Escape, and Other Essays Part 10

The second motive in art is the desire to share and communicate experience. Every one must know how intolerable to a perceptive person loneliness is apt to be, and how instinctive is the need of some companion with whom to partic.i.p.ate in the beauty or impressiveness or absurdity of a scene. The enjoyment of experience is diminished or even obliterated if one has to taste it in solitude. Of course there are people so const.i.tuted as to be able to enjoy, let us say, a good dinner, or a concert of music, or a play, in solitude; but if such a person has the instinct of expression, he enjoys it all half-consciously as an ama.s.sing of material for artistic use; and it is almost inconceivable that an artist should exist who would be prepared to continue writing books or painting pictures or making statues, quite content to put them aside when completed, with no desire to submit them to the judgment of the world. My own experience is that the thought of sharing one's enjoyment with other people is not a very conscious feeling while one is actually engaged in writing. At the moment the thought of expression is paramount, and the delight lies simply in depicting and recording. Yet the impulse to hand it all on is subconsciously there, to such an extent that if I knew that what I wrote could never pa.s.s under another human eye, I have little doubt that I should very soon desist from writing altogether. The social and gregarious instinct is really very dominant in all art; and all writers who have a public at all must become aware of this fact, by the number of ma.n.u.scripts which are submitted to them by would-be authors, who ask for advice and criticism and introductions to publishers. It would be quite easy for me, if I complied fully with all such requests, to spend the greater part of my time in the labour of commenting on these ma.n.u.scripts. It is indeed the nearest that many amateurs can get to publication. As Ruskin, I think, once said, it is a curious irony of authorship that if a writer once makes a success the world does its best, by inundating him with every sort of request, to prevent his ever repeating it. I suppose that painters and sculptors do not suffer so much in this way, because it is not easy to send about canvases or statues by parcels post. But nothing is easier than to slip a ma.n.u.script into an envelope and to require an opinion from an author. I will confess that I very seldom refuse these requests. At the moment at which I write I have three printed novels and a printed book of travel, a poem, and two volumes of essays in ma.n.u.script upon my table, and I shall make shift to say something in reply, though except for the satisfaction of the authors in question, I believe that my pains will be wholly thrown away, for the simple reason that it is a very lengthy business to teach any one how to write, and also partly because what these authors desire is not criticism but sympathy and admiration.

The third motive which underlies the practice of art is undoubtedly the sense of performance and the desire for applause. It is easy from a pose of dignity and high-mindedness to undervalue and overlook this. But it may safely be said that when a man challenges the attention of the public, he does not do it that he may give pleasure, but that he may receive praise. As Elihu the Buzite said with such exquisite frankness in the book of Job, "I will speak, that I may be refreshed!" The amateurs who send their work for inspection cannot as a rule bear to face this fact. They constantly say that they wish to do good, or to communicate enjoyment and pleasure. To be honest, I do not much believe that the motive of the artist is altruistic. He writes for his own enjoyment, perhaps, but he publishes that his skill and power of presentment may be recognised and applauded. In FitzGerald's Letters there is a delightful story of a parrot who had one accomplishment--that of ruffling up his feathers and rolling his eyes so that he looked like an owl. When the other domestic pets were doing their tricks, the owner of the parrot, to prevent its feelings being hurt, used carefully to request it "to do its little owl." And the truth is that we most of us want to do our little owl. Stevenson said candidly that applause was the breath of life to an artist. Many, indeed, find the money they make by their work delightful as a symbol of applause in the sense of Sh.e.l.ley's fine dictum, "Fame is love disguised." It is not a wholly mean motive, because many of us are beset by an idea that the shortest way to be loved is to be admired. It is a great misapprehension, because admiration breeds jealousy quite as often as it breeds affection--indeed oftener! But from the child that plays its little piece, or the itinerant musician that blows a flat cornet in the street, to the great dramatist or musician, the same desire to produce a favourable impression holds good.

I once dined alone with a celebrated critic, who indicated, as we sat smoking in his study, a great pile of typewritten sheets upon his table. "That is the next novel of So-and-so," he said, mentioning a well-known novelist; "he asks me for a candid criticism; but unfortunately the only language he now understands is the language of adulation!"

That is a true if melancholy fact, plainly stated; that to many an artist to be said to have done well is almost more important than to know that the thing has been well done. It is not a wholesome frame of mind, perhaps; but it cannot be overlooked or gainsaid.

Even the greatest of authors are susceptible to it. Robert Browning, who, except for an occasional outburst of fury against his critics, was far more tolerant of and patient under misunderstanding than most poets, said in a moment of elated frankness, when he received an ovation from the students of a university, that he had been waiting for that all his life; Tennyson managed to combine a hatred of publicity with a thirst for fame. Wordsworth, as Carlyle pungently said, used to pay an annual visit to London in later life "to collect his little bits of tribute." And even though Keats could say that his own criticism of his own works had given him far more pain than the opinions of any outside critics, yet the possibility of recognition and applause must inevitably continue to be one of the chief raisons d'etre of art.

But the main motive of writing lies in the creative instinct, pure and simple; and the success of all literary art must depend upon the personality of the writer, his vitality and perception, his combination of exuberance and control. The reason why there are comparatively so few great writers is that authorship, to be wholly successful, needs so rich an outfit of gifts, creative thought, emotion, style, clearness, charm, emphasis, vocabulary, perseverance. Many writers have some of these gifts; and the essential difference of amateur writing from professional writing is that the amateur has, as a rule, little power of rejection and selection, or of producing a due proportion and an even surface; amateur poetry is characterised by good lines strung together by weak and patchy rigmaroles--like a block of unworked ore, in which the precious particles glitter confusedly; while the artistic poem is a piece of chased jewel-work. It is true that great poets have often written hurriedly and swiftly; but probably there is an intense selectiveness at work in the background all the time, produced by instinctive taste as well as by careful practice.

Amateur prose, again, has an unevenness of texture and arrangement, good ideas and salient thoughts floundering in a vapid and inferior substance; it is often not appreciated by amateurs how much depends on craftsmanship. I have known brilliant and accomplished conversationalists who have been persuaded, perhaps in mature life, to attempt a more definite piece of writing; when it is pathetic to see suggestive and even brilliant thought hopelessly befogged by unemphatic and disorderly statement. Still more difficult is it to make people of fine emotions and swift perceptions understand that such qualities are only the basis of authorship, and that the vital necessity for self-expression is to have a knowledge, acquired or instinctive, of the extremely symbolical and even traditional methods and processes of representation. Vivid life is not the same thing as vivid art; art is a sort of recondite and narrow symbolism, by which the word, the phrase, the salient touch, represents, suggests, hints the larger vision. It is in the reducing of broad effects to minute effects that the mastery of art lies.

Good work has often been done for the sake of money; I could name some effective living writers who never willingly put pen to paper, and would be quite content to express themselves in familiar talk, or even to live in vivid reflection, if they were not compelled to earn their living. Ambition will do something to mould an artist; the philanthropic motive may put some wind into his sails, but by itself it has little artistic value. Speaking for myself, in so far as it is possible to disentangle complex motives, the originating impulse has never been with me pecuniary, or ambitious, or philanthropic, or even communicative. It has been simply and solely the intense pleasure of putting as emphatically and beautifully and appropriately as possible into words, an idea of a definite kind.

The creative impulse is not like any other that I know; some thought, scene, picture, darts spontaneously into the mind. The intelligence instantly sets to work arranging, subdividing, foreseeing, extending, amplifying. Much is done by some unconscious cerebration; for I have often planned the development of a thought in a few minutes, and then dropped it; yet an hour or two later the whole thing seems ready to be written.

Moreover, the actual start is a pleasure so keen and delightful as to have an almost physical and sensuous joy about it. The very act of writing has become so mechanical that there is nothing in the least fatiguing about it, though I have heard some writers say otherwise; while the process is actually going on, one loses all count of time and place; the clock on the mantelpiece seems to leap miraculously forward; while the mind knows exactly when to desist, so that the leaving off is like the turning of a tap, the stream being instantaneously cut off. I do not recollect having ever forced myself to write, except under the stress of illness, nor do I ever recollect its being anything but the purest pleasure from beginning to end.

In saying this I know that I am confessing myself to be a frank improvisatore, and where such art fails, as mine often fails, is in a lack of the power of concentration and revision, which is the last and greatest necessity of high art. But I owe to it the happiest and brightest experiences of life, to which no other pleasure is even dimly comparable. Easy writing, it is said, makes hard reading; but is it true that hard writing ever makes easy reading?

The end of the matter would seem to be that if the creative impulse is very strong in a man, it will probably find its way out. If ordinary routine-work destroys it, it is probably not very robust; yet authorship is not to be recommended as a profession, because the prizes are few, the way hard, the disappointments poignant and numerous; and though there are perhaps few greater benefactors to the human race than beautiful and n.o.ble writers, yet there are many natures both n.o.ble and beautiful who would like to approach life that way, but who, from lack of the complete artistic equipment, from technical deficiencies, from failure in craftsmanship, must find some other way of enriching the blood of the world.

XIV

HERB MOLY AND HEARTSEASE

1

When Odysseus was walking swiftly, with rage in his heart, through the island of Circe, to find out what had befallen his companions, he would have a.s.suredly gone to his doom in the great stone house of the witch, the smoke of which went up among the thickets, if Hermes had not met him.

The G.o.d came in the likeness of a beautiful youth with the first down of manhood upon his lips. He chid the much-enduring one for his rash haste, and gave him what we should call not very good advice; but he also gave him something which was worth more than any good advice, a charm which should prevail against the spells of the Nymph, which he might carry in his bosom and be unscathed.

It was an ugly enough herb, a p.r.i.c.kly plant which sprawled low in the shadow of the trees. Its root was black, and it had a milk- white flower; the G.o.ds called it Moly, and no mortal strength could avail to pull it from the soil; but as Odysseus says, telling the story, "There is nothing which the G.o.ds cannot do"; and it came up easily enough at the touch of the beardless youth. We know how the spell worked, how Odysseus rescued his companions, and how Circe told him the way to the regions of the dead; but even so he did not wholly escape from her evil enchantment!

2

No one knows what the herb Moly really was; some say it was the mandrake, that plant of darkness, which was thought to bear a dreadful resemblance, in its pale swollen stalk and outstretched arms, to a tortured human form, and to utter moans as it was dragged from the soil; but later on it was used as the name for a kind of garlic, employed as a flavouring for highly-spiced salads.

The Greeks were not, it seems, very scientific botanists, so far as nomenclature went, and applied any name that was handy to any plant that struck their fancy. They believed, no doubt, that things had secret and intimate names of their own, which were known perhaps to the G.o.ds, but that men must just call them what they could.

It would be best perhaps to leave the old allegory to speak for itself, because poetical thoughts are often mishandled, and suffer base transformation at the hands of interpreters; but for all that, it is a pretty trade to expound things seen in dreams and visions, or obscurely detected out of the corner of the eye in magical places; while the best of really poetical things is that they have a hundred mystical interpretations, none of which is perhaps the right one; because the poet sees things in a flash, and describes his visions, without knowing what they mean, or indeed if they have any meaning at all.

A place like a university, where one alights for an adventure, in the course of a long voyage, is in many ways like the island of Circe. There is the great stone mansion with its shining doors and guarded cloisters. It is a place of many enchantments and various delights. There are mysterious people going to and fro, whose business it is hard to discern: there are plenty of bowls and dishes, and water pleasantly warmed for the bath. Circe herself had a private life of her own, and much curious information: she was not for ever turning people into pigs; and indeed why she did it at all is not easy to discover! It amused her, and she felt more secure, perhaps, when her visitors were safely housed, grunting and splashing about together. One must not press an allegory too closely, but in any place where human beings consort, there is always some turning of men into pigs, even if they afterwards resume their shape again, and shed tears of relief at the change.

3

My purpose here is to speculate a little upon what the herb Moly can be, how it can be found and used. Hermes, the messenger of the G.o.ds, is always ready to pull it up for anyone who really requires it. And just because "the isle," as Shakespeare says, "is full of noises--sounds and sweet airs," it is a matter of concern to know which of them "give delight and hurt not," and which of them lead only to manger and sty. My discourse is not planned in a spirit of heavy rect.i.tude, or from any desire to shower good advice about, as from a pepper-pot. Indeed, I believe that there are many things in the correct conventional code which are very futile and grotesque; some which are directly hurtful; and further, that there are many things quite outside the code which are both fine and beautiful; because the danger of all civilised societies is that the members of it take the prevailing code for granted; do not trouble to think what it means, accept it as the way of life, and walk contentedly enough, like the beetle in the bone, which, as we know, can neither turn nor miss its way.

To fall feebly into the conventions of a place takes away all the joyful spirit of adventure; but the little island set in the ocean, with its loud sea-beaches, its upstanding promontories, its wooded glades, its open s.p.a.ces, and above all the great house standing among its lawns, is a place of adventure above everything, with unknown forces at work, untamed emotions, swift currents of thought, many choices, strange delights; and then there is the shadowy sea beyond, with all its crested billows rolling in, and other islands looming out beyond the breakers, at which the ship may touch, before it finds its way to the regions of death and silence.

I myself had my own time of adventure, took ship again, and voyaged far; and now that I have come back again to the little island with all its thickets, I wish to retrace in thought, if I can, some of the adventures which befell me, and what they brought me, and to speak too of adventures which I missed, either out of diffidence or folly. I am not at all sure whether Hermes, whom I certainly encountered, ever gave me a plant of Moly, or, if I did indeed receive it, what use I made of it. But I knew others who certainly had the herb at their hearts, and as certainly others who had not; and I will try and tell what he thinks it is, and how it may be found. It is deeply planted, no doubt; its root is as black as death, and its flower as pure as the light; while the leaves are p.r.i.c.kly and clinging; it is not a plant for trim gardens, nor to be grown in rows in the furrow; it is hard to come by, and harder still to extract; but having once attained it, the man who bears it knows that there are certain things he cannot do again, and certain spells which henceforth have no power over him; and though it does not deliver him from all dangers, he will not at all events be penned with the regretful swine, that had lost all human attributes except the power of shedding tears.

4

Now I shall drop all allegories for the present, because it is confusing both to writers and readers to be always speaking of two things in terms of each other. And I will say first that when I was at college myself as a young man, I seemed to myself to be for ever looking for something which I could not find. It was not always so; there were plenty of contented hours, when one played a game, or sat over the fire afterwards with tea and tobacco, talking about it, or talking about other people--I do not often remember talking about anything else, except on set occasions--or later in the evening some one played a piano not very well, or we sang songs, not very tunefully; or one sat down to work, and got interested, if not in the work itself, at least in doing it well and completely. I am not going to pretend, as elderly men often do with infinite absurdity, that I did no work, and scored off dons and proctors, and broke every rule, and defied G.o.d and man, and spent money which I had not got, and lived a generally rake-h.e.l.l life. There are very few of my friends who did these things, and they have mostly fallen in the race long ago, leaving a poor and rueful memory behind. Nor do I see why it is so glorious to pretend to have done such things, especially if one has not done them! I was a sober citizen enough, with plenty of faults and failings; and this is not a tract to convert the wicked, who indeed are providing plenty of materials to effect their own conversion in ways very various and all very uncomfortable! I should like it rather to be read by well-meaning people, who share perhaps the same experience as myself--the experience, as I have said, of searching for something which I could not find. Sometimes in those days, I will make bold to confess, I read a book, or heard an address or sermon, or talked to some interesting and attractive person, and felt suddenly that I was on the track of it; was it something I wanted, or was it something I had lost? I could not tell! But I knew that if I could find it, I should never be in any doubt again how to act or what to choose. It was not a set of rules I wanted--there were rules enough and to spare, some of them made for us, and many which we made for ourselves. We mapped out every part of life which was left unmapped by the dons, and we knew exactly what was correct and what was not; and oh, how dull much of it was!

But I wanted a motive of some sort, an aim; I wanted to know what I was out for, as we now say. I did not see what the point of much of my work was, or know what my profession was to be; I did not see why I did, for social reasons, so many things which did not interest me, or why I pretended to think them interesting. I would sit, one of half-a-dozen men, the air dim with smoke, telling stories about other people. A-- had had a row with B--, he would not go properly into training; he had lunched before a match off a tumbler of sherry and a cigar; he was too good to be turned out of the team--it was amusing enough, but it certainly was not what I was looking for.

Then one made friends; it dawned upon one suddenly what a charming person C---- was, so original and amusing, so observant; it became a thrilling thing to meet him in the court; one asked him to tea, one talked and told him everything. A week later, one seemed to have got to the end of it; the path came to a stop; there was not much in it after all, and presently he was rather an a.s.s; he looked gloomily at one when one met him, but one was off on another chase; this idealising of people was rather a mistake; the pleasure was in the exploration, and there was very little to explore; it was better to have a comfortable set of friends with no nonsense; and yet that was dull too. That was certainly not the thing one was in search of.

What was it, then? One saw it like a cloud-shadow racing over the hill, like a bird upon the wing. The perfect friend could not help one, for his perfections waned and faded. Yet there was certainly something there, singing like a bird in the wood; only when one reached the tree the bird was gone, and another song was in the air. It seemed, then, at first sight as if one was in search of an emotion of some kind, and not only a solitary emotion, like that which touched the spirit at the sudden falling of the ripe rose- petals from their stem, or at the sight of the far-off plain, with all its woods and waters framed between the outrunning hills, or at the sound of organ-music stealing out of the soaring climbing woodwork with all its golden pipes, on setting foot in the dim and fragrant church; they were all sweet enough, but the mind turned to some kindred soul at hand with whom it could all be shared; and the recognition of some other presence, visibly beckoning through gesture and form and smiling wide-opened eyes, that seemed the best that could be attained, that nearness and rapture of welcome; and then the moment pa.s.sed, and that too ebbed away.

It was something more than that! because in bleak solitary pondering moments, there stood up, like a ma.s.sive b.u.t.tressed crag, a duty, not born of whispered secrets or of relations, however delicate and awestruck, with other hearts, but a stern uncompromising thing, that seemed a relation with something quite apart from man, a Power swift and vehement and often terrible, to whom one owed an unmistakable fealty in thought and act.

Righteousness! That old-fashioned thing on which the Jews, one was taught, set much store, which one had misconceived as something born of piety and ceremony, and which now revealed itself as a force uncompromisingly there, which it was impossible to overlook or to disobey; if one did disobey it, something hurt and wounded cried out faintly in the soul; and so it dawned upon one that this was a force, not only not developed out of piety and worship, but of which all piety and worship were but the frail vesture, which half veiled and half hampered the ma.s.sive stride and stroke.

It did not attract or woo; it rather demanded and frightened; but it became clear enough that any inner peace was impossible without it; and little by little one learned to recognise that there was no trace of it in many conventional customs and precepts; those could be slighted and disregarded; but there were still things which the spirit did truly recognise as vices and sins, abominable and defiling, with which no trafficking was possible.

This, then, was clear; that if one was to find the peace one desired--it was that, it was an untroubled peace, a journey taken with a sense of aim and liberty that one hoped to make--then these were two certain elements; a concurrence with a few great and irresistible prohibitions and positive laws of conduct, though these were far fewer than one had supposed; and next to that, a sense of brotherhood and fellowship with those who seemed to be making their way harmoniously and finely towards the same goal as oneself. To understand and love these spirits, to be understood and loved by them, that was a vital necessity.

But this must be added; that the sense of duty of which I speak, which rose st.u.r.dily and fiercely above the shifting forms of life, like a peak above the forest, did not appear at once either desirable or even beautiful. It blocked the view and the way; it forbade one to stray or loiter; but the obedience one reluctantly gave to it came simply from a realisation of its strength and of its presence. It stood for an order of some kind, which interfered at many points with one's hopes and desires, but with which one was compelled to make terms, because it could and did strike, pitilessly and even vindictively, if one neglected and transgressed its monitions; and thus the quest became an attempt to find what stood behind it, and to discover if there was any Personality behind it, with which one could link oneself, so as to be conscious of its intentions or its goodwill. Was it a Power that could love and be loved? Or was it only mechanical and soulless, a condition of life, which one might dread and even abhor, but which could not be trifled with?

Because that seemed the secret of all the happiness of life--the meeting, with a sense of intimate security, something warm and breathing, that had need of me as I of it, that could smile and clasp, foster and pity, admire and adore, and in the embrace of which one could feel one's hope and joy grow and stir by contact and trust. That was what one found in the hearts about one's path; and the wonder was, did some similar chance of embracing, clasping, trusting, and loving that vaster Power await one in the dim s.p.a.ces beyond the fields and homes of earth?

I guessed that it was so, but saw, as in a faint vision, that many harsh events, sorry mischances, blows and wounds and miseries, hated and dreaded and endured, lay between me and that larger Heart. But I perceived at last, with terror and mistrust, that the adventure did indeed lie there; that I should often be disdained and repulsed, untended and unheeded, bitterly disillusioned, shaken out of ease and complacency, but a.s.suredly folded to that greater Heart at last.

5

And then there followed a different phase. Up to the very end of the university period, the same uneasiness continued; then quite suddenly the door opened, one slipped into the world, one found one's place. There were instantaneously real things to be done, real money to earn, men and women to live with and work with, to conciliate or to resist. A mist rolled away from my eyes. What a fantastic life it had been hitherto, how sheltered, how remote from actuality! I seemed to have been building up a rococo stucco habitation out of whims and fancies, adding a room here and a row of pinnacles there, all utterly bizarre and grotesque. Vague dreams of poetry and art, nothing penetrated or grasped, a phrase here, a fancy there; one's ideal of culture seemed like Ophelia in Hamlet, a distracted nymph stuck all over with flowers and anxious to explain the sentimental value of each; the friendships themselves-- they had nothing stable about them either; they were not based upon any common aim, any real mutual concern; they were nothing more than the enshrining of a fugitive charm, the tracking of some bright-eyed fawn or wild-haired dryad to its secret haunt, only to find the bird flown and the nest warm. But now there was little time for fancies; there was a real burden to carry, a genuine task to perform; day after day slipped past, like the furrows in a field seen from some speeding car; the contented mind, pleasantly wearied at the end of the busy day, heaved a light-hearted sigh of relief, and turned to some recreation with zest and delight. It was not that the quest had been successful; it seemed rather that there was no quest at all, and that it was the joy of daily work that had been the missing factor . . . the weeks melted into months, the months became years.

Meanwhile the earth and air, as well as the comrades and companions of the pilgrimage, were touched with a different light of beauty.

The beauty was there, and in even fuller measure. The sun in the hot summer days poured down upon the fragrant garden, with all its bright flower-beds, its rose-laden alleys, its terraced walks, its green-shaded avenues; the autumn mists lay blue and faint across the far pastures, and the hill climbed smoothly to its green summit; or the spring came back after the winter silence with all its languor of unfolding life, while bush and covert wove their screens of dense-tapestried foliage, to conceal what mysteries of love and delight! and the faces or gestures of those about one took on a new significance, a richer beauty, a larger interest, because one began to guess how experience moulded them, by what aims and hopes they were graven and refined, by what failures they were obliterated and coa.r.s.ened. But the difference was this, that one was not now for ever trying to make these charms one's own, to establish private understandings or mutual relations. It was enough now to observe them as one could, to interpret them, to enjoy them, and to pa.s.s by. The acquisitive sense was gone, and one neither claimed nor grasped; one admired and wondered and went forwards.

And this again seemed a wholesome balance of thought, for, as the desire to take diminished, the power, of interpreting and enjoying grew.