From a Cornish Window Part 1

From a Cornish Window.

by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.

DEDICATION.

MY DEAR WILLIAM ARCHER,

Severe and ruthlessly honest man that you are, you will find that the levities and the gravities of this book do not accord, and will say so.

I plead only that they were written at intervals, and in part for recreation, during years in which their author has striven to maintain a cheerful mind while a popular philosophy which he believed to be cheap took possession of men and translated itself into politics which he knew to be nasty. I may summarise it, in its own jargon, as the philosophy of the Superman, and succinctly describe it as an attempt to stretch a part of the Darwinian hypothesis and make it cover the whole of man's life and conduct. I need not remind you how fatally its doctrine has flattered, in our time and in our country, the worst instincts of the half-educated: but let us remove it from all spheres in which we are interested and contemplate it as expounded by an American Insurance 'Lobbyist,' a few days ago, before the Armstrong Committee:--

"The Insurance world to-day is the greatest financial proposition in the United States; and, _as great affairs always do, it commands a higher law._"

I have read precisely the same doctrine in a University Sermon preached by an Archbishop; but there its point was confused by pietistic rhetoric: the point being that in life, which is a struggle, success has in itself something divine, by virtue of which it can be to itself a law of right and wrong; and (inferentially) that a man is relieved of the n.o.ble obligation to command himself so soon and in so far as he is rich enough or strong enough to command other people.

But why (you will ask) do I drag this doctrine into a dedication?

Because, my dear Archer, I have fought against it for close upon seventeen years; because seventeen years is no small slice of a man's life--rather, so long a time that it has taught me to prize my bruises and prefer that, if anybody hereafter care to know me, he shall know me as one whose spirit took its cheer in intervals of a fight against detestable things; that-- let him rank me in talent never so low beside my contemporaries who preached this doctrine--he shall at least have no excuse but to acquit me of being one with them in mind or purpose; and lastly, because in these times few things have brought me such comfort (stern comfort!) as I have derived from your criticism, so hospitable to ideas, so inflexible in judging right from wrong. As I have lived lonelier it has been better for me, and a solace beyond your guessing, to have been reminded that criticism still lives amongst us and has a Roman spirit.

A. T. QUILLER-COUCH

The Haven, FOWEY, April 3rd, 1906.

PREFACE.

My old friend and publisher, Mr. Arrowsmith, maintains that the time has come for a cheap edition of this book. Should the public endorse that opinion, he will probably go about pretending that his head is as good as his heart.

_From a Cornish Window_ first appeared between cloth covers some six or seven years ago. I see that its Dedication bears the date, April 3rd, 1906. But parts of it were written years before in the old _Pall Mall Magazine_, under the editorship of Lord Frederic Hamilton (who invented its t.i.tle for me), and a few fragments date back almost to undergraduate days. The book, in short, is desultory to the last degree, and discourses in varying moods on a variety of topics. Yet, turning the pages again, I find them curiously and somewhat alarmingly consistent--consistent not only in themselves, but with their surviving author as he sits here to-day, using the same pen-holder which he bought for twopence in 1886, and gazing out of the same window, soon to be exchanged for another with a view more academic: and 'alarmingly consistent' because (as Emerson has very justly observed) a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. To persevere in one fixed outlook upon life may be evidence of arrested capacity to grow, while on the other hand mere flightiness is a sure sign that the mind has not even arrived at man's estate.

The best plan seems to be to care not a farthing for consistency or inconsistency, but to keep the eye turned outwards, and to keep it fresh by taking on new interests (however trivial), and reading new books, but still comparing them with the old. I think we ought to be especially careful to read new poetry as we get on in life, if only as a discipline-- as men with increasing waists practise calisthenics--because poetry is always trying to reach beyond the phenomena of life, and because these are all the while, if imperceptibly, narrowing us within the round of daily habit. As the author of _Ionica_ put it (I quote from memory)--

Our feelings lose poetic flow Soon after thirty years or so: Professionising modern men Thenceforth admire what pleased them then.

But on the whole I do not regret this consistency, believing that the years 1896-1906 laid an almost holy constraint on the few who believed neither in Sham-Imperialism nor in the Superman, to stand together, to be stubborn, to refuse as doggedly as possible to bow the knee to these idols, to miss no opportunity of drawing attention to their feet of clay.

I seem to perceive that the day of the Superman is drawing to its close.

He is a recurring nuisance, like the influenza, and no doubt will afflict mankind again in due season. But our generation has enjoyed a peculiarly poisonous variety of him. In his Renaissance guise, whether projected upon actual history, as in the person of Richard III, or strutting sublimated through Marlowe's blank verse, he spared at any rate to sentimentalise his brutality. Our forefathers summed him up in the byword that an Italianate Englishman was a devil incarnate; but he _had_ the grace of being Italianate. It is from the Germanised avatar--the Bismarck of the 'Ems telegram,' with his sentimentalising historians and philosophers--that Europe would seem to be recovering to-day. Well, I believe that the Christian virtues, the lovable and honourable code of ancient gentlemen, may always be trusted to win in the long run, and extrude the impostor. But while his vogue lasts, it may be of service to keep reminding men that to falsify another man's dispatch is essentially a stupider action than to tilt at windmills: and that is the main moral of my book.

Arthur Quiller-Couch.

December 2nd, 1912.

JANUARY.

Should any reader be puzzled by the t.i.tle of this discursive volume, the following verses may provide him with an explanation. They were written some time ago for a lady who had requested, required, requisitioned (I forget the precise shade of the imperative) something for her alb.u.m.

"We are in the last ages of the world," wrote Charles Lamb to Barry Cornwall, "when St. Paul prophesied that women should be 'headstrong, lovers of their own will, having alb.u.ms.--'"

BEATUS POSSIDENS.

I can't afford a mile of sward, Parterres and peac.o.c.ks gay; For velvet lawns and marble fauns Mere authors cannot pay.

And so I went and pitched my tent Above a harbour fair, Where vessels picturesquely rigg'd Obligingly repair.

The harbour is not mine at all: I make it so--what odds?

And gulls unwitting on my wall Serve me for garden-G.o.ds.

By ships that ride below kaleid- oscopically changed, Unto my mind each day I find My garden rearranged.

These, madam, are my daffodils, My pinks, my hollyhocks, My herds upon a hundred hills, My phloxes and my flocks.

And when some day you deign to pay The call that's overdue, I'll wave a landlord's easy hand And say, "Admire _my_ view!"

Now I do not deny that a part of the content expressed in these lines may come of resignation. In some moods, were I to indulge them, it were pleasant to fancy myself owner of a vast estate, champaign and woodland; able to ride from sea to sea without stepping off my own acres, with villeins and bondmen, privileges of sak and soke, infangthef, outfangthef, rents, tolls, dues, royalties, and a private gallows for autograph-hunters. These things, however, did not come to me by inheritance, and for a number of sufficient reasons I have not ama.s.sed them. As for those other ambitions which fill the dreams of every healthy boy, a number of them had become of faint importance even before a breakdown of health seemed definitely to forbid their attainment.

Here at home, far from London, with restored strength, I find myself less concerned with them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more keenly interested than ever in life and letters, art and politics--all that men and women are saying and doing. Only the centre of gravity has shifted, so to speak.

I dare say, then, that resignation may have some share in this content; but if so 'tis an unconscious and happy one. A man who has been writing novels for a good part of his life should at least be able to sympathise with various kinds of men; and, for an example or two, I can understand--

1. Why Alexander cried (if he ever did) because he had no second world to conquer.

2. Why Shakespeare, as an Englishman, wanted a coat of arms and a respectable estate in his own native country town.

3. What and how deep are the feelings beneath that _cri du coeur_ of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's 'Old Squire:'--

"I like the hunting of the hare Better than that of the fox; I like the joyous morning air, And the crowing of the c.o.c.ks.

"I covet not a wider range Than these dear manors give; I take my pleasures without change, And as I lived I live.

"Nor has the world a better thing, Though one should search it round, Than thus to live one's own sole king Upon one's own sole ground.

"I like the hunting of the hare; It brings me day by day The memory of old days as fair, With dead men past away.

"To these as homeward still I ply, And pa.s.s the churchyard gate, Where all are laid as I must lie, I stop and raise my hat.

"I like the hunting of the hare: New sports I hold in scorn.

I like to be as my fathers were In the days ere I was born."

4. What--to start another hare--were Goldsmith's feelings when he wrote--

"And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return--and die at home at last."

5. With what heart Don Quixote rode forth to tilt at sheep and windmills, and again with what heart in that saddest of all last chapters he bade his friends look not for this year's birds in last year's nests.