From a Cornish Window Part 10

The poem of FitzGerald's from which these verses come was known, I believe, to very few until Mr. E. V. Lucas exhumed it from _Half-hours with the Worst Authors_, and reprinted it in that delightful little book _The Open Road_. I have a notion that even FitzGerald's most learned executor was but dimly aware of its existence. For my part, at this time of the day, I prefer it to his Omar Khayyam--perversely, no doubt.

In the year 1885 or thereabouts Omar, known only to a few, was a wonder and a treasure to last one's lifetime; but I confess that since a club took him up and feasted his memory with field-marshals and other irrelevant persons in the chair, and since his fame has become vulgarised not only in Thames-side hotels, but over the length and breadth of the North American continent, one at least of his admirers has suffered a not unnatural revulsion, until now he can scarcely endure to read the immortal quatrains. Immortal they are, no doubt, and deserve to be by reason of their style--"fame's great antiseptic." But their philosophy is thin after all, and will not bear discussion. As exercise for a grown man's thought, I will back a lyric of Blake's or Wordsworth's, or a page of Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_ against the whole of it, any day.

This, however, is parenthetical. I caught hold of FitzGerald's verses to express that jollity which should be every man's who looks up from much reading or writing and knows that Spring has come.

"_Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et favoni Trahuntque siccas machinae carinas_ . . ."

In other words, I look out of the window and decide that the day has arrived for launching the boat--

"This is that happy morn, That day, long wished day!"

And, to my mind, the birthday of the year. Potentates and capitalists who send down orders to Cowes or Southampton that their yachts are to be put in commission, and anon arrive to find everything ready (if they care to examine), from the steam capstan to the cook's ap.r.o.n, have little notion of the amus.e.m.e.nt to be found in fitting out a small boat, say of five or six tons. I sometimes doubt if it be not the very flower, or at least the bloom, of the whole pastime. The serious face with which we set about it; the solemn procession up the river to the creek where she rests, the high tide all but lifting her; the silence in which we loose the moorings and haul off; the first thrill of buoyant water underfoot; the business of stepping the mast; quiet days of sitting or pottering about on deck in the sunny harbour; vessels pa.s.sing up and down, their crews eyeing us critically as the rigging grows and the odds and ends--block, tackle and purchase--fall into their ordered places; and through it all the expectation running of the summer to come, and 'blue days at sea' and unfamiliar anchorages--unfamiliar, but where the boat is, home will be--

"Such bliss Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss."

Homer, who knew what amused men, constantly lays stress on this business of fitting out:--

"Then at length she (Athene) let drag the swift ship to the sea, and stored within it all such tackling as decked ships carry. And she moored it at the far end of the harbour. . . . So they raised the mast of pine tree, and set it in the hole of the cross plank, and made it fast with forestays, and hauled up the white sails with twisted ropes of oxhide."

And again:

"First of all they drew the ship down to the deep water, and fixed the oars in leathern loops all orderly, and spread forth the white sails.

And squires, haughty of heart, bare for them their arms,"--but you'll observe that it was the masters who did the launching, etc., like wise men who knew exactly wherein the fun of the business consisted.

"And they moored her high out in the sh.o.r.e water, and themselves disembarked. There they supped and waited for evening to come on."

You suggest, perhaps, that our seafaring is but play: and you are right.

But in our play we catch a cupful of the romance of the real thing.

Also we have the real thing at our doors to keep us humble. Day by day beneath this window the statelier shipping goes by; and our twopenny adventurings and discoveries do truly (I believe) keep the greater wonder and interest awake in us from day to day--the wonder and interest so memorably expressed in Mr. Bridges's poem, _A Pa.s.ser By_:--

"Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?

Ah! soon when Winter has all our vales opprest, When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling, Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling?

"I there before thee, in the country so well thou knowest, Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air: I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest, And anchor queen of the strange shipping there, Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare.". . . .

"And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless, I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless, Thy port a.s.sured in a happier land than mine.

But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine.

As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding, From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding."

Though in all human probability I shall never be the first to burst into a silent sea, I can declare quite seriously that I never steer into an unfamiliar creek or haven but, as its recesses open, I can understand something of the awe of the boat's crew in Andrew Marvell's "Bermudas;"

yes, and something of the exultation of the great Columbus himself!

In a later paper I may have to tell of these voyages and traffickings.

For the while I leave the reader to guess how and in what corner of the coast I happened on the following pendant to Mr. Dobell's _trouvaille_.

It may not challenge comparison with Mr. Flinders Petrie's work in Egypt or with Mr. Hogarth's Cretan explorations; but I say confidently that, since Mr. Pickwick unearthed the famous inscribed stone, no more fortunate or astonishing discovery has rewarded literary research upon our English soil than the two letters which with no small pride I give to the world this month.

Curiously enough, they concern Mr. Pickwick.

But, perhaps, by way of preface I shall remind the reader that the final number of _Pickwick_ was issued in November, 1837. The first French version--which Mr. Percy Fitzgerald justly calls 'a rude adaptation rather than a translation'--appeared in 1838, and was ent.i.tled _Le Club de Pickwickistes, Roman Comique, traduit librement de l'Anglais par Mdme.

Eugenie Giboyet_. With equal justice Mr. Fitzgerald complains (_The History of Pickwick_, p. 276) that "the most fantastic tricks are played with the text, most of the dialogue being left out and the whole compressed into two small volumes." Yet, in fact, Mme. Giboyet (as will appear) was more sinned against than sinning. Clearly she undertook to translate the immortal novel in collaboration with a M. Alexandre D--', and was driven by the author's disapproval to suppress M. D--'s share of the work. The dates are sufficient evidence that this was done (as it no doubt had to be done) in haste. I regret that my researches have yielded no further information respecting this M. Alexandre D--'. The threat in the second letter may or may not have been carried out. I am inclined to hope that it was, feeling sure that the result, if ever discovered, will prove in the highest degree entertaining. With this I may leave the letters to speak for themselves.

(1)

"45 Doughty Street,"

"September 25th, 1837."

"MY DEAR MADAM,--It is true that when granting the required permission to translate _Pickwick_ into French, I allowed also the license you claimed for yourself and your _collaborateur_--of adapting rather than translating, and of presenting my hero under such small disguise as might commend him better to a Gallic audience. But I am bound to say that--to judge only from the first half of your version, which is all that has reached me--you have construed this permission more freely than I desired. In fact, the parent can hardly recognise his own child.

"Against your share in the work, Madame, I have little to urge, though the damages you represent Mrs. Bardell as claiming--300,000 francs, or 12,000 pounds of our money--strikes me as excessive. It is rather (I take as my guide the difference in the handwriting) to your _collaborateur_ that I address, through you, my remonstrances.

"I have no radical objection to his making Messrs. Snodgra.s.s, Winkle, and Tupman members of His Majesty King Louis XIII.'s corps of Musketeers, if he is sincerely of opinion that French taste will applaud the departure. I even commend his slight idealisation of Snodgra.s.s (which, by the way, is not the name of an English mountain), and the amorousness of Tupman (Aramis) gains--I candidly admit--from the touch of religiosity which he gives to the character; though I do not, as he surmises, in the course of my story, promote Tupman to a bishopric. The development--preferable as on some points the episcopal garb may be considered to the green velvet jacket with a two-inch tail worn by him at Madame Cha.s.selion's _fete champetre_-- would jar upon our Anglican prejudices. As for Winkle (Porthos), the translation nicely hits off his love of manly exercises, while resting his pretensions on a more solid basis of fact than appears in the original. In the incident of the baldric, however, the imposture underlying Mr. W.'s green shooting-coat is conveyed with sufficient neatness.

"M. D--' has been well advised again in breaking up the character of Sam Weller and making him, like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once.

Buckingham (Jingle) and Fenton (a capital rendering of the Fat Boy) both please me; and in expanding the episode of the sausage and the trouser-b.u.t.tons M. D--' has shown delicacy and judgment by altering the latter into diamond studs.

"Alas! madam, I wish the same could be said for his treatment of my female puppets, which not only shocks but bewilders me. In her earlier appearances Mrs. Bardell (Milady) is a fairly consistent character; and why M. D--' should hazard that consistency by identifying her with the middle-aged lady at the great White Horse, Ipswich, pa.s.ses my comprehension. I say, madam, that it bewilders me; but for M. D--'s subsequent development of the occurrences at that hostelry I entertain feelings of which mere astonishment is, perhaps, the mildest. I can hardly bring myself to discuss this with a lady; but you will allow me to protest in the very strongest terms that Mr. Pickwick made that unfortunate mistake about the sleeping apartment in the completest innocence, that in e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. 'ha-hum'

he merely uttered a note of warning, and that 'ha-hum' is _not_ (as M. D--' suspects) an English word from which certain syllables have been discreetly removed; that in thrusting his head through the bed-curtains he was, as I am careful to say, 'not actuated by any definite object'; and that, as a gentleman should, he withdrew at the earliest possible moment. His intercepted duel with Mr. Peter Magnus (De Wardes) rests, as I fondly imagined I had made clear, upon a complete misunderstanding. The whole business of the _fleur-de-lys_ on Mrs. Bardell's shoulder is a sheer interpolation and should be expunged, not only on grounds of morality, but because when you reach the actual trial, 'Bardell _v_. Pickwick,' you will find this discovery of the defendant's impossible either to ignore or to reconcile with the jury's verdict. Against the intervention of Richelieu (Mr. Nupkins) I have nothing to urge. M. D--' opines that I shall in the end deal out poetical justice to Mrs. Bardell as Milady.

He is right. I have, indeed, gone so far as to imprison her; but I own that her execution (as suggested by him) at the hands of the Queer Client, with Pickwick and his friends (or, alternatively, Mrs. Cluppins, Mr. Perker, and Bob Sawyer) as silent spectators, seems to me almost as inconsistent with the spirit of the tale as his other proposal to kidnap Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the boot of Mr.

Weller's coach, and subst.i.tute for his lordship the Chancery prisoner in an iron mask. I trust, madam, that these few suggestions will, without setting any appreciable constraint on your fancy, enable you to catch something more of the spirit of my poor narrative than I have been able to detect in some of the chapters submitted; and I am, with every a.s.surance of esteem, Your obliged servant, Boz."

"P.S.--The difference between Anjou wine and the milk punch about which you inquire does not seem to me to necessitate any serious alteration of the chapter in question. M. D--'s expressed intention of making Master Bardell in later life the executioner of King Charles I. of England must stand over for some future occasion.

The present work will hardly yield him the required opportunity for dragging in King Charles' head."

(2)

"MADAME,--Puisque M. Boz se mefie des propositions lui faites sans but quelconque que de concilier les gens d'esprit, j'ai l'honneur de vous annnoncer nettement que je me retire d'une besogne aussi rude que malentendue. Il dit que j'ai concu son _Pickwick_ tout autrement que lui. Soit! Je l'ecrirai, ce _Pickwick_, selon mon propre gout.

Que M. Boz redoute mes _Trois Pickwickistes!_ Agreez, Madame, etc., etc., Alexandre (le Grand)."

I am told that literary aspirants in these days do not read books, or read them only for purposes of review-writing. Yet these pages may happen to fall in the way of some literary aspirant faint on a false scent, yet pursuing; and to him, before telling of another discovery, I will address one earnest word of caution. Let him receive it as from an elder brother who wishes him well.

My caution is--Avoid irony as you would the plague.

Years ago I was used to receive this warning (on an average) once a week from my old and dear friend Sir Wemyss Reid; and once a week I would set myself, a.s.sailing his good nature, to cajole him into printing some piece of youthful extravagance which he well knew--and I knew--and he knew that I knew--would infuriate a hundred staid readers of _The Speaker_ and oblige him to placate in private a dozen puzzled and indignant correspondents. For those were days before the beards had stiffened on the chins of some of us who a.s.sembled to reform politics, art, literature, and the world in general from a somewhat frowsy upstairs coffee-room in C--' Street: days of old--

"When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek And all the world and we seem'd much less cold And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold. . . ."

Well, these cajoleries were not often successful, yet often enough to keep the sporting instinct alive and active, and a great deal oftener than F--'s equally disreputable endeavours: it being a tradition with the staff that F--' had sworn by all his G.o.ds to get in an article which would force the printer to flee the country. I need scarcely say that the tradition was groundless, but we worked it shamelessly.

In this way on January 9th, 1897 (a year in which the Westminster Aquarium was yet standing), and shortly after the issue of the New Year's Honours'

List, the following article appeared in _The Speaker_. The reader will find it quite harmless until he comes to the sequel. It was ent.i.tled--

NOOKS OF OLD LONDON.