus she wrote in the year of our Great Exhibition, seated 
 at her ' Casa Guidi Windows,' and it required some courage
 
 320 NEW AND OLD 
 
 to publish the lines. That the ideal should have its roots 
 in the real, that the real, to be true, must be enkindled by 
 the ideal, in matters of human love as well as in matters 
 of art, such was her spontaneous message as much as it 
 was that of her husband. Their purpose was the same, but 
 he proclaimed it in tones strong enough to reach farther 
 than hers. And though it sounds ordinary now, it did not 
 sound so then, when the art of Ary Scheffer and the cult of 
 sentiment were in vogue. 
 
 ' Beloved,' it sang, 'we must be here to work ; 
 And men who work can ouly work for men, 
 And, not to work in vain, must comprehend 
 Humanity and so work humanly 
 And raise men's bodies still by raising souls, 
 As God did first. ' 
 
 ' But stand upon the earth,' 
 1 said, ' to raise them (this is human too, 
 There's nothing high which has not first been low ; 
 My humbleness, said One, has made me great !) 
 As God did last. . . . 
 
 The man most man 
 Works best for men, and, if most man indeed, 
 He gets his manhood plainest from his soul : 
 While obviously this stringent soul itself 
 Obeys the old law of development, 
 The Spirit ever witnessing in ours, 
 And Love, the soul of soul, within the soul, 
 Evolving it sublimely.' 
 
 This passage from Aurora Leigh is idealism, but not of the 
 rosy kind ; it is the idealism which sees the ideal in the 
 real, often in the ugly ; which resulted in Les Miserables, in 
 the pictures of Jean Francois Millet, in Rossetti's painting 
 of ' Found,' or in his poem of Jenny. Thus, Early Victorian 
 though she was in inward form, she stood no less at the 
 parting of the ways, at the source of modern art, and 
 hailed the rising sun. Her tendencies were forward and, 
 at whatever time she might have lived, she would have 
 been of les Jewries, unmindful of personal risk as long as
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 821 
 
 some one reached the goal that many made for. The 
 juvenile audience at a Gay Lord Quex, the babes fed on 
 Ibsen, can afford to smile at Thackeray's rejection of ' Lord 
 Walter's Wife' as being too 'strong' for the Cornhill 
 Magazine ; yet, mild as it seems to us now, to the in-seeing 
 eye it contains the germ of much — of the whole protest of 
 the spiritual against the material view of love. It requires 
 a woman's hand to rend the veil from coarse fact with 
 sullicicnt delicacy ; to know where to lift, and where to 
 drop it ; and Mrs. Browning was practically the first who 
 dared to attempt the task. Mrs. Hemans belonged to the 
 literary generation before her, George Eliot to the one 
 which followed after. 
 
 Nowhere has she shown more of her delicacy and courage 
 than in her chief work, Aurora Leigh, and nowhere has she 
 more clearly worked out her message. For the outcome 
 of the poem, the solution of the questions there set forth, 
 is the marriage, after many struggles, of the ideal with the 
 real ; of Aurora Leigh the poetess, who believes in working 
 first upon the souls of her fellows, with Romney Leigh the 
 philanthropist, who believes in working first upon their 
 bodies. It is the union of idea and action, both, as she 
 teaches, inadequate half-truths till they join forces. And 
 the book is rich in other notes characteristic of her singing. 
 The wronged Marian Erie, who lived only for her nameless 
 child, stands out as the embodiment of the mother-love 
 which was so strong in Mrs. Browning herself. And all 
 the society characters in the story, however unnatural they 
 may be, serve to prove, as she herself says elsewhere, that 
 
 This age shows, to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam 
 Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God. 
 
 There are obvious absurdities in the work. But Aurora 
 and Romney live — in imaginative fashion ; and even 
 Marian Erie, though she does not make us believe in her, 
 
 x
 
 322 NEW AND OLD 
 
 often revives in our eyes some sketch by Rossetti of Miss 
 Siddal, so poetically pure that it seems as if comparison 
 with fact would detract from its own inherent truth. The 
 whole theme of the poem recalls the kind of themes chosen 
 by the Pre-Raphaelites — Holman Hunt's ' Awakened Con- 
 science,' Rossetti's ' Found,' Martineau's ' Last Day in the 
 Old Home.' There are other things to remind us that the 
 poetess was writing at the time that they were painting — 
 the same desire to defy conventions and return to Nature ; 
 the same amassing of detail, sometimes to the detriment 
 of the whole ; the same chivalry and strenuousness ; the 
 same handling of a realistic subject in a mystic spirit, pro- 
 ducing an unreal effect. There is, however, one wide 
 difference between Mrs. Browning and the ' P.R.B.'s.' 
 Purity of form, a clear-cut outline, were essentials of their 
 art. Not so of hers. Her forms are defective, and often 
 either rough or blurred ; she seems to be so much absorbed 
 in pouring out the new wine that she does not care much 
 about the shape of the old bottles. It is this which makes 
 us feel, when we put down Aurora Leigh, that she would 
 have written a fine novel ; but of one thing we are sure — 
 that we have not been reading a poem. It may be urged 
 that she composed it in adverse circumstances. ' She wrote 
 in pencil, on scraps of paper, as she lay on the sofa in her 
 sitting-room open to interruption from chance visitors . . . 
 simply hiding the paper beside her if any one came in.' 
 
 And if her sense of form were found lacking only in this 
 work the excuse would hold. But this is not so. Her 
 poems, however sweet, are nearly always redundant, un- 
 concentrated, too long and overcrowded with images ; full, 
 too, of the repetition of thoughts that vary but slightly 
 from one another. The sonnet may perhaps be taken as a 
 final proof of the sense of form possessed by a poet. It 
 must be so condensed, so clearly outlined ; it must supply 
 the want of space by depth, it must be exquisitely wrought
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 323 
 
 with lines deftly interlaced. But Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
 ing's sonnets do not stand the test ; they are too unchiselled, 
 too wordy. We except, of course, the Sonnets from the 
 Portuguese, because there the white heat of feeling does the 
 work of the potter's furnace, and gives them a shape of 
 their own. But take Discontent, or Tears, or Cheerful- 
 ness taught by Reason, and you will wonder why they 
 were ever cast in sonnet-mould instead of being written as 
 lyrics. There is a certain hymn-like quality about them, 
 as, indeed, about many of her verses, which mars their 
 strength and their design. And this will be felt the more 
 if you compare them with the work of her contemporary, 
 Christina Rossetti, the only other poetess whose name can 
 be mentioned with hers. Many of Miss Rossetti's poems 
 are hymns in subject and intention, and yet they remain 
 pure poetry because their distinction of feeling is enshrined 
 in distinction of form ; because their burning intensity 
 refines, but never destroys, the vessel which contains it. 
 Each sonnet in the Monna Innominata series is in itself a 
 crystalline gem, giving joy by its mere sound ; while even 
 the Sonnets from the Portuguese would not satisfy us 
 apart from their meaning. Miss Rossetti had the Catholic 
 mind ; Mrs. Browning's spirit was Evangelical. Miss 
 Rossetti, concentrated and cloistral, was the completer 
 poet; Mrs. Browning, prodigal of herself, absorbed in 
 helping the world, was the greater and the richer-natured 
 woman. Nor are her poetic defects unaccountable. She 
 lived before all the talk about form that has since become 
 current coin ; she had a fatal facility in rhyming and no 
 self-conceit to make her cautious. And, although, fine 
 Greek scholar that she was, she had a delicate ear for the 
 classics, she had no wish to return to their methods. ' Pan, 
 Pan is dead,' she cried ; her generation had a new song 
 to sing, and she deliberately gave to all form a place of 
 secondary importance. ' To bring the invisible full into
 
 324 NEW AND OLD 
 
 play, let the visible go to the dogs ; what matters ? ' was 
 her motto as well as that of Robert Browning ; and, in her 
 eyes, nothing did matter so long as the end in art exceeded 
 the means. 
 
 Mrs. Browning had another faculty which is often a sub- 
 stitute, and sometimes a dangerous one, for form — the 
 faculty for melody. It is this which gives to certain of 
 her lines a magic, a pathos, they cannot lose. This and the 
 gift that she possesses of evoking associations ; of reviving 
 scents and sounds of past years, of making us live in the 
 past — the past, for which she herself had a close and almost 
 morbid affection. ' I am strongly a creature of associa- 
 tion,' she once wrote to a friend ; and her love of harking 
 back for herself was as strong as her power of looking forward 
 for the world. Such sentiments are almost inseparable 
 from the melodies which clothe them, and there are certain 
 of her verses, seldom whole poems (except, perhaps, The 
 Poet and the Bird, or A Musical Instrument, or Catarina 
 to Camoens), that haunt the brain because of their tune- 
 fulness. 
 
 In the pleasant orchard-closes 
 
 'God bless all our gains,' say we ; 
 But ' May God bless all our losses ' 
 Better suits with our degree 
 
 is like a snatch of song. And the Mountain- gorses ever 
 golden — 
 
 Ye whom God preserveth still, 
 Set as lights upon a hill, 
 Tokens to the wintry earth that Beauty liveth still — 
 
 are not likely to be forgotten. No more is IsobeVs Child : 
 
 The poplars tall on the opposite hill, 
 
 The seven tall poplars on the hill, 
 
 Did clasp the setting sun until 
 
 His rays dropped from him, pined and still
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 325 
 
 As blossoms in frost, 
 Till he waned and paled, so weirdly crossed, 
 To tlie colour of moonlight which doth pass 
 ( )ver the dank ridged churchyard grass. 
 
 The worst, perhaps, of this melodic gift is the speed with 
 which it cloys and degenerates — its easy appeal to the 
 crowd. 
 
 Unless you can muse in a crowd all day 
 
 On the absent face that fixed you ; 
 Unless you can love, as the angels may, 
 
 With the breadth of heaven betwixt you ; 
 Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, 
 
 Through believing and unbelieving ; 
 Unless you can die when the dream is past — 
 Oh, never call it loving ! 
 
 — lines such as these have too much of the tune that every 
 man can learn. And yet can we quarrel with the defect, 
 when it was this very quality of popular emotionalness 
 that enabled her Cry of the Children to contribute, as 
 no other poem has done, to a reform in the law of the land 
 — one of the noblest achievements ever accomplished by 
 art ? Nor did she lack other talents which corrected her 
 diffuseness. Now and again she shows an inconsistent 
 turn for aphorism, as in Casa Guidi Windows : 
 
 An ignorance of means may minister 
 To greatness, but an ignorance of aims 
 Makes it impossible to be great at all. 
 
 or in A Vision of Poets : 
 
 Knowledge by suffering entereth 
 And life is perfected by Death. 
 
 The painter's gift, too, is hers. It often seems as if she 
 wrote with a brush rather than a pen, and her descriptions 
 of Nature, whether in England or in Italy, show her at her 
 best as an artist. She saw, she says in a letter of 1854, 
 ' the wonderful Terni by the way — that passion of the waters,
 
 326 NEW AND OLD 
 
 which makes the human heart seem so still.' And earlier 
 in the year, ' Oh those jagged mountains rolled together 
 like pre-Adamite beasts and setting their teeth against the 
 sky — it was wonderful,' she writes from the Baths of Lucca. 
 
 If we think of Mrs. Browning's many-sidedness, our 
 wonder at her character grows. She had lain on her couch 
 between four walls for twenty years of her existence, suffer- 
 ing constant pain and weakness ; and her soul triumphed 
 over both. Shrinking as she did from contact with the 
 unknown, she had the courage at forty to know and to 
 grasp life when it came to her in the guise of love ; she did 
 not flinch from her secret marriage, or from her wedding 
 journey to Italy ; and once there, in the full blaze of happi- 
 ness at last, she did not, as would be most comprehensible, 
 relapse into sublimated selfishness, but spent herself in 
 thought for others. The cause of the Italians, struggling 
 for a united Italy, absorbed her energies. She loved altars, 
 she loved the flame upon them ; and she kept her fires 
 faithfully alight, for Mazzini, for Louis Napoleon, for 
 Garibaldi, and, most of all, for Cavour. ' I can scarcely 
 command voice or hand to name Cavour,'' she wrote at his 
 death. ' That great soul which meditated and made Italy 
 has gone to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could 
 have saved him to us, he should have had mine.' 
 
 In her great-heartedness and public spirit, Elizabeth 
 Barrett Browning is nearer to George Sand than to any of 
 her own countrywomen. George Sand felt for the French 
 Republic of her dreams the same passion of hope, of dis- 
 enchantment, of untiring aspiration that the Englishwoman 
 felt for Italy. But, in Mrs. Browning's case, disillusion 
 did not last, and no coup oVEtat stained the fame of Victor 
 Emmanuel. Both were women of 1848, the period of 
 eternal youth, which seemed to give those who lived through 
 it the power of never losing their ideals. Both were in- 
 veterate believers. Both were generous democrats whose
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 327 
 
 written pictures of the poor were idylls rather than realities. 
 Both would rather have renounced their pens than ceased 
 to succour human suffering. Perhaps this is but another 
 way of saying that both were inspired by ardent maternal 
 devotion, lavished on their own children first, then on the 
 countless children of others. But strong as is the like- 
 ness between these two leaders of the Romantic school, in 
 the main functions of life their positions were exactly 
 reversed. If Mrs. Browning was incomplete artist and 
 complete woman, George Sand was the opposite. Com- 
 plete artist she was — but she was incomplete woman. 
 
 Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man 
 Self-called George Sand ! Whose soul amid the lions 
 Of thy tumultuous senses moans defiance — 
 
 thus Mrs. Browning addressed her. Yet while we see 
 George Sand's ' woman-heart beat evermore through the 
 large flame,' we have to own that the ' man ' in her played 
 too strong a part. ' Je me hate de vous confesser, ma 
 Juliette, que pour une femme e'est une inferiorite que se 
 defeminiser,' she said in her old age to Madame Adam. 
 
 That was an error Mrs. Browning had no need to renounce. 
 Robert Browning and his wife will live as classics in perfect 
 married love, as well as in the realm of poetry. And 
 typically woman as she was, she was also what few women 
 are — creative. ' You are wrong — quite wrong — she has 
 genius,' said Browning to one who admired his work more 
 than hers. ' I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you 
 imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries 
 to build up something — he wants to make you see it as he 
 sees it, hammering into your head the thing he wants you 
 to understand ; and whilst this bother is going on God 
 Almighty turns you off a little star — that 's the difference 
 between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine.' 
 Shall this stand as Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epitaph ? 
 We will but add some words of her own from one of her
 
 328 NEW AND OLD 
 
 letters : ' I can't look on the earth side of death. . . . 
 When I look death wards I look over death and upwards, 
 or I can't look that way at all.' (1906.) 
 
 THE BRAHMAN OF CONCORD 
 
 Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vols. ix. and x. 
 (Constable. 6s. net each.) 
 
 ' Emerson,' said the East Indian Mozoomdar, ' had all 
 the wisdom and spirituality of the Brahmans. Brahmanism 
 is an acquirement, a state of being rather than a creed.' 
 ' Emerson,' says Lowell, ' awakened us, saved us from 
 the body of this death. . . . Were we enthusiasts ? I hope 
 and believe we were, and am thankful to the man who made 
 us worth something for once in our lives.' ' He was,' says 
 Mr. Birrell, ' once upon a time, and for a long time, a 
 veritable sign in the heavens.' 
 
 Where, we ask, as we put down these last two volumes 
 of his journals, is all this power now ? As far as the present 
 generation is concerned, it is over. This is a fate common 
 perhaps to great teachers. They form a generation more 
 potently than they write books ; they make the men who 
 directly follow them ; and just because their work is living 
 and visible it cannot endure unchanged like a book. The 
 next age suffers reaction, and the influence of the teacher 
 lives on only as a cause of oscillation. There are many 
 reasons why Emerson does not suit the young people of 
 to-day, why he even irritates them. Any academicness 
 is their bugbear ; and Emerson is a spiritual don, adoring 
 youth, yet speaking to it from a terrace of higher ethical 
 wisdom and with an assumption of knowing its needs. 
 Emerson was suave, serene, uncircumscribed ; no man 
 holds sway at this moment who does not hit straight from 
 the shoulder, who is not vehement and definite. How
 
 THE BRAHMAN OF CONCORD 829 
 
 could ether-loving Emerson prevail at a time when men 
 alternate between Nietzsche and Newman ? He was vague 
 at an hour when men were revolting from Calvinism and 
 wanted vagueness. ' If I asked what was left, what we 
 carried home,' writes Lowell, ' it would have been enough 
 if we had said that something beautiful had passed that 
 way.' ' Something beautiful ' would ill suit the modern 
 conscience, which is so subject to the despotism of the 
 strident and the abnormal. But is it enough for any con- 
 science ? Is the food offered sufficiently solid to nourish 
 us ? It is not altogether the fault of this generation that 
 Emerson — in England at least — has ceased to concern it. 
 There are other reasons, and these journals reveal more 
 than one of them. 
 
 To begin with, Emerson's serenity — born, not made — 
 includes serenity as regards himself. He is almost smug. 
 
 When I wrote ' Representative Men ' [runs an entry of 
 1863] 1 felt that Jesus was the ' Representative Man' whom I 
 ought to sketch ; but the task required great gifts, steadiest 
 insight, and perfect temper. . . . Theodore Parker, of course, 
 wished to write this book ; so did Maria Child in her ' Book of 
 Religions,' and Miss Cobb, and Alcott, and I know not how 
 many more. 
 
 This is too much and not enough — it is shallow. And 
 where warm imagination was needed, or multiform percep- 
 tion, shallow Emerson sometimes was. What understand- 
 ing reader of Racine, Ronsard, Boileau, would let pass 
 these observations on French classicism ? 
 
 I think I can show that France cleaves to the form, and loses 
 the substance ; as in the famous unities of her drama; and in 
 her poetry itself; in the whole ' classicality ' of her turn of 
 mind, which is only apery. 
 
 The fact is that Emerson's vision was limited ; his gifts 
 were great but they were few, and as an artist he was
 
 330 NEW AND OLD 
 
 inadequate. He judged everything — art, poetry, even Nature 
 — by its effect upon conduct. His very philosophy often 
 fails, intellectually speaking, for this reason. It is neither 
 pure thought nor pure sentiment, but something between 
 the two. He could not keep it disinterested, free from 
 morals. And his sentiment falls short in the same way. 
 It is too intellectual, too unwarmed by human sympathy. 
 When he writes, in 1864, that ' they who should be friends 
 cannot pass into each other. Friends are fictions founded 
 on some single momentary experience,' we feel his words 
 to be no calm victory after conflict, no sign of self-mastery, 
 but rather the expression of a lack in him. A wistfulness 
 here would have made him richer. 
 
 Perhaps this brings us to the main reason why just at 
 present Emerson is forgotten. It is not because he is an 
 idealist, but because his idealism was not deeply enough 
 rooted in reality. He knew too little of the fray, of the 
 shoulder to shoulder jostle in the market-place ; and, if 
 not too much of Adirondack philosophers, too little of the 
 poor and unpresentable, of sorrow and suffering, of life's 
 violence and life's contrasts. His intimacy with the sub- 
 lime needed these contrasts as justification. He was, so to 
 speak, the high priest of spiritual respectability — sanctify- 
 ing it sincerely, yet remaining hierarchical. But this kind 
 of want is precisely that which is least pardoned by the 
 young who come after ; the want, also, least remarked by 
 contemporaries, when accompanied, as in Emerson's case, 
 by such forcible personal magnetism. 
 
 Mozoomdar was, indeed, not wholly right. If Brahman- 
 ism is ' a state of being rather than a creed,' Emerson was 
 not a true Brahman. Almost unconsciously, he tried to 
 make being into a creed — after the practical Western 
 fashion, which asks for spiritual results. The Brahmans 
 are mystics ; Emerson was a transcendentalist ; and fine 
 though the shade between the two looks at first, it is really
 
 THE BRAHMAN OF CONCORD 331 
 
 a strong line of division and involves a profound difference. 
 Mysticism is never vague ; it always means experience — 
 definite experience in an indefinite region. But it leaves 
 the indefinite indefinite. Emerson, on the contrary, 
 attempts to define the indefinite ; to feel after some spiritual 
 formula sublimated beyond recognition, flexible and floating 
 as ether, in which to imprison the infinite. He is a kind of 
 celestial doctrinaire. For transcendentalism is not experi- 
 ence, it is thought ; it is born of the intellect ; it is, at 
 best, the expression of experience. Plotinus, Behmcn, Law, 
 Blake, Wordsworth can testify to states of being as clearly 
 as if they were conversions ; these states are part of their 
 human lives. But Emerson's testimony takes shape in 
 beautiful thoughts, in eloquent ideals, in winged reflections, 
 in things said and not in human documents. 
 
 It is interesting under this aspect to look at Emerson 
 and Wordsworth together : at least in their attitude towards 
 Nature. Wordsworth may moralise about Nature as much 
 as he pleases, but that is not Wordsworth. The true 
 Wordsworth is non-moral, is almost Nature herself. She 
 sweeps him into her being ; their relations towards one 
 another are quite simple, like those of mother and son. 
 Emerson says starry things about earth and sky ; he talks 
 of the universe with Thoreau ; he continually considers 
 Nature's mysteries, her import, but he never seems quite 
 simple about her. He has nothing of the peasant's feeling 
 which entered into Wordsworth's love of the earth ; or 
 of that unreflecting mystical instinct which makes Nature 
 an end in itself. 
 
 And there is another reason why Emerson is bound to 
 fail to-day. Men cannot help being idealists, however they 
 disguise the hated fact ; and our modem anarchy, our 
 cult of chaotic ugliness, seems to be little more than a kind 
 of inverted idealism. Fifty years ago men of science were 
 proud to be materialists ; they had made of matter an
 
 332 NEW AND OLD 
 
 austere goddess, nearly akin to truth and worthy of good 
 men's worship. Now, materialists are so uneasy about 
 that goddess, about her status and her respectability, that 
 they are trying to achieve the impossible, and in literature, 
 painting, music, to wring a kind of mysticism out of matter. 
 They are doctrinaires of anarchy ; they have no use for 
 another doctrinaire with a hostile and a truer form of ideal- 
 ism. This idealism it is which constitutes the interest of 
 Emerson's last journals. They cover a period of twenty 
 years, from 1856 to 1876, and they tell of his' lecturing 
 tours, of his farewell journey to England, Paris, Italy, of 
 his home life, and of days in the Adirondacks ; but they 
 might for the most part be written anywhere. Wherever 
 he went he inhabited the land of ideas and spoke its lan- 
 guage. And though, here and again, he gives that vivid 
 touch of portraiture which had lent his pen such distinc- 
 tion, the personal note is generally absent from these pages. 
 There are too many generalisations ; for he who tries to 
 define the indefinite is bound to land in large assumptions ; 
 and sometimes his conception outruns his power of utter- 
 ance and leaves his expression obscure. But as a rule it 
 is clear, even though it is elaborate, and his creed might 
 quickly be epitomised from these volumes. 
 
 The intellectual power [he writes] is not the gift, but the 
 presence of God. Nor do we reason to the being of God, but 
 God goes with us into nature, when we go or think at all. 
 Truth is always new and wild as the wild air, and is alive. 
 
 All physical facts are words for spiritual facts, and Imagination, 
 by naming them, is the interpreter, showing us the unity of the 
 world. 
 
 The imagination gives all the value to the day. If we walk, 
 if we work, if we talk, it is how many strokes vibrate on the 
 mystic string. 
 
 The way to the centre is everywhere equally short. 
 
 And the centre it was that Emerson made for. This is
 
 SAINTS AND MYSTICS 333 
 
 what constitutes his permanent value in the world. He 
 proclaimed the immanence of the Divine to an age that 
 had just escaped from the vindictive despot whom it called 
 Jehovah. Such a notion of God we of to-day have left 
 far behind us, and we feel none of the relief of deliverance. 
 But Emerson's faith, whatever its momentary fate, still 
 has living use : it serves as an abiding defence against 
 reactionary influences. Its very foibles help it ; its elusive 
 abstract quality is too indeterminate to provoke a retro- 
 grade movement, a return to authority. And in this time 
 of extremes, when those who are not supermen take refuge 
 from spiritual responsibility by running back to systems, 
 ritual, tradition, Emerson's large unemotional outlook 
 affords us no unsafe entrenchment. (1914.) 
 
 SAINTS AND MYSTICS 1 
 
 Saint, mystic, hero, idealist — each of these words bears a 
 distinct meaning, yet we constantly use them interchange- 
 ably, and rather too mistily. This, perhaps, would not 
 much concern us, were it not a fact that vague conceptions 
 are apt to be incompetent and to befog spiritual issues. 
 And the question seems to have a sharper point just now 
 when biography has been setting before our eyes such great 
 types of sainthood, heroism, and the rest ; when, in the 
 course of one year, Florence Nightingale, Octavia Hill, St. 
 Vincent de Paul, have lived again in printed pages ; when 
 from our midst has passed away the poet — the practical 
 poet — of citizenship, Canon Barnett ; or when we read the 
 record of the less known, no less striking, Mother Mabel 
 Digby, Mother-General of the Order of the Sacre Cceur 
 
 1 [A paragraph on heroes, which was inserted in haste and did not satisfy 
 the writer, has been omitted in this reprint, and some sentences written after 
 the article had appeared have been added.]
 
 334 NEW AND OLD 
 
 through the dark days of the recent persecutions in 
 France. 
 
 What, first of all, is a saint ? A saint is an artist in holi- 
 ness, one who is good for the joy he feels in goodness without 
 ulterior aim, who forgets his own soul in his love for the 
 souls of others. He is, if you like, a spiritual genius, the 
 owner of inaccessible secrets of sanctity, of which he is 
 unconscious, by which he lives. Above all, he loves good 
 more than he hates evil. Pascal, however holy, was for 
 this reason no saint. He dreaded sin more than he loved 
 his brother men. He invented the omnibus for the poorer 
 of them, but he shrank from association — from the risks 
 of love. He was happier fighting the Jesuits than in fellow- 
 ship with Port Royal. The true Puritan can perhaps never 
 be the true saint ; for the power of enjoyment, the saint's 
 enjoyment of holiness, lies at the root of saintliness, and 
 he says ' Thou shalt ' before he says ' Thou shalt not.' 
 It is asceticism which has proclaimed him as the enemy of 
 the artist, and so misapprehended the significance of both. 
 Saint and artist, alike, delight in self-expression, it is the 
 condition of their being ; and to both the outward form is 
 inseparable from the inward meaning. 
 
 A saint is necessarily a mystic, but a mystic is not neces- 
 sarily a saint. A mystic — to sum up briefly — is one who 
 lays stress upon being rather than upon doing, while a 
 saint holds the balance between the two ; he expresses 
 being by doing, and regards the one as incomplete without 
 the other. Being, it is true, must come first; it is the essence 
 of holiness, and works without faith are nought. Prayer 
 and contemplation with him become an energy — an action 
 for others ; and a life of love for mankind there must be 
 to prove belief. A mystic, in so far as he is a mystic, feels 
 no such necessity ; the one thing needful for him is the 
 direct communion of his spirit with God. For the rest, he 
 may neglect his fellow-creatures, he may even be inhuman,
 
 SAINTS AND MYSTICS 335 
 
 as some mystics have been. The only demand he makes 
 is for the heights, for those peaks which in themselves 
 encourage remoteness. The ecstasy of intercourse with 
 the divine, the intoxication of solitude he must have, and 
 he must have them often ; but these very conditions are 
 far from helping a return to common life, or acting as a 
 barrier to intellectual scorn. The true mysticism implies 
 abstract intellect, the true sanctity does not. The mystic 
 asks for light first, the saint for lire ; and the highest 
 and rarest types are those in which both elements are 
 made one. 
 
 Of these types of a high altruism, as of the hero, one thing 
 can equally be said : each one is an idealist ; each one sees 
 what might be in what is, and strives to realise his vision. 
 The love of the ideal is, so to speak, the common source 
 from which saint, hero, mystic draw their spiritual suste- 
 nance. And saint, hero, mystic are again alike in this : 
 they care for goodness in preference to morality, often in 
 opposition to it. To them the garden is all-important, the 
 fence that guards it not so — that paling which each genera- 
 tion in turn knocks down and builds up anew, according 
 to its especial needs. And goodness also, although it is 
 not destroyed, is re-defined by the good men of every age. 
 They have sought purity by many and divers ways ; through 
 asceticism and superstition, through control over Nature 
 and through knowledge ; but their fundamental object is 
 always the same. They endeavour to set the will free from 
 the ego, to make human beings less selfish and more them- 
 selves, to follow after kindness and to learn love. Sincere 
 goodness, like sincere art, is an attempt to wrest what is 
 permanent out of the transitoriness of things. 
 
 The way to live with God is to live with ideas — not merely 
 to think about ideals, but to do and suffer for them. Those 
 who have to work on men and women must, above all things, 
 have their spiritual ideal, their purpose ever present.
 
 336 NEW AND OLD 
 
 I believe , . . in the service of man being the service of 
 God, the growing into a likeness with Hioi by love, the being 
 one with Him in will at last, which is Heaven. I believe in 
 the plan of Almighty Perfection to make us all perfect. And 
 thus I believe in the Life Everlasting. 
 
 The mystical state is the essence of common sense. 
 
 These sentences, the last above all, make the epitome of 
 Florence Nightingale's creed. And, under the heading 
 ' Drains,' ' the question,' she wrote, ' is not whether a thing 
 is done for the State or the Church, but whether it is done 
 with God or without God.' 
 
 I care very little to express faith anywhere but in life [said 
 Octavia Hill]. . . . God has been always pleased to build His 
 best bridges with human piers, not angels, nor working by 
 miracles ; but He has always let us help Him, if we will, never 
 letting our faults impede His purposes when we struggled that 
 they should not. 
 
 The people round, and all we see and hear, leave a kind of 
 mark on us, an impression of awe, or pity, and wonder, or 
 sometimes love. . . . How hard it is to do justly and love 
 mercy and walk humbly. 
 
 In God [wrote Canon Barnett] we are alive and move and have 
 our being. . . . Through God we can therefore act on others. 
 Prayer is work. 
 
 It is unbelief in God which makes much effort ineffective 
 . . . not disbelief, but just unbelief in a Power Whose will is 
 being done. 
 
 In each of us [we quote St. Vincent de Paul] there is a grain 
 of the almighty power of God, and that should be a great 
 motive for hope. 
 
 If we take a person who fixes his love on God only — a soul 
 . . . which has soared in contemplation, and . . . limits himself 
 to this unfailing source of satisfaction, and does not trouble 
 himself about his neighbour; and then take another who loves 
 God with his whole heart and for the love of God loves his 
 neighbour also, however faulty and repulsive . . . which of 
 these two . . . has the most perfect sort of love ?
 
 SAINTS AND MYSTICS 887 
 
 As it is the function of fire to give light and warmth; so is it 
 the function of love to spread the sense of love. 
 
 In the pronouncements of these four great pioneers — the 
 three modern contemporaries, the fourth, their predecessor, 
 the creator of lay charities two hundred and fifty years before 
 them — we shall first be struck by the likeness, by the same 
 mystical note in each. Work in God and through Him is 
 their gospel. And thus they escape all the perils of mysti- 
 cism. Like wine, mysticism is dangerous when drunk alone 
 without food. Every sacramental thought needs both 
 bread and wine. And to each of these four vision seemed 
 useless without action. But further reflection reveals deep 
 differences. In the sayings of Florence Nightingale the 
 intellectual quality leads, the abstract mind is there ; in- 
 tellect also it is which is salient in the utterance of Canon 
 Barnett. But in the words of Octavia Hill and of St. 
 Vincent it is the heart which predominates, the personal 
 element which inspires them. The first two make for the 
 good of the world ; the last two for the good of the individual 
 soul. The first two are spiritually minded reformers ; the 
 last two are saints. Not that feeling is absent from the 
 reformers — far from it ; but it is feeling sublimated by 
 thought : the saints also think, but their intellects are 
 kindled by emotion. In the case of St. Vincent it is far 
 more than this. Although he had the nature of the saint, 
 and so the saint in him came foremost, his capability was 
 as signal as his holiness. He was the initiator of organised 
 charity outside the cloister — of the Sisters of Chanty, bound 
 by no convent vows ; of outdoor relief, of aid to convicts, 
 of hospital reform ; he utilised the wealth and service of 
 the women of fashion for that Hotel Dieu of Paris which, 
 from being a den of infection, became the prototype of 
 modern institutions. He did the organising work of a 
 Florence Nightingale on starvation diet and under sternest 
 
 T
 
 338 NEW AND OLD 
 
 discipline, yet never lost his personal touch of every human 
 soul with which he dealt, or his large and warm indulgence 
 for every one excepting himself. But he was an exception, 
 and the distinction remains between the saint and the intel- 
 lectual reformer. It is no mere subtlety. It means a real 
 division between two classes of people important for the 
 work of the world. What does that difference signify ? 
 Can we find the answer if we study these great achievers ? 
 
 Among them three were creators. The fourth, Canon 
 Barnett, was an inspirer, a source of action rather than an 
 originator. He was an idealist, a converter of the real into 
 the ideal, the bearer of a message. And his message was 
 that the perfect citizen of London was no less the citizen 
 of the unseen city of God. But the remaining three stand 
 for concrete realities introduced by them into the world : 
 St. Vincent for organised charity ; Florence Nightingale 
 for the modern hospital for nursing, for Army reforms ; 
 Octavia Hill for the housing of the poor, and for her civilis- 
 ing system of personal rent-collecting. Only St. Vincent 
 was equally endowed as a saint and an organiser. Florence 
 Nightingale was a practical genius, a mystic, and a hero — 
 not a saint ; Octavia Hill was a saint and an inspired 
 reformer, with remarkable practical gifts which grew from 
 her inspiration. 
 
 Both these women had vocation in the truest sense. 
 Each set herself apart in a cloister made out of a great 
 purpose, yet moved freely in the world. Miss Hill was more 
 of the artist, swayed by form and colour, compelled by 
 love of Nature. Miss Nightingale was more of the thinker 
 and the scientist ; statistics moved her much, Nature 
 affected her but little, and when, as rarely, art stirred her, 
 it was for its moral import, as in her enthusiasm for Michael 
 Angelo. Her friendship for Jowett, that of Miss Hil0for 
 Ruskin, were like symbols of the two women's natures. 
 But the main difference between them lies in their attitude
 
 SAINTS AND MYSTICS 339 
 
 towards their fellow-creatures. Octavia Hill loved them ; 
 Florence Nightingale only loved the subjects of her kingdom 
 — her soldiers, her nurses, her colleagues ; for the rest she 
 had a good deal of intellectual scorn — which included all 
 those who did not suit her. The enemy she chose to fight 
 was official stupidity, and that is not the enemy to soften 
 contempt. ' Man must create mankind,' such is her own 
 summary of her belief that through our mastery of the 
 laws of health and social welfare we form each other, body 
 and soul. But a creator is presumably superior to what 
 he creates, and such a creed as hers does not foster the 
 spirit of indulgence. She was annoyed when her staff 
 married, and in her eyes work always came before family ; 
 she felt no need of seeing her own unless they were help- 
 ing her achievement. Not that separation mattered ; all 
 great pioneers in goodness have had their call ; have, at 
 whatever cost, gone about their Father's business. Nor 
 need we join in the charge which has been made against 
 her, that she overdrove her labourers. Who shall blame 
 her if she set small value on life by the side of what we live 
 for ? But it may with truth be urged that the human 
 love in her was not as great as her demand for efficiency. 
 
 Neither of these two great spirits could have done what 
 she did except in her own fashion. Florence Nightingale, 
 the more glorious, worked in the block ; Octavia Hill on 
 each separate incident, yet without losing sight of the 
 whole — ' a kind of Cecil in her sphere,' as some one said of 
 her. She did her task anywhere, constantly surprised at 
 the sympathy she found. Florence could accomplish hers 
 only in seclusion from all common conditions, and she com- 
 plained of the dearth of sympathy, because she reckoned 
 no one sympathetic who did not yield her his whole time 
 and powers. She did not see many different kinds of people, 
 nor did she come into direct contact with those baffling 
 problems of moral evil which make us acknoAvledge that
 
 340 NEW AND OLD 
 
 we are all sailing in the same boat. She worked on a high 
 plane above the world ; Octavia in the crowd — ' not,' she 
 wrote, ' as one standing aloof or above, but as a fellow- 
 worker, fellow-sufferer.' 
 
 This last phrase brings us down to bed-rock. The real 
 difference between these two is one of humility. Octavia 
 Hill lived by it, Florence Nightingale did not ; and they 
 represent more than themselves, they are types of two 
 orders of human being. Humility is perhaps the rarest of 
 all qualities, hardest to capture, hardest to define. It is 
 not self-abasement, for that imports the thought of self, 
 and the humble man is so full of the good in others that he 
 has no time to brood on his own imperfections. It is not 
 modesty, for modesty is often concerned with pride — is a 
 code of moral" taste used between man and man. But 
 humility is the attitude of man towards God, as expressed 
 in his attitude towards his fellows. And those who stop 
 at humility towards God alone, and thus escape all risk of 
 contradiction, are not really humble at all. Gordon was 
 of them, so was Florence Nightingale, so was Tolstoi ; they 
 knew their distance from Heaven, but it did not make them 
 patient with their neighbours. 
 
 Humility is not native to Protestant countries, where 
 reason makes for fearless freedom. Amongst Catholics it is 
 an essential virtue, the virtue of discipline, of the Orders. 
 Within the cloisters and outside them it is strenuously culti- 
 vated, to the destruction of the individual. This art of self- 
 effacement it is which produces unknown heroic Superiors, 
 Sisters, missionaries, such as Mother Mabel Digby records, 
 nameless victims of persecution and massacre, whose con- 
 demnation to namelessness is part of their day's work ; the 
 same self-effacement that reared and sculptured the cathe- 
 drals and left no trace of who and how. But this system, 
 which gives their chance to the average and the small, 
 means death, or cramp, to the exceptions. No one can tell
 
 SAINTS AND MYSTICS 341 
 
 what the large-brained Mabel Digby could have been, had 
 her originality had full play, instead of being suppressed 
 and tamed by self-laceration. The Catholic system has 
 produced the great obscure. But it was reserved for the 
 Protestant atmosphere to produce the stars of modern 
 philanthropy, the individuals who needed free develop- 
 ment, an Elizabeth Fry, a Florence Nightingale, an Octavia 
 Hill. And we can add a Vincent de Paul only because he 
 was greater than his system. ' To fulfil nought but what 
 charity demands and His will requires ... to imitate our 
 Lord in the hiddenness of His life ' — this is his single- 
 hearted aim. He was humble without knowing it, and in 
 spite of the rules for humility that he imposed upon himself. 
 
 For it is the worst of this hothouse humility, grown by 
 prescription, that its growth is self-conscious, arrested by 
 investigation, weakened by puerile practices — -that it centres 
 a man upon himself. Thus it defeats its own ends, since 
 true humility gets rid of the mere shadow of the ego. The 
 unprofessionally humble will even sacrifice their humility 
 to spread an idea ; they take no thought for their personal 
 salvation. St. Vincent was big enough to be able to think 
 of himself detachedly as a source of knowledge for his deal- 
 ings with others, but for most men introspection is apt to 
 falsify the currency. For this kind of lowliness is founded 
 on fear, on the resolute sacrifice of the intellect, on a with- 
 drawal from the panic of temptation, on flight instead of 
 conquest ; and no virtue founded upon negation — upon any 
 caution or any dourness, whether preached by Law or Calvin, 
 St. Cyran or St. Simeon Stylites — is a safe asset for the 
 majority. It lands them in childishness. If the indepen- 
 dent Protestant standard is apt to result in the Pharisee, 
 the votary of rule is too often puerile, and puerility is as 
 corroding as want of discipline. 
 
 Octavia Hill had no use for special exercises or prescribed 
 services to the poor for the sake of her soul. She served
 
 342 NEW AND OLD 
 
 them spontaneously for love ; she was a free saint, and her 
 humility grew like the lilies of the field. 
 
 I would wish [she said] most lovingly to grasp the whole 
 purpose of each life ... to find the point, or points, as one 
 always does, in which every one is so much greater than one- 
 self that one bows before it in joy and cries ' Thank God for it.' 
 
 And : 
 
 I wish ... I were better able to let people see what I feel. 
 . . . Sometimes people almost make me wonder whether I love 
 in some other poorer way than most people, after all. ... I do 
 so often tremble lest I should spoil all by growing despotic or 
 narrow-minded ... so few people tell me where I am wrong. 
 
 Florence Nightingale and Octavia Hill, both of them 
 unhampered by any spiritual gentilities, suffered from none 
 of the duperies or excesses of outraged Nature. Without 
 fear and without reproach, they spent the intellects God 
 had given them for His purposes. Both prove alike the 
 power of faith — the power that has been proved by all 
 mystics, by all saints, by all heroes that have been since 
 the world began. (1914.) 
 
 THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 
 
 George Meredith. His Life, Genius, and Teaching, from the 
 
 French of Constantin Photiades. Rendered into English 
 
 by Arthur Price. (Constable. 6s. net.) 
 Richard Jefferies. Etude d'une Personnalite. Par Clinton 
 
 Joseph Masseck. (Paris : Larose.) 
 George Peele (1558-1596). Par P. H. Cheffaud. (Paris; 
 
 Felix Alcan. 4f.) 
 
 Most moral misunderstandings, such especially as exist 
 between nations, arise from the different constructions put 
 upon the term Nature. The word, indeed, includes as many
 
 THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 343 
 
 meanings as ' Love,' that other word, almost Nature's 
 synonym ; and upon the use and misuse of 4 Love ' and 
 ' Nature ' have been founded the biggest mistakes, as well 
 as the finest creeds, in Western history — all its ' isms,' from 
 Asceticism and Puritanism to Naturalism, Platonism, Pan- 
 theism, Stoicism, Materialism, Idealism — even Mysticism, 
 the religion of being before doing, of love before faith. Nature 
 has figured to great spirits as the devil ; as the star-sown 
 universe, the hem of God's garment ; as the monster red 
 in tooth and claw ; as the pitiful mother gathering her 
 tired children to her breast ; as the indifferent Moloch 
 who devours them ; as the law-abiding, self-contained 
 antithesis to man's restless and anarchic passions ; as the 
 ungoverned being of dire caprices ; as the ' Nature ' who 
 receives but what we give ; as the greater life outside 
 and beyond us ; as the primal simplicity, the Hygieia, 
 who beckons to the jaded victims of civilisation ; as the 
 incoherent bundle of instincts holding orgy in war and 
 revolution. 
 
 It is thus that Nature has taken a different complexion 
 in every country according to the national temperament, 
 while the builders of Babel fondly figure to themselves as 
 acting upon the self-same password. And their illusion 
 is of no slight import. It is not too much to say that every 
 generation of ideas has begun or ended with some move- 
 ment concerning Nature — an impulse towards, a reaction 
 against her. From the days of Greek philosophy and before 
 them, from the times of the Fathers and St. Augustine and 
 the conflict between Freewill and Predestination, the pivot 
 has remained the same. Medievalism, with its chivalrous 
 artifices and monastic ideals — with its effort to order and to 
 feudalise men's appetite — made against Nature. She took 
 her revenge in the Renaissance, the heyday of humanists 
 and artists, her preux chevaliers, who vindicated her rights. 
 So did Luther and the first reformers. But the pendulum
 
 344 NEW AND OLD 
 
 oscillated, and the Puritans worked havoc in men's con- 
 sciousness with a sourer asceticism than the world had ever 
 known. Then came the period of the grand style and of 
 the prominence of the Roi Soleil in Europe. Nature was 
 drugged into sleep, was counterfeited by etiquette and Le 
 Notre, by Lely and Kneller, in their false arcadias, with 
 intricate side-alleys for intrigue. Rousseau followed them 
 — Nature's Peter the Hermit, who preached the Crusade 
 without a Cross, proclaiming the return to Nature's bosom 
 and practising his precepts by dropping his children at the 
 door of the Foundling Hospital in Paris. The world took 
 up his doctrine, and the French Revolution was the result : 
 to be succeeded by natural movements everywhere — in the 
 Lake School of English poetry — in the landscape-painters 
 of France and England — in the educational systems born 
 of Miss Edgeworth and Pestalozzi — no less in the abolition 
 of slavery, in land reforms and in repeals of corn laws. 
 Upon these there came the Second Renaissance, the reign 
 of Science : the investigation of Nature's laws, the arro- 
 gance of discovery, the protest of the Oxford Movement, 
 of Pre-Raphaelite visions, and what not ; until, if such a 
 light survey be permitted us, we reach the creeds of the 
 present day. 
 
 But no difference in regard to definitions of ' Nature ' has 
 been so marked or so confusing as that between France and 
 England — since the days of the Puritans (till then we were 
 as natural as our neighbours over the Channel). In France 
 ' Nature ' has, before all else, meant the spontaneous rela- 
 tions of man and woman. In England Nature has first 
 meant the face of the universe and the spirit that it breathes 
 upon us. Rabelais and Montaigne looked frankly at the 
 sexes and the problems they create ; Bacon devoted him- 
 self to probing the secrets of the earth. For us no Flaubert ; 
 for them no Lake School. Unhampered by conviction of 
 sin, the French are natural, and look upon as natural the
 
 THE FRENCH POINT OF VIKW 345 
 
 half of what we regard as moral, thereby causing misappre- 
 hensions that obscure main issues and falsify values <>f 
 conduct. At this moment England is discovering what 
 France has always known — that impropriety and immorality 
 are not identical and that Nature has her say in such things ; 
 is re-discovering Nature, in short, with much clatter from 
 novelists and much acclamation of the ballet and the cult 
 of the body — too much fuss about an obvious matter. And 
 France, it would seem, from the books before us, has lately 
 awakened to the simple sense of earth and sky and what 
 they bring us, apart from dramatic effect. In either case 
 exceptions have appeared within the last generations. In 
 England arose Meredith to tell men in prose and verse that 
 what is primal cannot die and that the life of the woods is 
 linked to that of men — to tell it and to be misunderstood. 
 In lesser degree, with far less perfect art, Richard Jefferies 
 proclaimed the same truth ; and long before these, before 
 Puritanism, before the question was a matter for hostilities 
 and the need of champion-philosophies, the great Eliza- 
 bethan poets had sung to the same tune in all simplicity. 
 This the Frenchmen who have chosen these three writers — 
 Meredith, Jefferies, and the Elizabethan, George Peele — 
 have well understood ; and it is their interpretation of the 
 English attitude towards Nature that makes the chief point 
 of interest in the volumes before us. Though sound and 
 well-written expositions of their themes, they would not 
 otherwise stand out as remarkable ; for even the book on 
 Meredith, the most distinguished of the trio, with its clever 
 reports of his talk, fails to tell us anything new ; in great 
 measure, perhaps, just because the writer passes quickly 
 over Meredith's criticisms of men and women — so often 
 like those of a Frenchman and hence familiar to him — and 
 lingers over the English characteristics already known to us. 
 The author of Richard Jefferies, indeed, admires what to us 
 appear Jefferies's foibles, his dithyrambs about the Universe,
 
 346 NEW AND OLD 
 
 his over-use of the lyre, so nearly approaching French 
 methods ; while the study of George Peele, offering a new 
 field to France, is to us but a piece of our literary history, 
 and, again, only striking because illustrative of the Eliza- 
 bethan outlook. 
 
 The main point of a French interpretation of English per- 
 ceptions is that it must unconsciously reveal the soul of the 
 interpreters and the contrast between two national tempers. 
 Thus it is, and when we close the volumes beside us one 
 impression stands out foremost. To the French, the love 
 of Nature for Nature's sake is no part of their daily lives, 
 as revealed at least in their literature. That love seems 
 to have found refuge alone in other art — in their great school 
 of landscape painting. There have, of course, been excep- 
 tions. As we have had our Meredith they have had their 
 Senancour, their George Sand, their Andre Theuriet, and 
 others. But they were exceptions, misunderstood even by 
 the choicest of French spirits. 'Elle s' est fait bergere' 1 was 
 Sainte-Beuve's comment on George Sand's exquisite idylls. 
 To French writers the proper, and often the improper, study 
 of mankind is man, and when they introduce Nature it is 
 with an axe to grind — as an adjunct to the sublime, or as 
 a dramatic effect, in the pages of Chateaubriand and Victor 
 Hugo ; or as an aid to preaching and the revelation of 
 God, in the hands of Rousseau ; or as a symbol of a revived 
 and classic Paganism, such as that of Maurice de Guerin ; 
 or as a channel of aesthetic sensibility, in the pictures of 
 Loti and the word-impressionists. If we look further back, 
 we find much the same. Villon and Charles d'Orleans, it 
 is true, used Nature simply, but they had a scant following. 
 To Ronsard and his Pleiade Nature figured as a grove in 
 which to read the classics and eat peaches, or a fountain 
 whence a Nymph might arise. Sometimes they seized 
 details — they sang the swallows, or April, or the Winnowers :
 
 THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 347 
 
 but these were stray impressions. No whole view of Nature, 
 no love of Nature as a power to soothe and strengthen, 
 existed then or afterwards. Throughout the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries Nature slept, smothered beneath hoops 
 and periwigs ; and the great Revolution, only caring for 
 self-expression, affected torrents and precipices as bombastic 
 symbols of inner tempest, and went into the country because 
 of Rousseau. No Frenchman could have said : ' The Com- 
 forter hath found me here upon this lonely road ' ; for him, 
 the Comforter would have been a woman, the road unendur- 
 able if lonely. Cowper's calm pictures of winter afternoons 
 and summer mornings would have counted for little in 
 France beside his polished versification ; Keats, Coleridge, 
 Shelley, Tennyson would have been prized for their ideas 
 and their power of word-painting, but the influence of the 
 earth which they painted on their spirits would have remained 
 a force unknown ; and although one of the best books on 
 Wordsworth has been written by a Frenchman, to the bulk 
 of his compatriots that High Priest of Nature must remain 
 but half comprehended. A Sovereign Being existing apart 
 from us, independent of our emotions, dwarfing into nothing 
 those passions so all-important to a Frenchman, linked to 
 man only in so far as man can empty himself of himself and 
 go out to Nature, would not easily appeal to VEsprit Gaulois, 
 in the literal sense of that phrase. And this is how both 
 Meredith and Jefferies, as well as Wordsworth, feel Nature. 
 Yet M. Masseck gets no further than : ' Jefferies is the type 
 of that group of the adorers of life, who, waking while other 
 men slept, discovered something of the splendour of the 
 world. . . . He justified his existence before he died.' The 
 definition of the justification is incomplete. Jefferies, 
 dreamer, revolutionary, romancer, embryo thinker, went 
 beyond the mere perception of splendour. 
 
 But these students of English authors do not only reveal 
 the French attitude towards Nature. Both Meredith and
 
 348 NEW AND OLD 
 
 Jefferies were, we have seen, like Frenchmen in their criti- 
 cism of the relations between men and women. They were 
 natural. But they were something more besides ; they 
 went further — and this is what interests the French. For 
 England — the better England, not the land of Puritans — is 
 not in these matters a mere imitator of France ; it has its 
 own point of view, a point of view which is its glory. The 
 French consider the more obvious questions of the senses 
 as outside the province of morals and below the level of the 
 intellect ; to them it seems false and out of place to bring 
 them before an ethical tribunal. A Meredith, a Jefferies, 
 would no less acknowledge such questions as part of Nature, 
 but, unlike the French, they do not stop there. All Nature 
 —men, beasts, earth, and sea— says Meredith (and Jefferies 
 hymns the same), is one, bound together by indestructible 
 ties. When we try to break them we sin against truth and 
 put the human spirit in false positions. But that human 
 spirit — also a part of Nature, however sublimated — has a 
 transforming power. It can convert the most animal 
 functions of man into his highest faculties- — it can link the 
 beast with the angel ; and that by no fantastic evolution, 
 no transcendental tricking of the nerves, but by simple 
 honesty, by a frank acceptance of bare facts, by first acknow- 
 ledging earth's maternal part in us and then giving that 
 part over to the guardian intellect to be transmuted ' into 
 something rich and strange.' Falling short of this, we 
 abuse our heritage and remain of the dust, dusty. English 
 poets have before now borne this message variously ex- 
 pressed. Donne, Browning, Kingsley have been among 
 them. But Donne was an Elizabethan ; and Browning 
 and Kingsley were affected by the supernatural view of the 
 natural. Neither Meredith nor Jefferies was spiritual, in 
 the ordinary sense of the word. They were high-souled 
 Pagans, apostles of a modern Pantheism; and so it is the 
 more remarkable that they were mystics — mystics of matter,
 
 THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW 349 
 
 mystics of Nature, knowing no difference between soul and 
 body, regarding nothing natural as unclean, taking each 
 part as a symbol of the whole, and looking upon every germ 
 as a being with endless possibilities to be unfolded for the 
 good of the world. But to enter Nature's jungle, to find 
 your way there and pierce to her innermost, needs courage : 
 
 Enter these enchanted woods, 
 
 You who dare. 
 Nothing harms beneath the leaves . . . 
 
 Then is courage that endures 
 Even her awful tremble yours . . . 
 
 Here you meet the light invoked, 
 Here is never secret cloaked . . . 
 
 Are you of the stiff, tbe dry, 
 Cursing the not understood . . . 
 Hate, the shadow of a grain, 
 You are lost in Westermain. 
 
 This is mysticism ; and ' The Woods of Westermain ' may 
 well stand as an epitome of the faith of Meredith and 
 Jefferies. Their point of view is a surprise to France — 
 new and exciting ; not so high-pitched or un-material as to 
 offend its sceptical common sense, yet partaking of that 
 romance which belongs to the North — and in thought, 
 perhaps, especially to England : a romance, as like as not, 
 born of struggle with rain and cold, with that very Nature 
 who engenders our creed. The courage invoked by Meredith 
 as a condition of initiation into Nature's secrets must strike 
 fresh on the mind of an average Frenchman, since in those 
 secrets he sees no dangers but the obvious ones — practical 
 perils and inconveniences. Montaigne said that animals 
 were paragons to men. Hamlet said that man was the 
 paragon of animals. And it was reserved for English poets 
 to see as nakedly as Zola and to hope as high as Victor Hugo. 
 England has wrestled with Nature — has vowed that it will 
 not let her go until she has revealed her name. And the 
 French critics are beginning to be alive to the fact. (1913.)
 
 350 NEW AND OLD 
 
 ZOLA, MANET, AND THE ART OF 
 
 EFFECTS 
 
 Art, as we know, perhaps, too well by now, is not moral. 
 But, for all that, as Tolstoi says, every work of art sets up 
 a moral relation between itself and the public — as that 
 which affects the feelings and sensibilities is bound to do ; 
 and an art that provoked neither like nor dislike, neither 
 pain nor pleasure, would not be an art at all. Our moral 
 selves follow us like our shadows, thrown by an unseen 
 sun, and, do what we will, we cannot elude them. If there 
 should be an art, therefore, which appeals first and fore- 
 most to the brain, it would seem to be a kind of anomaly, 
 a cold-blooded creation devoid of warmth and doomed to 
 mortality. Yet this kind of art is just what has been given 
 us by two of the most prominent creators of modern times, 
 men who have made a school and have a large family of 
 disciples. 
 
 And yet their fame, if we consider it, gives matter for 
 some reflection, their work and its developments still more 
 so. Art, it may be said, has made a mesalliance with science, 
 and the names of her sons are Gustave Manet, the painter, 
 and Emile Zola, the writer. They are essentially the 
 offspring of an unhappy marriage, sad and ill at ease, 
 trying in vain to effect a reconciliation between their in- 
 congruous parents. The consequence is that they have 
 bequeathed to us a number of books and pictures in which 
 science comes first, and the human element is subordinate 
 to what it is put there to prove. If Manet paints a nude 
 woman with a piece of black velvet round her neck, it is not 
 because the woman is interesting, but only to show certain 
 effects of light upon flesh. And if Zola portrays his groups 
 of peasants, shopmen, artisans, or artists, they exist mainly
 
 ZOLA, MANET, AND THE ART OF EFFECTS 351 
 
 to demonstrate some specific formula of Naturalism, some 
 scholastic rule of environment, heredity, or what not ; and 
 they move as exponents of the rule much more than as 
 dramatis personae. Before such an art, the emotions are 
 forced to retire, dumb and defeated. 
 
 At this moment, when at length Zola's work is before us 
 in all its completeness and his last volume has appeared, 
 it is impossible not to ponder upon all that he accomplished 
 in his lifetime ; upon his ' colossal industry ' and the issues 
 of his art, that Naturalistic art of which he was one initiator, 
 while Manet, in the painting world, was another. Never, 
 perhaps, before did brush and pen more closely work together 
 for the same end, in the same spirit, and by much the same 
 methods. And the fact is emphasised by Zola's reproduc- 
 tion of Manet's masterpiece, ' Plein Air,' the great, slowly- 
 wrought canvas at which the public would only laugh in 
 derision. It is easy enough to deprecate the peculiarities 
 of these men, to smile at Manet's absurdities, to be dis- 
 gusted at Zola's crudities ; but this is not to criticise them. 
 Serious and devoted persons with large aims, they deserve 
 serious and untrammelled judgment. The heroic energy 
 of Zola, the much-enduring patience of Manet, are qualities 
 to remember. Zola was an earnest social reformer willing 
 to suffer for his cause ; Manet lived largely unrecognised 
 and died in great poverty. Such dignified servants of 
 art, if we go forth willing to admire them, should, it would 
 seem, stir something deeper than our intellects. Yet to 
 stir the intellect is their chief effect, even upon those who 
 care most for them ; while a large number of people, anxious 
 enough to be in touch with them, come away feeling a 
 void — interested, maybe, but questioning. The fact is, if 
 we look deep enough, that they make a fundamental error. 
 They confuse Truth and Knowledge, But knowledge is 
 not truth ; it is only a part of truth's domains— the avenue 
 that leads to the temple. Truth lies in no one thing, but
 
 352 NEW AND OLD 
 
 in the relations of all things ; in the balance between know- 
 ledge and feeling, thought and expression, form and matter. 
 Gare a nous, if we make truth less than she is. Of those 
 who take fact for truth it is easy to recognise the ignominy ; 
 we have but to send to Mudie for any of the ' realistic ' 
 novels now in vogue, Blue-book records of grim or brutal 
 details, from which all that in actual life relieves them is 
 eliminated. But of those who confound truth with know- 
 ledge the fallacy is graver, its results more subtle. 
 
 A fallacy seen with our eyes is much the easiest to under- 
 stand ; and therefore it may be best to observe first how 
 this one acted upon the painter's — the Impressionist 
 painter's — art, or rather upon that of Gustave Manet, who 
 sums up all the rest. For what is true of him is more or 
 less true of Monet, of Pizarro, of Sisley, of Renoir, of all 
 their lesser disciples. Let us take for our purpose Manet's 
 ' Plein Air '- — the picture which raised such an outcry when 
 it first appeared in the Salon, and ended, nevertheless, by 
 making a school. The canvas is large, the time is summer, 
 the place is a wood ; the full June light falls golden-green 
 through the branches and chequers the forest floor. It 
 falls, too, upon a nude woman who oits just beyond the 
 trees, her flesh bathed by the sun ; by her side is a gentle- 
 man, swathed in black velvet to his chin, his hands cased 
 in black peau-de-Suede gloves. Beyond, in a glade, some 
 more figures — not nymphs, but nude women — are sporting 
 together on the grass. In spite of the rich warmth and 
 sunshine, the impression is not one of bountiful summer, of 
 splendid goddesses, or beautiful women, but one of absolute 
 matter-of-fact. Here is no midsummer exuberance ; on 
 the contrary, the picture is pervaded by a kind of con- 
 scientious low spirits. One consequence is that it appears 
 quite irrational that these ladies should have chosen this 
 particular spot in which to take off their garments, while 
 their escort remains so unnecessarily burdened by his
 
 ZOLA, MANET, AND THE ART OF EFFECTS 353 
 
 winter suit. Nothing before us seems natural, everything 
 has to be accounted for. Our first impulse is to laugh, our 
 second to wonder. We probably begin by thinking that 
 the absurdity lies in the subject. But, after all, Giorgione 
 has chosen much the same theme for his ' Fete Champetrc ' 
 in the Salon Carre, and no one dreams of laughing at that, 
 unless it be for pure joy. Glory is the note of the whole 
 sumptuous picture, the glory of life, the glory of the year 
 and of beauty. Here we feel no questioning ; the entire 
 work is in the order of things. The woman-goddess clothed 
 in sunlight, the romantically dressed musician, are instinct 
 with life and poetry, because Giorgione enjoyed painting 
 them and felt them to be part of the summer. The effect 
 of light upon the woman's body is as accurate as that which 
 Manet gets, but Giorgione painted it thus because it was 
 there, not because he wanted it to be so ; and to us it is 
 but part of the woman. And here we have the secret of 
 the matter, the gulf that stretches between these men. 
 Manet painted his picture entirely for the sake of the effect 
 of warm light upon bare flesh, upon soft stuff, and on grass 
 when the sunshine falls through forest branches. He 
 deliberately chose the subject which would best expound 
 his theories, without the slightest regard as to its human 
 probability. His demand is scientific, not artistic, and 
 human beings are to him the more or less vile bodies on 
 which to make his experiments. But in art the human, 
 the natural element, comes first, and the infringement of 
 this vital decree brings its consequences. Nature herself, 
 so quick to meet her real lovers — a Turner, a Daubigny, a 
 Corot — becomes depressed and inarticulate when Manet 
 approaches her. And his human beings, indignant at being 
 used first as light-traps and only secondly for their own 
 sakes, lose imagination and vitality and become the most 
 literal of bourgeois. Velasquez, the master on whom so 
 many of Manet's school claim to model themselves, would 
 
 z
 
 354 NEW AND OLD 
 
 never have dealt thus with his subjects. To him, great 
 dramatist that he was, the human element came royally 
 first ; his ' effects,' however mighty, followed after. When 
 we look at Manet's portrait of a woman (also in the Luxem- 
 bourg), at the appalling countenance, the ragged medley 
 of browns and sallow yellows, we are inclined to think that 
 the ugliness of his themes is at fault. But whoever, last 
 year, had the happiness of visiting the Bruges Exhibition 
 of old Flemish pictures, will quickly realise that ugliness 
 has nothing to do with it. What can be uglier or sincerer 
 (and sincerity is the Impressionist's watchword) than many 
 of these Flemish paintings — Van Eyck's portrait of his 
 wife, for instance, than whom no woman could be plainer ? 
 But there is a majesty, a mastery, about the ugliness he 
 depicts, because, to the best of his powers, he was trying to 
 express all he saw and to harmonise his knowledge. The 
 homeliness is supremely interesting, because it is animated 
 by the soul that lives in the eyes ; by the artist's reverence 
 for humanity ; by the all-surrounding atmosphere of beauty. 
 And Van Eyck's successors have the same princely gift. 
 The plainest Virgin, the most commonplace of men and 
 women, are touched with a glowing dignity that lifts them 
 —and all mankind with them— to a higher level. Yet 
 the Flemings rejected neither intellect nor the secrets of 
 their craft ; their work is full of both. Only, to them, 
 their subject as it stood there, the truth as they saw it, 
 came first. The fire that warmed them was not of the 
 brain but of the spirit. 
 
 It may perhaps be easier now, after looking at Manet, to 
 turn to Zola's novels and to glance at his methods. No 
 more than the defects of Manet do those of Zola's books 
 spring, as at first sight appears, either from the ugliness of 
 his subjects, or from the stress he lays on certain vices. 
 The weakness of his work, its frequent want of vitality, 
 really comes from the secondary place that he assigns to
 
 ZOLA, MANET, AND THE ART OF EFFECTS 855 
 
 human beings. For him, too, science takes precedence of 
 
 them and they figure as his illustrations of certain scientific 
 
 laws, predestined by him to succumb to the infallible 
 
 machinery. But this, well enough, however depressing, in 
 
 a pamphlet, means death to the novel, because it eliminates 
 
 all drama from life. We know beforehand what the fate 
 
 of the victims will be, and we lose interest in them. There 
 
 is no struggle of the soul, no assertion of itself, no illusion 
 
 of the spirit ; he gives us none of those things which make 
 
 us want to go on with the game. Life, as Zola shows it, 
 
 has neither hills nor plains ; it becomes like the rolling 
 
 trottoir in the Paris Exhibition, a construction hardly 
 
 raised above the lowest level, swarming with common people 
 
 and futile energies, hot and dusty and malodorous, ever 
 
 moving and ever deadly monotonous. One cannot help 
 
 coming away from it encanaille and dejected. There are, 
 
 after all, many volumes on subjects as unbeautiful as those 
 
 that Zola elaborates. Tolstoi's Resurrection is terrible 
 
 enough in its theme. Yet let who will read it and then 
 
 read one of Zola's many versions of a fallen woman (his 
 
 novels are not lacking in them), and he will not be slow to 
 
 measure the difference between the two. Tolstoi, no less 
 
 than Zola, deals with big natural laws ; the laws of health 
 
 and heredity are ever present with him. But he does not 
 
 foredoom his characters to fall a prey to them ; he loves 
 
 his human being more than these great rules ; he allows 
 
 man's soul to join issue with them and to found a spiritual 
 
 law of its own. In spite, or rather because, of his profound 
 
 Realism, his man and woman win the day and send us back 
 
 encouraged into life. 
 
 In limited space it would be as tedious as it is impossible 
 to present Zola's limitless canvases to the eye as if they 
 were Manet's. For the absence of soul and of struggle 
 detract from individuality ; and, as a writer recently pointed 
 out in the Journal des Debats, Zola creates types, represen-
 
 356 NEW AND OLD 
 
 tative of various laws, rather than personalities. You can 
 take up any of his volumes, and whether he is describing 
 the strata of the artists, or of the working classes, or examin- 
 ing the layers of religious sensation, you will come upon 
 much the same people, the same common denominators, 
 working in different atmospheres, among different smells 
 and sounds. There are pages of immense power, of absorb- 
 ing interest, of forcible insight into the passions, into causes 
 and effects ; there are descriptions — may we say so ? — of a 
 gigantic minuteness. But when all is said, his people are 
 only accessories, and his theory of art condemns them so to 
 remain. The men just before Zola— the great novelist, 
 Flaubert, who was growing old while Zola was young- 
 drove science as far as she might go. If any one objects 
 that the idealist Tolstoi is no fitting subject for comparison 
 with Zola, let them turn to Madame Bovary, which no 
 man will accuse of optimism. That, too, belongs to the 
 terrible, the dusty school of novel. But we read it to the 
 bitter end and, when we have finished, the picture is clear 
 before our eyes. It is not woman we are conscious of, the 
 victim of a Juggernaut rule ; but a woman — her drama, 
 her weakness, its Nemesis — the human element which alone 
 clinches an impression. (1903.) 
 
 THE FANTASTIC ELEMENT AND 
 MR. BARRIE 
 
 The kingdom of fantasy is a kingdom by itself, quite apart 
 from the kingdom of imagination. Who shall lay down the 
 boundaries of either ? And yet we cannot but know that 
 imagination is the bigger of the two ; it moves the feel- 
 ings ; it implies a spiritual quality, call it moral or intel- 
 lectual or what you will. But fantasy is born of sprites,
 
 FANTASTIC ELEMENT AND Mil. IJAllIUE 357 
 
 and its essence is to go no further than sentiment and to 
 move nothing profounder that the sensibilities. These the 
 true fantasy must touch ; it must caress, it must mystify 
 them ; often leaving us to stand doubtful in that misty, 
 pensive land which lies between tears and laughter. The 
 charm of fantasy is its elusiveness, and if it had heart or 
 conscience or came too near reality it would cease to be 
 fantasy at all. Harlequin has ever been the king of the 
 fantastics ; Harlequin, the dancer, the glittering and 
 enigmatic, with the half-mask that shows his jesting lips 
 and hides his eyes. For all we know, there may be pathos 
 in them, or his love for Columbine, but his step is not the 
 less light for that. He carries his lath like a sceptre, but 
 none can tell who are his subjects, and he flashes past us 
 before we can ask him. 
 
 It is easier to recognise what is fantasy than to define it ; 
 and it is perhaps in painting, where the eye beholds its 
 embodiment, that the quality is most easily perceived. 
 So much will be conceded by whoever has loved Watteau 
 and Fragonard, or looked at Stothard, or delighted in 
 Richard Doyle — Richard Doyle, painter-laureate to Queen 
 Mab, the man with the child's heart and the poet's brush. 
 Other names will occur to the reader's mind. But Watteau 
 comes first, Watteau the profoundly poetic, who was also 
 supreme as a fantastic. He leads us into an enchanted 
 irresponsible world, a world of rapture and of melancholy, 
 where Pierrots look sad and lutes play songs about the 
 end of things — where lovers, in dresses made of moonlight, 
 who have nothing to do with reality, wander deep into the 
 blue alleys of dreamland and lose themselves in distance. 
 Lancret and Pater took the same themes as he did, but 
 they only give us brilliant and light-hearted fact. It is the 
 passionate fantasy in Watteau's pictures which lifts and 
 transmutes the subjects. 
 
 Your true fantastic is a sentimentalist. Sterne, the greatest
 
 358 NEW AND OLD 
 
 of sentimentalists, is also one of the greatest of fantastics. 
 But it is a kind of whimsical, intellectual fancy peculiar 
 to himself. The twelfth and thirteenth chapters of Book ix. 
 in Tristram Shandy are full of that ' gentlest spirit of sweetest 
 humour,' as he himself calls it. ' I never stand conferring 
 with pen and ink one moment,' he says ; ' for if a pinch of 
 snuff, or a stride or two across the room will not do the 
 business for me — I take a razor at once . . . lathering my 
 beard, I shave it off . . . this done, I change my shirt — 
 put on a better coat — send for my last wig — put my topaz 
 ring upon my finger. . . . Now the Devil in Hell must be 
 in it if this does not do.' It is mercifully impossible to 
 analyse charm, or to discover why certain literary caprices 
 please us. But this passage owns one essential of fancy, 
 a sense of the incongruous. Sterne takes the common 
 daily processes of dressing and of shaving, and puts them 
 to uncommon purposes. He surrounds the real with the 
 unreal, which is the whole duty of fantastics. 
 
 The simplest kind of fancy is the fairy-tale kind — the 
 sort of thing that Mr. George Macdonald understood so well 
 in his Phantasies. But the subtle charm of contrast and 
 of the incongruous is wanting here. The whole story lies 
 in the region of the magical and impossible. Fantasy, it 
 is true, lives on air, far away from the real ; and yet, to 
 be interesting, it must possess intangible relations with 
 reality. Intangible, however, they must be. They must 
 never weigh us down, as they do in the modern German, 
 the heavily responsible, fairy-story ; such an allegory 
 charged with problems as Hauptmann's V ersunkene Glocke, 
 lately acted in London. This play and its kind come forth 
 mature and fully armed from the heads of pessimist philo- 
 sophers. They aim at being fantastic and have both feet 
 solemnly planted upon earth. Controversy unfortunately 
 seems to have taken refuge in art, and controversy is death 
 to fancy, especially when it is that of the dogmatic free-
 
 FANTASTIC ELEMENT AND MR. BARRIE 359 
 
 thought, now in fashion, which all goes to prove the things 
 that we have no wish to know. This is a depressing busi- 
 ness when it is carried into fairyland. It is time that some 
 kind-hearted person should found a Society for the Preven- 
 tion of Cruelty to Fairies, and take from their poor little 
 shoulders the vast moral burdens now laid on them. Shake- 
 speare and Charles Lamb would have wept to see them put 
 there. And if controversy thus crushes fancy, mysticism is 
 little better. Those (and there are such) who confound 
 mysticism with fancy make a spiritual blunder, for, sooner 
 or later, they are bound to err against the fitness of things. 
 Shakespeare and Lamb, each in his measure, were men 
 of imagination. But, when they wanted, they could doff 
 the greater quality and become pure fantastics. The fairies 
 of A Midsummer Nighfs Dream remain a pattern to all 
 fairies for evermore. And none who have read Elia's 
 ' Defeat of Time,' in which the spirit of Shakespeare defends 
 the fairies against Time's scythe, could reject Charles Lamb 
 as an elfin psychologist. ' Titania and her moonlight elves 
 [it begins] were assembled under the canopy of a huge oak, 
 that served to shelter them from the moon's radiance, which, 
 being now at her full noon, shot forth intolerable rays — 
 intolerable, I mean, to the subtil texture of their little 
 shadowy bodies — but dispensing an agreeable coolness to 
 us grosser mortals.' This is the prettiest piece of gossamer 
 and yet not too ethereal to be real. The whole essay 
 crowns Charles Lamb for what he was — a past master in 
 whimsies. 1 Or there is Heinrich Heine, Harlequin's favourite 
 Councillor. Indeed, he is almost Harlequin himself as he 
 flits and flashes on his road, mocking and melancholy, 
 piercing the air with his golden lath, which turns into a 
 gleaming scimitar ; the Heine of Der Eabbi von Bacharach 
 
 1 [In a letter printed in the Literary Supplement Canon Ainger pointed 
 out that 'The Defeat of Time 'is avowedly a prose version by Lamb of a 
 portion of Hood's beautiful poem ' The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies.']
 
 360 NEW AND OLD 
 
 and Das Buck Le Grand and a score of dreaming poems. 
 Like all fantastics, he understood children ; so did Hans 
 Christian Andersen. Andersen is often too poetic and 
 deep-feeling to be fantastic ; but when he gives vent to his 
 humour no one can be more so, no one can hover more 
 enchantingly between tears and laughter. We do not know 
 which to give way to when we remember ' The hardy tin 
 soldier,' so brave, so galant, so possible, so impossible. He 
 was one of many : ' They shouldered their muskets and 
 looked straight before them — their uniform was red and 
 blue and very splendid . . . but one of them had been 
 cast last of all and there had not been enough tin to finish 
 him ; yet he stood as firmly upon his one leg as the others 
 on their two ; and it was just this soldier who became re- 
 markable.' He fell in love, as we all know, with the dancing 
 paper-lady of the cardboard castle, but in the midst of 
 his happiness he tumbled out of window. He was instantly 
 sought for. If he ' had cried out " Here I am," they would 
 have found him ; but he did not think it fitting to call out 
 loudly, because he was in uniform.' The whole of etiquette 
 and of military honour seems to be compressed into this 
 sentence, and yet, all the while, we feel that the episode is 
 deliciously remote from us. This is what makes fancy 
 convincing, and the charm of it is that it convinces us 
 against our reason. Andersen, the magician, was well 
 versed in the spell. 
 
 There has been no one to compare with him till Mr. Barrie 
 wrote The Little White Bird. And when we mention Mr. 
 Barrie, we mention, perhaps, the most distinguished fan- 
 tastic now alive. He differs from Andersen in many ways ; 
 he has more humour, but he is neither so much the poet 
 nor so much the artist as his predecessor. Yet he resembles 
 him in that fascinating and elusive power of mingling matter- 
 of-fact and fancy — the same combination that makes 
 children such enchanting, such alarming companions.
 
 FANTASTIC ELEMENT AND MK. BARRIE 3fil 
 
 It is frightfully difficult to know anything about the fairi 
 [he writes], and almost the only thing known for certain is that 
 there are fairies wherever there are children. . . . When the 
 first baby laughed for the first time his laugh broke into a 
 million pieces and they all went skipping about. That was the 
 beginning of fairies. . . . They are frightfully ignorant, and 
 everything they do is make-believe. They have a postman, 
 but he never calls except at Christmas with his little box, and, 
 though they have beautiful schools, nothing is taught them ; 
 the youngest child, being chief person, is always elected 
 mistress, and when she has called the roll they all go out for a 
 walk and never come back. 
 
 There is a particular pleasure in being so swiftly carried 
 from fancy to fact and back again. The whole story of 
 Peter Pan, half child, half bird, who lived on the island on 
 the Serpentine and played his exquisite pipe — divided 
 between joy in his bird life and desire to return to his mother 
 — is full of this delicate art. So is the description of the 
 fairy wedding : 
 
 Brownie held out her arms to the Duke and he flung himself 
 into them, the Queen leapt into the arms of the Lord 
 Chamberlain, and the ladies of the court leapt into the arms of 
 her gentlemen, for it is etiquette to follow her example in 
 everything. Thus in a single moment about fifty marriages 
 took place, for if you leap into each other's arms it is a fairy 
 wedding. Of course a clergyman has to be present. 
 
 If the fairies possess an Academie they surely ought to 
 crown Mr. Barrie for that last sentence. 
 
 He is, indeed, a true fantastic, armed cap-a-pie with all 
 the characteristics of his race ; and it may be well to re- 
 capitulate them roughly. The true fantastic, so it seems, 
 must (as far as his work goes) possess no heart ; he must 
 have plenty of sentiment ; he must abound in a sense of 
 the exquisite and in power over the incongruous, and he 
 must only have just so much moral sense as to make a
 
 362 NEW AND OLD 
 
 half-invisible thread between himself and his public. To 
 all these requirements Mr. Barrie answers. His fantasy 
 is charmingly heartless. If it were not he could never have 
 killed Timothy. Timothy (as most of us know) is the make- 
 believe child of the old bachelor who tells the story of the 
 little white bird — the child whom he invents in a moment 
 of sympathy with an anxious father and then kills off, in 
 order to give him a pretext for presenting clothes and toys 
 to the baby of his poorer friend, the painter : 
 
 c How is Timothy ? ' he asked ; and the question opened a 
 way so attractive that I think no one whose dull life craves for 
 colour could have resisted it. ' He is no more/ I replied 
 impulsively. The painter was so startled that he gave utterance 
 to a very oath of pity, and I felt a sinking myself, for in these 
 hasty words my little boy was gone indeed ; all my bright 
 dreams of Timothy, all my efforts to shelter him from Mary's 
 scorn, went whistling down the wind. 
 
 If Mr. Barrie had really been feeling, had been sounding 
 the unfathomable grief that the death of a child means, he 
 would never have dared to play round it ; nor should we 
 have consented to follow him. He would have brought 
 his heart into the matter and spoiled the fantasy. But 
 fantasy is an illusion to which we ourselves consent ; Mr. 
 Barrie duly lets us into his secret, and we know that he is 
 sporting with us. He deliberately leads us up to the brink 
 of tears, tickles our sensibilities, and then abruptly leaves 
 us dry-eyed, pervaded by a luxurious melancholy. None 
 knows better than he that fancy is a matter of half -tints. 
 We need only restrict ourselves to his two last works, for 
 he practises the same art with equal success in that delight- 
 ful piece of fantasy The Admirable Crichton. Here it is 
 always the unreal winch convinces us, and the real which 
 seems fictitious. He carries us with him over all the 
 vagaries of life on his desert-island, and it is only when he 
 tries to introduce a real love-affair that we hesitate to
 
 FANTASTIC ELEMENT AND MR. BARRIE 303 
 
 believe, and feel as if a piece of waterproof had been 
 suddenly sewn on to a web. By plunging into poetry 
 where he should have only used sentiment Mr. Barrie 
 betrays himself. 
 
 But in sentiment he is a connoisseur. We need hardly 
 formulate as much About the man who wrote Sentimental 
 Tommy. He is quite aware that true sentiment must be 
 without compassion. His sentiment, if you examine it, 
 is most delicately pitiless. He has an elfin sense of the 
 foibles of mankind — the sense of an elfin epicure — and also 
 the gift of expressing it. His sentiment is his deadliest 
 weapon, yet his malice is so gentle and playful that, as 
 often as not, he tricks us into taking it for grace and courtesy. 
 Such qualities are the birthright of the satirist, and, in a 
 good hour for the public, Mr. Barrie has discovered that 
 fantasy is a subtle medium for satire. There is hardly a 
 drop of the milk of human kindness in the whole of The 
 Admirable Crichton ; all its fun is due to the failings of 
 its characters ; the T weenie, though loyal, is an abstrac- 
 tion, and even Crichton himself, who comes so near to being 
 our ' favourite hero in fiction,' ends by being absurd. This 
 fact is perhaps hidden by exuberance, and, indeed, it is 
 Mr. Barrie's gift for the incongruous that helps him to go 
 along so affably. He has perceived (and this is probably 
 the most cruel and valuable of his perceptions) that, so 
 long as you understand how not to wound men's vanity, 
 you may say the most scornful things to them and they 
 will not recognise them. So he leads his public kindly 
 into the realm of the impossible, and when they are com- 
 fortably seated — safe, as they think, from personalities — 
 he has at them. For fancy can suggest what no sermon can 
 preach. No ' Contrat Social ' turned topsy-turvy could 
 more clearly reveal than does this play the Bashaw that 
 lives in every man and the slave that lives in every woman ; 
 or the inherent snobbishness of mankind ; or their want of
 
 364 NEW AND OLD 
 
 aspiration and originality ; or their servile subjection to 
 tradition ; or the impossibility of being natural or equal or 
 Utopian. He binds his fantasy to us by a hundred little 
 gossamer moral threads. Indeed, we are inclined to believe 
 that Mr. Barrie himself belongs to ' the Little Folk,' that 
 among his forbears there must have been an elf who married 
 a human ; and we feel a wish to put fresh junket or a new 
 sixpence in his path, or to do something else to propitiate 
 him. But, as we say this, we remember the lucky hours 
 that his books have brought us and we hail him as a good 
 elf, after all. 
 
 Is it far-fetched to suggest that fancy is the child of the 
 North — that this subtle form of conception is born of the 
 struggles and contrasts and complexities arising from damp 
 and mist ? Southern countries, at all events, do not seem 
 to have much to do with fantasy, and both the Italians and 
 the French, who are matter-of-fact enough, have all their 
 fancy done for them by nature and the sun. However that 
 may be, two of the best fantastics of modern days have been 
 a Dane and a Scotsman ; and, absurd though it may seem, 
 we cannot but nurse a hope that at this moment Hans 
 Christian Andersen is enjoying a pirated edition of The 
 Little White Bird in Hades. (1903.) 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
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