Hilaire Belloc Part 3

It is a style which conveys emotion and it is also a style which can be used perfectly to describe. We may refer, at least, as an example, to the careful and exact account of the appearance and utility of the Mediterranean lateen-sail which occurs at the beginning of _Esto Perpetua_, a piece of writing which enchants the reader with its beauty and its practical sense.

Consider, too, that light and graceful composition of a different character, equally perfect in beauty, the dialogue _On the Departure of a Guest_, in the book called _On Nothing and Kindred Subjects_. Youth leaves the house of his Host and apologizes for removing certain property of his, which the Host may have thought, from its long continuance in the house, to have been his very own: included in this property are carelessness and the love of women. But, says Youth, he is permitted to make a gift to his Host of some things, among them the clout Ambition, the perfume Pride, Health, and a trinket which is the Sense of Form and Colour (most delicate and lovely of gifts!) And, he continues, "there is something else ... no less a thing than a promise ... signed and sealed, to give you back all I take and more in Immortality!" Then occurs this pa.s.sage which closes the piece:

HOST. Oh! Youth.

YOUTH (_still feeling_). Do not thank me! It is my Master you should thank. (_Frowns._) Dear me! I hope I have not lost it!

(_Feels in his trouser pockets._)

HOST (_loudly_). Lost it?

YOUTH (_pettishly_). I did not say I had lost it! I said I hoped I had not.... (_Feels in his great coat pocket, and pulls out an envelope._) Ah! Here it is! (_His face clouds over._) No, that is the message to Mrs. George, telling her the time has come to get a wig ... (_Hopelessly_.) Do you know I am afraid I have lost it! I am really very sorry--I cannot wait. (_He goes off._)

That pa.s.sage would appear to confute a quite common notion to the effect that Mr. Belloc, who can and does write nearly everything else, does not write a play because he cannot. It is not for the purpose of arguing such a highly abstract point that we must call attention to the exact way in which it conforms to the necessities of this kind of expression without losing its character, its vividness, or its rhythm.

It is admirably moulded in its expression of a feeling or a sensation, and, in this way, Mr. Belloc's style comes very nearly as close to perfection as can be expected of a human instrument. He renders his moods, the fine shades of a transitory emotion, the solid convictions that make up a man's life with spirit, with humour, with beauty, but, above all, with _accuracy_.

He builds up his sentences and paragraphs with the beauty and permanency of the old barns that one may see in his own country. He does this through his sincerity. He does not exaggerate an emotion to catch a public for the s.p.a.ce of half an hour: he does not, in the more subtle way, affect a cynical or conventional disregard of the n.o.ble feelings and fine motives which do exist in man. It has been his business with patience and fidelity to seize, with skill to make enduring and comprehensible in words, the things which do exist.

His style is a weapon or an instrument like one of those primitive but exquisitely adapted instruments which are the foundations of man's work in the world. With his use of words, he knows how to expose the technicalities of a battle or the transformations of the human heart.

CHAPTER IV

THE POET

So much for Mr. Belloc's most copious revelation of his personality. But this is true--that the most personal expression of all for any man is in verse: even though it be small in quant.i.ty and uneven in quality. It is as though, here, in a more rarefied and more complex form of composition--we will not say "more difficult"--some kind of effort or struggle called out all of a man's characteristics in their intensest shape. Such emotions as a man has to express will be, perhaps not more perfectly, but at any rate more keenly, set out in verse. It gives you his characteristics in a smaller s.p.a.ce. This is true of nearly all writers who have used both forms of expression. It applies--to quote only a few--to Arnold, to Meredith, and to Mr. Hardy.

Now we must admit at the outset that Mr. Belloc's verse does not satisfy the reader, in the same sense that his prose satisfies. It is fragmentary, unequal, very small in bulk, apparently the outcome of a scanty leisure. But it is an ingredient in the ma.s.s of his writing that cannot be dismissed without discussion.

Mr. Belloc realizes to the full the position of poetry in life. He gives it the importance of an element which builds up and broadens the understanding and the spirit. He has written some, but not very much, literary criticism; and, of a piece with the rest of thinking, he thinks of poetry as a factor in, and a symptom of, the growth and maintenance of the European mind. He would not understand the facile critics who only yesterday dismissed this necessary element of literature as something which the modern world has outgrown.

But, curiously, he is a disappointing critic of Literature. His essays in this regard are, like his essays on anything else, obviously in touch with some substratum of connected thinking, a growth which springs from a settled and confident att.i.tude towards man and the world. But they are, as it were, less in touch with it; they are more on the surface, more accidental, less continuous.

His little--very little--essays on the verse of the French Renaissance are extremely unsatisfactory. His criticism of Ronsard's _Mignonne, allons voir si la rose_ is a little masterpiece of delicate discrimination:

If it be asked why this should have become the most famous of Ronsard's poems, no answer can be given save the "flavour of language." It is the perfection of his tongue. Its rhythm reaches the exact limit of change which a simple metre will tolerate: where it saddens, a lengthy hesitation at the opening of the seventh line introduces a new cadence, a lengthy lingering upon the last syllables of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth closes a grave complaint. So, also by an effect of quant.i.ties, the last six lines rise out of melancholy into their proper character of appeal and vivacity: an exhortation.

This pa.s.sage, which, as a demonstration of method, is not altogether meaningless, even without the text beside it, shows the accuracy and nicety of his criticism. And _Avril_ contains a number of similar observations which are valuable in the extreme as aids to judgement and pleasure. But the book has written all over it a confession, that this is a department of writing which the author is content, comparatively, to neglect. The essays are short and, again comparatively, they are detached: they examine each poem by itself, not in its general aspect.

And it is, too, a singular example of book-making: there are more blank pages, in proportion to its total bulk, than one could have believed possible.

The rare studies dealing with poetry which one finds among his general essays also bear witness to his discrimination and determined judgement.

The essay on Jose-Maria de Heredia in _First and Last_ is a remarkable example of these, a remarkable a.n.a.lysis of a poet who is, if not obscure, at least reticent and difficult to like, and in whom Mr. Belloc sees the recapturer of "the secure tradition of an older time." And this essay relates the spirit of a poet to the general conception of Europe and its destiny.

Such a relation is rare. Poetry seems to lie, to an extent, apart from Mr. Belloc's definite and consistent view of life. He takes other pleasures, beer, walking, singing and what not, with the utmost seriousness: this he treats, at bottom, casually and disconnectedly. We can just perceive how he links it up with his general conception of life, but we can only just see it. The link is there, but he has never strengthened it.

And when we turn from his opinions on other men's poetry to his own compositions, we find the same broad effect of casualness varied with pa.s.sages of singular achievement. His verse is very small in bulk: between two and three thousand lines would cover as much of it as he has yet published. Within this restricted s.p.a.ce there are numerous variations of type, but these, in verse, are so subtle and so fluid that we are forbidden to attempt a rigid cla.s.sification.

What, then, is our impression on surveying this collection of poetry? It includes a number of small amusing books for children, a volume called _Verses_ and a few more verses scattered in the prose, most notably (as being not yet collected) in _The Four Men_. The general impression is, as we have said, one of confusion and lack of order: verse, the revealing instrument, seems to be to Mr. Belloc a pastime for moments of dispersion, and most of these poems seem to point to intervals of refreshment, periods of a light use of the powers, rather than to the seconds of intense feeling whereof verse, either at the time or later, is the proper expression.

It goes without saying that little enough of this verse is dull: it nearly all has character, a distinct personal flavour in phrasing and motive. Yet this flavour is best known to the public in its development by the first of brilliant young men to be influenced by Mr. Belloc's style, as apart from his ideas. We may pause a moment to examine this point, for its own special interest and for the guide it will give us to Mr. Belloc's poetry.

Rupert Brooke has been called too often the disciple of Dr. Donne: no critic, so far as we are aware, has called attention to his debt to Mr.

Belloc. This debt was neither complete nor immediately obvious, but it existed. Brooke knew it, spoke of Mr. Belloc with admiration, and quoted his poems with surprising memory. Some of these were--necessarily--unpublished and may be apocryphal: they cannot be repeated here. The resemblance between the styles of the two men was most noticeable in Brooke's prose: his letters from America show a touch in working and a point of view singularly close to those of Mr. Belloc.

But it is also to be discovered in his poetry. Put a few lines from _Grantchester_ beside a few lines from one of Mr. Belloc's poems of Oxford and you will realize how curiously the younger man was fascinated by the older. We will quote the pa.s.sages we have in mind. The first is by Brooke:

"In Grantchester, their skins are white, They bathe by day, they bathe by night; The women there do all they ought; The men observe the Rules of Thought.

They love the Good; they worship Truth; They laugh uproariously in youth."

And the second is from Mr. Belloc's _Dedicatory Ode_:

"Where on their banks of light they lie, The happy hills of Heaven between, The G.o.ds that rule the morning sky Are not more young, nor more serene....

... We kept the Rabelaisian plan: We dignified the dainty cloisters With Natural Law, the Rights of Man, Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters."

There is a difference, for two men of different character are speaking: but there is more than the accidental resemblance that comes from two men making the same sort of joke.

But Brooke was, in his own desire and in the estimation of others, first a poet: and Mr. Belloc has written his verses, as it would seem, at intervals. The common level of them is that of excellent workmanship, the very best are simply glorious accidents.

Now the common level, if we put away the books for children which will be more conveniently dealt with in another chapter, is represented by such poems as _The Birds_, _The Night_, _A Bivouac_, and a Song of which we may quote one verse, as follows:

"You wear the morning like your dress And are with mastery crowned; When as you walk your loveliness Goes shining all around.

Upon your secret, smiling way Such new contents were found, The Dancing Loves made holiday On that delightful ground."

That is to say, these poems are of a certain grace and charm, neither false nor exalted, pleasant indeed to say over, but without that intensity of feeling which even in a small and light verse transfigures the written words. The carols and Catholic poems are of this delightful character, curiously one in feeling with such old folk-carols as are still preserved. One of these compositions rises to a much higher plane by a truly extraordinary felicity of phrase, one of those inspired quaintnesses which move the reader so powerfully as the nakedest pathos or the most ornate grandeur. We mean the poem _Courtesy_, where the poet finds this grace in three pictures:

"The third it was our Little Lord, Whom all the Kings in arms adored; He was so small you could not see His large intent of Courtesy."

These verses are certainly, as we have said, charming. They are really mediaeval, for Mr. Belloc admires the spirit of that age from within, which makes truth, not from without, which makes affectation.

There is another cla.s.s of poem which is jolly--it is the best term--to read and better to sing. The _West Suss.e.x Drinking Song_, a rather obvious reminiscence of Still's famous song, is perhaps the best known but by no means the best. (It is, however, an excellent guide to the beers of West Suss.e.x.) We would give this distinction to a song in _The Four Men_, which begins:

"On Suss.e.x hills where I was bred, When lanes in autumn rains are red, When Arun tumbles in his bed And busy great gusts go by; When branch is bare in Burton Glen And Bury Hill is a whitening, then I drink strong ale with gentlemen; Which n.o.body can deny, deny, Deny, deny, deny, deny, Which n.o.body can deny."

We must speak here, however, since our s.p.a.ce is limited, not of these sporadic and inessential excellences, but of the isolated and admirable accidents--for so they seem--which make Mr. Belloc truly a poet.

One of these is the well-known, anthologized _The South Country_; another is a pa.s.sage in the mainly humorous poem called _Dedicatory Ode_ which we have quoted in another connexion; two occur in _The Four Men_.

All of them deal with places and country, they are all by way of being melancholy and express the quite human sadness that goes normally with the joy in friends and in one's own home.

Such a verse as this in praise of Suss.e.x is inspired, sad and gracious:

"But the men that live in the South Country Are the kindest and most wise.

They get their laughter from the loud surf, And the faith in their happy eyes Comes surely from our Sister the Spring When over the sea she flies; The violets suddenly bloom at her feet, She blesses us with surprise."

The rhythm, apparently wavering, but in reality very exact, alone reflects in this stanza the sadness which elsewhere in the poem is put more directly. It is a delicate, ingenuous rhythm, suited most admirably to (or rather, perhaps, dictating) the unstrained and easy words.