Pot-Boilers Part 6

MAG. How? permit me to learn.

LYS. Just as a woman, with nimble dexterity, thus with her hands disentangles a skein.

MAG. Wonderful, marvellous feats, not a doubt of it, you with your skeins and your spindles can show; Fools! do you really expect to unravel a terrible war like a bundle of tow?

LYS. Ah, if you only could manage your politics just in the way that we deal with a fleece!

MAG. Heard any ever the like of their impudence, these who have nothing to do with the war, Preaching of bobbins, and beatings, and washing-tubs?

LYS. _Nothing to do with it_, wretch that you are?

The women conclude that one who talks thus is no better than a dead man; and when he sets out on some trusty plat.i.tude concerning women's sphere and the married state with

Truly whoever is able to wed--

Lysistrata takes him up sharply with

Truly, old fellow,'tis time you were dead.

Accordingly they prepare with sacrificial pigs, funeral cakes, fillets and chaplets to give the walking corpse a decent burial. The magistrate stumps off, taking Heaven to witness he never was so insulted in his life, which, as Lysistrata observes, amounts to nothing more than grumbling because they have not laid him out.

Twenty-three centuries are gone since Aristophanes wrote the _Lysistrata_, but the safe official who dismisses with a traditional sneer or a smile the notion that any can manage, save those who have been trained to mismanage, is still with us. Perhaps he has outlived the cla.s.s whose prejudices and limitations he formerly expressed; but in the days of Aristophanes such a cla.s.s existed, and it is represented here by the chorus of old gentlemen. In those days the men were not the only fools. Aristophanes had no intention of making out that they were. He was a better artist than party man. He was a comic poet who revealed the essential comedy of all things. The chorus of women, Lysistrata herself, and the other leading ladies, all have their foibles and absurdities; only the chorus of men, who are so keenly alive to them, seem never to guess that there are s.m.u.ts on the pot. To seek in this age and country a companion for these old fellows would be to insult our Western civilization. Let us invent a purely fantastic character; one who could not sleep at night for fear of Prussians and Social Democrats, who clamoured daily for a dozen Dreadnoughts, conscription, and the head of Mr. Keir Hardie on a charger, and yet spent his leisure warning readers of the daily papers against the danger of admitting to any share of power a s.e.x notorious for its panic-fearfulness, intolerance, and lack of humour; such a one would indeed merit admission to the [Greek: choros geronton], would be a proper fellow to take his stand [Greek: hexes Aristogeitoni], beside the brave Aristogiton, and [Greek: pataxai tesde graos ten gnathon], beat down this "monstrous regiment of women."

Aristophanes was a staunch Conservative, but he disliked a stupid argument wherever he found it. He cared intensely about politics, but he could not easily forget that he was an artist. Neither the men nor the women are tied up and peppered with the small shot of his wit; they are allowed to betray themselves. The art consists in selecting from the ma.s.s of their opinions and sentiments what is most significant, and making the magistrate, who speaks for the party, deliver himself of judicious commonplaces. The chorus of wiseacres, the bar-parlour politicians, whom chance or misfortune has led to favour one side rather than the other, are less cautious without being less plat.i.tudinous.

Their talk is all of "inevitable war" and "stripping for the fray,"

"vindicating rights," "tyranny" and "traitors," "spoliation,"

"innovation," and "striking good blows for the cause"; at least it was twenty-three hundred years ago.

_Men Chorus._

This is not a time for slumber; now let all be bold and free, Strip to meet the great occasion, vindicate our rights with me.

I can smell a deep, surprising Tide of Revolution rising, Odour as of folk devising Hippias's tyranny.

And I feel a dire misgiving, Lest some false Laconians, meeting in the house of Cleisthenes, Have inspired these wretched women all our wealth and pay to seize.

Pay from whence I get my living.

G.o.ds! to hear these shallow wenches taking citizens to task, Prattling of a bra.s.sy buckler, jabbering of a martial casque!

G.o.ds! to think that they have ventured with Laconian men to deal, Men of just the faith and honour that a ravening wolf might feel!

Plots they're hatching, plots contriving, plots of rampant Tyranny; But o'er US they shan't be Tyrants, no, for on my guard I'll be, And I'll dress my sword in myrtle, and with firm and dauntless hand, Here beside Aristogeiton resolutely take my stand, Marketing in arms beside him.

This the time and this the place When my patriot arm must deal a --blow upon that woman's face.

One is tempted to quote Mr. Rogers indefinitely; indeed, there are a score of good things to which we would gladly call attention. Having warned readers that this version is not a translation in the sense that the versions of _The Frogs_ and _The Birds_ are, we can, with a clear conscience, urge all to read it who care for good literature or are interested in political ideas. They will not be disappointed; only, we would suggest to those whose Greek has grown a little rusty that a literal translation in French or German would be a suitable companion for the English paraphrase. Without it, they will hardly understand what provoked Plato's splendid compliment and would bring down upon the author, were he alive, the rigours of our English law.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] "The Lysistrata of Aristophanes, acted at Athens in the year B.C.

411." The Greek Text Revised, with a Translation into Corresponding Metres, Introduction, and Commentary, by Benjamin Bickley Rogers. (Bell and Sons.)

[10] Voltaire, by the way, was no admirer of Aristophanes. "Ce poete comique," said he, "qui n'est ni comique ni poete, n'aurait pas ete admis parmi nous a donner ses farces a la foire Saint-Laurent." But that was not because he was indecent, but because to Voltaire, who said much the same of Shakespeare, he seemed extravagantly incorrect.

[11] Of course this panegyric needs qualification. What panegyric does not? The Athenians condemned Socrates. Yes ... yes. But, as a statement of the general belief and, what is more, the practice of Athens, these rather excited paragraphs may stand.

[12] _Note_: 1918. Though a.s.suredly our satirists hide their light under a bushel, the tiny flickers do not escape the eyes of our officials. Let them beware. In 415, after the mutilation of the Hermae, there was a panic at Athens and a reign of terror instigated by some of the demagogues. Torture, though contrary to the laws of Athens and to all Athenian sentiment, was proposed. The proposal was accepted; but when the moment for execution came the _ecclesia_--the ma.s.s meeting of citizens, that is to say--refused to allow it. Now Pericles would never have proposed such a thing; neither would Mr. Asquith: but suppose in these days some more popular and less responsible leader were to back the project, I wonder whether the English people would decline to follow him.

TRELAWNY'S LETTERS[13]

[Sidenote: _Athenaeum Jan. 1911_]

Any one who has read Trelawny's recollections of Sh.e.l.ley and Byron must know that their author was something much more considerable than a friend of the great. Any one who, lured by that enchanting book, has gone on to the "Adventures of a Younger Son" may be pardoned for supposing, if we are really to take it for autobiography, that its author was a stupendous liar. Just what he was--the man who wrote those enthralling memoirs and that excellent romance--may now be pretty well made out from this collection of old and new letters put together by Mr.

Buxton Forman.

"Vigour and directness," "transparent honesty and complete fearlessness," are the qualities that impress this able editor as he reads the letters of the man who, in his opinion, "was less tainted with the sordid commercialism and ever-increasing sn.o.bbery of that century [the nineteenth] than almost any man one could name as having lived through so large a part of it." We agree heartily; but, of course, there is more to be said--for instance, that Trelawny sometimes reminds us of an extraordinarily intelligent schoolboy, at others of a rather morbid minor poet. Only, the vitality of few schoolboys amounts almost to genius, and minor poets are not always blest with feelings fundamentally sound. Most of his vices were the defects of good qualities. A powerful imagination may be fairly held accountable for his habit of romancing, and a brave vocabulary for some of his exaggeration. His vanity and violence--as childish as his love of mystery, and often as childishly displayed--were forms in which his high spirits and pa.s.sionate nature expressed themselves. Art, in the shape of a bad education, aggravated his faults; but his honesty and imagination, his generosity and childlike capacity for admiration and affection were from nature alone.

He was a schoolboy who never grew up; cultivating his cabbages at Worthing in 1875, he is essentially the same shrewd, pa.s.sionate, romantic scapegrace who deserted his ship in Bombay harbour soon after the battle of Trafalgar, and burnt Sh.e.l.ley's body on the foresh.o.r.e at Via Reggio.

Like all boys, Trelawny was exceedingly impressionable, and at the beginning of this book we find him under the influence of the learned ladies of Pisa. Left to himself, he wrote with point and vigour prose as rich in colour and spirit as it is poor in grammar and spelling. His letter to the _Literary Gazette_, published in this volume, is a good example of his narrative style. But even his style could be perverted:

"I must give you the consolation of knowing--that you have inflicted on me indiscribable tortures--that your letter has inflicted an incurable wound which is festering and inflaming my blood--and my pride and pa.s.sion, warring against my ungovernable love, has in vain essayed to hide my wounded feelings--by silently submitting to my evil destiny."

So he wrote to Claire Clairmont in December 1822; but under the language of the minor romantic throbs the l.u.s.ty pa.s.sion of a man.

Sh.e.l.ley's influence was great; with him Trelawny was always natural and always at his best; but Sh.e.l.ley was a wizard who drew the pure metal from every ore. With Byron it was different. Trelawny was almost as vain as "the Pilgrim of Eternity," as sensitive, and, when hurt, as vindictive. He was jealous of Byron's success with women--they were two of a trade--and especially of his relations with Claire. When Byron posed Trelawny posed, and when the one sulked the other sulked; but was any man except Sh.e.l.ley big enough to brook his lordship's moods? That Byron valued Trelawny is certain; he invited him to Greece because he knew his worth. Once arrived, Byron had the wit to perceive that Mavrocordato, albeit the meanest of masters, was the best and most serviceable to be had at the moment. Trelawny, as was to be expected, fell under the spell of Odysseus, at that time in more or less open revolt against the provisional government, but an adventurer of fierce and reckless spirit, in manner and appearance a romantic outlaw, a man after his own heart. Henceforth Byron is reckoned at best a dupe, and at worst a sluggish poltroon; while Trelawny, it is said, imitated his hero so loyally that "he ate, dressed, and even spat in his manner." When the poet died Trelawny spoke with characteristic feeling:

"With all his faults I loved him truly.... If it gave me pain witnessing his frailties, he only wanted a little excitement to awaken and put forth _virtues_ that redeemed them all."

But the iron had entered into his soul, old sores rankled, he could not forgive; to the last he was willing to pay back his rival in his own coin--sneers and abuse.

As Trelawny could scarcely write to a woman without making love to her, and as his relations with Mary Sh.e.l.ley were necessarily emotional and intimate, an ambiguous proposal and a handful of affectionate letters will not persuade us that he ever cared more seriously for her than for scores of others. Though some letters must have been written when he was courting the sister of Odysseus or keeping a harem at Athens, and others when his heart was disengaged, can any one decide which are sincere and which are not? Or, rather, are they not all equally sincere? The following extract may help us to a conclusion:

"I say! the poet [Sh.e.l.ley] was a thorough mormon--why did he not declare himself and antic.i.p.ate the sect? I would have joined him and found him a settlement--it would not hold together without a superst.i.tion--for man all over the world are [_sic_]

superst.i.tious--it's the nature of the animal--your mother was a simpleton to have never heard of a man being in love with two women; when we are young we are in love with all women--the bible would call it by its proper name, l.u.s.t."